BigDipper 80

Dona Brady is Team Vape all the way, none of that ethnic crap.

^That's hard and you can't use buzzwords like "catalyst" or "neighborhood anchor" or "tax credits", though.

I would assert that tearing things down makes it harder to revitalize a neighborhood. I think people get sick of having to look at "blight" and somehow think a greenfield (or a parking lot, I guess) is more attractive to developers. Except it obviously has nothing to do with how large your greenfields are or else East St. Louis would be the most booming city in the Midwest right now. The hard part is convincing the residents and business owners who have to walk/drive past those abandoned buildings every day that they're more of an asset even in their abandoned state than they are demolished.

I just can't fathom how this is still a popular mindset. Tearing everything down didn't revitalize Cleveland in the 60s and 70s, why would tearing more things down now lead to a different result?

Interesting that this is separate from the Fairgrounds development.

The average person just sees what they want to see when they go places for work or pleasure, unfortunately. There are heroin needles and piles of garbage all over San Francisco, but it hasn't put a huge dent in tourism there. But if someone bumped into an aggressive panhandler in Cleveland, it would probably confirm their bias about Cleveland being a terrible place. I'd agree that things could eventually change in the long, long term, but I don't know if playing that long of a game is the most effective use of public funds. How else do you suggest getting people to these cities? Most people won't be going to Cleveland or Cincinnati for vacation. Maybe some people would come for sports or concerts, but those are mostly local or regional draws. Conventions offer a chance to bring people to these cities that they would otherwise have to reason or inclination to visit. If the concern is that people will have a bad experience here, the solution should not be to simply keep visitors away, it's to make the city better. I think more people are likely to have the reverse experience of the one you cited. The average person in the country seemingly has no perception or knowledge of Cincinnati. People I talk to in California generally know that it exists, and maybe that we have a couple pro sports teams, but that's about it. Bring that person to Cincinnati and let them dine at a nice restaurant, and take in the architecture and picturesque streets of OTR, and I think most people would leave pleasantly surprised. When I show coworkers (planners, who theoretically should not be clueless about urban stuff) pictures of OTR, most are blown away and say they had no clue something like that exists off the East Coast. That surprise would almost certainly weigh more heavily in the mind of a visitor than an encounter with a homeless person, unless the visitor is from a small town, and has no exposure to the homeless. I actually think you summed up what my personal viewpoint is on this subject - word of mouth from someone with knowledge and passion for a place who shows it off to his acquaintances is going to have more of an impact than just dropping people in a random location and expecting them to figure it out or read a local brochure put out by the tourism board. At most conventions I've been to, my coworkers just want to grab a steak and a drink at whatever fancy restaurant is closest to their hotel or the convention center, and then they turn in for the night. Obviously, if you're in a field that values the urban experience you'll get out a little bit more, but most of these conventions are for boring, unadventurous businesspeople who just want to get back to their families as soon as possible. Someone is much more likely to seek out new experiences and heed the advice of a friend than listen to a tourist board when they're away somewhere for work. I will say that watching peoples' expressions when they discover what Cincinnati actually looks like (aka "wow I thought this whole place was going to be Bob Evans and corn!") is always a joy, and I obviously want this to happen more frequently. I just personally think having boots on the ground and word-of-mouth is going to do more to change opinions than a convention ever will. Of course, maybe one or two conventioneers will become that next word-of-mouth catalyst... but I'm not sure if the payoff is worth it. Maybe it is; I'm not an analyst of these types of things.

The average person just sees what they want to see when they go places for work or pleasure, unfortunately. There are heroin needles and piles of garbage all over San Francisco, but it hasn't put a huge dent in tourism there. But if someone bumped into an aggressive panhandler in Cleveland, it would probably confirm their bias about Cleveland being a terrible place. I'd agree that things could eventually change in the long, long term, but I don't know if playing that long of a game is the most effective use of public funds.

If someone is getting paid $20 an hour to find "government waste" and it takes 2 hours to comb through documents to find a "wasteful" $30 case of water, did you actually save anyone any money? Heck, I'd like to think that even if your're doing it for free, your time is more valuable than the $30 you "saved" in 2 hours of watchdogging.

It's similar to the US Bank Arena argument. Cincinnati is always going to struggle with these sorts of things when you have these massive convention and arena facilities in two different state capitals two hours away. The best bet would be to accept this fact and focus on attracting niche talent and conventions to keep the current facility programmed more often, but that'll bruise a lot of peoples' egos.

Oh SNAP! This is what I'm talking about! Good size, and I don't totally hate the style of it, if the brick looks ok.

^This is an actual real estate listing in Cleveland right this very moment: "WHY PAY RENT, Be all you can be" https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Cleveland-OH/33333331_zpid/24115_rid/41.480523,-81.740835,41.466471,-81.763902_rect/15_zm/0_mmm/1_fr/ (thanks to jws[/member] for this one)

Does this include weird homes, or does the listings just have to be weird? Cleveland agents REALLY LIKE to capitalize random words for EMPHASIS and are always fun to look at. As for weird houses, this one is one of my all-time favorites (I'm downloading all the photos this time before they take the listing down again) : https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2-New-Albany-Farms-Rd-New-Albany-OH-43054/34051601_zpid/

Hopefully next time, those lots will have disappeared! I still think building a narrow "mall" between 13th and Elliot (or the Reading stub, honestly those buildings aren't great) and then having a bunch of apartments overlooking the new mall would be a good use for those blocks.

What made people willing to "admit" they were from Seattle in the 90s? Was it because they wanted to be associated with the "birthplace" of a particular genere kind of like Detroit or Nashville? Does Cincinnati's relative lack of a nationally-recognized "sound" cause people to claim they're from somewhere cooler, or is it typical Midwest insecurity? Obviously there's a certain level of marketing attached to it.

That's kitty-corner to Drunken Tacos, which itself is next to Chipotle. I guess it's at least not another Asian/sushi place.

^Giving the job to a Cincinnati entity trumps any and all common sense.

Although I guess it's not yet a "fair" comparison since MLK west is still being widened and there's a lot of construction over there, did it seem like the I-71 interchange has helped traffic out more or less than the Hopple interchange? I still haven't gotten on/off at it yet, other than the now-ridiculously-long offramp to Taft.

How long do you think it'll be until we start seeing things built on narrow lots, like the one next to Pleasantry in the above photo, if ever? I'd love to see all of that fine-grained texture filled back in and we've seen a little bit of it on Elm, but I have a feeling a lot of people aren't going to want to give up their side yards.

I've got a sense that a lot of people view it as "recreation" instead of transportation and simply don't realize that its primary purpose is to get you from A to B and not for you to diddle around in Smale Park for 3 hours.

The real question is, did they make it to a dock within 30 minutes? Or alternatively, why not just dock them and walk up the hill without lugging a heavy Red Bike if you can't pedal up it?

Wouldn't "the middle of Flyover Country" be Brady, Nebraska, halfway between New York and San Francisco?

Speaking of one-off housing styles.... get a load of this bizarre shotgun house that appears to have been converted into a duplex at some point (and presumably has been/will be razed for the above project). It looks more Mississippi than Cincinnati.

^Well, according to the article, they're actually being built along Concord between Wayne and Morgan, not on McMillan. So I guess that's a consolation? Most of the housing on that block is really crappy, but I hope he didn't tear down the great Italianate at the corner of Concord and Morgan.

So... they're not only "faux historic", they're also not reflective of any Cincinnati vernacular style? But then again, it's also Samir Kulkarni, who just tore down that great mansion in Walnut Hills, so I guess I shouldn't expect much from him.

Geauga Lake's closing was when I first truly realized something was "wrong" with Cleveland's economy. I was a whopping 13 years old when it closed in 2007, and I'd spent a lot of time in and around Cleveland as a kid, but I just assumed that all cities were pretty much uniformly poor and sad. It probably said a lot about Detroit's economy too (and how the Rust Belt was already feeling the full brunt of the recession a couple of years before everyone else), since there are so many Michiganders who go to Cedar Point and losing that stream of customers was starting to cut into that park's bottom line, and Cedar Fair probably didn't like the cannibalizing effect the "theme park sprawl" that came with operating two Cleveland-area parks. I get that the park had gotten too big for the market, but I don't know if I can ever fully forgive them for the way they sprung the closure on the public.