BigDipper 80

Hamilton had a downtown Elder-Beerman until 2009, somehow.

Cleveland has all three of its rail lines and its BRT converge at its downtown mall, and it still lost all of its department stores. Of course, Cleveland has a lot of different, more complex economic issues than even Cincinnati, and its overall retail market has always been weak compared to downstate for whatever reason.

^Well now it's easier to brush off as "the death of retail" instead of "the death of downtown".

Cranley got excited when a Domino's opened up in the Mabley garage so I don't usually look to him for being a good metric of "exciting downtown development".

I'm not usually one to yell "OMG that's so out of scale with the neighborhood" but the upper floors of that first building just look... wrong. Which is a shame, because the lower half looks pretty decent.

Oh man, even with this redesign they still managed to put in a gigantic and hugely unnecessary interchange.

Using Chiquita logic, none of these texts count as valid evidence since they weren't discussed openly in accordance with the law.

Downtown Dayton apartment building sells for $1.4M A downtown Dayton apartment complex has been sold to a Philadelphia-based property management company. The JP Flats building (also known as Jefferson Place Flats) at 105 E. Second St. was sold for $1.39 million last week, according to Montgomery County property records. The buyer is listed as Lindy Jefferson Flats LLC, which is affiliated with Lindy Communities in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. The Dayton Business Journal previously reported in January Lindy Communities was planning to acquire the high-rise building. Lindy Communities President Alan Lindy said JP Flats will be scheduled "for full renovations" upon the acquisition, including glass-encased patios, and will be designed to have a presidential theme. More below: https://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/news/2019/06/05/downtown-dayton-apartment-building-sells-for-1-4m.html?iana=hpmvp_day_news_headline

No one would even notice or care if that deficit was wrapped up in the greater SORTA budget.

I really wish ODOT would "dream bigger" with the whole approach to the BSB. I know the era of fullscale neighborhood demolition for freeways is mostly (thankfully) in the past, but this would be the perfect once-in-a-generation opportunity to at least try and fix one of the biggest mistakes the city made with both the destruction of Kenyon-Barr and the construction of Queensgate, which is not only really ugly but also full of a bunch of confusing roads that loop all over the place for no real reason. If I-75 was re-routed through Queensgate roughly along where Freeman Avenue currently stands before making its eastern hook onto Fort Washington Way, you'd free up a huge chunk of land that could readily be re-attached to the central core, while also cleaning up the mess of weird wide roads in Queensgate and around the current terrible 71/75 interchange. There'd be lots of new space to expand the covention center, the street grid could be restored, the new interchange at Fort Washington Way would be a more compact trumpet interchange, and you'd be able to build most of the new freeway without disrupting traffic on the current I-75. Downtown access would be available by new interchanges with Sixth street as well as the Second-Third street frontage roads. It's a pipe dream, but I think something like this would be a huge boon for downtown.

Kings Island also has the free water park, if anyone in the party is into that sort of thing.

I wonder if the population explosion of Toronto helped out Canada’s Wonderland’s attendance more than Detroit’s implosion hurt Cedar Point’s attendance.

Look at Yellow Springs. I don't think the village has a single apartment building, and it's still one of the most vibrant, walkable, and urban places in the state.

That's basically what the entire state of New Jersey does, except since it's a state full of bedroom communities for Philly and NYC, they charge you to leave!

People get too hung up on the word "density" and immediately assume that people are advocating for Manhattan-style tenements everywhere. It's not hard to be both urban and allow for some of that stereotypical American "breathing room". Just build more Lakewoods and Shaker Heights.

They should at least build something tall there so there can still be that great view of downtown!

Well to be fair, I think a lot of the people who currently live and play in OTR (more the latter group) don't appreciate how unique it is either.

Hell, I live four miles from the path of destruction and I didn’t even lose a shingle on my house. Lots of lightning and some mildly strong winds, but nothing otherwise out of the ordinary.

The silver lining (if you can really call it that) is that the Miami Valley has such a glut of cheap houses that many of those affected may be able to move on and rebuild their lives quicker than when a disaster strikes in a more isolated location like Paradise or any number of tiny Kansas towns that get wiped off the map every few years. Hopefully folks are able to get new roofs over their heads fairly quickly and aren’t stuck living in FEMA trailers for a year or more.

Wow, now there's an organization composed entirely of meaningless buzzwords.

No discussion of the Dayton tornadoes? 'Tornado Outbreak' Devastates Ohio Communities With Winds Up To 140 MPH Several tornadoes touched down in highly populated areas of Dayton and other Ohio communities late Monday night, causing catastrophic damage. The storms devastated dozens of buildings and trees. One death has been reported, officials said Tuesday morning. More below: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/28/727439670/multiple-tornadoes-touch-down-in-dayton-ohio-catastrophic-damage-reported

I'm surprised Cranley didn't ask them to explicitly set this stuff up along Main instead just to block the streetcar.

I've become kind of obsessed with the "faux historic" buildings that populate the French Quarter, and I'm curious what everyone's opinion is on them. Most of them were built during the "Disneyfication" of the Quarter in the 1960s and replaced other buildings that were still historic, but didn't fit the overall aesthetic narrative that preservationists at the time were pushing for. Most of them look decent from street level as you're strolling past them, but if you spend enough time studying them you can tell they're a facsimile of lesser quality than the original buildings of the neighborhood. They're almost all hotels or parking garages, so their massing tends to be out of scale with the rest of the neighborhood. The hotel on the right is an infill block. Again, the building on the right is probably only 50 years old. These are both parking garages. I think this was one of the first infill projects in the Quarter, and you can see how it employs some of the same "broken facade" tricks that developers still use on their yuppie boxes.

According to the national news though, Ohio's entire economy is supported by two steel mills and a car factory.

It's amazing how easily you can spin a city's narrative through selective shots and interviews. I don't think anyone would argue that Middletown is "healthy" by any stretch of the imagination, but its population has been growing and its downtown has vastly improved even in the past few years.