OHSnap

I'm down with the Stargel Stadium site. There doesn't appear to be much going on between Central Ave. and Central Parkway right there, so if you had to bend Central Ave around a new stadium you could. The Music Hall garage means you could get away with a smaller dedicated garage. Good highway access via Liberty or Ezzard Charles, too (and even the Western Hills Viaduct or 50/Freeman for westsiders). And if the team got big enough, I could also see constructing a "game day loop" for the streetcar that uses 14th, Central Ave, and Wade.

I still can't believe the city and state will spend like $7M to save people one traffic light. I get that the Medpace people are leveraging a larger development, but I don't understand how this road really brings $7M of utility to its employees. (Also, not to be pendantic, but the Taco Bell and Freddie's are in Fairfax, not Madisonville.)

Tree removal and earthworks underway for the Duck Creek Connector.

I've lived in Madisonville for going on 12 years, and hadn't heard of it either. So I wanted to find out where, exactly, it was located, as I live "on the west edge of Madisonville." So I looked at some historic aerials to try to spot a 200-home neighborhood in the path of the current RBE, and didn't see anything I would think was Dunbar. Anyone else know anything? I reached out to MCURC through their FB page but haven't heard anything yet.

^ The same group (something called BAM Realty) owns the Fresh Market site, the Sleepy Bee building, and everything in between, plus two single-family homes around the corner on Brownway. I suspect they have bigger plans.

^well that's pretty sexist

It passes right by UC's utility plant - I suspect it's a mess of underground crap right there, but that's just raw suspicion. Should it go on the north side of the Jefferson/MLK intersection for a stop at the EPA? I feel like having pedestrians cross that intersection twice to walk to/from a station is a big ask - so pedestrian-unfriendly...

Norwood is already exceptionally dense. Looking around on Google Maps I don't see a lot of park space in Norwood until you get to the far end of Sherman or north of the Lateral - nothing those southern areas can walk to, anyway. There's the Evanston playground, which is nice, but you can't get to it from Lexington without walking on the thoroughly unpleasant Dana, and the Burwood playground which no one seems to know exists. I'd propose a linear park along the trail, with trailhead amenities similar to Nisbet. Could probably even link it to Burwood and get better utilization of it. Sometimes the best development is no development - creating a buffer for that neighborhood with some amenities/attractions may be more valuable than another couple hundred residents.

^Wait, $29.3 million for 710 spaces? That's $40,000 per space! I mean, I know it's about more than parking - engineered to rise above the floodplain and support construction atop it - but where's the outrage at that taxpayer expense? It's 1/4 of the cost of the streetcar, and won't do anything to help the neighborhoods!!

Holy cow. How tall are the Jersey barriers there? That's got to be, what, 3-4 FEET of water right there. Also, people are idiots sometimes. There was some flooding near my house at the site of the flood walls they built along Duck Creek. The police had parked at either end, but you could go around if you cut through a neighborhood. Problem was, you popped out right in the deepest part of the water. And so people were going around a police barricade in order to drive through flood waters - while abandoned cars continued to float nearby.

Yeah, they seriously need to get their QA house in order first. Word around the campfire is that they regularly release beers with off-flavors or infections, and the head brewer doesn't recognize the problem. I don't think they are respected by other brewers in the community. It's doubly sad because one the city's finest craft brewers, Blank Slate, is regularly confused for Bad Tom, as they're both East End breweries with B's and S's in their name.

^Not a subscriber. Care to summarize? I assume Sung, but where in Blue Ash?

Just came from the public meeting unveiling the initial plans Ackermann has put together for this project: Phase 1 comprises the northeast and southwest corners of Madison and Whetsel. 40,000 sq ft office/retail on the ground floor, all oriented to the sidewalks. (Madisonville has a form-based code.) 180 residential units, primarily one-bedroom. The existing plaza at the northwest corner (including the health clinic) remains, but the city owns it and has committed to updating it. they went to great pains to repeat that the conceptual drawings are only for a sense of scale, that materials haven't been chosen. It all hinges on the competitive New Market Tax Credits. The southeast corner will be phase 2, once the success of phase 1 has been demonstrated. Ideally I guess I'd like to see less parking, but Madisonville isn't dense enough yet to be truly walkable and car-free. The ratios are 1.4 spaces per residential unit and 4 per 1000 sf of commercial/retail. It's great that it's behind the buildings and there are no curb cuts on Madison itself. FYI the first photo looks south-southeast, with the current plaza/clinic in tan. Edit: don't know why the last one is getting turned upside down - tried twice.

Oh yeah, I think you're right. Not sure what's going in there.

Just the first domino to fall in that area resulting from the MegaKroger just the other side of 71. With two Krogers, Meijer, two Remkes, Target, Fresh Thyme, Fresh Market, Whole Foods, and Sam's within a couple miles of one another, something was going to change. But yeah, too many big boxes sitting empty near Ridge and Highland. Remke, the building supply place behind Aldi, the former K-mart...

^I've seen all the stuff to do with the lateral at 75, and this seems like more than that. I mean, why would they detour 71-N traffic onto 71 south because of a ramp closure on 75? Maybe the rail overpass is the answer - wait and see.

Old topic, I know, but I'm seeing barrels and a lot of weird detour signs on 71 around the lateral. Anyone know what's going on? District 8's website is unhelpful, and it's not listed on DOTE. I'm seeing (still covered) signs indicating a detour for *north* 71 on the southbound side until Dana, then exiting at Dana presumably to U-turn to go back north. So exit ramp work I guess?

Very nice. A few years ago we spent about six days on Maui and just 2.5 on the big island, based out of Hilo. Really wish we had balanced that better - I very much liked the old-Hawaii feel of Hilo, and the rainforest on the northeast end of the island.

Also, from what I recall, the Heart Mini does not cross the streetcar course. The streetcar would be an excellent way to shuttle participants to their cars, if they wanted.

^Counterpoint: wife and I have a Breville convection toaster oven that has largely replaced our standard oven. It can fit a half-sheet pan and up to a 14" pizza. We still use the standard oven on occasion for larger stuff, of course, but I'm convinced that a couple could get by rather well with a nice toaster oven. Caveats about counter space apply.

Saw in the agenda for tonight's Oakley council meeting that Steve Dragon of Vandercar will be presenting on "Potential Chick-fil-a" at Oakley Station. Great. Thought when I moved to Oakley/Madisonville that I was moving to an historically inner-ring suburb. Turns out I moved to Mason.

^Let's hope it continues to come in over budget and gets killed. Cincinnati and ODOT shouldn't be in the business of building a $5-10 million road that saves some employees one traffic light on their way to work. All one needs to look to is a mile the other way on Duck Creek to the Kennedy Connector. If there's a more lightly-used five-lane road in Cincinnati, I haven't seen it.

I've lived in my house on the Madisonville/Oakley line for 11 years. It seems prescient now, because within about 10 minutes' drive, I'll have Madtree, this new Tap & Screw, Nine Giant, Listermann/Triple Digit, 50 West, Blank Slate, Bad Tom, and the other new one coming to the East End whose name I forget. Widen that to 15 and with light traffic I can get to Woodburn, Rivertown, Rhinegeist, Taft's, the Moerlein Malt House, and maybe even Eight Ball. It's a good time to be alive.

We already have two surface-street bridges between Cincinnati and Covington, and a third if you count Brent Spence. I guess I'm a little confused how a third/fourth bridge would make it that much easier to get to Covington. I feel like most of the time the Suspension Bridge and Clay Wade Bailey are underutilized as it is.

The brand of these beers is tied up in the character of their taprooms as much as their packaging and whatever other marketing they do. These microbreweries won't ever be able to do Superbowl ads and sponsor NASCAR teams, so the image of their tap rooms is paramount. Currently the success of the image of these taprooms has been accidental...for whatever reason people like hanging out in MadTree's current undecorated warehouse space. In time there will be fatal car wrecks, fights or shootings, and the other sorts of things that happen at bars. And since so many people are at these places compared to neighborhood bars, that sort of thing might happen more regularly than people imagine. Eventually someone's going to suffer a critical injury on Rhinegeist's steps, and similar problems will occur at the others. I'm really having trouble seeing how a discussion of the margin of a taproom vs retail sale led you to a monologue about fights and shootings.