PAlexander

You're the one who keeps going back to city's history with Saks. No one has touted that as an excellent example of how a subsidy is supposed to work. The fact remains that the owner of Mahogany's had a shaky financial history that served as a red flag (which was ignored). Now it looks like they're going out of business. I'm not sure what else there is to say. This is the post that started my responses:

^^These resident only parking plans are the DUMBEST idea. I remember when I used to work downtown; I was too cheap to even consider paying for parking so I always parked north of Liberty and walked. Prior to the resident only parking on Broadway around the old SCPA those spots were always full during the day. Afterwards those streets were empty. It didn't make any sense- enforcement was built around the hours that most of the residents were at work, and open parking existed when the residents were back home from work and people trying to hang out on Main Street in the evening showed up. Just meter everything already. Also, we are putting in a streetcar in that neighborhood. Those residents don't need an extra input of special parking rights, they need to be disincentivized to have a car to begin with, and, you know, use the streetcar and other forms of transit. Also, it's a shame that the smartphone app won't be a part of the plan. A lot of the meters, particularly on the busier commercial streets, could be designed to prevent automatic refills on smart phones in order to allow for churn in those areas, but the less busy, less commercial or purely residential streets could allow for automatic refills.

I think that subsidies are generally used to lure businesses that wouldn't necessarily choose to open in a given location. You incentivize Nordstrom to come downtown because it would greatly help the retail scene, and establishes downtown as a retail force in the region. Nordstrom seeks subsidy for a downtown store because they know that location wouldn't be as profitable as a location at Kenwood, and they need a way to justify their decision. The subsidy doesn't allow Nordstrom to make money downtown if it wasn't going to already; it just helps bridge the gap between what they could be making elsewhere. It's the same thing you see with corporate relo's. Companies can choose any city or state to locate in, and they can generally make money wherever they are. The subsidy just sweetens the pot and makes one location a bit more appealing than another. Anybody who thinks that any of those subsidies for downtown department stores were about "establishing downtown as a retail force in the region" is ignoring what was happening to retail when they began. Forest Fair Mall has never, ever, panned out, because the retail market went bust immediately after it opened. All the other Malls in the region went down hill as well. Even properties that have, over time, been successfully redeveloped, like Beechmont Mall, for example, don't have the amount and diversity of retail that was there back in the 80's. The places that are humming are basically food courts with some attached stores. Look at Newport- it's a safe place for pre-teens to walk around without their parents. All those downtown department store subsidies were band-aids pure and simple. And they failed utterly in both making downtown a place that people go for high-end shopping as well as keeping the customers for the myriad other smaller shops that existed on 4th Street or Race Street or the like. Downtown Cincinnati started loosing its luster in the 90s and lost it a really fast pace, and so the subsidies succeeded in their actual goal, which was to make the politicians who approved them seem like they weren't incompetents who were presiding over rapid decline. But it certainly didn't keep downtown as the major high-end shopping destination. What happened to Herschede, Gidding Jenny, Dino's, Sterling Cut Glass, Florsheim, and myriad other local retail power houses that sat between McAlpin's and Lazarus and Pogue's and Elder-Beerman? You guys are just too young to have any familiarity with downtown shopping was actually like back prior to the mid nineties to understand the scale of failure of all those subsidies. They were all sold as a way to keep all that activity and all those institutions and every one of them crapped out. The idea that one restaurant given a $300,000 subsidy because they were African-American owned was a stupid fiscal decision because it crapped out 3 months later, but Saks stringing along the public for decades at the tune of millions of dollars to maintain a glorious tradition of upscale destination shopping was a sound fiscal decision is nuts. All those retail subsidies failed- downtown is not a destination for upscale shopping. We just got lucky that it started turning a corner recently for other reasons that basically have nothing to do with any plans made by the City.

That's not what you asked, though: "Saks, Macy's & Nordstrom's are all profitable companies, as you say, so why should any government subsidize them at all?" Which implies that subsidies are supposed to make up for a lack of profitability, which isn't their intended purpose. The argument against subsidizing Mahogany's specifically focused on profitability because of the owner's poor financial history. If the business isn't profitable, the subsidy is a bad bet, since that business may not be around long enough to achieve the city's intended purpose. In this case, it was to achieve a more diverse group of restaurants (and possibly clientele) at the Banks. Basically, profitability should be a prerequisite for receiving government subsidies. A subsidy historically is supposed to make up for a lack of profitability in the early years of an industry. Your argument seems to be that the government should attempt to encourage certain types of economic behavior in certain areas for the benefit of certain economic actors. In the example you gave, you suggested that the City should subsidize profitable anchor chains for the benefit of the downtown retail market, presumably landlords and other retail store owners. In the case of Mahoganny, the City is subsidizing a restaurant for the benefit of the landlords at the Banks and the other restaurants and bars in the entertainment district. I guess the difference for me is, I look at the size of the subsidy given to Mahoganny and think, "I'd rather take a shot on a local business owner with a smaller subsidy" than pay out a much larger subsidy to a national chain. A lot of people looked at Mahoganny's history and said, "This restaurant is obviously going to fail." I'd argue that one could have taken a quick survey of the malls in the Greater Cincinnati area and said, "We just don't have the purchasing power to support more than one tony shopping area. That area is going to be Kenwood because it is physically closest to the neighborhoods in the area with the highest purchasing power." To each his own.

Right, but the general thrust of the argument on this thread against subsidizing Mahoganny was all about the potential profitability of the target business.

Not to pick a fight, I just think this reasoning is sort of weird. Saks, Macy's & Nordstrom's are all profitable companies, as you say, so why should any government subsidize them at all? Also, did Mahogany's seem like a horrible idea it total, or just because of the financing? Because my experience at the Eagle leads me to believe that there is a big market for the kind of menu Mahoganny's put out. At least that part didn't seem horrible.

This is basically right. These guys rely on a group of hard-core voters who are against things simply because they don't like the people proferring. It's not a situation where any negotiation is going to work. Also, these guys like the idea of fighting with people. They are so ambitious for position and title that they've forgotten (or never had) any sense of public-spiritedness. You can tell the contempt with which they hold ordinary folks because they are unable to get a sentence out without it being covered in bullshit (e.g. "It doesn't take $40 million to say 'No'". The words in that sentence were utterly disconnected from the question they were responding to). They've gotten so warped and twisted that they believe that if they win the political fight they've accomplished something of merit.

Man, the Enquirer is absolute garbage: "As the mayor and city council pause now to deliberate the future of parking in Cincinnati, it would be smart to re-examine the original deal. It should be analyzed in light of the tough realities the city faces today – chronic budget deficits, slow growth, stagnant revenue." Why endorse someone who campaigns explicitly against this deal if you are actually in favor of it? Also, the article completely missed the detailing the costs that the City will be on the hook for if it wants to maintain "local control" (i.e. run the thing). Pathetic. The "local control" issue is stupid. The fact that the President of UC can call up the Mayor and get enforcement change around the University shows the folly of "local control". I see two legitimate issues regarding the parking deal: -The Port. This is the Pete Witte complaint. Basically the Port is an incestuous group of local developers and big-wigs. In addition, the revenue source is coming from the City, but the Port's mandate is County-wide. Once again, just like Metro, the City is subsidizing the region (Contra to this argument is that if one believes the Port's economic development plan, then these concerns disappear). -The up-front payment and the fact that the revenue stream isn't dedicated to funding anything. This is the complaint that the City is simply raising rates to "make more money". While a general complaint like that is stupid (mostly because the complainer isn't articulating the fact that present rates are so low that they arguably subsidize drivers), I would argue that most people don't trust the present group of politicians to make good, structural choices. Unfortunately with Cranley and Smitherman at the helm, there's simply no way that a positive compromise agreement can be reached regarding increased parking revenue. Something like increased funding for the pension liability for several years then switching to a transportation fund, where all transportation related revenues go and all transportation projects are funded, would be a gentlemanly compromise. Given that the City needs more revenue, and we know that 70% of the City's revenue comes from the earnings tax, the quetion is how can the City actually increase the amount of people living and working in the City in order to increase the revenue from the earnings tax. Trying to lure businesses, in my opinion, isn't terribly effective, so the City should focus on luring residents, and then expecting the businesses to follow their employees. Anyway, the original parking deal seemed to me to be the best administrative way forward. Have all the funds that result from the deal plowed back into a dedicated fund for street maintenance and expansion of the streetcar network would be the best way to keep from squandering the up-front payment. Then add to this fund an increase in the property tax so that the areas most benefited by the garages and the streetcar pay more, and we might start to see some structural balance that actually leads to economic development.

Guys, those non-core counties (Butler, Warren, Clermont and Boone; and now ones even further out than that in both KY & OH) are built around new car-centric subdivision. That's not going to change anytime soon. That's why the streetcar is so important: it's a City-controlled (as much as possible) transit system designed to increase density. Once it is in place and starts to work it's success will snowball. Inner-ring suburbs are going to want to be connected to the City and a larger commuter system may be possible within Hamilton County. But those far out exurbs aren't going to be interested for some time.

These priorities aren't new with Cranley. Let's stop trying to comfort ourselves that Cranley won the election through some sort of tactical brilliance. He won because he'd spent a his post-riots career cozying up to those conservative voters who are few but come out for every election. And Qualls lost because she presumed her ability to get votes in a field race would carry over in a head to head race. If the issues that clown campaigned on actually mattered, then how come he got crushed on the streetcar a month after his election mandate? The only thing I find surprising is the idea that this dude keeps getting away with maintaining the perception that he's a proponent of fiscal restraint, when his efforts to undo things done by the previous council has cost the City a ton with no benefit to show for it. And, the most crazy thing, is how these jokers keep harping on a "structurally balanced budget", when the budgets ceased being structurally balanced in 2002, the year John became chair of the finance committee! There's plenty of legitimate reasons to complain about how economic development is done in this City. But like I said earlier, Cranley isn't actually addressing issues like that, he's just saying that the right way to do economic development is a function of his decisions- if it's something he's choosing to do, it's the right policy, end of story. Ted Cruz-HLS logic, I guess.

The previous parking plan was explicitly designed to cover previous budget shortfalls with the upfront payment, as well as to give a stable funding stream to the Port. If you thought these were bad priorities, that's perfectly reasonable. Cranley's plans, on the other hand, don't seem to have specific ends; they aren't designed to accomplish anything. Instead they are designed in opposition to someone elses's plan, and they are self-justifying: the other guy's plan didn't have local control; this plan does (despite having the fact that both plans contain leases to the Port). It's a really silly way to lead a City.

I understand what you are saying, but isn't it sort of weird how the negatives are the positives when you set them next to each other? And then of course, the negatives are only the negatives when viewed from a particular perspective (i.e. the individual who is parking) whereas the positives are only positives when viewed from a particular perspective (i.e. the City of Cincinnati as a corporation). Cranley's stance is different, and much more like bullshit- his plan retains local control, whereas the previous one didn't. Fair enough. But part of his plan involves a loss of local control just like the previous plan (the leasing of the Fountain Square Garage to the Port) and it loses both the upfront payment and the technological improvements. Also there's this weird component where people using city parking spaces (but not bus riders, for example) are worthy of subsidy when times are hard. The real way in which "local control" would have been met would have been for the City to invest in all the technology and hiring to improve parking flow and enforcement, and then jacking up the rates. But that would have taken an upfront payment from the City that they don't have at the moment.

^Thanks.

What do you mean by "integrated"?

My biggest thing with the Mahogany's related posts on this thread is that, if you look at all the businesses that are subsidized in all different ways by local governments, this subsidy is pretty small. It might be have been dumber or more hopeful than most, but it's never struck me as being nearly as big a deal as countless other subsidies out there. Also, isn't better to subsidize locally owned businesses on the Banks than anyone of all those chains? The chains provide a benefit because they are familiar for tourists, but I'd rather try to help out a local, new place, than some nationwide chain or a place like the Maisonette which was poorly run and asking for hand-outs because of new competition.

The color of the skin of the person who owns the business should matter zilch. Were those white owned business subsidized because they were white? I sure as hell hope not. If they subsidize any business it should be based on solid financial analysis, not race. Basically all government programs prior to the Sixties were geared toward white people. For example, employers of farm laborers and domestic servants were originally excluded from having to pay Social Security, and that was a direct result of Southern legislators during the New Deal. Heck, the housing projects built after the Second World War were explicitly segregated. It's not so much that the other restaurants were subsidized because they were white, it's that if you're white you automatically get subsidized- mostly by benefitting from the decisions made in ages past. Why do people get so up in arms about Mahoganny's? Cincinnati and governments on every level, heck tons of private business, make stupid decisions that aren't based on solid financial analysis all the time. Remember six years ago when basically every major bank in the country was about to go under?

^Yeah, it's a a shame that the rail plan isn't to go from the Riverfront Transit Center out east via the Oasis line, then rather branch east at Fairfax, continue north along Red Bank, through Highland Ridge Plaza to Bond Hill, then head west across Seymour all the way through Elmwood Place to Este Road, follow Este to the abandoned rail line that goes through Spring Grove and then crosses Hamilton in Northside around Hoffner Park and follows the west side of the Mill Creek through Lower Price Hill and then back to the Riverfront Transit Center. While I admit that some of these areas aren't terribly important, that's a plus in some way because they are developable. In fact, if a lot of the adjacent land was aquired and developed by the rail authority itself (like is done in Hong Kong, for example) it would be a great thing. In addition, there are enough residential areas and business centers (run down, to be sure, but at least pre-existing as business centers, and P&G's Center Hill campus and Ivorydale would be adjacent to this line) along this route to make it feasible. Also hits east and west sides and enough black areas to make it politically more attractive, and SORTA basically already owns most of the right-of-way.

I recognize that the CL&N line has its problems, particularly the broken-up right-of-way, but it seems like there are some positives about it, namely the fact that because there is very little around it it has decent potential for development. In addition, there are some spots where it could link up with an expanded streetcar line. If the Eastern Avenue route is used, I wonder if it would be possible to redevelop that area along Eastern between Wilmer from Airport Road to Red Bank in a way to add housing/office space that is quite dense and focused entirely on the commuter line. It seems to me that the only way to avoid the highway is to get the commuter rail line going first. And I'm not sure that any commuter rail line in Cincinnati is going to be that viable, unless the route is redeveloped for higher densities.

I understand there are several tight turns in the area, but is there no way to take a branch from Vine over Thill Street and then up past Christ Hospital via Glencoe?

I'm curious: anyone know how the County gave some sort of contractual right over building heights to the Bengals through their lease? I presumed the City controlled building heights exclusively.

^I'd be more concerned if his working coalition didn't break down so quickly. I find it hard to believe that there would be any support on this council to sell the railroad, even if Cranley were pushing for it. It's a mistake to think that Qualls lost because she pushed "unpopular" policies. The streetcar proved to be quite popular when the chips were down. Both Qualls & Cranley were very well known, and only 28% of eligible voters showed upt to vote for some relatively prominent politicians. I think it's more indicative of how little City residents seem to believe local politicians work for them than it was about any specific policy.

This is a good point. The biggest problem, and the reason that we have a road-centric culture, is that local governments don't reallly have the means to fund transportation projects themselves, primarily because they are barred from enacting the types of funding mechanisms that would create a more transparent and direct cost burden- basically the state controls how local governments may tax real estate. Because of this, they come up with ways to work around these rules- like with TIF districts and so forth. So many programs are jerry-rigged to avoid offending certain interest groups, or to make sure enough interest groups have a piece of the pie, or because the programs have been added to organically over decades, that cities simply don't have the ability to do projects like the streetcar without help from the state or feds. Like you said, minimum transportation access is oftentimes (particularly with the limited funds available) mutually exclusive from biggest impact routes. The reason why cities all over the country are doing these types of streetcar systems is because the old way, where the cities pay for the buses to take their residents to suburban jobs, isn't sustainable, and it has resulted in swaths of underutilized urban real estate that ends up costing more because it is underused.

Socialism refers to common ownership of the means of production. Its practical application is large, state-owned industries. These definitions are important, because that allows people to understand each other. When you don't respect what a word means, you're clearly trying to manipulate people.

I agree. Having that intact right-of-way is really important. It's a shame it hasn't been more at the forefront of transportation efforts.

No it doesn't. You can recognize there are pros and cons to both ways. Recognizing that commitment to long-term investments is harder with shorter election cycles is not a statement that campaigning is bad. I guess I just don't see it that way. Every politician on council at the beginning of 2009 was for the Streetcar except Cranley & Monzel. Now you can't be a Republican and be for the streetcar. I see that there was a real change in how "long-term investments" were viewed after 2010; it became fashionable to be against government investment as entirely wasteful, and it became fashionable to beat an issue like a dead horse. When Mallory was running for Mayor in 2005, he criticized 3CDC and such, but he never tried to undo it. That was the old, time-honored way of campaigning. Well, if a politician is apt to no be in "campaign mode" at any time, it would be immediately AFTER their election, but that certainly wasn't what happened here. Let's not forget, this group of politicians had it entirely within their power to take the operations cost off the table (even though it wasn't necessary for two years) by funding it through property taxes of those properties which directly benefit from the investment. And operations costs were supposed to be the major issue here. I certainly didn't see any greater commitment to facts when these same folks voted unanimously to spend $20 million on the MKL/I-75 interchange.