Alabama ExPat

The full article: Downtown garage opening set BY JON NEWBERRY | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER More than two months after a redesigned Fountain Square was scheduled to be completed – and four weeks after an Oct. 14 formal rededication – the Square’s “rolling re-opening” is making halting progress in the heart of downtown Cincinnati. Two weeks before Light Up Cincinnati officially kicks off the holiday season: --Crews this week are busy installing a much larger – and colder – skating rink that’s scheduled to open the day after Thanksgiving. And the underground parking garage, whose needed repairs precipitated the entire $42.7 million project, is scheduled to open by the same day. --McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant in the Westin, initially set to open in August, will begin serving next Friday, and Via Vite, an Italian Bistro operated by Nicola’s Ristorante owner Nicola Pietosa, has signed a lease for a new restaurant directly on the square. But Via Vite won’t be ready until late April at the earliest and possibly not until June, as construction of the structure hasn’t even begun. --Fifth Third Bancorp plans to begin installing a new glass-curtain exterior later this month on the five-story office building that forms the northern boundary of the plaza. But the bank still hasn’t signed any new retail tenants for multiple spaces in the Fifth Third Center that open onto the square. Today, Downtown Cincinnati Inc. unveiled its Holy Jolly Trolley that will provide free rides to holiday shoppers and other downtown visitors in the central business district. Two of the special Metro buses will begin plying Fourth and Fifth streets on Saturdays and Sunday, traveling between Pike Street and Central Avenue with stops along the way – including the new Fountain Square skating rink, newly rebuilt Government Square, Lytle Park, and the 61st edition of the Duke Energy holiday train display. Passengers can hop on one of the trolleys every 10 minutes or so all along Fourth and Fifth streets, said David Ginsberg, DCI’s president and chief executive. DCI opens the holiday season with the annual Light Up the Square show, Nov. 24 on Fountain Square. It will include the lighting of the city’s Christmas tree, skating shows, music acts, and fireworks. Some 300 holiday events are planned for downtown from Thanksgiving to New Years. According to DCI’s third-quarter report on downtown Cincinnati, the number of violent crimes were down 22 percent through September compared with the same period in 2005. The group will be providing 24 “downtown ambassadors” throughout the central business district – and 24 hours a day on Fountain Square – to assist visitors, keep the area clean, and provide directions. They are in addition to a team of 38 police officers, including mounted police, who will also be patrolling downtown 24 hours a day. The DCI report also said that, through the first nine months of 2006, the number of downtown condominium sales increased 58 percent compared to the same period in 2005, from 95 units to 150. The average price was up 24 percent to $339,000, it said. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20061110/BIZ01/311100021/

We went to an event at the Netherland Hilton a few years ago. You might want to call them and ask.

Nope. Here is the wording for that exemption: © Family-owned and operated places of employment in which all employees are related to the owner, but only if the enclosed areas of the place of employment are not open to the public, are in a free standing structure occupied solely by the place of employment, and smoke from the place of employment does not migrate into an enclosed area where smoking is prohibited under the provisions of this chapter.

It looks like issue 4 will be voted down, and issue 5 will pass. I wonder if the Havana Martini Club in Cincinnati will change their name with the smoking ban.

Or... Maybe she didn't do to college but entered the military after high school, got deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, or both. She decided not to re-up, got a job at a corporation that loves giving jobs to veterans (like many companies do), and bought the place on a no down payment VA loan (or saved her meager military salary for a down payment while she was deployed).

So you had a thing for going to school in towns named "Bowling Green"? :lol:

A bit more info than the earlier article posting... Newport OK's $800M deal BY SCOTT WARTMAN AND JON NEWBERRY | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER NEWPORT - The Newport City Commission this morning approved a master development agreement with a partnership led by Corporex Cos. this morning to transform a 13-acre former public housing site into an $800 million riverfront community. Corporex will pay Newport $13.5 million for the property, related long-term development rights, and certain city expenses. The mixed-use complex will be completed over 10-to-15 years, the company and the city said. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061102/BIZ01/311020024/1001/BIZ

I'm a bit suprised that at the 18 number as well, and numbers tend to get exagerated for the press. It may be that the edge has been on the market a bit longer, there's a model in the building, and the view of the Taft is pretty nice from the window.

I think that condo looks pretty sweet from the picture.

Division over new OTR garage BY JON NEWBERRY | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER OVER-THE-RHINE – A proposed Music Hall garage stirred strong reactions from preservationist groups tonight after details were unveiled for the first time at an Over-the-Rhine community meeting organized by Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. (3CDC). The eight-level, 632-space Music Hall Square, as 3CDC is calling it, would be sandwiched into an irregular-shaped lot south of Music Hall between Memorial Hall on Elm Street and the Pipefitters Local 392 building on Central Parkway. All three of the buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061102/NEWS01/311020029/1056/COL02

So they got the name of the building right (who knew that building even had a name), but they somehow missed the fact that there insn't actually any residential in there yet. They do need to do a better job of checking their facts.

Census Bureau To Revise Cincinnati's Population Report Sarah Christian & Candice Terrell 10/30/2006 City leaders have asked the Census Bureau for the revision because they knew projects like City West were bringing more people back into the city. Leaders said new condominium projects and private home subdivisions have helped Cincinnati keep its population fairly stable and have actually attracted new residents. This past summer, the Anderson Building on Culvert Street was converted into a residential complex, bringing another 77 housing units into the city. Downtown Cincinnati, Incorporated representatives said more than 4500 people now live in downtown Cincinnati. An additional 400 downtown housing units are either under construction or are in the planning stages. Read full article here: http://www.wcpo.com/news/2006/local/10/30/census.html

Great pics! Although it looks like there may have been some illegal parking on I-75 for a couple of those. :lol:

B.S. in Computer Science at Western Kentucky University way back in '85. M.S. in Engineering Management at Santa Clara University in '91. When I'm not hanging out in Cincinnati, I work at Lockheed Martin in Huntsville, Alabama.

That's great news. We got some food to go at lunch on Thursday and took it home. It was good. We thought about going by on Saturday but just assumed it would be closed.

Half the story lies beneath Fountain Square Focus on history By Dan Hurley Post columnist Standing along Fountain Square watching the fireworks dance playfully above the head of the Genius of Waters two Saturday nights ago reminded me of Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar." The poet describes placing a jar on a hilltop in the midst of the Tennessee wilderness. With that simple act, "The wilderness rose up to it, and sprawled around, no longer wild..." The Tyler Davidson Fountain is our jar. When it is gone, greater Cincinnati dissolves into an urban wilderness without an organizing symbol. When the fountain is put back in place, even a new place, that wilderness can rise up and reorganize itself, no longer so wild. I was reminded just how important the fountain and the square are by the reaction to the dedication ceremonies. Many people have already commented on the fact that although no one questions the right of Nikki Giovanni to speak her mind on Fountain Square, her remarks were unfortunately inappropriate for the occasion, which should have been about attracting people back to downtown, not providing one more excuse to stay away. Marianne Schmidt e-mailed me to say that she did not believe that the redesign was worth "$42 million in our tax payers money." Although Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) has said it many times, I don't think it has sunk in that only $4 million of those $42 million are public (tax payer) funds. The rest are private, largely corporate, dollars. More importantly, what really drove the cost of this project was not the "pretty" part that people could see two weeks ago, the partially finished public square, but repairing the parking garage beneath the square. That garage has been the centerpiece of downtown revitalization for almost 60 years. After World War II, city leaders undertook a series of planning exercises to try to find ways to "modernize" the downtown. The 1948 Metropolitan Master Plan bluntly recognized that parking in downtown has "not been solved in a completely satisfactory manner in any American city." Though a few cities like San Francisco were building underground garages, Cincinnati land prices were not high enough to justify such an investment. Instead, the document suggested that the city consider building an "express bus terminal" beneath Fountain and Government Squares. Over the next decade a series of studies explored a vast underground facility beneath both squares that could handle buses and trucks on the top level and a cavernous 1,100 -plus space parking garage for cars on three lower decks. When Fifth Third Bank announced plans for a skyscraper at Fifth and Walnut and an office building on Sixth in 1961, city planners scaled back the proposed garage and centered it beneath Fountain Square. On December 29, 1965, ground was broken for a seven-level, 615-space garage which opened 16 months later with Mayor Walter Bachrach driving his limousine through the ceremonial ribbon. Though hard to appreciate, the underground garage was the "first major downtown urban renewal project that was completed and was one of the most important," according to the Cincinnati Post. But the garage almost didn't get built for a very odd reason, which is related to a question that Jerry Hellmann, and at least three other people asked me. "Where is the flower stand? Don't we have to sell flowers from it at least once a year?" People born here grew up with the oral tradition that the city had to arrange for the sale of flowers at least once a year from the flower stand that stood since 1871 on the southwest end of the esplanade and the Square. Supposedly this was necessary to fulfill its legal obligation to maintain the property as a "market space." In 1971, James W. Farrell, Jr., wrote an article entitled "The Myth of Fountain Square" for a collection of legal essays published by the Cincinnati Bar Association. In 1827, when the city wanted to widen Fifth Street between Vine and Walnut to build a market house in the center, Farrell found that it purchased an additional 75 feet of property from a series of owners on the south side of Fifth. The deeds for seven parcels on the western end of the block stated that the property would be used for "a market-house and market space." When Henry Probasco offered in 1867 to donate the Fountain, the city first considered tearing down just the eastern half of the Fifth Street Market House where none of deeds contained the restrictive language, but in the end tore down the entire structure. To honor the restrictions, the city commissioned architect James McLaughlin to design a wonderful little wrought-iron flower stand (the Cincinnati Historical Society Library has the two drawings he prepared) and to sell flowers from the stand at least once a year. The legal necessity of this quaint custom, or its sufficiency, was never tested until 1957 when municipal bond attorneys, "among the most cautious and disbelieving people in the world" according to Farrell, forced the city to sue the heirs of the property owners to establish that it actually had clear title to the property. The city offered five arguments, including the operation of the flower stand. The courts found in favor of the city without explicitly ruling that the flower stand was necessary or sufficient. Bill Donabedian, the manager of Fountain Square for 3CDC told me that the stand is in storage "somewhere," but that it has not been decided if it will be returned to the Square. Sometimes it is the quirky, distinctive, things that make a place special. Though the Genius of the Waters has been returned, clearly many Cincinnatians recognize that something important is missing, and without this gentle, civilizing element, it remains hard to organize the wilderness in our minds. http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061027/LIFE/610270338/1005

I stopped by "Fresh" for lunch today. Everything was very tatsy, but I have to admit going into sticker shock at the price. A sandwich, bottled water, and chips and hummus totaled out at over $12 (there's no options for any kind of chips without the hummus or guacamole). It seems a bit high to me.

Some listings have shown up in the MLS http://www.comey.com/browse.asw?proptype=1&browseby=street&mls=mls_cincy&choice=River%20Plaza

So what's up with the water being off? Is it normal for this time of year? It seems a bit too early for that.

Dang It! If I'd only known that before it closed!

5 out of 11 for me, with a few lucky guesses. :-(

Actually, there's probably good money to be made over the next couple of years feeding workers for the Edge and One River Plaza condominium construction sites.

I'm thinking "Lake House".

Um, er, um, yeah, that's it! That happened to me too!

One option for Cincinnati might be to team up with the Downtown Residents Council. They've done this sort of thing before, and know what needs to be done from a coordination, permission, city support point of view. http://www.ilivedowntown.com/meetings.lasso