chilismaug

Yeah, I live in Mt Aub and drive 'round that corner - what concerned me most was the narrow sidewalk. The poor bus riders at that stop were wedged between the road and the church wall with major traffic going by. It's a pain to drive, but a wider sidewalk with the curb maybe rounded off a little more would be fine with me. No more lanes. Much worse is the intersection down by my block - Sycamore meets Auburn and Dorchester. The whole intersection is absurd, 20 years overdue for re-engineering.

Yes, Curtis Street needs love! Pic Google maps this summer. Just around the corner are beautiful homes.

errr.. the doomed WH Taft block picture .

Oh dear, more old mansions to be crushed. I live an Mt Auburn, and Victorians are getting dozed left and right, as in Corryville. The church at McMillan and Auburn is going down, stained glass is just about stripped now. That one has been doomed ever since they moved the road within 4 feet of it, pretty much. Meanwhile down my street, the Governor's house, circa 1870, is patched with tarpaper, and we are sposedly in a historic district. However, all the new stuff does put a tad more pressure on whatever old piles are lucky enough to be left standing to be patched and prettied up.

This motif has even been copied by new buildings built at the top of Sycamore street, numbers 1821 thru 1831 roughly. They went ahead and did the modern thing, which is to use this space as a roof deck, but they retained the cornice style that hints at those little windows. http://goo.gl/maps/qCxh2 http://goo.gl/maps/W8wdY

THAT would be a huge improvement!

ah, but my grief is with the owners who DO pay their taxes. They want their property, just not the pesky old building on it. So they just let it rot, and after a couple years the city demo's it for them! And they still have the land! Now they can build some generic units and flip 'em. Sweet ain't it?

The building in the picture on the left was "given" to a phony nonprofit, run by more or less the previous owners. It has decayed since the pic was takn, but still verttical. I guess VBML has fallen down at the enforcement step.

That's just barely part of OTR - more like part of the court house zone. It's a good spot to catch the county workers on lunch and kids from the school across the street.

It's sad, infuriating. Poverty, Inc. members are not community builders, they are predators.

Cincinnati has a rule in place - VBML- that attempts to discourage property owners from letting their buildings rot. I assume the intent is to discourage demolition by neglect. At least in my neighborhood (Mount Auburn ) I see several close-by properties where the owners have swerved around these hurdles by playing the last-minute waiting game, pleading various hardships, transferring ownership to bogus owners, such as fake nonprofits, and just plain old obliviousness. Years have gone by with no positive actions, nothing but code violation wrist-slaps, squatter break-ins and decline. And then, when the skeeves like this finally let their roof leak and rot sets in, the city tears it down for them. There are once-nice old buildings being destroyed this way, and I still see the law too weighted toward "property rights" of bad owners without enough emphasis on the fact that a historic (or nearly historic) building is like a living thing and affects the neighborhood where it stands. Have any communities with a similar problem found a way to light a bigger flame under the bad owners?

Ah, that figures. RentaCenter was one of those businesses mentioned in "Broke USA" , Gary Rivlin's book about the profiteers of poverty. Them, the Tax Refund shops and Payday Loan shops are referred to as "Poverty, Inc." - they never saw a slum that didn't make them salivate.

It's July 2013, the demolition work was started last year then stopped. The Corryville Council's http://corryville.org web site domain has been taken by a squatter, Rumor has it that one of the businesses in the plaza won't leave until their lease is done. That seems very anti-community minded ; anybody know if that the case?

A lot like Dresden, with 2 notable buildings remaining like islands in the rubble. The WPA published a book with a walking tour of Mount Auburn on page 355. Interesting to see all the historic properties noted in that tour, c 1940, that have been pulled down by Christ Hospital. http://books.google.com/books?id=g9vJrsMSnEQC&q==auburn#v=onepage&q=tour%2018&f=false

May 24, 2012: Huntington Place demo progressing southward. Historic Mt Auburn getting a bit less historic to make way for a parking lot, as I understand it.

Huntington place by Christ Hospital: Entire neighborhood south of hospital being bought out, 1 side of Huntington already torn down. All since December. See snapshots, WH Taft House in background of he already razed side.

Confusing - in May she gets the proposal from Christ Hospital, then in June she sues the City?

I think we need a corridor to Inwood park - something to open up the canyon so it's no longer "The Hole". We need open connections between the hoods so the thugs can't scurry around in their maze.

I live a few blocks away, and from visiting the Hole, it seems that any rescue would require some major change in the site topology. Just because something is old does not mean it is good. It is just a bad feeling place - bad feng shui if you like. Interesting and fascinating for sure, but the canyon effect is oppressive. If one of the rows were to be knocked down, it might open it up better. There needs to be some sort of connection between this area and the Inwood park and Auburn Avenue spaces. Part of the problem is the looming effect from Christ Hospital, and some crappy tenements have been built in the last 50 years in that area as well.