Brutus_buckeye

Heard Julie Calvert on the radio today. Essentially, they are working on the plans for what to do. Don't know if they will expand over Elm or go North over 6th Street. That could be months away. If you don't have the plan for building the convention center expansion, then to me it makes it hard to move ahead with the construction of the new hotel. obviously the drawings reported on last month are far from coming to fruition. My big concern is that they close this asset which is performing, tear it down, and then not have a viable plan for moving forward, or it gets mired in city politics. We are then stuck with an empty lot for a few years until city council gets its head out of its a$$ and figures out a viable plan.

THe worst thing that could come from this is that they close this down and it sits vacant for years until they come up with a plan on what is going to happen next. I think this is the likely scenario as it does not seem to be that there is a cohesive plan going forward. Don't close the hotel down until you know what you are doing first.

I had heard at one time that Pure Romance was paying somewhere like $15-$20k per month to have their sign on the rotating billboards at USBank Arena. They purchased a warehouse right at the bridge on 3rd street solely because they wanted to use it as a billboard for the highway and no longer pay for the USBank sign.

The value in the arena naming rights has to do with its location. Having a branding presence on the interstate where you essentially get a billboard at the most prominent location in the city. The events that take place in the arena are secondary.

For some reason I thought it was oriented on the other side of sycamore. Personally, I would have faced the front of the building toward Main as opposed to Sycamore.

Must have gone for a considerable discount. I am sure Heritage will be sold off in a few years to a much larger bank. Maybe then it will be the First Financial Arena then.

Just heard from a trusted source. Uncle Bob's Self Storage Arena

U Pull and Pay Arena

So explain to me. I thought there was supposed to be an announcement months ago on an office tenant or something coming to this space to fill it. It seems like nobody really knows what will become of this space.

When you increase the coverage and make it available and an option for more people it touches them directly. People will see the benefit of bus service and be willing to invest in more frequency, etc. When you have a system that only touches 25% of the county residents, the other 75% does not see a benefit and hence they don't buy in. You need to create service that touches everyone. look at the vitriol over the streetcar. The biggest complaint was how much it cost and how few people directly benefitted from it. People in Cheviot could not regularly benefit from the Streetcar. They did not have a buy in. Yes, the frequency may not be there initially, but you got to give people a tangible benefit in access to see what it can be in order to get more to buy in.

The idea behind it is to create fairness for the suburban workers who don't use the bus system but fund it with their earnings tax. In return, it will get them to support the sales tax, which is a more fair way to pay for a countywide bus system. Wouldn't you agree that part of the reason why the bus system sucks is because of how it is funded does not allow for things to be expanded easily? If you can change the funding mechanism, short term it may not do much but long term it opens a lot more options.

Since when are they talking about a Subway again in Cincinnati? Heck in an ominous sign for the Subway, even the sandwich shops are struggling

^ So you say there is a rational party on the environmental side that is open to compromise? Of are they in fact right in their doomsday predictions? Which one is it? Could it be that maybe, just maybe we could take care of the planet while at the same time recognizing that we don't necessarily have to destroy our way of life in the quixotic quest to supposedly save humanity from itself? Personally, I have faith in humanity and we will be just fine.

I am against referendums when it is one special interest group fighting it out over another special interest group. Neither party really cares about Ohioans. It is just a bunch of outside money coming in and trying to influence things with bad policy. On both sides. Believe me, I financially benefit much more from repeal of this, but the policy on both sides is really bad

You are assuming that environmentalists are pure in their advocacy. There is a lot of "power" at stake behind the environmental lobby. Also, you also would be assuming that many of their doomsday predictions are in fact 1) right, 2) sincere, and 3) no room for compromise. The one thing that I think most people find fault with the environmental lobby and why a lot of people who many be sympathetic to the environment yet find the environmentalists to be mostly whacko is that they hold such strict dogmatic principles and often are refusing to budge on them no matter what the cost is to the rest of society.

That would be up to the legislature. In their infinite wisdom, they signed on to it. Whether it was Union/labor support or whatever.

Never thought that. It was on the radar but the convention expansion was a separate issue and would likely delay any rebuild of the hotel. If the hotel is predicated upon the expansion, the Millenium will be standing a few more years in my opinion OR, it gets torn down this fall and we are left with a gaping hole in the ground for 3 years until the city/county get their act together and come up with a plan for expansion or hotel.

This was a fight between unions and environmentalists and neither side really cared about what was truly best for Ohioans.

But they also know how to get a petition certified too.

I don't think residential renters in apartments would be given the same consideration as 1) Property owners, and 2) class A office tenants. Residential apartment space rents out at $2 a sq ft or so whereas class A office rents out at say $21-$25/ft roughly. I doubt Kroger would give a second thought to the views of the apartment tenants. Plus creating a large office asset would only make the apartment building more popular because there are more workers who may want to live near there.

Or on the empty lot on Walnut and Court across from the new store.

They were successful in the summer of 2018 of gathering enough signatures to get commissioners to drop the .2% sales tax increase at that time. If they come out strongly and organize, they still pull a lot of weight in the county. They will be out in force in Green Twp, Delhi, Blue Ash, Anderson, etc. and don't think for a second that the suburban housewifes there will not be about signing onto the tax repeal. If they get it on the ballot, it will pretty much sink the bus levy too.

Yes, but they have a skywalk that connects to the 5/3 building that will remain. Part of the lobby redesign is to create a mezzanine area where people can gather but is not past the security area. The current one was way to small and outdated for today's security needs. No longer would people enter the building by the elevator, they will need to go to the Walnut Breezeway as the main entrance.

The other question about the Kroger building is given the types of jobs, is it obsolete in some cases? It is no longer a class A building. As rumored, IT is moving to Fountain place, but you figure executives would prefer a nicer place that is more Class A as far as retention purposes go.

Does anyone know how much of the building Kroger uses? I have not been in there in about 10 years but what I remembered at that time, there were a number of floors that were leased by small law firms and attorney's who needed some class B space near the courthouse and county admin buildings.