northsider

yeah, I saw an article recently where the average rent in Cincy had one of the top 20 biggest jumps in the nation, percentage-wise. We just aren't bringing on new units quickly enough to help stabilize / lower rents.

Truly the Cincinnati YIMBY paradise!

Foundation completely done on Apple Street Seniot, and most of the walls for first floor have already been roughed out! this is really going quickly. (this is an older photo from a week ago or so - way more has been built out since then)

Truly devastating news. Please was my favorite restaurant in Cincinnati and the place I'd always take out of town guests to blow their minds, and I'd been enjoying Ryan's cooking since Please was a series of pop-up dinners. It was up for a regional James Beard award and on the cusp of really breaking through as a restaurant of note regionally/nationally. But running a small upscale restaurant is really, really difficult. I'm hopeful that Ryan Santos will eventually re-emerge with a different project that's more sustainable for himself personally.

the old Save-A-Lot is completely gone! Prepping the site for Apple Street Senior is well underway.

also the first floor has a real paucity of natural light! I think they're banking on people willing to pay a premium for a newly built home in Northside with an interior garage.

One of the new houses on Apjones just went live with a new listing showing off all of the interior choices https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1685866/1320-Apjones-St-Northside-OH-45223 a lot of... Choices on display here. I wouldn't be so judgmental about it except for the fact that it costs nearly half a million dollars. Who wants to spend almost half a million dollars on a freestanding house in Cincinnati that doesn't have room to comfortably seat six+ adults around a dining table?

I can see the back of this project from my backyard and the workers on it have surprisingly good singing voices!!

great shots! I remember that Ace Doran at the time decided to put up a large truck trailer in their lot with the message "One Big Ass Mistake America" written in giant letters on it

I was talking about the red brick Ace Doran building on the north side of Blue Rock bordering Hoffner Park. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1602406,-84.5409656,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sgKuDNgUkEdXlZMS9IrIiGg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DgKuDNgUkEdXlZMS9IrIiGg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D234.93202%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

Agreed. I wonder if they're running into parking requirement issues. I also wonder what's going to happen to the old red brick Ace Doran building that borders Hoffner Park. It's a neat building, and the brick offers a really nice sense of bracketing the park space. I hope it's able to be repurposed.

I don't like these proposed new apartments, but they're in an out of the way place that wouldn't be pedestrian friendly even if there were sidewalks all along Spring Lawn and Crawford - it'd be about a half hour walk to the beginning of the Hamilton business district at Hamilton and Chase. 16 minutes to the nearest bus stop and it'd be steeply uphill. also, they're in a distant corner of the neighborhood that few people rarely see, so the impact on the neighborhood's character would be limited.

unless the topic of off leash dogs in Parker Woods / Buttercup Valley comes up...

I agree that would have been better, but it's still going to be a very good thing for the neighborhood.

the transit hub being in use is great! rather than having a bunch of people milling awkwardly on the corner of Hoffner and Hamilton, they can spread out and actually sit down at the hub. Also makes social distancing easier! (I'm sure this is also going to help with litter in the first block of Hamilton.)

that flexibility to me makes sense - back when OTR had retail on the ground floor of almost every building, they were also packing 6 people or more into 3 room flats. I think I remember @jmecklenborg saying years ago that we'd never approach OTR's old population density because no one wants to live like that anymore. Plus of course more commerce is done online et cetera.

I mean honestly Skyline Field is kinda evocative while being deeply Cincinnati??

Man, I'd love it if something was actually done with that weird wedge lot between Vandalia and Blue Rock!! the Transit Hub looks like it's almost done, too.

Northside's current ethos was built up by thousands of people over the past four decades, but probably the single biggest influence was Maureen Wood, a remarkable woman who ran Crazy Ladies Bookstore, taught home maintenance workshops to women, ran Off The Avenue studios, promoted community engagement events like dances and potlucks, helped found MUSE, and was an affordable housing developer. She also helped fight off the Walgreens that was planned for the old lumber yard at Blue Rock and Hamilton, which means she's partially responsible for the Gantry being able to be built at all.

the concept of neighborhood culture is very real, and Northside's a really strong example of it. I know of multiple instances where people moved to Northside and then left within two years because they were more, uh, uptight than the neighborhood ethos. you even see it in the front yards - tons of Northsiders are really into gardening, but most Northside lawns are a mixture of grass, dandelions, violets, mock strawberries, and crabgrass. Definitely not a neighborhood to be in if you judge neighbors for not mowing every week!!

Northside's nonprofit development corporation, NEST, has a big commitment to affordable housing - over half of their projects are oriented towards affordable housing, and when you look at the number of units, it's way more than half. The Northside Comprehensive Land Use Plan from 2014 explicitly talks about wanting to remain a mixed economic neighborhood and the need to continue to concentrate on affordable housing. It also specifically calls out welcoming new residents via affordable housing.

they treated the parking about as well as they possibly could, and I'm glad we have frontage on all three streets! I do wish that the "Community Space" were a small corner grocery, but this is still going to be a really positive development for the neighborhood.

having the front door open into the kitchen/dining area is really weird! the third floor getting relatively little light is weird! you should be getting more from a house that they're trying to sell for nearly half a million dollars!

this piece of work is currently listed at *$450K*, the highest listing in Northside single family home real estate that's not pending. I encourage y'all to click through and look at the floor plans... they're unfortunate. I have no idea who the target audience for this home is at this price.

Yeah, this is where I'm at too. Fountain Square is one of the most highly used public spaces in the city.