LincolnKennedy

On that note, it is interesting how long it takes a political narrative to die in the public consciousness long after it has been debunked by historians (Lost Cause and things relating to slavery and the Civil War are only the most prominent of such narratives). The purity of the Progressives in cleaning up government is one such narrative. It's still hard for people to accept the idea that it was Seasongood, et. al. who killed the subway. Sounds like you rather painstakingly threw this thing together.

I was always under the impression that those gaps existed as a result of the change in elevation from the highway entering and exiting the trench.

^Yes, I was referring to having them in the same location for transfers.

That's exactly right. I think the fall off in value is overstated. Even if the route was a straight shoot up the Main/Walnut axis, things would creep over to Findlay Market and Music Hall relatively fast because both places are well known and unique destinations that are and have been receiving investment from other sources. I also don't think the jog to Elm/Race is that much out of anyone's way, but I think the split between CP and 12th is confusing and doesn't add value. The potential benefit from that split is on Vine Street, but that area has already been redeveloped by 3CDC. Double-tracking CP also gives you the perfect potential tie in between the Streetcar system and the old subway line.

The best thing about the plan is that there so far isn't anything the plan that isn't good to have. Having streetcars on the Main/Walnut axis makes sense. Having them on the Race/Elm access makes sense (the only thing I think is a mistake is the split between CP and 12th- I think both ways on CP lining a middle esplanade would be best). The fact that the route in its initial offering is jankety doesn't mean that a quicker connection (say up Main/Walnut to McMicken and then to Vine) couldn't happen after Phase 2. The reason housing the Streetcar under SORTA concerns me is that the plan has many constituent parts that need to be implemented fully for it to work in the right manner and capture the revenue from the development to operate the Streetcar and expand the system, and I fear that the bus system may siphon off revenue for itself, revenue that comes from Streetcar inspired development. It's too early in the life of the Streetcar to get it to pay for things other than itself. The Streetcar is about densifying the City and Metro is about accessing the region. It's for this reason I believe they should be funded distinctly.

I agree with this. I tend to think this is an unfortunate development, since the systems are meant to accomplish different things.

It's not that the West Side isn't close to downtown and Clifton (and once again, my point was about its proximity to the Uptown employment area only) it's that it isn't closer to commute from vis-a-vis other neighborhoods that also happen to be easier to commute to Blue Ash, Mason, etc. Here's the problem with the 'Price Hill's been shit upon argument'- for that argument to be taken seriously you have to actually have a central authority who is doing the shitting. If anything, Price Hill has suffered because of a lack of a centralized authority dictating where poor people will be. The western suburbs like Delhi and Green township were settled much later than those east and north, and their conspicuously dated housing stock is really what holds them back. People forget that Mt. Adams was a blue collar neighborhood until the 70's. Mt. Adams gained cache because it is the closest hill to the CBD and it has defined boundaries- the hill on three sides and the park on the fourth. These things are the random externalities that make a difference when you are trying to redevelop and area. There's no building in Oakley Square that's necessarily better than what's around the Covedale Theater. The big difference is that you can get to 71 from Oakley Square in about 5 minutes. Growth went up 71 because it didn't have 75's industrial legacy. I don't see how one can downplay the significance of that twist of fate.

Some thoughts- 1) I assume what you mean by 'destruction' of West Side neighborhoods is the increase in Section 8 housing in the area. The first thing to remember is that OTR was destroyed in essentially the same manner. The Denhart properties were all Section 8 and they became Section 8 for the same reason West Side apartments became- because the landlords could get higher (and guaranteed) rents from the program than they could from the market. OTR was effected the same way in which the West Side is being effected. The West End was different, since those were housing projects owned and operated by CMHA. The destruction of Lincoln Homes and Laurel Court was policy, but the residents who went from there to Section 8 moved to the West Side because the Section 8 properties in OTR were so derelict that they weren't usable. Denhart went bankrupt about 4 years after they cleared out those two projects in the West End- OTR would never have absorbed those residents regardless of of 'gentrification' or 3CDC because those building were not inhabitable and would never have been approved by either the Section 8 renters or the authority that evaluates the landlords. Also CMHA and the federal government, not the City, determined how federal housing programs would exist and how they would be executed. The City might bear some responsibility for the choices by a lack of opposition or simple ignorance, but if you want to fix the problem you have to go to CMHA, which is why Westsiders started getting themselves elected to the CMHA Board. The big problem the West Side has is that it is disconnected from both the University/Pill Hill area and the I-71 corridor. It's all about topography (and ball bearings). That's why people will pay more to live in a dinky house in Oakley or new condo in OTR than a grand old house in Westwood, because Westwood is further removed from other stuff. In my opinion, the public goods the West Side needs are: 1) a direct (and distinctly marked) bus that connects to the University/Pill Hill area; 2) improved neighborhood business districts; and 3) a targeted approach to teardowns (they kind of already have this, but they could make it better). I would also suggest strong outreach from the Catholic parishes to new Latino immigrants as well. It always struck me that the West Side could benefit most from a "we're cool with you doing that, so long as we get this little thing" approach that is targeted and incremental. But the 'West Side' is hardly as monolithic as it is portrayed and those individual neighborhoods fight with each other just as much as they fight with the rest of the City.

The Founding Fathers thought a free press was important enough to democracy that they included it in the first constitutional amendment they drafted. S'all I'm saying... That's cute. You've pretty much exhibited exactly the 'incredibly maudlin conceit that says more about what reporters think about themselves' that I mentioned with that statement. I'm talking about the crappy local news reporting of one paper, and your bringing up the first amendment. As a former reporter maybe you can describe why local news coverage tends to blow while local sports coverage maintains quality. I always assumed that after The Enquirer got sued successfully by Chiquita or Lindner (I can't remember exactly who it was) ten or so years ago there's been a culture of timidity there, and that personnel cuts have reduced the wheat and left the chaff. I don't see what that has to do with The Enquirer not existing, which was what started this. Anyway, I think The Enquirer is basically irrelevant as an opinion-former and opinion-leader, and is only becoming more so.

Be careful what you ask for. Having a local news publication with experienced journalists who are committed to doing research, analysis and honest-to-goodness reporting is one of the great assets of an open democracy. Many of these Internet-based news, radio and television reporters are nothing more than sounding boards, echo chambers and rip-and-read talking heads. If that is the future of journalism, then I am afraid. I respect you, but I feel the 'newspapers are essential to democracy' is an incredibly maudlin conceit that says more about what reporters think about themselves than it describes reality. It also doesn't explain why the paper was decent twenty years ago but blows now. If the various industries that employed people can up and move to China and democracy can endure, I don't see why I can't import my news from The New York Times or Slate (yes, I realize they aren't local, but the paper's crappy local coverage is the precise reason I refuse to buy it. Their reprinted AP stories are fine, if short.)

Thanks for your insight, Ken. Totally agree about the laziness (not that reporters are inherently lazier than other workers- they're just like everyone else). Also, I do think the narrative form in most news stories require more action (and therefore conflict) than saying, a report from Brookings. The Enquirer is a business that, in my opinion, delivers a crappy product. i don't really care if they go under or not. Totally agree. The riots really focused the attention of the City on it's core, and we've seen many positive things come from that. In a way, because they focused the attention of the City on these discrete and reinforcing projects (3CDC, the Streetcar, Uptown) they (combined with the stadium overruns) really put the City back in the driver's seat of development from the County. We went from building a Mexican restaurant rather than letting Midland expand and constructing signature "gateways" (of which only two or three were completed) to the energy we have now. So, mostly curious why you said 1989-1994. I would have put it at 1995-2001.

^Here's the difference dude: The majority of the people who support the streetcar project want to improve the City by bringing in new residents in the old urban form, and good public transit is essential to that. They believe that the urban core is currently undervalued, and that the right investments can add a ton of value for the cost. These people look at other metro areas, like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or even Charleston and Annapolis and notice that people pay a premium to live in the urban core of those Metro areas. They look at cities that were much smaller than Cincinnati back in the day like Washington, Atlanta, Seattle, et. cetera, and see the same thing. They think that Cincinnati can do the same thing. The people making comments on The Enquirer blog are not addressing the project in a manner that is objective. Folks who refuse to engage an argument on the merits quickly become tiresome. To the extent they are being ignored or dismissed is not because they have a different opinion, it's because they aren't interested in the project and won't engage the facts. It's pretty simple. You've made some decent criticisms of the plan, and I tend to agree with you on your preferred route. Nevertheless, arguments to life experience and thinly veiled genuflections to the transcendence to the holy opinion of the individual is just relativist bullshit and extremely tedious. There's plenty of paths open for political action to oppose this plan. If you oppose it and your opposition fails because you 1) don't live in the constituency effected; 2) don't bother to support candidates for office who oppose the plan; 3) aren't able to convince a majority of voters or decision-makers to support your position; then you have failed, and you lose. Whether such a person chooses to view themself as Jeremiah is of course up to them, but that of course lends support to the opinion that they once again aren't willing to face facts.

Wait, this isn't why we are doing this? I only got on board because I thought I'd be able to eventually go to concerts at the Fillmore Midwest.

^There were many problems with Martin's idea- the bend in the river at the Queensgate site was a bad place to dock barges, the fact that it conflicted with the already approved changes to River Road (which included pushing River Road a bit further south), the lack of space for warehousing the massive influx of soybeans that were supposedly going to be coming from his proposal, and the fact that his plan basically required a ton of public money for what was in theory an all-inclusive modern agriculture port, despite the fact that numerous port facilities already existed on the river in Hamilton County (I'm pretty sure they are all in Cincinnati as well). The CBT site doesn't sit at the bend, doesn't conflict with the River Road improvements, will be using the site re-developed by Jim Olman for additional storage and train track space, will be paid for by the Port instead of the City (an important distinction) and will be partnered with a responsible local business with a very long track record of success in this department, unlike the relatively untested David Martin from Jeffersonville. It's kind of like the opposite of the Banks project in the sense that here, picking a local company as partner was a better move than not (whereas with the Banks, Atlantic Station was a pretty good match in the type of development we were looking for). It seems silly to be pissed that someone 'stole' your idea because they were able to execute it and you weren't. It's not like CBT doesn't know about agriculture shipping or that it exists, or that it can pay off to use state of the art, cutting edge equipment when you build new. Also, since the whole theory of his project was that we would see an upsurge in soy exports after the Panama Canal widening was complete, he can still use this new facility to sell his soybeans.

Thank you. I would actually push for a situation that would relocate the Metro Depot at Government Square to the Main/Walnut cap (or also the Walnut/Vine cap) and add whatever reinforcement is necessary to allow buses to drive on them. We don't really need anymore park space in that area and it interfaces so well with the Streetcar line terminus, the RTC (and it's potential light rail line) and the new Riverfront Parking Garages.

^Well put. Sometimes it's more important to take a little time so long as it is done right. Also, a station around Kemper Road near 275 offhandedly strikes me as the best bet.

^This deal with Cincinnati Bulk Terminals is much better and makes much more sense than the Queensgate Terminals proposal. Two big reasons: 1) We are working with a long-term and proven local company with CBT; 2) We will end up using that Olman property for an appropriate use. Anyone who thinks people are going to want to put offices under huge power lines when there are numerous empty offices downtown are kidding themselves. I don't really get why David Martin would be so annoyed, since if he's primarily a soybean farmer he can still use this facility to move his product.

I think this idea is a mistake. If you gain control/access to the University Plaza site (and Kroger has a lease until 2017 there I believe) you're going to get a lot more out of running it both ways on Short Vine and closing off the street to cars (while letting them move freely on Corry, Charlton, Daniels, etc.) The development potential of Jefferson on that route is tapped out in most spots. At any rate its potential exists because it is across the street from UC, and the Streetcar isn't going to change that. There are natural routes up from the Basin- Vine, Gilbert, Ludlow, Harrison. Just because they aren't all perfectly developable in all places doesn't change the fact that they are the routes. Here's the thing- it's only by changing the rules of development, encouraging higher density and building heights, and properly pricing parking that we are going to get traffic on the streetcar at all. So whether the route splits at one point or another isn't going to drive development if all the structure that supports streetcar infrastructure isn't in place.

Reflect upon the irony of those two sentences for a while. Being car-competitive means providing fast service to a broad geographic area. Streetcars and buses don't do that. Driving is all about mobility, being able to go fast and far. Streetcars and buses are about access, giving people the ability to go places they might not otherwise be able to because of the difficulty of parking, personal preference, or not having another means of getting around. The streetcar plan improves access between and within Uptown, Downtown, and OTR, but it is not going to be faster (and because of the circuitous route I suspect it will be slower) than bus lines, which are already slower than driving. The Streetcar is not intended to be car-competitive. It is the result of a new recognition of the way to best take advantage of our current Downtown/OTR/Uptown infrastructure, and a conscious political decision to favor a certain mode of transportation for a certain area in order to give rise to a certain type of development, all of which are pretty much the opposite of the political decisions of the previous fifty years some odd years. Jeff's sentence expressed it best, "Streetcars and buses are about access, giving people the ability to go places they might not otherwise be able to because of the difficulty of parking, personal preference, or not having another means of getting around." It's a mistake to view the streetcar as being car competitive because if we do so we run the risk of ignoring the importance of pricing parking in the streetcar area in such a way that drives more traffic to the streetcar. Both the car culture and the non-car culture require attendant activity and regulations to make them both viable, and they work best when people aren't switching back and forth between them. It's less relevant if the streetcar goes up Vine or Gilbert than it is that parking in the dense zone is placed and priced correctly and density is allowed and encouraged.

It's funny how so man of the anti-streetcar LetEd pieces are from outside of the City. But the really weird thing is how The Enquirer keeps pushing this issue. I'd say that for the vast majority of the disinterested electorate, this issue is over, they realize the streetcar will be built, and they are fine with it (mostly in the sense that they aren't thinking about it). The X factor in the Streetcar vote was the African-American community in Cincinnati, and the successful No on Nine campaign has mooted the issue. The only danger to revitalize this issue is if they don't get the federal money allocated before the next local election cycle, but that seems unlikely.

Completely agree with this statement and the comparison to Cranley really illustrates the problem with the supposed benefit Bortz and Towne receive from the Streetcar. Cranley resigned before voting on approving TIF money for a project he stood to benefit from financially. That money was zero-sum and project specific- money spent on one project means that it can't be used for a similar project. The Streetcar route was not decided by Council (though they approved it) and the funds benefit all property owns along the route equally. There's nothing more beneficial about this project than allocating funds to repave the exact same roads. I'm mostly surprised that the feds look this closely at projects like these, that they would be concerned enough to look at the size of the vote and potential conflicts of interests and aren't focused solely on quantitative things like local funding match and projected ROI. I doubt Mallory is thinking much about that. I also doubt that either Ghiz or Monzel will resign if they get the nomination. But I'd be surprised if a post-November Republican appointee wasn't pro-streetcar. The businessmen aren't outnumbered by the culturals at the QCC.

The Enquirer's criticism deserves scorn for two reasons: 1) the fact that Towne has intimate dealings with the City on any number of development deals, and has for at least two generations of Bortz', so that there are probably plenty of instances where Towne has directly and singularly benefited from official action that Chris Bortz (or Arn before him) has ruled on, at least during some portion of the process. The Streetcar doesn't benefit one property on the route more than any other. I'm sure Bortz' have voted for funds that go to Metro that pass by their properties as well, so why not complain about that? Second, isn't an article that claims the Streetcar will materially benefit a member of actually an article in support of what the Streetcar components claim it will do? Does The Enquirer realize that it is endorsing the theory of the Streetcar as an economic development tool?

Agreed. And there are fairly intuitive routes that seem to maximize development without compromising operations. Which is why I think Findlay Street is a no-brainer as an east-west corridor.

I think the concerns that some have with this idea is that if you stretch it to far and try to get it to do too many things, then it isn't going to do anything well. Let's remember that this project exists to connect the businesses on thomasbw's map with Washington Park, Music Hall, Findlay Market and thence upward to Clifton/Pill Hill/Uptown. If hillside development was the priority of this project it wouldn't shift to the Elm/Race axis and would instead simply go all the way up the Main/Walnut access to McMicken like Eighth and State wants. There strikes me as being two ways to maximize the value of those hillside properties- 1) make single family homes with a lot of attached garages a la Mt. Adams or 2) make duplexes and triplexes that attract younger folks who don't want a car. The problem with scenario two is current builders don't really build that way, and we've got so much underused capacity in that area south of McMicken. There's any number of areas of the City that could stand to be re-developed. There are houses for sale in Price Hill and Westwood for $100,000-$300,000 that would be selling for $600,000-$800,000 if they were in Hyde Park or Clifton. But it takes time and lots of money to develop that cachet. As great as the hillside is around McMicken is (and it's really great) having the streetcar end at McMicken isn't going to turn it into Prospect Hill, let alone Mt. Adams. I think you're right. But I think we should realize that a streetcar line that really intended to develop that hillside would have to travel the length of McMicken both ways, not simply spur to a tiny section of the hill. Thankfully the current route doesn't preclude that development from happening in the future.

I think anyone who spends any amount of time in that North Findlay area has to honestly say that having the streetcar go one block further north from Findlay Street to Henry Street won't make a bit of difference. I understand that the models say "development happens two to three blocks away" but practically speaking one block isn't going to make change the known unknown amount of people willing to enter this space after the Streetcar is built. There are is a certain group of enthusiasts who will respond to initial development in that area and only an increase in the comprehensiveness of the system, the safety/cleanliness of the area, and the amount of livable buildings will take us beyond these pioneers. Nevertheless, if they need to put a car barn anywhere along the route the one story building at Henry and Elm would be a great potential site since it is a large lot occupied by a building with no historical relevance whatsoever. I say this with no knowledge whatsoever about what type of space is actually required for the car barn. I truly think that a double tracked Findlay Street closed to cars and existing only for bicycles and pedestrians would really be a great experiment to see if a closed street like that would be viable. There's very little on it right now (so we can see how much development we can expect), it's got high name rec because of the Market (even though the Market House is on Elder), it is a straight shot through the West End to Dalton Street post office and thence to the Museum Center if we choose to move that way in the future, and there is a ton of empty space (that parking lot on the north side of the Market) for new construction. It's win-win-win-win-win-win. Those last two wins were because we need a connection to Vine and I was able to incorporate so many wins into one scenario.