Brutus_buckeye

Jake - If you are going to do this again, let me know, I may be interested in paying you to take a few photos for me. Depends where you are going to be going.

If there will be parking in the Westin Garage, that is not so bad. I have a friend who lives in the Fountain Sq condos and parking across the street at the Westin is not really any walk for him.

Do you take these pics for a hobby or to sell, or do people pay you to get flyover pics of their property?

Have a hard time seeing this happen. First, an affluent community of Mariemont would not allow an interstate to go through their town square let alone their backyard. If it does happen, I imagine the route would be tweaked a bit. Second, there does not seem to be much need for it anyway, After all, I64 in KY goes E/W from Lexington and covers most of the NE part of KY. This is a sparsely populated area. Is there really a need for another interstate to go 40 miles north for the same route. It will not save interstate truckers much time with this route which is the impetus for such a highway. They just don't need it.

Woo HOo!!! We're big time now!!

I was looking at the Streetcar line the other day, it seems like there are an excessive amount of stops in the CBD. At one point there are 3 stops within a 3 block area. Doesn't that seem a little excessive? Part of the draw in riding this will be to get you to where you want to be as fast as possible. Cutting out a few stops could help this.

UC has a nice endowment they can tap into. If I am not mistaken, they used some of the endowment to finance some of the development on Calhoun 10-15 years ago.

I think we should all be thankful to Mayor Cranley for his graciousness in defeat yesterday. While, he was a thorn in the side of supporters for that past 6-8 weeks, the project is not done and will ultimately need his reluctant support over the next 4 years to ensure it is a continued success. Please be graceful and respectful of the Mayor

Considering it was 3-6 in favor of the streetcar in mid November the fact that it is 5-4 is a pretty good movement. That is over 20% change of opinion. I know it needs to be 6-3 but still that is progress.

I could be wrong but I thought I heard on readio that Amy murray was noncommittal about her vote? She is clearly against it but apparently the numbers have given her a little pause

Quinlivan did not contest a recount since the likelihood of gaining that many votes was too remote. She decided it was not worth the additional costs of the recount (as advised by Burke). Since the new council has been seated, she no longer can go back and request a recount.

The people against it will see a $50 million gap between cancelling and completing it as opposed to $20 million. It is human nature. The people for it see that ROI and other benefits left off. I think the enquirer article sums it up nicely with the role the Haile foundation is playing. Also I agree with Sittenfield's position on this. It was a bad idea to begin this project with the financing in place and the last city council did a disservice to the city by going forward. That being said, the project has progressed along too far to halt and it is time to make some lemonade with what is left and make the best of it. The pragmatic approach is to finish it and have the asset and save the bus system because of it. WOrst thing that could happen is that federal bus dollars are put into play. Cranley and council are right to be against this but wrong on not letting it go forward because of the additional damage that will be done to the city's reputation.

That does not look good for the streetcar

If the bus funding thing is at risk, it is hard to imagine the county not getting involved in this since they would have a stake in the bus system. Don't they own SORTA?

You fell in love with Cincy without a streetcar, there was obviously something that brought you here.

I bet they will say the streetcar will continue. Just a hunch. However, they will also say what an injustice it is to the people of Cincinnati that the prior council hamstrung their efforts to get out of the boondoggle that is the streetcar.

In favor, no, but they may announce that they reluctantly need to go ahead with it because the costs are too expensive at this point to cancel phase 1. That with the help of the private business community and foundations, it makes the operating costs more palatable to proceed, but if only the prior council had not saddled them with the debt from this project, it would have been easier to do what the voters sent them there to do. They will apologize to the voters for letting them down and not being able to cancel this project and blame the prior council. Just a thought on how it may go

Jake, I don't think it was as much of an "us" against them argument for the office towers on Rivercenter. I agree with your assessment that NKY tried to make a run as the entertainment destination with NOTL and the Rivercenter barges and such. However, the Covington Towers were more a response to business desire and better tax structure that existed at the time in Kentucky vs Ohio. The reason why the towers have a lot of vacant space has more to do with the fact that the KY legislature changed the tax structure and Ohio developed a more favorable tax structure to lure these tenants back (i.e. Neilsen and Omnicare). If QC square was not built, these companies would still be back in Ohio, they just may have been in other spaces or in Norwood.

A Subway has nothing to do with greatness. See Atlanta as Exhibit A

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-MJZhnvf0mLY/UplsYISycCI/AAAAAAAAEBw/-EE-ChFHByk/w720-h540-no/IMAGE_21.jpg Because we all know that title belongs to Cincinnati

Quick Question - If Mann or Flynn flip and there is 5-4 in support of the streetcar, cant Cranley just use the veto pen to kill it? Don't both have to flip to ensure it goes forward?

So what are the bookmakers in vegas saying about completing phase 1 right now? Can I look forward to riding in 2015 or 2016, or should I invest in some new running shoes?

I think I may be confused about a few things but please fill me in. If they vote to Pause the streetcar on Dec 2, why would it take 30 days to actually stop it? Why would it not happen immediately? At that point the supporters would have to get signatures on the ballot to try and have a referendum. At which point construction would continue? Would they not first have to go to court to get an injunction to continue construction? Why would the referendum be in November and not May? Just curious if anyone had any answers.

I anticipate if you look at the wind down numbers factoring in the money you can get for items such as selling the streetcars being built and things like that, the true winddown cost is probably about 25% less than stated yesterday. Still not enough to justify canceling the project, and that does not account for legal fees either which would probably eat up the difference. It was interesting to hear Flynn and Mann speak because they did offer a little wiggle room. They went from being against it to looking at a short pause (hell even Murray wants that). Even if a short pause would add a few million more, a reasonable person would not pull the plug on it. It sounds like this will continue even after a short pause but they want to do their own due diligence first. All in all it could have been much worse.

Tim Burke has advised her that a recount would be a waste of taxpayer money and has such an extremely low probability of changing the result