Brutus_buckeye

last year CJ Stroud was a Heisman candidate until the 2nd half of the Michigan game where he looked lost and OSU could not move the ball move than a few yards. As Dewand Jones said earlier in the week "We knew they stole signs and we changed some up but did not have time to change everything". You figure the first half when OSU moved the ball, Michigan may not have been able to guess everything they would be running. This was the same CJ Stroud who lit National Champion Georgia up for close to 400 yards last year. On D, while OSU had holes in their D last year, McCarthy and Michigan had been a pedestrian passing team before then, lit up OSU's D that game and gashed them with the run game. They knew what to do based on how OSU was aligned on D. Even in 2023, while Michigan has a good team and may not have played a tough schedule, in years past they would win those games by 7-14 points, now they are winning by 28. Coincidence?? I think not.

ten months later the consensus now is that TTUN's dominance over Ohio State the last 2 years was apparently aided by cheating.

So is this a courthouse? New office of Daily Planet? Your future evil lair? The people want to know, :)

This is one of those programs that create sound bites but will likely do almost nothing, and probably what would come from it will be projects that do not make sense to convert to residential. Many of the modern offices built in the 1980s and 90s were never designed in such a way to convert. They had large floor plates and plumbing that ran only in the center of the building. It would create a ton of expense and cost to create an environment (without a ton of wasted space) to make a modern apartment out of the space that people would desire to rent at an affordable price. Cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati have done well in the office to residential conversions because they have a much older office stock which tended to have smaller floorplates and not as much plumbing work needing to be run in order to createa livable space. Look at a 1930s office building and a 1980s building and you can see why a conversion of the older building was economically reasonable. Now, look at the office space issue. The big problem in places like San Fran, LA and others are that they have newer office properties that were built on speculative builds that will never be viable due to the new office trends.

I think @thomasbwis probably able to best offer insight into the divorce of the Streetcar between Metro and the city. I think he may know some additional insight on the dynamics going on at the time.

The city wanted it to happen. They did not like Metro's management and felt that Metro was not providing adequate service on the routes and causing much of the problems associated with the streetcar at the time. Both Metro and the city wanted this breakup. In one sense, since Metro left the picture, the impressions of the Streetcar have improved.

"study" is just political speak for kicking the can down the road. Studies are always done, but if you look at the responses of say Jefferies and Kearney and parse how different they truly are. Jefferies - essentially says, we need to pursue my 4 part plan to study it and design the best path forward. - Jefferies is saying he wants to move forward with an expansion but has not settled on the exact right path so you study it. Kearney says - I like the Streetcar but we need to study it first to see if the costs of expanding it can justify an expansion. Essentially, she says, this is not a high priority to me right now and if we find money, then maybe we can do something, but expansion is a very low priority for me. They both are saying study it, but their statements have quite different meanings.

The Streetcar was managed by Metro at one time when it first started. It was not managed properly. Metro wanted nothing to do with it and they essentially walked away from it 3-4 years ago and the city runs it solely by themselves. From what I understood, the city always had an interest in it, Metro had to provide reporting to the city (separate than what they did to the bus system) and the city had to sign off on some items thus leading to a ton of red tape and a lot of inefficiency. Metro hated running it because it was a bit out of their wheelhouse and did not love the city oversight. Metro was glad to give up the management when they did and the city wanted Metro out of the picture too at the time. So yes, politics. Also, I think Metro was trying to pass their sales tax for BRT at the time and in order to help get support for that, they wanted to completely divorce themselves from the Streetcar which was an Albatross that could have sunk their levy.

So what this says is that there is really not enough support for expanding the streetcar anytime soon. THere are very few strong yes people, most of the people interested are soft yes people who are essentially playing politics and do not wan to take a hard position either way.

What the railway board has been saying is that; while they can certainly try and negotiate a better deal, there is no guarantee they could come to an agreement. Yes, worst case scenario is that N&S vacates the line and leaves the city holding the bag, but the greater liklihood is that any cost dispute will go to an arbitration board that would make a binding decision regarding the lease payment. The arbitration board is run by railroad professionals and it puts the city at a disadvantage in that forum. Therefore, it is not in the city's interest to go to arbitration because the odds of a favorable ruling are lower

I do not think it is as basic as finding someone to manage the funds, it is also transaction costs and fees associated with connecting to various brokerage accounts are set up (it is not as easy as just opening a Schwab account online with this amount of money) There are other admin costs, etc. that go with managing the money. Put it this way, the Scripps family has an office where they employ around 70 people in six figure jobs with the sole responsibility of managing the family trust as well as the disbursements to members.

The fees are tied to the value of the funds under management. Just like a mutual fund that charges money management fees that comes off the total return paid to the customer, the fees are baked into the account. The $8 million in fees is an estimate based on the value of the fund. As it goes up, the fees will go up marginally because there are more funds being managed by the fund, if the value of the fund decreases, the fees go down too. There is not necessarily a correlation between the amount of the fees and the amount of the distribution. Theoretically, the fund could increase 8% but the trustees decide not to distribute anything that year or to distribute say $30 million and reinvest the rest. This has no impact on the fees due as the fees are on the value of the funds under management. (Now, please note that I am speaking in generalities and not necessarily saying that the trustees may distribute $0 in a given year and instead reinvest the entire gain, etc.)

It is a lot of money coming in from the Coasts that are doing this. They do not understand the market and just look at aggregate numbers. They see a "housing shortage" or "low rents" compared to other markets and see the opportunity to drastically raise rents if they put a ton of money into renovating a tired "C" class apartment in a "C" class location. Dont get me wrong, many of these tired units need upgrades and you can make them look very nice by putting in the fresh vinyl floors and new builder grade cabinets or even just adding a dishwasher. However, adding subway tile in the showers and granite counters as well as tile backsplashes are a waste of money when your average resident is going to still be a similar "C" class level resident that was there before. The Forum may have been a very nice building in the 60s but preferences have changed. It is not walkable to anything and does not really offer much in view. What may have been the "Prime" location in the 1960s is no longer considered preferable as people want to have amenities near their units and some level of walkability, even if it is to a strip mall next door to get their morning Starbucks or chicken wings.

I would imagine that even if LA would be a no go, they would find another city out west.

The demand is there but the interest rates make the construction unfeasible. To get a project off the ground there are a few components to financing and the price of the loan is based on the after construction value of the property. When rates are 3-4% that is easy for developers to finance. When rates go to 8% that changes the construction assumption quite a bit. Even though the demand is there, the developer now has to carry the debt at 8% instead of 4% over a period of 2 years to complete the project. That is a lot more money. THen, you have the assumption that the economy will be the same once completed or better, and it will allow the developer to lease that project. If, after 2 years, the economy is in the tank, the developer is left holding the bag on a property that cannot be leased up (at projected rates). Couple that with the fact that at current rates, bank regulators have imposed more stringent capital requirements on lenders and developers are having to come up with more equity to get the project off the ground. 2 years ago, the developer could finance 85% of the project. Today, the developer will likely need to bring 1/3 of the money to the table. All of this increases the risk and challenges to the developer making it difficult to get a project off the ground. Remember, the projects are often 2-4 years in the making so a lot can change during that time frame, even if demand is off the charts right now.

There are, but one way to lower the cost of doing business is to speed up the approval process and allow things to be done without as much red tape. Instead of needing 5 duplicative departments to sign off on a permit, it can and should be streamlined. The process also allows NIMBYs to frustrate the process by gumming up the process with one of these departments. This is a significant cost to do business. Eliminating red tape will also speed up the material delivery process and cause fewer delays which, impact the cost of the project. It will also lower material cost too. Labor may not be going down now, and prices will remain high until there is a recession that causes a labor demand contraction but there are other ways to reign in costs outside of labor. This will not make it cheap to build, but it will encourage more units coming to market and help to alleviate shortages.

That is correct, the way to bring them down is to remove red tape to make it easier to develop or redevelop properties and to limit the rights of the NIMBY's

upstairs is nice but could be better. It has about 4 food vendors at any given time with room for about 7 or 8. The one thing is that sometimes the hours are inconsistent. Kroger owns 2 of them I believe so they at least make sure that there is adequate service there. THere is a bar on the second floor which is nice and caters to the after work/FC crowd and I assume people who live in the apartments. It appears to do a decent lunch business during the week with everything going on at the Courthouse. I think it could do better but I think there needs to be more residents, especially in the Court Street corridor and just South of Court Street. The thing I like best about it is that it is a place where you can take kids that is not high end or fast food and they have space to run around.

All would be nice, you just do not get the ROI for those types of projects. Better to serve the E/W routes by bus at this point. Connecting to the universities, zoo and hospitals would be a good addition to have because it offers connectivity to job and destination centers. People could live on or near the line, or they could drive and park at a lot near the line to use the streetcar and take to their employment/destination center. I do not think you get that in Northside or Fairmont, at least to justify an expansion of the line there right now.

I do enjoy the downtown store. We stop there to eat on occasion when going to Reds or FC games. I really have not shopped there and from what I see it does have a bit more on the produce side than the old OTR store so it is a great amenity to have in town.

Have not been to the new Corryville Kroger, but pretty much what did they expect. Especially, once they closed down the Walnut Hills Kroger, the riff-raff was going to naturally go to Corryville. The downtown one is similar. It is still small and does not carry as wide of a variety as the other Krogers do. The big complaint of the old OTR one was the lack of items it carried. While the new one is better, it is still not the same variety as Newport or Hyde Park.

Define city? If you ask those who live and work downtown or OTR or even the Clifton area, they would like it expanded. If you ask those who live in Evanston, Madisonville, or Westwood; you may get different responses. I think it would be good to expand if you find the right route and right places to connect it too. Just building a line as an expansion is not the right thing to do, it has to have connectivity of points of interest/importance. Just building to Fairmont or Northside is not the best path for the Streetcar because those areas are probably better handled by bus service (or dedicated light rail). The other challenge you are seeing now with the city (and it impacts the Streetcar) is that even if there is a will to expand it, the trust in the civic leaders as at a low point, so that is also part of the calculus too.

Because it is still politically toxic due to the disaster of the rollout in 2016. As the mayor has said multiple times, their is a lack of trust in city government now given the Dennard, PG and Malone corruption mess. Given that this was such a political hot potato at the time and remained so until at least 2021, discussion of expansion is not politically feasible.

I think the big thing that we are missing in regards to the arena is a space that will attract events that will bring visitors to town. THat is the problem with Heritage. For 80% of events it is fine, but it is that 20% that is what boost tourism dollars. The Cyclones are a nice amenity and send 3-5k people downtown on nights that they play however, a minor league hockey team does not get people to travel form out of town to see minor league hockey. It is about selling hotel nights and the Cyclones do not generate that buzz. Heritage is fine for mid-tier concerts, but again they do not generate the hotel nights that the CVB seeks because those events do not bring a ton of visitors from other cities to town because oftentimes, those acts will stop in most regional cities anyway, plus they are not going to draw the crowd of a major headliner like Taylor Swift. As much as we all love the Trans Siberian Orchestra, they do not really generate much for hotel nights. High School Football nights and local events are a nice use of the stadium, but again, they do not generate the tourism dollars or out of town exposure that the CVB is looking to create. That is why the need for the new arena. It is that top 20% of events. How much money does an NCAA tourney weekend bring in? How many extra Cyclones games or REO Speedwagon concerts would the arena need to host to match an NCAA Tourney weekend. That is what they are trying to do with the arena. It is to get that 20% of events that generate the hotel nights for downtown.

Not saying that it is likely they would go under. THey are a very solid company, but bankruptcy of any company is always a realistic event even if the likelihood is minute.