Brutus_buckeye

I thought there was debate about that concept 20 + years ago but there was not the political will to do it and the Brent Spence Replacement took priority at the time. We see how far that has gone.

The reason why the Eastern by pass gets so much attention is because the growth has been on the East side in both KY and OH. All highways will create some sprawl, but I do like the West side plan. If anything I would connect it over 71 into 75 further South. It would really open up the West side of Cincinnati and help improve access to Delhi, Price Hill, Westwood for redevelopment and investment. It would encourage more fill in development on the West Side of Hamilton County. It would also as you point out, make Boone County much more developable and help with airport growth and encourage more businesses around the airport because of the West Side growth. The one concern I would have about your model and idea is that it may not take into account Boone's topography which could cause issues and also certain national parks like Big Bone Lick, etc, may be located in your right of way.

Instead of funding "education" in general, why not use it to fund "college education" Use it to make Ohio Colleges affordable for the masses and keep Ohio's top students at home.

^ partially because the rules are still being written and nobody wants to take the first leap without certainty.

Do they still have plans for the second tower or did that project get shelved?

I thought the convention hotel was supposed to be on the 5th street lot the Port just bought

^ Well, part of the problem is they are still being written. But, the kicker is that essentially, if you buy a property, you need to improve it for about as much as you buy it for (I could be off a little on this but regardless, it requires a significant improvement) and a significant amount of the assets have to be located on site right now (Hence no trucking companies, etc). It really would not work well for say an apartment developer to come into say East Cleveland and renovate an apartment building because the capital contribution required to renovate it likely would not justify the value created in the building for that area. Many startups would have trouble taking advantage of this because they do not have enough hard assets to generate a return on. Basically, the ideal opportunity to take advantage of something like this is going to come from an Amazon type company who is going to invest and essentially take over a neighborhood, or a group like a 3CDC (if they were not non-profit) that can invest in an emerging neighborhood on a large scale to create gentrification. Also, a light manufacturing company who is asset heavy could benefit from some of this. Now I am not an expert at this by any means, but even the experts will admit that this is pretty much uncharted territory and nobody knows for sure how the program will actually work until the IRS actually challenges someone on it. Pretty much, someone needs to be the guinea pig in all this.

The more info and regs that come out on the O-zone program, they really are catering to a very limited group of investors and businesses. The Amazon's of the world or businesses that can come in and make a transformative change to an area are who it is designed for. The typical investor or someone who wants to throw down 4-5 million on a project is not a good fit for this.

Gas taxes have never been seen as "sin" taxes. They were an efficient way to fund roads because, 1) for a long time it was the only way to measure mileage. Give or take a car will only get a certain MPG. The heavier the car, lesser MPG it gets and more damage to the road, therefore, it pays "higher" taxes. 2) within reason, a galloon of gas will get on avg 25-40 MPG, less if you have a truck or heavier vehicle. While non-exact, the gas tax gives a rough idea of how many miles people drive. Only with today's technology can we determine things more accurately

It used to be much better around say 20 years ago. I agree though, there is something about it that has gone down in quality. I would never have called the food great, it was a greasy diner after all, but overall quality has gone down

But when you have government, oftentimes process matters just as much if not more than the result. Yes, without the federal funding the states lose the ability to fund the roads, but, the fact is the Feds can only give grants to the states to administer on how to build the roads and maintain them. Yes, they can have strings attached to them but their recourse if the state does not comply is to yank funding. The Feds cannot come in and take over the system themselves. They would need to use the carrot and stick approach to get the states to comply To do a mileage tax, the Feds would need to require that all cars in the US built after a certain date have a way to track this. They would then need to mandate to the states that if the states did not keep track of this or refuse to renew tags to cars that do not have the capability to track mileage, then they would lose highway funds. It could be doable but it is a herculean task that could take years to implement. I wonder if the hybrid and E-vehicle crowd would go down fighting against this since they often are free riders on the gas tax right now.

The thing is that roads and has never been a federal responsibility and I am not sure the feds even have Constitutional jurisdiction to have a federal mileage tax. Roads are maintained by the state, licensing and taxing is all state regulated. The state controls their roads. Yes, Feds can give money with strings attached, but legally they probably could not administer a national mileage tax program. THis would be solely at the state level.

You can also rent pickups from U-Haul for $20 a day and .79 per mile. If you are doing a day project and need to haul items and make a number of trips it is a much more economical option.

This is not going to go anywhere. This is Mann with a stick up his a$$ and listening to his friend's in the hotel business about what a problem it is. Framing it as a fair housing issue and affordable housing issue may get people like Landsman and/or Dennard to support it, but Sittenfeld and Seelbach are against it because in their views, it is the "future" and Pastor, Murray and Smitherman are against it on free market principles. So really Mann is just a one man show promoting this right now.

i saw that the other week too. It had been teetering that direction for a while. It pretty much falls in line with projections from back in 2016 where it said that approx 3rd/4th qtr 2019 we should start to see this and then a recession sometime in 2020.

I was speaking with a prominent bank executive the other week and he was saying that many of the large banks are working on projects to move all real estate transactions to blockchain within the next 10-15 years. This would eliminate the need for title insurance or greatly diminish it, and it would eliminate the need for the county recorder

So who would own the stadium? is this a CSU project that a USL would rent or will it be jointly developed by the USL team and CSU, or will it be developed by the city and rented to both CSU and the USL team?

But the owner is making a solid return on their investment as a parking lot. As much as I would like to see a 40 story tower there or a 30 story apartment building, does the developer see the reward to offset the risk?

And who thought the 2017 tax act was a bad deal for cities. Just sayin...

Alecia Resse has to be coming up on term limits. Could she return to council? As far as Laketa Sassy Cole. - What about "all aboard the Cole Train" wasn't that her slogan at one time.

The biggest question is whether they are running into financing issues with the RE market softening for such projects. I do love the project and location. I drove past it a few weeks back and thought the proposed project would be a good asset to the area. Although, I was sad to see Lakewood Hospital close as I had fond memories of that place.

The 5/3 building had always lacked the type of modern atrium that most modern office towers have. For example, the Atrium buildings, old Chiquita building, First Financial Center, PNC, all have large atrium spaces that are open for people to gather and meet before going up the elevators. The 5/3 building was a giant elevator banc. I think for security, this created a problem. It also is not really in line with those who consider class A office buildings in today's times. The downside is that I wish the construction were facing the Walnut street side because architecturally, I think the lines of the bullding look quite nice from the Ftn Sq side. Less people would notice it on the Walnut side.

^ Yes, but just because it is a 2 story lobby does not mean it will not connect through to Walnut street. It does mean that they will need to remove the Skywalk to Walnut if they are going to make it a 2 story lobby.

Certainly, the older mothers are when they have kids plays a role. Part of that is the reason for lower birthrates because there is less time to have 6-7 or 8 kids.

I would imagine it would be like the connector to 6th street. It will be enclosed but open to the public to pass through. Still cuts the street off some since the general public does not know of it because it appears closed off. However, on the bright side, enclosing it will get rid of the wind tunnel that is currently there right now. Given that this is a museum and they want people to actually see it, it would make sense it is open to the public.