Brutus_buckeye

While the initial theory is nice, it really does not sound very workable and it would ultimately do nothing but punish the small owner and reward the big developer (which I know is part of the goal). However, land prices can easily be manipulated and the article does not address that issue at all in the article. For example, take a parking lot in downtown Cleveland that currently has a auditor value of $1 million for land plus improvements. The owner sells it for $2 million to a new owner, that does not mean the taxes will be reassessed on the new $2 million land value. Depending on how the purchase is, the value of the land could actually go down and taxes reduced.

Most apartment owners were really only giving annual increases in that range anyway. The rent CAP was not really much of anything. The bigger issue in CA (which some cities have enacted, hey Oakland) as well as a few other places in Oregon and Washington, was the enactment of laws that limited the landlord ability to non-renew a lease. This meant that at the end of a monthly term, the tenant could not be forced to leave if the owner did not wish to rent to them again unless they did not pay the rent or had a significant lease violation that was documented by the landlord. The goal was to prevent people from taking advantage of the hot market by forcing people out and then re-renting the unit for $500 more per month. While noble in its theory, it amounts to nothing more than a backdoor rent control measure, and it also makes it hard to remove bad tenants from the property in a timely manner.

I do not disagree with you either, something needs to be done. All I am saying is that the city is not in a great position either, because when the city intervenes and levies heavy fines such as this, it pretty much will cause the property to be condemned and the residents to be forced to move and the property continues to sit in a dilapidated condition until the right redeveloper comes along. If the city tried working behind the scenes and the landlord has not acted as a willing partner, then of course, you seek to condemn the building, send it to receivership, etc. But despite whatever fine a bankrupt LLC will likely never end up paying, the city is ultimately left dealing with the blight for more years to come. (see Terrace Hilton in Cincinnati for example).

Everything has a life cycle. Housing too. They go from class A to class B, then C and D over time as they age and the area around it ages (of course a 100 year old building in Cleveland Heights or Lakewood does not necessarily fit this model because those neighborhoods are very desirable, but it is still not a class A building). Overtime, buildings and their systems deteriorate. People's tastes and preferences change. Luxury apartments designed to fit the tastes of the 1980s look gaudy by todays standards. Same with 1990s properties. In 15 years, the new buildings being built today will look dated.

Has it had the same owner for the last 20 years? Many times buildings like this change hands every 5-10 years and the new owner inherits the issues from the old one. some of the problems get fixed, but new ones arise. Until someone goes in and does a major renovation and complete repositioning with higher paying tenants, the vast majority of the issues are just band aided over

it is a difficult position for cities to levy fines like that. On one hand, the landlord was neglecting important matters with the building, but on the other hand, when you levy a fine like that, it likely plunges the property into insolvency. You cant get insurance on such a property and would throw any loan into default. At that point, any chance of immediate attention to the property stops and nothing happens while the property is in litigation and eventually going back to the bank. THe bank does the bare minimum to manage the asset as they just want to find a buyer to liquidate it and cover their losses. Eventually, a new buyer comes in, who has to have a plan to renovate the property to close on it, but often, it ends with all the old tenants having to be evicted so repairs can be done and the updating building coming back online with much higher rents, which does not help the affordable housing stock. I know a lot of times, the city will be patient if the owner maintains a dialogue with them the whole time. I wonder if this landlord quit commuicating with the city?

I am not too familiar with the North Olmstead and Westfield properties However, in Cincinnati, the city is getting aggressive in trying to pass a tenant bill of rights and has been coming hard against the landlords. Sometimes this is justified, but in some cases it is a power play against a landlord who is trying to work on the property but there are significant issues that just take time to address (such as sewer line back ups, etc.). In some cases you have a new landlord buying a 50 year old property with some hidden defects that may not be completely discoverable and the capital is not there to address it all immediately, so they have to triage. That is especially true for landlords who purchased the property in the last 20 months as asset prices have become overinflated. For example, down in Cincinnati, there is the Williamsburg community which is a 1000 unit apartment/townhome community built in the late 60s early 70s. At the time it was very nice but over 50 years things wear out. A new owner purchased the complex in the summer, and although it had issues he took over anyway. There were 160 units that would constitute needing significant repairs. While that may seem like a lot it is about 1.5% of the complex which in the grand scheme is almost expected for a complex of that size. The owner was open about working with the city to address these matters and was making progress. They had cut the amount of units with significant problems down to around 80 (less than 1% when an ice storm came on Christmas and froze a bunch of pipes creating additional problems. The city pounced on this situation to assert a narrative that the out of town landlord was not properly taking care of the property (which was not an accurate narrative). The out of town landlord even flew into town to try and meet with the mayor, city manager, and city solicitor to discuss the issues and repair plan. After waiting around for hours, they were rebuffed by the city and told that the city was determined to make an example out of them.

It is more than an off-hand comment. Now, are all progressives aligned with this?? No, of course not. Many progressives have other issues to worry about than housing. However, there are many far left progressive groups in the larger cities who work around rental housing and affordable housing that want to advocate for this. Often times, these individuals do not care to understand the challenges and the problem, they see a solution as a zero sum gain. In their minds, if housing or rent is too expensive, then simply pass a law and require it to be lower. This is what happened in Portland, St. Paul and Seattle and what they tried to do in California except they have been smacked down by the voters twice now. Since housing is local, you do not see a mass mobilization of progressive forces because these issues are not handled at the DC level. Congress does not determine housing policy (or at least rental policy) so it makes little sense for the groups to spend big money at a national level and focus resources in DC when the battle to be won is in the local cities. When these cities have rent control ordinances on the ballot, you see a ton of money from outside interest groups (on both sides) flood into that area. It is just not national news because people in Ohio do not really care about a local Minnesota or Oregon ballot initiative.

Not a groundbreaking finding but just illustrative that landlords are not a bunch of money grubbing greedy people and that there is a significant cost associated with housing. The majority of landlords are small mom and pops who own 1-4 units and are trying to get by. They are not putting any money in their pockets on a regular basis but rather, they keep the property as a nest egg for their retirement. Tenants who destroy the property, fail to follow the rules, steal housing by failing to pay the rent are hurting many average middle class families who are just hanging in there to survive. The idea that these large apartment owners are fleecing the little guy is just not true and unfortunately it creates a false narrative about property owners.

Not that it is a regular route, but United is adding a non-stop to Kansas City for this weekend for Bengals traffic. So, at least for a 2 days we have non-stop service to KC again. :) Small victories.

Here is a good infographic on where each dollar of rent goes. Landlords are only earning $.09 on every dollar of rent on average. Not a huge sum by any means. https://www.naahq.org/sites/default/files/naa-documents/dollar_of_rent_2022.pdf

if you look at the general consensus of economists and also the history of rent control in many cities, it has been deemed to be a failure as far as an economic policy to create more affordable housing and in fact it actually stifles the creation of additional housing. Now, of course, there will be some landlords that keep their properties better than others, but with rent control, it removes the incentive to keep up a property and continue to modernize it.

I would not take that seriously. Progressives have been whining about rent control for years, and they will continue to whine about it. There are 2 problems with it and Biden would never attempt to do this. Another Democratic president (maybe) but even then it does not overcome the second problem. 1) Economically speaking, rent control is an utter failure. There is no better way to encourage disinvestment in housing then to enact rent control Product that would otherwise be upgraded and updated gets band aided to the most minimal level to get the regulator off your backs. There is no new investment in housing because the return is not there. Rental housing becomes a slum. 2) legally speaking (and Biden understands this). The Federal government has no power to regulate rental housing. This is a state issue and not subject to the Federal Government's purview. Any attempt to do so would get slapped down by the courts, and there would likely be a lot of fairly liberal judges who would slap this down too. Biden already saw what would happen when he had his eviction moratorium struck down (which was also an illegal assertion of power when Trump tried to do it in 2020). Rent control is even more of a stretch, and that would get struck down in a hurry.

I am sure it is not a heavy sponsorship, but remember, The Bengals have training camp down there. They have fans visit training camp and open practices. There is value to Kettering having their name on the field. There are potential game day shots of the practice field from the stadium and the Kettering logo is on TV for a few seconds. On radio reports, they could mention they are reporting from the Kettering Health practice fields. I can see the value, just do not know how much it should be worth.

What is interesting is how long Kettering health is going to be the official health care sponsor. IEL only has naming rights on the temporary bubble. When the permanent indoor facility is built I was told that the sponsor was going to be Mercy Health.

The Bills secondary was beat up and far from full strength. They lost their key pass rusher for the year. They were severely hampered on D and had not faced a team that could challenge their D like this all season. Burrow exposed them in the regular season contest that was canceled. The big difference with the Bills vs Bengals is the Bills invested in a lot of proven veterans but they were older and more susceptible to injury whereas the Bengals had a lot of younger talent that needed to develop better so they could plug and play a lot easier when people got injured (and also Joe Burrow is better than Josh Allen)

realistically, that is not going to happen. Just think how hard it is to expand the streetcar already. There are higher priority projects for the streetcar that they would want to accomplish first before going down the Race/Elm corridor

I guess we can now say that whomever purchased those options for Jan 23 officially took a bath on them

It appears this decision was actually made a few weeks ago and not really announced with any fanfare. This article from Jan 4 references that GE Aerospace is going to be based in Ohio. The rest of the media may have been preoccupied and missed it. https://www.flightglobal.com/engines/ge-aerospace-nears-being-standalone-company-following-healthcare-divestiture/151520.article

There was certainly pressure to break up GE before Immelt was forced out. Immelt was there for a while and probably was biased to try and keep it together (that was what he knew and did not want to break the company up on his watch). The move to Boston was to reflect some of the changing economic realities for GE and position itself to be more nimble (it didn't work obviously). You saw this with the global operations hubs that were built in Cincinnati and elsewhere. These never came to full fruition as the pressure from Wall Street forced them to pivot and new leadership came in. Clearly, Boston provided a lot of benefits for the HQ. Huge talent base, lower taxes because of incentives offered to lure GE there, access to a large airport. If I remember correctly, the cities that GE was looking at for their relocation were Boston, New York and DC area. None would have been low tax areas (but would have been able to get a lot of incentives that Connecticut was not willing to offer) and all offered a lot of potential talent nearby. Wherever GE moved the HQ would not have mattered as the company would have suffered the same outcome. The thing about Boston though is that you can see they remain committed to the area with the HQ for the Vernova division. maybe at the time the decision was made, this was the main driver, along with the fact that Boston had a large healthcare presence too.

I dont think Boston had anything to do with it. The corporate strategy to turn the corporate conglomerate into a software/tech company was the key problem because it hurt the existing aerospace business which was the economic driver for the company from a profit standpoint. Back in the 90s GE was a high flying company based on the fact it was a financial company and that came to an end in 2008. There are much more important strategic decisions then where the HQ is located. Moving from Connecticut to Boston was fairly irrelevant to GE's problems. Also worth noting, GE Vernova (the energy division) is still based in Boston and will remain there with a new office in Cambridge, so obviously, GE saw many benefits to the Boston area in 2016 when they located there that still remain true today.

I do bet that some of the bigger execs stay in Boston and rent space at the Vernova HQ in Cambridge. Culp is a big Boston guy so I cant see him moving as much and maybe a couple of other C-Suite people will stay up there and do more flying back and forth to Cincinnati. They will likely be expanding their accounting and legal groups in Cincinnati and a few corporate IT positions and corp communications would have to be relocated down here too, but outside of the big "name" on the skyline, it will not bring a ton of people here, however the few that do relocate, will certainly be the ones with multiple homes

Why move the ice rink? I get the idea to create a vibrant convention district, but you still do not want to take away from Fountain Sq which is traditionally the gathering point of the city. They should keep the rink on the square as that still should be the focal point of downtown. They have already developed the infrastructure around that area that the convention district does not have. You dont have the streetcar access to the convention area like you do Ftn Sq, for example.

There are a number of office projects on hold now, namely the new Western Southern Tower too. These will likely have to happen sometime this decade given the amount of class B/C office that is coming offline in the city and the aging buildings of what was previously class A. The loss of the Macy's tower as office space, the loss of 4th and Vine and Carew Tower office space is only pushing those tenants (who still will need space) into places like 312 Elm, 600 Vine, Huntington Tower, etc. It puts pressure on those tenants who may look to upgrade to places like the Scripps Center or Atrium which will further push demand for some customers toward newer space Class A+ space. There will be demand for new product in the next 10 years even if the office market stays soft.

You need to look the canadian government in this and then have the Lake Erie bridge project to complete the loop so you actually create a true outerbelt.