BigDipper 80

There's a Cheesecake Factory in Beverly Hills, for crying out loud. People are boring literally everywhere, just like every city has interesting pockets if you bother to look for it and not dismiss it as dumb.

But again, you see that everywhere. Los Angeles worships In-N-Out Burger the same way any other suburb loves Olive Garden or whatever. And that attitude by and large has been changing - my parents are quintessential suburbanites, but they almost never eat at chains any more because every sh!tsplat of a town has good food these days.

I was reading the comments on a NY Times article about Amazon's HQ2, and I couldn't believe the vitriol being spewed by people against the "heartland". Really nasty stuff about the entire Midwest being third world, totally boring and ugly with no "action". It's as if the entirety of the Midwest is shitty regardless of the policies and lifestyles of the cities within the region, whereas being a coastal city exempts you from the backwards policies of, say, interior Washington or coal-country Pennsylvania.

^That's the old Dayton Daily News headquarters. Sinclair was going to redevelop it as a part of a campus apartment complex, but the plans fell through. Hopefully if/when the Arcade takes off, there will be talks to redevelop that lot.

With Kuhns purchase, developer controls all Arcade buildings The developers behind the renewal of the Dayton Arcade have purchased the Benjamin F. Kuhns building downtown. Dayton Arcade Partners LLC bought the building at 45 S. Main St. from the city of Dayton in a Montgomery County property transaction picked up Monday. More below: https://www.mydaytondailynews.com/business/arcade-project-buys-kuhns-building-for-28m/oVJq6vDTvyelSbruB9v0vK/

This is a great news day for Dayton!

I'm on the same page as you with respect to development, I was just trying to argue that it could be denser, in theory. I don't necessarily think Cincinnati would have become twice as dense as Baltimore because if that early turn of the century pressure was there, that OTR-level of development, or at least CUF-level, would have spread out further. But instead it got snapped up pretty early on (the 1830s in some cases) by rich people to build their mansions above the smog.

New York seems to have a similar attitude in that regard, I think. 30 Rock spoofed it a couple of times (notably and ironically in the episode where Liz contemplates moving to Cleveland), where characters will go on a monologue about how greate NYC is only to be pushed into a giant pile of trash bags next to the curb. When you're confident enough in your city, you can own the shitty parts instead of being embarassed by them or trying to "booster bro" them away. After all, what is LA without the traffic or NYC without Pizza Rat?

I personally think Cincinnati's topography gets overplayed when discussing "uphill" density. The Mill Creek and Ohio River valleys have steep, hilly terrain, but a vast majority of the east side (almost all of the Madison and Montgomery corridors) and a good chunk of the Price Hill area is plenty flat for a much denser vernacular than what was developed. Hyde Park north of Observatory could easily have been developed more in the manner of CUF, but instead it's full of roomy lots. Same goes for Corryville and Walnut Hills. The divide in density almost certainly has more to do with income levels, the time period of "uphill" construction, and the disconnect from the urban basin than it does with any major topographical challenges.

JUST IN: New restaurant moving in to the former Arby’s on Brown Street will be 1st of its kind The new restaurant under development in the former Arby’s space at 1200 Brown St. adjacent to the University of Dayton will be operated by the franchisees for Dayton-area Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken restaurants, but it will be a new concept that will differ from the local chicken chain’s existing locations, one of the franchise owners told this news outlet today. More below: https://www.dayton.com/news/local/just-arby-abruptly-closes-its-brown-street-restaurant-neighbors-say/5cXsDjHpkVaM3lnPiRSKVL/

This is HUGE news; the Grant-Deneau tower is the tallest vacant skyscraper in Dayton. Can't wait to see it redeveloped. (Exclusive) Fire Blocks developer acquires historic downtown high-rise The developer of the Fire Blocks project has acquired the oldest high-rise building in downtown Dayton. More below: https://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/news/2019/01/08/exclusive-fire-blocks-developer-acquires-historic.html?ana=e_day_bn_breakingnews&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWXpVME1qa3lZak0zTVRVNCIsInQiOiJXUlNIRHpcLzI3KzlJVStyVFZERlY1NXFrdGJjRnNERXlrT3hqNE1qRGxoU2FNZURKVitoR0VJcUNrTGJ4TVpyVUlRS3Z6OG1VRW1zV005Z2dJS01yZlU0ekROcW9ZUE1QTW5nbWdMUWp2aHl4VU5VRmtrYnJZNzdmVUU0VkRlRWoifQ%3D%3D&fbclid=IwAR3sg2DrtBIK3hfRxpZirDjmbTOimOzFe4tG1qLt6yl-qu7sLOBDQP3-O1g

Will Dusty Rhodes finally stop complaining about the five parking meters removed from Court Street for streetcar construction now that we have this gigantic garage in the same location?

Ironically that's basically how grocery stores all used to be before Piggly Wiggly invented the modern store layout.

The tram at the Getty Center in Los Angeles is also a HovAir and it makes a number of curves, but it has a slightly different track design, with the cables running alongside the tram instead of down the center of the track.

It's not even a new idea, Kroger themselves already tested it out 6 years ago...

A question for the architects on this board: At what point does a building's design move from being "faux historic" to being "XYZ Revival" architecture? Is the Collegiate Gothic of Yale's campus less valid and honest as an architectural form because it copies 800 year old ecclesiastical architecture for dorms and classrooms? What about the Tudor revival downtown buildings in Mariemont? Not trying to be snarky, I'm just trying to better understand where the line lies between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" when translating older forms of architecutre. Is it about context, since both college campuses and places like Mariemont are somewhat self-contained, unlike an OTR-type setting?

Maybe if Columbus had a more comprehensive mass transit system this DUI problem would be less of an issue. Hooray for Dayton being 25th best, though. It really is an easy city to drive in, and drivers are also generally pretty decent at respecting cyclists compared to some other places.

I mean... is this really too oppressively dense for people? They may not be suburban-sized lots but most of Cleveland's homes actually sit on fairly roomy lots for being "urban core". Most lots are probably comparable to, if not larger than, lots in Southern California, aka the poster child for postwar suburban sprawl. Even Lakewood, the densest city in the state, has very generously-sized yards. It's not like walking around midtown Manhattan or something. And the lots in Euclid and the other immediately-after-WWII suburbs are only slightly larger lots than what you'd find in Lakewood, anyway.

The Short North has required parking permits in a bunch of locations all the way up past OSU for years now, and the service industry folks seem to be doing just fine along High Street there. Sure there will be some growing pains getting used to the new system but people will figure it out.

Google finally rolled out some new Streetview images for Wheeling recently. But for whatever reason they didn't bother doing the entire city and hardly touched Wheeling Island. I don't know why it's so hard for them to map that city.

^^ I've said it before in other threads, but McMicken between Marshall and Ravine is my favorite section of street in Cincinnati. I haven't been down that way in ages - have they ever managed to successfully curb the prostitution that was going on in that area?

More on that: Taglio Pizza taking over Lachey's Bar space A second Taglio Pizza is coming to Over-the-Rhine. It is expected to open in the old Lachey's Bar space in the spring. Taglio is the second pizza concept from the owners of A Tavola Trattoria. A Tavola serves thin-crusted wood-fired Neapolitan pizza and other Italian classics in two locations, Over-the-Rhine and Madeira. But when owners Jared and Nick Wayne and Jake Goodwin opened Taglio in Columbia Tusculum, they specialized in traditionally American-style pizza and thick-crusted Detroit-style, well-suited to take-out and delivery. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/entertainment/dining/2019/01/03/taglio-american-pizza-tavola-owners-opening-lacheys-space/2472899002/

The Josephs are going to be so mad that they got the Dennison site all ready for a mysterious Fortune company only to have one open up shop where this CVS was instead.

I think the compressed floor heights also make them stand out, which is another problem that seems to plague any of the single-family houses that have popped up in the neighborhood recently. People tend to describe OTR and Pendleton as "rowhouse neighborhoods", but they're really tenement neighborhoods and most of the buildings have 11-12 foot stories instead of your standard 8-10 foot stories you more regularly see in single-family houses or townhomes. So you end up with townhomes pretending to be tenements, and the massing is off just enough for it to be really obvious.

I think it just comes down to the materials (and a couple other things like lot setbacks) more than anything else. Look at this tenement building on Broadway: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1093203,-84.5082896,3a,75y,104.37h,106.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shrAQi0_9qLwQdgC9Pv_u1Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 It's literally just a long brick box that lacks a cornice or any level of detailing. It really isn't functionally any different from Brackett Village, other than it lacks the latter's admittedly out-of-place stoops. If you get the height right and use a high quality brick (or whatever other cladding you want, I'm not picky), it should turn out looking fine. Most of the basin's vernacular is just brick boxes with varying degree of detail on the lintels and cornices. I don't personally find it "dishonest" if you slap a fancy cornice on top if you feel like it (so long as it's not made out of EIFS or something), or you put a modern looking metal cornice or no cornice at all. It's quite literally just window dressing.