Brutus_buckeye

WIthout knowing details, I estimate the property owner will get around $2-3k per month in additional parking revenue from monthly and hourly parkers who will now be using that garage to park. The garage will look a lot nicer when you have an active tenant on the street corner too. Bringing in 300 volunteers and others on a regular basis will likely lead to a new restaurant or cafe opening in that area. It may have minor spillover to local apartments like Gramercy or Shilitto (although most of the paid positions who would rent downtown likely could not afford those buildings). The biggest benefit will be that corner of downtown that is dead with the empty Macy's building and the fortress that is the Cincinnati Bell building that generates no pedestrian traffic.

Just speculating but it may have been fully depreciated and if he transferred it in kind he would have a big tax bill. Also, he still owns the garage above the space so he gets the monetization of the garage still and would not make sense to break out the space below. Maybe in the event the area were to be redeveloped, it allows the current owner the ability to restructure the Pro-Kids lease to accommodate future redevelopment of the parcel in an easier manner than if Pro-Kids owned the space outright. Not sure the answer, but just my initial thoughts.

So it looks that that will always be a parking garage. I am sure there are caveats if they need to tear down that garage at some point, but I guess as long as they are in the building it is free rent (assuming they pay their utilities). It is a shrewd move by the landlord if you think about it. 1) that space has been empty for over 30 years. It was never going to rent to a major retail tenant or even restaurant or other business (at least not that amount of space). 2) Pro-kids will likely pay to refresh the space and area and activate that part of the street which is essentially dead right now. 3) If Pro-kids has a lot of people coming and going from the building throughout the day, this will certainly lead to much more parking revenue for the owner than he would otherwise get if that space continues to remain empty for all these years. This is a no brainer deal for the landlord and Pro-kids if you ask me. It will be nice to see that space activated again too.

In one sense this has been going on for decades already. They are not necessarily paid patronage jobs but look at how certain leadership and positions of influence are filled and who takes them. To your point, the perfect example is Dwight Tillery's Health Collaborative. It may not be a city department, but it is an agency that receives a lot of city funding and certainly has been called into question as to how it spends its funds.

I dont disagree with you. However, if you were the GOP and the Dems or Charterites are not going to overstuff the ballot with options, it would probably be at least somewhat strategically beneficial to them to get more people on the ballot.

why wouldn't it? The vast majority of voters will vote all 9 candidates. If you tend to vote the GOP slate, you would theoretically vote a keating, goodin, sunderman (if they ran). Now Goodin and SUnderman have no chance, but if that voter would vote for 6 more candidates, which candidates do not get the vote, this would naturally narrow the margin for Keating that she would have to overcome. It does not matter if it is the GOP slate or Charterite slate or even more Dems on the ballot, the more candidates, the better it would have been for Keating.

Strategically, the GOP messed up by only endorsing Keating. With only 10 candidates on the ballot, and people vote for 9, if there were more choices (even GOP choices that would not win), Keating may have been put over the top. The reasoning is that there are still a block of GOP voters in the city. In general, voters will vote for 9 candidates and without a few other GOP candidates to act as placeholders to take some of the GOP vote, candidates like Seth Walsh, Crammerding and Albi benefit because people who like Keating will vote for her and then pick another 8. If they vote for all 9 candidates, it will likely increase the votes of the bottom 3 candidates to the detriment of the lone GOP candidate. WIth 5-6 GOP candidates running (even though the other 4 will lose) it increases the case for a person like Keating to get on council because it will decrease opportunities for people who like her to fill out the ballot for people like Crammerding, Walsh and Albi (or whomever may be in position 7,8 and 9 in a given year). The Dems were smart by only endorsing a slate of 9 this year when they normally endorse 12-14 people.

^ The NBA is nice but it is not the same level as a World Series or Super Bowl.

I think a lot of this is that those guys were nostalgic figures to the Browns 80s glory days. I do not disagree with his decisions. Slaughter certainly left in his prime, but receivers in general are on the downside of their career by 29 or 30. Kosar had been injured a ton and he was very slow in the pocket. He was a good QB and great in the mid 80s but by the early 90s the injuries had caught up with him. He was a good QB but not quite as good as Marino. But you can't always just look at those guys. Look at Clay Mathews and many of the defensive stars. They had gotten old and were on the downside of their career too. Also, remember, it was not like Belichick took over a dominant team and tore it apart. The Browns were a decent team in 1989 and then stunk in 1990 such that they fired their coach. In 1991 Belichick came in and had to rebuild that, and took on a lot of new players into his system in order to do that. 1991 was a rebuilding year, and 1992 essentially was too. By 1994 they were competitive again and ready to take the jump in 1995 until the rug was pulled out from under them.

They were, unfortunately, much of that would have been in Baltimore if Belichick were retained and made the move. However, imagine if the Browns never left. They would have 2 Super Bowls, multiple division championships and ALWAYS competitive even when they are having a down year. I can't remember a time where the Ravens have been a truly terrible team. WIth the Browns and Bengals, there have been a lot of times where October 1 rolls around and as a fan base you say, why bother. WIth the Steelers and Ravens, you have never felt that way.

I think Belichick got a raw deal with the Browns. He inherited a bad team when he took over the job. They had an aging roster and poor QB play at the time. In his second year, he turned them into a competitor. They were supposed to win the division in 95 and were off to a solid start until the whole front office upheaval about moving to Baltimore happened and it pretty much killed morale for that season (there was nothing he could do about that). Overall, he won in Cleveland despite the clusterf*** that was going on around him. I do not think any coach could hold the team together with what was going on around him.

I have always felt Stefanski was a good coach, he just has never had a QB to make him look brilliant, but he knows how to manage a good team and get the most out of all his players. I think he has gotten a raw deal with an average QB in Mayfield and then losing all the draft capital they have in the Watson deal that is not looking great the longer this has gone on.

think the Steelers will fall off. Bengals are surging and will likely vault into 1 or 2 in the division. Browns have a path to 10 or 11 wins and wildcard spot either the 2nd or 3rd spot (likely 3rd spot given that a 3rd place team has a hard time getting a 2nd spot). IN the 3rd spot, they would play either a KC, Jax or (Bal/Cin) in the wild card round. That would be a winnable game given that it would be strength on strength although ideally, it would be best to avoid an AFC North foe in the first round of the playoffs. I would not quite throw the Browns into Super Bowl contender but they certainly are a playoff team and a team that can do some damage in the playoffs with the right matchups

Cedar Fair knew who they were. Paramount's parks knew who they were too. WHen they combined it was a good combination of good companies that were able to find synergies in each other's strengths. Six Flags has always seemed to be a company that really had no strategy. They would dabble in one thing and then another and before you knew it they were all over the map without anything they did particularly well. THey had good assets like Magic Mtn and Great Adventure but the majority were poorly performing assets that were nothing more than a local draw. It was never a surprise that 6 Flags was always in and out of bankruptcy over the last 30 years whereas Cedar Fair and the Paramount Parks that they bought consistently chugged along.

Understood. I was not sure if she was still in jail or had been released yet. Ultimately, what I was trying to say was that much of the opposition is relying on the sins of recent past members and how it has ruined the public trust. The railroad sale has unfortunately come up at a time where it needs to confront these issues.

that is true, even before Paramount Parks, in the early 1980s Taft move the HQ operations for all their parks to Charlotte (Kings Island, Kings DOminion, Carrowinds and Canada's wonderland).

Bummer for Ohio. I guess this is Charlotte's consolation prize for losing the tennis tournament. In all seriousness, it appears that this is still Cedar Point in control. CEO and CFO positions are still Cedar Fair people which mean it will be run with the Cedar Fair culture (or most of it). Charlotte is a Cedar Fair HQ city anyway as it has always been (at least since the Paramount parks joined) the park operations HQ so this keeps that consistent.

I think Cedar Fair corporate is still Ohio from what I understood but the park operations division is in Charlotte. It has been run out of Charlotte since the old Kings Island days when they moved operations to Charlotte in the early 1980s. With the mergers, they left it down there.

I think Cedar Fair is the acquiring company here. Now it will depend how the management board shakes out but while initially I do not love it, it could be a good thing. Six Flags has long been an underperforming group and I hope this does not dilute Cedar Fair's ability to invest in Kings Island and other parks not named Cedar Point in the future. It always seemed like Cedar Point was the main park in their portfolio and got the best and most frequent improvements and then Kings Island , Carrowinds , Kings Dominion and Canada Wonderland seemed to share in the rest of the major upgrades while the remaining parks in their portfolio never received any money for major improvements. with the new Six Flags parks, what does this do to the parks like Kings Island.

If this fails, PG Sittenfeld will shoulder most of the blame as to why. At least Seelbach, and Dennard have been removed from council for a couple years and have kept a low profile on this (yes, I know Dennard is in jail) but all the PG trail headlines this fall certainly remind those who are skeptical that politicians can be corrupt

Billboards are typically ground leases so the owner of the land will get rent from the billboard company on a monthly basis even when the billboard may not have an advertiser on the property.

I would think the billboard owner would not have liability since they were there first. The apartment owner would have the duty to make sure that the attractive nuisance is removed or minimized. I would think that the light from the billboard ought to be pretty bright at night around there. WOuld hate to live in one of those units and see the light from the billboard in my room each night. If I am a betting man, they are probably trying to negotiate with the billboard company and the state to relocate the billboard. THe biggest challenge is that you cant build a new billboard without a lot of people signing off on it

^There may be a number of drunken nights where a resident may try and jump to the billboard or use it for a billboard party if they are not careful. A little too close for comfort if you ask me.

They are going to roll Buffalo. Buffalo his missing their all Pro DB, has an injured safety and the rest of the D backfield is pedestrian at best. Von Miller is still coming back from his injury so the pass rush is not there, Matt Milano is out for the year who is their all pro at linebacker, and I think they are missing another key component on D. I am expecting the same as last winter for the Bengals this weekend. Even if Allen has a good day, the Bengals D is far better than the Bills D and I cant see them keeping up with the Bengals in a shootout.

You have just dated yourself as a child of the 80s with that post