OCtoCincy

I actually think it's great this development is happening where it is. Hopefully it spawns more verticle elements in the Kenwood Area. It will be important though, that the urbanification™ of Kenwood also includes increased pedestrian designs.

Streetcar crossing of 6th street will be done by Tuesday, Jan 20th! track bed is cut & emptied all the way to Government Place.

Whenever someone announces they are building a performing arts venue, and they don't have multi-million dollar donors behind them, it's almost a guaranteed failure (west end church, metal blast building). performance venues (outside of concert venues where you are already a known promoter, re: Woodward) are incredibly difficult to launch. That building is unusable right now, and instead of keep working on it, he announced he was doing a project in Northside instead.

Alfred Berger is horrible for Cincinnati. He may be a nice guy, he may mean well, but he owns DOZENS of blighted buildings and keeps buying more before he finishes fixing a single one. He spent $142,000 on the Bay Horse building that he bought yesterday. You know what I would have rather had him do with $142,000? Prevent his court street building from collapsing by fixing it up and solving the problem before it was too late. Or what about the metal blast building. He stopped work on that... but keeps buying more buildings that need lots of work. And he bought those two buildings from the Freestore Foodbank (1606 and 1608 Walnut) almost a year ago and nothing seems to have improved there either. What makes him so dangerous is people are afraid to call him out, because he's pro-preservation, a nice guy, means well, etc. But he is becoming a slum landlord who owns way more buildings than he can fix in a reasonable amount of time. For many people, buying buildings becomes an addiction, and in Cincinnati you can do that because of the low cost of buildings. There are hoarders, who think they are helping by buying these up, but in the end, they become part of the problem by rarely completing projects on the other buildings they own. The Metal Blast building alone probably needs $500K to become usable. That's the lowest you could expect to spend on that building. In 2014 alone, Fred Berger has spent over $500K acquiring blighted properties. There comes a point where you need to stop, and complete more projects than buildings you acquire.

^ Very cool. Grandin will also be developing two brick buildings on Republic St (1300 block) into 12 apartments. These will be adjacent to the 5 new John Hueber Homes townhomes.

^ Also well said.

Actually, I would counter the (more realistic due to the points you make above) key would be to convert Central Ave to two way. That would have a dramatic improvement to the corridor. Derek, you should create a very basic petition calling for the City to return Central Ave to two way from Court to Ezzard Charles, print it out, and have everyone in that building sign it. I bet you could get people on the surrounding streets to sign it as well. Or you can always just do an online one, but having peoples addresses on the paper would be huge. Even just 25 people signing it could start a dialogue. I've seen smaller petitions start conversations at City Hall Would be great to see that conversation begin!

^ Well said. Let's keep our criticism to exteriors and other publicly influencing factors. It would be embarrassing if the owner of that house, a new neighbor to many of us, was a commenter or reader on Urban Ohio and just spent $600K building the house of his dream to see a bunch of randoms bashing his interior layout. Interior layout of a custom built home (it's different to criticize poorly built spec condos) has nothing to do with the urban fabric of Elm Street. I'm happy a vacant lot is now a well scaled home. Looking forward to the two next door, and hoping the builder fixes those basement window designs by the next one!

Awesome! Congrats.

The interior is 'Such a disappointment'... to you. And you don't own the house, so who cares? It's a custom build. That means it's 100% EXACTLY what the owner wanted. It wasn't some spec build that is a weird layout and no one is gonna want to buy it. It's literally exactly the layout the homeowner wanted, since the homeowner hired the builder to build exactly the house he wanted. Regarding the exterior, Yes I would have rather had a door on the front, but generally it fits in to the historic fabric. It isn't an exciting new contribution, but also, once the rest of the block is developed it will blend in decently. There will be 2 more homes exactly like it next door on the two vacant pads adjacent to this one. So there will be three of these that take what used to be a large vacant lot, and they will now have homes. Perhaps the other two will have front entrances- fingers crossed.

Interestingly, the 12th and Race street stop doesn't swerve over. It's the only one that I'm aware of that doesn't shift over.

Adding more stops is very unlikely, nor would it help the system. I think the Stops are essentially where they should go, with one major exception. The 9th and Walnut stop should have been up at Court & Walnut. It was put on the southside of 9th so that the right lane of walnut could be a continuous through lane from Central Parkway to 9th street between 7 and 9am. No idea why that's considered important, but that's why it was done. Adding more stops won't happen. This is a small circulator, these stops are generally only 1-3 blocks apart from each other anyway. More stops slows the system down even further. 18 is plenty for a 1.8 mile in each direction route. You could argue that some of the 18 should be moved a bit, but there's 0 chance, nor should we, add more stops.

I've heard the same rumor

Well the winter break sure went by fast!!! WALNUT: I've been told that in the week of January 12 Walnut Street construction will return at 6th street, tying into 3rd around Opening Day (April 6) MAIN: Also, Main street will begin at 12th Street in Early March, going southward. My prediction is track work & station stops are completed on Main Street by November 30. 2ND: The two curved pieces of 2nd Street will begin at the end of the Reds season, so likely mid-late October, meaning they could also be completed around November 30. STREETCAR DELIVERY: Vehicle delivery seems to still be on pace for early September 2015, with one vehicle arriving per month through December, where two will arrive in the final month. Atlanta just opened today, One year late according to their construction schedule. Kansas City says they will receive their vehicles at the same time as us (they are only getting 4) but that they will open before the end of 2015. That is absolutely impossible. I would bet Kansas City doesn't start revenue service until June of 2016. DC has been delayed 2+ years. The largest delays involve the systems testing and driver training. FTA is insanely cautious about these things and they are indeed very complicated systems. FTA approvals are what held Atlanta back by at least 3 months of their 1 year delay and DC is still waiting on FTA approvals (literally any day now) I think we can hit Sept 16, and we would be one of the few systems to come in on time, but that's also why our projects "seems" so much longer than everyone else's.

The reason the concrete isn't poured around the utility poles is that they DID bury all the lines, and the utility poles will be coming down. The issue is, utilities TAKE FOREVER to switch the service and take the poles down. The lines on 13th street were buried two years ago, and they still haven't come down. so in a year or so(hopefully) we will see a clear, clean Short Vine.

Has anyone been in the small beer, liquor & grocery markets in detroit? The floor to ceiling bullet proof glass surrounding the cigarettes, alcohol and employees is a sight to see.

The owner of that building (New York Drycleaner building) was the tenant of 1304 Main and was the owner of the Circle A market (which was horrible). His name is Fahdy Isaac. The City vacated 1304 Main (owned by Mr & Mrs. Adwani) due to structural issues and Fahdy threatened to reopen Circle A in the Dry cleaners building which he owns. But the drycleaners building wasn't up to code so he couldn't. He spent a long time updating that building and completely rebuilt the storefront. It turned out WAY better than I think anyone expected. But in the end, it will come down to how well he manages his building/what tenant he brings in. It's VERY attractive now for a simple store and would be nice to have something that contributes to the neighborhood and not just a single serve alcohol carryout. Mr & Mrs. Adwani were going through a divorce while the City was going after 1304 Main street for its building code violations. She ended up with the building, and recently sold it to Fahdy Isaac for $110,000 in April of this year. He hasn't done anything to it yet. I was really hoping someone else would buy it. I don't see how the guy would EVER do anything to the upstairs of either building.

The sewers beneath the streetcar have all been lined with a rosin that creates a pipe within a pipe. Think of it like a giant long sock you pull through a pipe and then once you've pulled it all the way to the other end you heat it and it turns into hard plastic that lines the inside smoothly. It shrinks the diameter of the pipe a mere 1/8 of an inch, yet adds another 50-75 years onto the life of the pipe. That's what they did since the County wouldn't move and rebuild the sewers underneath the streetcar. They also rebuilt a few manhole covers. If you ever walked by streetcar construction in OTR this past summer and smelt a horrendous strong plastic smell they were lining the pipes.

Well, it looks better than the charlie brown christmas tree....

This thing was a long shot. The entire concept (which is brand new) was created by an Akron area legislator and the front runner was considered the akron building that applied. One Akron building, two Cleveland buildings and one Cincy building applied. It cost $10,000 to apply. Steve Leeper stated the funding gap was now around "$20 million or less". Goal is for the project to end and everyone to move back into Music Hall for the start of the Fall 2017 season. So the building would be empty summer of 2016 - fall of 2017. Unfortunately, that's the first year of the streetcar operating! However, the two venues all the organizations will use are the Aronoff and the Taft theater. Aronoff is on the streetcar line, and taft is one block from Main St. So it's not really a big deal.

If anyone noticed, that new Gaslight project says all kitchens will have quartz countertops. That's a smart decision.

The environmental requirements to build on a former gas station are HUGE. It would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just to prep the site for development. I doubt it will be replaced, but it could be improved. First, I would put a decent looking 3-4 foot high fence (that can't be sat upon) along Liberty at the property line. Also, things will change when 3CDC & Urban sites develop their properties on Moore St.

Apparently the wiring will be going up in the next few months on the entire OTR route. The OCS braces will be up to Wade St south of Liberty (coming from the north) in the next two weeks. I think the entire OTR loop OCS will be completed by Spring. I wish so badly that a Streetcar could arrive next summer!!!! unfortunately, we have to wait until September for car #1 to arrive and shortly there after begin some testing. I've heard there are slim chances if all goes well it could arrive in August.

OKI, not FTA is the reason we aren't getting an operating grant. FTA said, submit it and we'll do it! but OKI gave it a horrendous rating so they didn't even submit it.

I've always been a bit surprised that they didn't put several large tree "planters" that are essentially steel barricades in front of the building at that location.