AmmasKitchenRulz

Could've been worse, like Broadway Pointe. :roll:

So much for the landmark of sketchiness that once fronted on McMicken and extended to the intersection of MLK. Said building was a motel where rooms at an hourly rate were offered. In naive pre-adolescence I thought it was enterprising to have a place where somebody could stop in for a nap instead of paying for a full night's sleep. :oops: What a dazzling - and almost literally dizzying - display of pics! What struck me the most was the ones which included expressways. They really show how disruptive and damaging those roads were to the communities (to say nothing of the natural features) they were built through.

Toward the end of that slide show was a photo which depicts a project I've yet to see any mention of here. :? Though large in scale it's not even all that's been going on in that area. For about 15 years (1956 to circa 1971) Swifton Shopping Center was a retail Mecca, so busy that its vast parking lot was usually full and extra traffic signals were installed along Seymour Ave at its eastern entrance. Old bus route maps from "pre-Metro" days show that lines had once been added or re-routed to there from as far away as Price Hill. A combination of factors spelled doom: the arrival and expansion of suburban malls, and the radical demographic shifts and neighborhood decline in Bond Hill as well as - to a lesser but notable extent - Roselawn. For years the once-bustling shopping center sat nearly vacant, its anchoring department store (Elder-Beerman, later Elder-Beerman Outlet) one of the few tenants. Two attempts to rejuvenate it complete with name changes also fell flat. Last fall the bulk of Swifton fell to the wrecking ball - at year end the entire area between anchoring structures had been cleared. The proposed Midpointe (sic) Crossing (how imaginative is that :laugh:) is said to be a multi-purpose "campus" of retail as well as office and residential space. A property across Seymour may have housed the big Zayre store eons ago. More recently it was the location of a nightclub where on any given day a shooting would be part of the events of the evening. :roll: Now it, too, has bitten the dust - thanks in this case to a Duke Energy grant. Plans are afoot to bring in offices to this spot. At first glance these ambitious undertakings would appear to be DOA. But, not so fast! Just up the road a piece we have successful redevelopment of the former Longview State Hospital parcels. The new Graeter's ice cream factory, a diploma-mill "college," and FedEx have all comfortably settled in around Seymour and Paddock. A "baseball academy" has been established to complement the diamonds in Roselawn Park where tournaments are now often held. While all eyes (at least in this thread) have been mostly trained on downtown, OTR, Corryville, and Oakley, developments that at least hold the potential for bringing exciting positive change farther north are taking root.

From a safe distance this has been my perspective on that fiasco of an election all along. The abysmal turnout tells that story. In my adopted state complacency had its consequences in the form of a special election for US Senator in 2010. The competent candidate and presumed victor didn't have any "fire in the belly" because it was taken for granted she'd win in a cakewalk. So we ended up with a lightweight whose main claim to fame was modeling shirtless (I should hasten to add that this candidate was male.) Fortunately in this case the error could be reversed, and was, less than three years later. And no major projects - public works or otherwise - ended up suffering. But that was lucky. Chant along with me, "RE-CALL, RE-CALL..."

Is Lou Reed singing about the same Candy in this later, much more famous song? Instead of "Candy came from out on the Island" you could substitute "Cranley's infamy came out of COAST." And he'll doubtlessly be a "darling" in some other kinds of back rooms.