moonloop

Here's some updated pics. A couple of stairs of to nowhere. The homeless have a little camp up on the hill that overlooks River Rd. I'm sure CityLink will save them.

The best new show on TV, "My Name is Earl". Though "The Office" is quickly gaining ground.

^He, he, he, and the scary part is that there are people that are running this country that believe this BS.

<i>What I don't like about the Enquirer redo is there being too many headlines and they seem to be constantly updated so it easy to lose track of what I read or didn't. It also harder to find articles like this. </i> <b>Preservation work toured National Trust comes to town</b> BY MARLA MATZER ROSE | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER Local preservationists have a special opportunity this weekend to highlight hotspots in Over-the-Rhine and other areas that are ripe for renovation efforts. The Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation is holding its quarterly board of trustees meeting in Cincinnati this weekend. The event starts today and runs through Monday morning. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060128/BIZ01/601280344/1076

I think it just looks taller thanks to the dreaded skywalk being removed. I wonder if the time frame to get this done is the same as the square itself. I would like to think 5/3 likes the new look of this building and decides to do it to the tower.

<i>It's official, my childhood memories are getting plowed over. </i> <b>Fort Scott property ready for construction</b> BY JEFF MCKINNEY | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER After 4½ years of delays getting approvals to build a massive subdivision in western Hamilton County, the vision of two businessmen is just a few months from fruition. The $300 million subdivision will be the biggest built in the county in at least 20 years, officials said. Click on link for article. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060127/BIZ01/601270381/1076 <i>I don't understand why they can't save these cabins. Just rehab them like the buildings in OTR.</i>

Any tacky stuff that happens on the river, I blame the Northern Kentuckians. ;-)

<b>Bridge climb to open in May</b> By Bob Driehaus Post staff reporter The installation of the Purple People Bridge Climb this spring will mean other big changes, including the likely removal of the popular cascading fireworks display from the Ohio River span for the Riverfest celebration Labor Day weekend. The bridge climb is on schedule to open in May and will be the first of its kind in the United States, giving daredevils a chance to climb the trusses of the bridge on stairs and ladders. Publication date: 01-26-2006 http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060126/NEWS01/601260352

<b>Square's retail space attracts lots of lookers But no signed tenants yet</b> BY MARLA MATZER ROSE | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER DOWNTOWN - The design is still being finalized and there are no signed tenants to announce, but the sales team behind Fifth Third's retail property on Fountain Square says it is getting strong interest from prospective tenants. Speaking to a crowd of several hundred people at CB Richard Ellis' 2006 Market Outlook Program, CBRE retail specialist Chris Hodge said there had been "significantly more interest from retailers than we will ever have space available."

I had that problem yesterday. Your not alone. (posted via quick reply)

I looked up his properties and two of the three listed are in terrible shape and should be torn down. The third looks like it could be rehabbed. I took a look at his actual home and it is large, but he has a clunker park in the front of the house that looks like a potential lawn ornament.

River Rd under the 6th street viaduct is getting more and more dangerous. Semi-trucks hog two lines in that area two. If drivers don't know that, they will get pinched.

^Man that's pretty low. The only good thing is, it seem no one reads that blog. Why is rehabbing an empty buildings evil and trying to clean up a run down area gentrification. BS

This will be of interest to maybe one other person, crews are now working on moving the phone lines and poles back off the road. They are also installing a lot of yellow pipes in the ground. The crews have been working in the cold and rain, impressive. So I take it once they finish moving the phone lines back they get to the road work.

Wow that is good work. A guy worth $40 million and still refuses to do anything with his properties. Terrible. Though, it shouldn't take 17 years. I'm going look up his properties out of curiosity.

This is good news. This isn't even 3CDC plan, right? Their plans for OTR still haven't been announced which will include Washington Park and Music Hall. Is it a separate thing altogether?

I saw the video online. I wonder if the owners walk out with fog machines going and fireworks. ;-)

I can't tell by the info provided, is this a finished project or are they just getting it together. It sounds like these apartments are geared toward the Art Academy folks. I would love to know how the Art Academy is doing down there. If it's spuring new housing, great. I just realized this is the same company that is doing Parker Flats and they haven't even start that. I would like to see some dirt pushing on that project.

<i>I think Nick is getting a bit frustrated with downtown and OTR. I can understand the concern that urban core will become nothing but a wasteland for the poor and addicted. The social service agencies are getting what they wanted and saving no one. Everyone seems to have high hopes for Broadway Commons, but again nothing happens so let build the new jail there.</i> <b>How to Kill a City</b> I think Cincinnati, over the last 30 years, has run a clinic on how to kill a city. Over that time frame, we have run an almost perfect playbook on how to drive people out into suburbs or out of the region entirely. When you take a step back, and look at it in a big-picture sense, its almost awe-inspiring. You really can't do it much better. So how do you kill a city? How do you make sure an urban area becomes so inhospitable, so unattractive, that it kills development before it even begins. How do you make sure that the evacuation from your core neighborhoods is so severe it drains the area of all but those of the least means? It starts with a lack of regional cooperation. Make sure the city and county are at odds, then make sure the neighboring counties think even less of the city. Get it to a point where just being cordial with each other is considered regionalism, and showing up together for a photo-op is called a show of cooperation. Avoid any kind of regional government entity with teeth; make sure the suburbs continue to sprawl outward with new construction of homes and office parks. Don't even joke about metro government even though its worked pretty much everywhere else. Now that you're sprawling, and the nicer areas and nicer jobs keep getting farther out, cut off the city. Whatever you do, do NOT pass any kind of transit initiative. If you do a light rail campaign, make certain its badly run and unrealistic in terms of cost and construction. Cut that city off at the knees-- they could handle the sprawl if there's a connecting train, so make sure that light rail defeat is so convincing it doesn't get on another ballot for fear that supporting it would mean pissing money and time away. No, get people addicted to cars, and make them hate walking and mass transit. When they take those cars downtown, make parking them as difficult as possible, and make sure you aggressively enforce parking meters. Make it a hassle. Now, you've cut off the city from most of the new investment. But a lot of people still like cities. They like the historic texture, the authentic neighborhood business districts, the culture. So override that by making the area as terrifying as possible. Make sure all your low-income housing is concentrated, preferably as close to downtown as possible. Now that you've done that, get a bunch of social services in. This works out great: conservatives like it because they don't want the poor anywhere near them, and liberals will fall for it if you dress it up as compassion and call any other strategy 'kicking out the poor' or 'gentrification'. The concentration of poverty will have a host of negative effects: the lack of investment will diminish the tax base, and you'll see less in basic services provided. That means less police. This makes the area a perfect place to commit crimes. More crime means more people are willing to forgo the excitement of a city in favor of suburban safety. This is maybe the most effective part. Because once you concentrate this stuff, you're practically all the way there. You can keep doing it, indefinitely. You can build social services, jails, and low income housing developments over and over, and each time, just argue that this is where the need is. Just make sure you don't spread this stuff out. A region is a big place, and if you spread low income housing out across every neighborhood and jurisdiction, no one would even feel it. If you put shelters and jails in non-residential areas, they'd barely be noticed by all but those who use them. Isolated, poverty swells. It will grow and grow, until it takes over an entire city. You're almost all the way there, but cities are stubborn. They get in people's system. They are still the place most regions put their major people magnets: stadiums, convention centers, museums, arts venues, and entertainment districts. People get down there, and they say, wow, look at all there is to do down here. Now, you've already fixed this a little bit by making people feel unsafe. But the surefire way to negate this impression is to cut those people magnets off. See, cities thrive on connectivity and walkability. So NEVER stick that Baseball park in the middle of the downtown or even directly adjacent to it. Cut it off. Use roads if you can. Nothing kills pedestrian traffic like long crosswalks. Don't put it near bars, shops, and condos-- put it around a sea of parking, or office towers with nothing on the storefront level. Before you know it, you can bring 60,000 people downtown and it will still have little to no meaningful impact on the city's economy. But amazingly, there are still groups of folks who will take a chance on your city. Urban pioneers. Almost nothing is too bad for them once they see that architecture and its potential. And while you may have to deal with some small number of passionate advocates for revitalization, there are ways to diminish those numbers. Make sure you're city isn't gay-friendly. The GLBT community can work wonders for an urban area, keep them away through State bans on Gay Marriage, never get a human rights ordinance that includes them. And watch out for immigrants. They are fueling growth in cities around the country. Avoid any concentrated efforts to attract new Americans. Oh, and artists. you can get away with creating arts districts in name, but don't implement financial incentives for them or develop artist specific housing. If you do all these things, you will kill your city. Do these things, and they set off an amazing chain reaction. Before you know it you will be spending most of your time arguing about race, poverty, and crime. Most people will talk about the city the way they talk about a dying relative. Few people will go there, and when they do, they'll be in and out as fast as possible. You may look at this and say its nothing new, stuff everybody knows. And yet, we continue to do it. We are, every day, making things worse. We're expanding our jail in the middle of downtown. This one is just mind-blowing in its stupidity. It sits next to Broadway Commons, the largest undeveloped parcel of land in our downtown. We need that area to be developed into residential units and maybe some kind of entertainment. It has nearly as much potential as The Banks, and its cheaper. It could be THE big project that turns downtown around. But nobody is going to develop it with a jail right there. Would you pay 250k for a condo that looks out at the fucking Justice Center? We're going to build CityLink in the West End. Metro Government? Ha. Light Rail? Ha ha. Dead last in terms of documented foreign born population and apparently we like it that way. No artist housing developments. No Human Rights Ordinance and a State Ban on Gay Marriage. We continue to do everything and anything possible to kill this city. Its done through an odd mixture of arrogance, incompetence, and fear. Undoing all of it would be a daunting task, but even worse, there's no WILL to do it. The system as it exists right now is working for most people. And so the decline continues. City government becomes less and less meaningful, and certainly less capable of doing much of anything about it. Its a sad, sorry state of affairs for a city with this much beauty, this much history. Its sad to watch it die. posted by Nick [/member] 11:12 AM http://nickspencer.blogspot.com/

<b>3CDC to unveil more development projects</b> By Jackie Demaline Enquirer staff writer Fountain Square may be a construction site now, but expect buzz to start building by spring. A national search for an experienced programming director is under way and a hire is expected to be announced by April. If all goes as planned, arts and entertainment will be a bold signature at the heart of downtown when Fountain Square unveils its $42 million makeover.

I just check HOETING, Realtors on MLS and they have 18 units for sale.

According to WCPO there was a Grand Opening ceremony. So they're done? I thought they looked pretty sharp. Anyone know of the 29 units, how many have been sold? There were quite few available on the MLS list. Probably too modern for the folks in OTR. There's a video of the news clip, but I can't get it to work. Their site isn't Mac-friendly.

Thanks for the tour. It looks like CPS created an unique environment for the kids. Being so close to the river will stick with them for a lifetime.

I guess I can cut you some slack, since your a PT fan. It was sweet to see PT live twice in one year (Covington and Bogarts). However, I will aways will hate the Steelers and the more I think about this cheap shot the more pissed off I get.

^I was trying to create a mental image that people could relate too. ;-)