Brutus_buckeye

So any news on when this will be announced? It seems like they picked the developer already? Any updates on the timeline?

Why not. It generally in the offseason for both sports and concerts so having events that can fill 1/3 of the arena are always good for all the businesses in the offseason.

^ given what is going on at MedPace, this is a huge development. Hope it gets built.

Sounds like the spun it off into a Joint Venture with the guy from Columbus who has the ability to market it on a nationwide basis. Still a Cincinnati brand but they are just bringing on a new partner and giving him equity.

^ Gas is still rather affordable even after price hikes. Still better than electric. I would be cautious about going to electric given that there is a higher likelihood to have electric supply shocks than there is with natural gas. After all, Ohio is pretty much in one of the largest gas fields discovered, natural gas will remain plentiful and affordable for a long time to come around here.

I think much of time for the 15-20 story tall office tower has passed at this point. Lab buildings such as this do not lend themselves to tall structures. 15-20 story offices structures are a tough sell right now even in urban centers. Outside of tall apartments, you typically are not getting much height out of the buildings. I think this is a great project that could develop a lot of biotech jobs and create a biotech corridor which would be great for the future.

The apartments likely get approved. The zoning is there for that, Developer can get it done as a matter of right. The stadium is a bit of a bigger challenge. I think if Moeller wants to commit to being a long term tenant then it will work. Plus, you have to think, Blue Ash is already a big amateur sports town. The sports complex off Grooms hosts a ton of tourney's in the area from travelling teams. Kids First has a lot of regional basketball and volleyball there. The baseball complex in Mason is not far from there too, so they bring a lot of travelling tournaments to their hotels on the weekends already. A football stadium there would only add to those potential opportunities with soccer, Lacrosse, etc that could be staged at that facility. You have to figure it would be used for more than just 5 Moeller games a year. This actually is not that bad of an idea for that area, especially given the other amenities that are already there.

They scored a TD after the Mahomes fumble. That was the 4th and 6 pass to Chase I thought?

The O-line was getting beat. Special Teams giving up 25 yards on the punt return to set up the Mahomes scramble. (Mahomes could not through downfield well late in the game) Also, I was commenting how calling the time out on the 2nd and 8 could come back to bite them. I would have ran a quick play (even if it took 10 more seconds off the clock) and see where it left things. If you can convert you still have 2 Time outs left to try and get a last second field goal. If KC got the ball back, they would have much less time to deal with.

I remember a few years ago, I was working on a development project in a local municipality which would have represented a nice improvement over the blight that was on the property. I knew it would be a tough sell because it did not bring in many jobs and the payroll taxes generated from it would be minimal. However, I made my case that the project (which conformed to zoning) would be a benefit to the city because in its improved manner it would increase the property taxes on the property because of the overall improvement to the project. The economic development director looked at me and laughed and said, property taxes are pretty much irrelevant to us, we get pennies on the dollar in property taxes, property taxes really only matter for the school board. She said what matters to us is payroll taxes. I knew that while we could have proceeded with our development as a matter of right and likely won, the city was going to be a thorn in our side the entire time so we abandoned it.

This really is a moot hypothetical discussion anyway because 1) the city would not be able to implement such a policy without the blessing of the state. 2) The state legislature right now is not overly keen on helping cities raise taxes through these types of schemes 3) There is already a lot of butting heads between the more progressive city administrations and statehouse who seeks to keep what they can do in check.

Yes, but the nature of what you are saying is that the ENTIRE property tax assessment be based on land value and not improved value, not just the city portion. When you apply it to the entire tax bill, that is a huge difference because the revenue to be made up from the lack of being able to tax improvements would be massive and would ultimately create a regressive tax that would benefit the super wealthy in that case at the expense of the middle class. Now to your point, assume that this only affected the city tax portion of the tax bill and not the overall tax bill. Now what you get is a system that essentially raises taxes on some to the detriment of others (ok, not much different than the current tax abatement in place now) but does not actually create any pain to truly alter the behavior you seek, so nothing really changes and people are not really incentivized to sell vacant property or it does not provide enough inducement to development if I understand you right?

So assume, Average Joe inherits a small parcel of land as an empty lot worth maybe 20k. He cant develop it but he is a run of the mill plumber and sits on it as a nest egg to preserve his money. Plus, the transaction cost to sell it for a fair price does not incentivize him to sell. The land will sit vacant for as long as Average Joe owns it. I get that is not a great use of land but at the same time, Average Joe should at least have a right to own the land as an asset. Now, under your proposal, Average Joe inherits this $20k empty lot, but taxes are so ridiculously high that it would cost him more money to keep after 2-3 years than it is worth so he would be incentivized to sell as quick as possible. Who is the buyer?? On the current market, he could fetch a fair price of $20k for the land. Under the new rules, Average Joe Plumber will not be able to be patient to get a fair price because the longer he sits on the property, the more it costs him. The only buyers are well heeled and well funded multi-millionaire developers who can now buy this land for pennies on the dollar (because Joe cannot afford to let it sit because he does not make enough money to afford the land). He sells to this potential developer who pays way below the actual fair market value and is able to "steal" the property for fire sale prices. That same developer banks the land for another 10 years before deciding what to do with it. Yes, that developer will pay the city a much higher tax rate for the property but you still have an empty lot that is not going to be developed anytime soon. You have also pretty much eliminated any potential for the middle class to own property in an urban area and have only turned it over to multi-millionaire developers. Furthermore, many of the developers who can develop the property are usually tight with the city. This system would further foster a ton of cronyism since the few who could practically get the project off the ground are the ones who can grease the skins of the politicians (lets not pretend this does not happen). So you have just created a system where the cities who collect the taxes are the gatekeepers of who they will allow to play the development game in their town, and they will now control who owns all the land in the city too. So as I see it, the system that you promote will: 1) destroy wealth of the middle class 2) allow wealthy investors and developers an avenue to acquire property at a steep discount. 3) promote cronyism and corruption in cities by having land and development controlled by a select few. I do not see this playing well with the public, plus the politicians that promote this while at the same time speaking about equity in the other breath are nothing but two faced hypocrites.

This is the easiest part IMO, the infrastructure is there and the area is redeveloping with the addition of TQL nearby. The hard part is the fact that there is a giant sea of parking at Union Terminal which is further surrounded by an industrial corridor which makes the idea of trying to connect it rather pointless.

It would be nice if the Cincy hotel were that tall.

The one challenge is that such a tax would be regressive and be strongly titled in favor of rewarding rich developers who can spend the money to develop a property and punishing poorer landowners who do not have the capacity to develop. In addition, there are other numerous odd shaped land parcels (such as some hillside property or empty parcels created by street easements that make land undevelopable in many cities. It would punish the people who may hold these (albeit a poor investment in my opinion, but still a way to store value for some people). My point is, this may seem nice in theory, and there could be certain benefits to such a system of taxation, but in practicality it seems like there will be significant problems trying to administer such a system in a fair and equitable manner that it seems impractical

I could see doing it if, 1) you expand the streetcar to Union Terminal 2) Develop the parking lot into mixed use residential, retail and parking garages, 3) further develop Ezzard Charles as a destination area in the West End to get that connectivity there.

Does anyone know when they will announce the developer? sOmeone mentioned that they have been chosen

Out of all the places to do something like this, this would not be a spot where it would be the best investment. 1) to the East, the West End is not there yet for development. If it was getting more traction in that area, then maybe consider it, but that does not seem to be on the near horizon in the next 5-10 years. There are better ways to spend the money. 2) and much more importantly, the point of a cap would be to connect a business district that has been cutoff by a highway and to connect the neighborhood. In Columbus you are connecting High street with the arena district, which was not developed until the mid 2000s. It connected 2 separate walkable areas into a continuous strip. That is not the case here. Even if the West End were developed into a dynamic district, you are stuck with a sea of parking on the other side of the highway leading to Union Terminal. A cap like that does not actually connect anything to anywhere, so it is a bit of a waste of money in this case.

also, back in the 70s and early 80s was before the tax code was changed so you had a lot more rich doctors and other highly compensated professionals that would site on a property solely for a tax loss. They did not care if it could not make money because they could deduct the losses dollar for dollar at the time.

Those are not institutional guys. Those are syndicators. The institutional guys are REITS. They really are not playing in the Cleveland apartment market so much and when they do it is the Class A+ stuff.

Heck, there are a lot of NYC residents who sell their NYC property or choose to buy property in Cleveland and other markets to take advantage of the cash returns that Cleveland rental housing offers. In New York, to own the same type of asset, they have to pay money into it every month but hope it appreciates by 10% a year. In Cleveland they can get 10% return on their cash, but the property does not necessarily appreciate (and this is a simplistic example, and yes you do get appreciation in Cleveland.)

Cleveland is not an appreciation market though. It is much more of a yield market. Same with Detroit. Columbus is a good appreciation market, Cincinnati has been more of a hybrid. Columbus and Indy draw more of an institutional investor whereas cities like Cincy, Pitts, Cleveland draw more of a private placement type of investment when it comes to housing

The thing is, these progressive housing advocates look at these as solutions to fix a problem by trying to stick it to landlords whom they perceive as having money and power. They only see things as an "us vs them" battle through their lens. While the policies they promote certainly make it more difficult for landlords to do their business, they harm the people that they claim to want to help most, in the name of equity or whatever buzzword is popular at that time in their circles. The one constant is that the market will always win out. If you throw up roadblocks to limit evictions, then housing costs will go up even higher and conditions in properties will get worse. Policies and procedures will just be updated to make it harder for people to qualify for housing and to rent. Take Section 8 for example. Columbus passed a law a little over a year ago requiring landlords to take Section 8. It has not helped Section 8 acceptance in the city because many landlords understand the loopholes so that they can avoid it. It was a dumb law and the results from the law are demonstrating this. Based on Biden's Renters Bill of Rights - One thing he is going to try and do is to tie Federally backed mortgages into a rent cap. This is about 1/3 of multifamily mortgages nationwide. This was done with the eviction moratorium during COVID and notice requirements during COVID. What it created was a mismash of rules that apply to a limited number of apartments but not others in the same area. It will make it harder for Fannie/Freddie to generate businesses over local banks who are not subject to the same rules. There are a lot of issues that will come from this and they will not really be good for renters in the long run.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/01/25/biden-proposes-renters-bill-of-rights---heres-what-it-will-do/?sh=737fe21250f3 Now a decent amount of this is just aspirational and much of it is illegal but looks like the progressives are starting to get into Biden's ear