thebillshark

VTICA payments will vary widely over the years. Hopefully someday they will be more than the streetcar needs and they will have to choose between saving for a rainy day or improving service. But there’s a big obstacle to overcome before that- the Haile grant of $900,000 a year will expire after 10 years from the first year of operations so VTICA will have to be making up that difference before then. All in all I think VTICA is a good way to capture the value created by the streetcar and makes way more sense to me than a special taxing district for Over the Rhine only (when half of the route is downtown/at the Banks and a major function is supporting tourism.) The city needs to make it worth those developer’s contributions though and make the thing run reliably on time which they have been completely negligent in doing.

You’re probably thinking of a proposal that’s out there for the City Club 309 Vine apartments just north of Third Street.

When I lived in OTR I used to ride my bike to the LA Fitness in Newport/Bellevue before we joined the Central Parkway Y, so this definitly would have been have an option I would have considered.

If whatever they put in doesn’t face the streets, (or if new public streets aren’t carved out of the interior,) it’s not going to do anything for the urbanism of the area. The way that this structure turns its back on the little business district along Edwards Road is a high crime against urbanism. https://goo.gl/maps/yfcbsuVfSRw

@John Schneiderposted a link to this article on Facebook awhile back. It touches on many of the points we’ve discussed here: https://recities.blogspot.com/2018/11/against-high-rises.html?m=1

Cincinnati’s goal should be to add 10,000 people to OTR, CBD and West End and move up to #15 on the “1-mile” list.

I’m impressed with what they’ve accomplished so far

Have they figured out how they want to handle the Madison and Edwards road crossings yet?

Looks like a mostly blank (windows on the ground floor) wall for the movie theater with no entrances will be facing Clifton Avenue. Not the best layout.

I don’t know if he’s talking temporary hours or something more permanent. If temporary I always thought a food truck or two would work well in Old St. Mary’s parking lot on Main Street in OTR on weekend nights (provided they’re not using it)

If the blank brick walls are “preserved” IMO there’s a risk the building will still feel ominous and the street will still feel somewhat dead even after an expensive renovation.

A skywalk to the store would facilitate the lot being used for Click List customers as mentioned upthread. Seems like a costly design change at this point though. If i was Kroger evaluating this plan i would ask how much does having Click List in the surface parking lot increase sales vs. having Click List operate out of the parking garage in the new Court and Walnut building? I guess having it out on street level would increase visibility, which may be the point (along with showing off new tech to investors.) But then is that theoretical increase in sales more than the increase in sales caused by building a 100+ unit apartment building in that lot which would be better for the city?

That would be a big loss if access to Walnut Street from Fountain Square is closed off. That access provides optionality for pedestrian routes though the area and thus is good for walkability and the vitality of the square. The far northeast corner of the square will be less visited without it. (I just used it this weekend going from the Aronoff to Fountain Square garage.). Hope it doesn’t happen. In other news, the purchase price of Fountain Place, $7.5 million, seemed low to me, compared to other recent purchases in the downtown area ($1 million for the cell phone store on Liberty by 3cdc, $25 million for Trisate Building Supply building by FCC.) By all accounts it should be considered “prime” but the situational details matter more I suppose.

Seems like the Garfield Suites project should have been somewhat of a softball

What is the design of this going to look like? Is the outdoor stage going to be pointed right at the front doors and windows of the mixed use development to be built on Lot 24? What about the awkward Race St. cul-de-sac? Time to take a fresh look at this area instead of relying on a somewhat boring and vague plan from 20 plus years ago

So much info (and maybe some news?) under the mixed-use link. 1. Someone has an option on 7th and Vine lot 2. Jean Roberts building 3. Griewe is involved with lot 24 at the Banks? 4. Chong building wants to take a look at doing something with College Street (mid-block Alley.) (I wonder if this project has anything to do with the proposals for the CVS building nearby) Pretty good reference for the people maintaining lists of their own trying to track new housing units, streetcar development, etc.

I don’t think these Nashville pictures have been that bad, certainly not all of them. They need sidewalks and curb drainage where that is lacking of course. One thing that strikes me is how much better a house can look if the garage is not placed out front and center. Houses with the garage detached behind the house have a classic look to them no matter what style they are, but that setup seems to have mostly fallen out of favor.

This is Brackett Village and I think it is excellent. This is fine grained affordable housing fit expertly into the neighborhood. For example, the house at 14th and Walnut has entrances and a balcony incredibly intimate with the street and sidewalk and it is honestly one of my favorite buildings in OTR. I’m pro-faux, if that’s the style you want to do. Or at least I think the guideline in the OTR historic guidelines to “pay homage to, but not mimic” is pretentious hogwash that breaks down into complete gibberish when you think about it for any length of time. It’s setting up some imaginary fine line to walk that doesn’t need to be there at all. Give me fine details and elaborate cornices! (If your project can afford it)

https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/article/13006627/the-going-out-of--business-business

...Or maybe there’s some kind of tax write-off they can get for the closing store by selling the rugs at what looks like huge discounts?

Hmm... Is it possible that the rugs are not part of normal inventory but are being brought in by a third party vendor to take advantage of the empty space created by the store closing? At the downtown Cincinnati Macy’s location they were literally the last thing left in the store.

The Garage OTR is a full service bike mechanic that I’ve used to work on my regular bike http://thegarageotr.com/

Also if they built a 100 unit apartment building there it would increase sales more at the store across the street than having a dedicated lot for click-list which they could support from the attached garage anyway.

This doesn’t make sense to me. Why would Kroger make thier employees cross the street with loads of people's groceries when they will have dedicated parking spaces in the attached garage? I remember hearing there is still one quandrant of downtown where new pay lots are permitted although I’ve never seen a map that shows it. And if it’s not technically a pay lot I don’t what the rules are.

I hope somehow, someway this leads to free streetcar fares. I read somewhere the gap that needs to be closed is not much ($200k/year? Don’t quote me on that!) when you subtract how much they have to pay to collect the fares.