greatgooglymoogly

In fairness, you're now playing the same, dismissive "we can make it work" game with a two-way Main Street. Limited access to Main Street for private automobiles is kind of a silly place to start.

If the NFL expands globally, all signs indicate it would do just that - expand. The NFL would never remove American football from highly profitable American media markets en masse.

I stand corrected. I made the switch to the Newport Five Guys since moving out of Clifton a few years back and I seem to have fallen out of touch!

Agree that Cane's will do well, but baffled by the second comment. At least 80% of the restaurants in the area are fast food. I'm looking more at the traditional sense of fast food. Almost all of the classic fast food places have vanished (McDonald's, Arby's, Long John Silvers, etc). Obviously that area has a lot of cheap, greasy food, but not many places that are traditional fast food. The closest things to this are Chipotle and Currito. Everything else is either more of a sit down place (Keystone, Hwy 55, BW3), drunk food (Gilpins, Tiger Dumplings), or a sub shop or Indian restaurant. There aren't any true fast food restaurants in that area right now. Understood - you're largely correct about that. In fairness, Five Guys and Chicago Gyro are relatively traditional burger/fry places, but they are definitely the outliers along that stretch of road.

Nobody is suggesting we have a crystal ball or that the company is fail-proof, but when this particular restaurant has staked it's brand on operating in near-campus markets across the nation, and has done so successfully for a couple of decades at hundreds of similar locations, it seems to me you are crying wolf for the sake of crying wolf to suggest that anyone who doesn't know how this individual location was financed is naive for thinking it will likely perform well. There is a pretty solid precedent set by several hundred near-campus Raisin' Cane's locations that indicate this restaurant has a strong chance of doing well in the proposed location. You're free to argue that the trend doesn't continue here, and you may even be right, but you're going to have to provide a little more evidence than 'you people don't understand how restaurants are financed'.

Your comments read as insightful until you remember that we're discussing a restaurant that will be directly owned and operated by a highly-regarded international chain with revenue approaching a quarter of a billion dollars and several hundred locations, including multiple high-profile, heavily trafficked locations in an area of the Columbus market that is a near-direct comparison to the area of the Cincinnati market where this location has been announced. Once you remember that, your comments read as a combative lecture on how much you know about the restaurant business.

Agree that Cane's will do well, but baffled by the second comment. At least 80% of the restaurants in the area are fast food.

That would be like closing a Lexus dealership because there's a Toyota dealership nearby.

There are three Fresh Thymes in the region as well, including the brand new location in Newport. Much better alternative to either WFs or TJs in my humble opinion.

Agreed. Looks a bit like Dunnhumby lite in that regard.

Not even close to true: http://www.cincinnati.com/staff/9067/polly-campbell/ 100% true. Not sure what support the link was the supposed to provide. Over half of those posts are regarding chains.

Wow. Pretty rare to see her actually write about local places. She is typically only adventurous enough to review chain restaurants in Florence and Mason.

Nitpicking here, but Pendleton is actually not a part of OTR. But I agree with the sentiment.

1) We have another barcade beyond 16 Bit!? 2) Keep in mind, while the opening of phase 2 does bring ~1,500 office workers and ~300 apartments, it also will add a considerable amount of new ground floor commercial space. It's possible that a lot of this space could potentially be filled by a large single user (grocery store rumor), but IMO the more likely scenario will be fairly similar to phase 1. The hotel should really help give a steady stream of business to the restaurants down at the Banks, though. The offices and streetcar should also help. It does seem a little strange, though, that there are so many vacancies in phase 1- including the other stand alone site in front of the Freedom Center. 1- Yeah, Arcade Legacy in Northside 2- Re: vacancies, it makes sense that they're struggling since they're going after these flash-in-the-pan national chain companies like Toby Kieth's, in contrast to 3CDC's method of nurturing homegrown businesses that are now branching out into other cities and neighborhoods beyond OTR. (I kind of wish 3CDC was in charge of leasing out the Banks, but I also wonder if they were, if that would be spreading their "magic" a little too thin, between the Banks and OTR and Fountain Square/84.51 building area downtown. I think 3cdc addressing Ziegler Park next is a smart move because it builds on the strength and momentum they've already created in OTR.) Barcade-wise, I'd consider 16-Bit a tad more relevant re: The Banks, given proximity. Regardless, the market for arcade games in an adult setting has to be close to saturated - I wouldn't be upset to see something else go in at Phase I.

I realize a traditional grocery store caters to a slightly different clientele than Findlay Market, but that still seems like a pretty redundant location to advocate for the downtown grocer we've all been yearning for.

I concur on the reddit sentiment.

In fairness, the location of the basketball courts isn't anything new. This overview is simply calling out the location of the 2 courts that already exist on that plot.

The Hearst Tower is somewhat unique in that it was constructed on top of a building that was originally designed to support the load of a tower. The tower phase was scrapped, however, due to the Great Depression, and the Hearst Tower was the revival of that concept (70 or 80 years later). It would be awesome if a tower could be added to one of those 3 buildings, but unfortunately that is impossible as they would need to have been originally designed to support additional floors.

Never been to the other two, but I'd love to see a Zaxby's in Newport. Zaxby's is great - Raisin' Canes is even better, though, and has a bit more of that Southern theme.

Do you still have any of the other renderings you posted this past winter when the project was announced?

Those things are hideous. They're always parked to capacity during business days though, so I'm sure it would take a pile of cash to get whomever owns them to sell. In a perfect world, a good size mixed use development would do wonders in connecting Pendleton to the rest of OTR. If Old Woodward ever does end up becoming a Marriott boutique, I can't imagine they'd be content with that mess as a front yard.

The article was referring to the existing 300 apartments built in Phase 1 being 100% leased, not the 300 additional apartments coming with Phase 2. Leasing won't even begin on Phase 2 until the final stages of construction.

If they do end up replacing the garage with an office tower, I wonder if they'll be able to hang on to the rotating W-S clock and use it as a roof ornament on the new building. The contrast with the tiara next door would be appealing IMO, and the view from inside the ballpark would be pretty cool (if the theoretical building had enough height).

Casino's High-Limit Gaming Area to Pay Homage to Chinese Sister City: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2013/02/11/horseshoe-casino-pays-homage-to.html Arguments over the blandness of the exterior aside, this is a very encouraging sign that we might find a more unique atmosphere inside IMO.