thebillshark

True. They may get the properties you mention plus the cell phone tower land and have some kind of grand entrance on Central Parkway at 15th street.

Thanks for asking Gordon Bombay[/member] - I have a few. 1. It's going to be difficult to get the design right. Paradoxically a modern stadium is an anti-urban thing. First, it's an enormous structure that only gets only occasional use. If the stadium has frontages that are long expanses of blank walls, it's sure to deaden activity on the surrounding streets. Second, the parking needs and traffic demands are enormous. It's hard to accommodate the typical automobile needs of a neighborhood and still maintain a neighborhood's walkability, let alone "design the church for Easter Sunday" and accommodate crush loads of vehicles for short amounts of time. Viewed from this light an urbanist could support the Oakley Station site as a form of triage, to protect the walkability of a core neighborhood by placing the stadium in a mostly unwalkable location anyway. But I understand there is a certain psychological/nostalgic appeal to having the stadium located in the urban core, and it's also a positive for it to be accessible to tourists staying downtown. So, thinking about how it could work, 1a. The first issue could be mitigated by making the stadium mixed use. Put team offices along the sides with their doors facing the street. Perhaps have a retail/restaurant space on the corner that stays open year round. 1b. The second issue, parking, is difficult to solve. It's impossible to construct the number of spaces that would be required by code. People will have to accept this. They'll have to rely on different garages across downtown providing a mix of options. The Union Terminal parking lot has over 1,000 spaces, and would have lots of spaces available for the most part except maybe on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when the museum's busy. The thing that gets me about parking is, I'd like the neighborhood to have any parking created for the stadium be available for daily use- but it's unclear how that could happen and still accommodate the stadium crowds. At the Banks, they built an enormous parking garage underground for the stadiums and all the development on top STILL was required to provide parking. They couldn't figure out how to share. The historic conservation board is becoming strict about providing parking variances, requiring new development to negotiate long term leases for parking spaces in available garages. Would a new development be able to lease out spaces in an FCC parking garage, thus enabling a historic building in the area to come back to life or an infill construction building to be built? I would hope so, but then there would be less spaces available to accommodate cars on game day. 1c. Traffic - The Oakley proposal contained several changes to area streets that were terrible for neighborhood walkability. The only answer here may be to ignore the city's traffic engineering department altogether, if they want to do the same in the West End. We can't make our environment unlivable all year long to accommodate traffic for 20 events a year. Furthermore we can't let a stadium stop the things that should be done to fix the streets in the area. The Liberty Street road diet must go forward. Central Avenue should be made into a two way street its entire length. The park maintenance garage should be torn down and Hopkins should be reconnected to Central Avenue. 2a. It does excite me to think that the CET/Town Center garage block could be redone as part of this deal. I wonder what such a proposal would look like. 2b. I also wonder what the long term plans are for the District One police station. The building looks aging. At least part of the lot would be used for this stadium proposal. The police memorial is also located across from it on Ezzard Charles, this would not be easy to relocate, if they wanted to keep it next to a relocated police station. (Interesting thought: there is vacant land at the NW corner of Ezzard Charles and Linn that could fit a new District One.) 3. I do think it would be positive for kids growing up in the West End to have FC in the neighborhood. No doubt Taft and Hayes Porter students would get tickets to games. It could expand horizons in an area where kids may not see a lot of the world beyond their own neighborhood. Who knows, the next great American soccer player could come from the West End. Soccer is also probably a lot better for the kids injury-wise than other sports. 4. I actually don't think the stadium (which has a limited number of events per year,) will spur a lot of development on its own (beyond what the Lindners and 3cdc do themselves as part of this deal,) and a stadium shouldn't be needed to spur development across Central Parkway anyway. Anything located across Central Parkway would have full access to OTR amenities, and some larger apartment buildings could fit there. It's ready, now. (ADDED to original post) 5. What is going to happen if we get into MLS and start drawing 30k-40k people to Nippert next year? Are they still going to want to build a 21,000 seat stadium? What happens to a smaller stadium if they do need something radically larger (like the size of Paul Brown stadium) in the not so distant future? Are there retrofit possibilities if the team moves out?

On my morning walk I saw Jeff Berding out in City West today talking to residents. (He tweeted about it too so I guess it wasn’t a secret mission: )

[/url] I made a diagram comparing two potential sites in the West End to list some pros and cons of each. The conventional wisdom that I'm seeing in the press is that the stadium will go in the blue box. Furthermore the club might purchase the Citirama site on the SW corner of Ezzard Charles and John to rebuild Stargel Stadium for CPS. Pros: -Large site (600x700) -Close to Streetcar stops/OTR with good access from 14th, 15th, Wade, Liberty -Potential less impact to residential areas. Only borders a residential area to the west with houses not facing stadium. Borders Taft HS to the south. On the east border Central Parkway could develop with denser apartments and commercial spaces. To the north infill could happen on empty lots in between the handful of historic buildings that have survived. -Potentially interesting trivia for the Lindners: Derrick Turnbow Ave. would have the Carl Lindner YMCA at one end and the FCC stadium at the other Cons: -More complicated land acquisition -Possibly would have to rebuild Stargel Stadium- could cost millions -Lose 4 historic buildings -Need to relocate 3 businesses in the historic buildings, and possibly the Jehovahs witnesses -Disruption to street grid for Central Ave., a long north/south street (Although admittedly not a busy street). Disruption to 15th Street -No frontage along a major Street I haven't seen it suggested in the media but the MLS stadium could potentially fit at the Citirama site along a north-south axis if it extends over Clark Street- see the purple square on the diagram. Land south of Clark Street could include Hay Porter Elementary campus land that is currently a drainage ditch, a church, a historic building, and a pocket park. Pros: -Potentially less complicated land acquisition- less parties to deal with -No need to rebuild Stargel/less disruption to Taft HS -Visible Frontage along a major street (Ezzard Charles) -Only disrupts 1 block of Clark Street, a smaller east-west street -Closer to Union Terminal parking/I-75 -perhaps a parking garage underneath the stadium here could help densify the Messer HQ campus (maybe) Cons: -Smaller site (510x650) -Lose 1 historic building (a rare survivor west of Mound Street) -Need to relocate 1 church. (Perhaps to the land they received the CMHA options on- corner of Linn and Ezzard Charles?) Need to relocate tenants of historic building -potential more disruption to residential areas. To the north, there would be houses facing it but impact would be mitigated by boulevard nature of Ezzard Charles. To the west Cutter street homes would face it but impact would be mitigated due to Cutter Street median. Would need to figure out ways to activate stadium frontage so homes aren't staring at blank wall. To the south it would border Hayes Porter Elementary. To the east is the Betts Longworth historic district. These houses here would not face the stadium, but crowds may pass through their streets coming from OTR on game day. Hopefully residents would be open to reconnecting Hopkins St. with Central Avenue -Traffic management of these smaller residential streets on game day -Streetcar stops would 1 block further away compared to first option. People would use only Washington Park stops instead of using both Washington Park and Liberty Street stops Both sites would be about equidistant from "Town Center" garage but the Ezzard Charles site would probably benefit more from the redevelopment of that block since people would pass it coming from OTR.

^ that would be some unnecessary demo of buildings along Central Parkway in the blue block there (if that’s what youre trying to show.) I don’t think they would or should tear down the big historic converted warehouse at 1401 Central Parkway, and mentioned upthread the next building to the north has just been renovated into offices.

^youre right, nothing west of John Street would need to be touched. I think Jake is trolling us a little bit because he knows this thought upsets some of us.

One thing I don’t get about the Stargell stadium site is wouldn’t they need some of CPD’s District One parking lot for the stadium footprint? Would we have heard about it yet if they have approached the city about this?

Seems like a lot of work just to tell Uber drivers not to block the streetcar in front of Rhinegeist

I don’t think this transaction is strange or related to FC Cincinnati. The purchase price was for several contiguous properties that include a big parking lot, and a huge recently redone completely open floor plan 2 story office building. The old KFC/cell phone store property on Liberty went for 1 million to 3cdc. The other property on Central Parkway that sold for 600k in 2015, was marketed for a grocery store after it sold and was temporarily used as self storage so I don’t think the inside was ready to go for an end user when it was bought. Also a stadium wouldn’t need the footprint of these buildings anyway.

If they were going to rebuild Stargel there though, might it be easier to put the whole stadium at the Citirama site, extending over Clark Street to the south?

Here’s the deal why I am getting so upset hearing everyone talk about demolitions of the public housing west of John Street. The public housing west of John Street is the some newest, best designed, cleanest, and safest public housing in the city. Those streets are safe to walk down and filled with kids at play. It would be damn wasteful to tear down that housing, even if was going to be replaced one for one in the immediate vicinity, while so much of our other public and subsidized housing is aging and not up to the same standard, and a great need exists beyond the current supply. If the only time there’s money to build new affordable housing is when the richest person in town wants the land underneath existing affordable housing, that’s not right. If on the other hand the plan is to leave the homes west of John intact, perhaps do a garage and mixed use develop on the large plot south of Ezzard Charles, fill in the random vacant CMHA plots with housing, and work out an agreement with Taft to share a new stadium and be involved with the school, I would consider that a win-win for the neighborhood. The Lindners and partners certainly have enough cash to do all of that.

Wouldn’t this be a poor use of urban land as opposed to working out an agreement for CPS to use the soccer stadium? I would hope some sharing would be possible...

Why do you think that? That would a worse case scenario I would fight tooth and nail. Do you think they would be that careless with their image with socially conscious millenials as their fan base? It would be a totally stupid unforced error on their part.

Would they develop housing at all those in-between vacant sites? That would be a big positive if they did that.

What I was thinking was that the stadium would be in the Stargel site plus some land to the east, with a re-routed Central Avenue. Then they would want the open land south of Ezzard Charles for parking garage/hopefully mixed use. Looking at Jake’s comment-just brainstorming- if they used the open land south of Ezzard Charles, and used Clark Street right of way plus the just the north part of the Hayes Porter schoolyard, they could fit a stadium there between Cutter & Mound, with the loss of a church, and a historic building that *may* be able to be incorporated in the facade. (Then you’d have 2 stadiums in the vicinity.)

Enquirer is reporting SW corner of Ezzard Charles and John. (Where Citirama was announced in December): http://cin.ci/2F47pqU

Re: Cincinnati accent, I don’t know or care what East coast city it was most similiar to, but my grandparents (and even some of my parents) generation did have a very particular cadence and way of speaking. I’ll give some examples later. Re: decline of accents, I think you guys are ignoring the effects of sprawl, which also coincided with the advent of radio and television. Look at that old black and white aerial photo of the density of downtown, OTR, and the West End. That was probably an accent furnace.

It’s non-contributing. There’s actually a list that defines all the “contributing” buildings at the back of the document that describes the Over the Rhine historic district. Whether it’s contributing or not is usually also included in the “existing conditions” section for each project in the HCB packets. EDIT: the document actually lists non-contributing buildings: https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/buildings/index.cfm/historic-conservation/local-conservation-guidelines/over-the-rhine-historic-district/

I think the Banks would benefit from more finely grained development. It’s a big ask for someone to come in build a huge block sized building on top of a County owned garage platform with additional parking above. Speaking of which, it doesn’t seem like the stadiums are sharing the County owned parking with the development that’s going in at the Banks. How can Over the Rhine and the West End get anything (anything that satisfies the parking minimums when new development is proposed that is) out of a possible soccer stadium garage if the city and county can’t work anything out with a planned 8,000 spaces at the Banks?

This could have lead to some very interesting counterfactual history.

Right. Would an Apple store even be placed at the Banks, let alone an Apple HQ2? If not, why not? That’s what we need to work on. That and there’s less overlap of Cincinnati’s business strengths with Apple than there was with Amazon.

If Cranley is successful in improving bus service over the next four years, I would consider that a huge win. Across the board, we just don’t have the proper pro-growth mentality around here to justify building a rail line right now. As I mentioned earlier in another thread, this stuff is path-dependent, and the first step is this: https://cincinnatiideas.com/2017/04/20/cincinnati-needs-people-vision-10000/

Whatever it is now called, the higher education commission in Columbus oversees state universities, and to change UC's status to an R1, research intensive university in the eyes of the state, would take action from that commission. The funding structures differ depending on research intensity, and while OSU doesn't get much of its budget from the state - no state university does any more, OSU is eligible for higher reimbursements on select research-intensive programs because of its status as THE primary research university in Ohio. In other states, their public research universities are structured: IU, PurdueU in Indiana UM, MSU (and Wayne State) in Michigan PSU, Pitt in Pennsylvania UIUC in Illinois (though UIC and SIU have close secondary status) UW-Madison in Wisconsin (UW-Milwaukee has some research programs) UI and ISU in Iowa *UMTC in Minnesota Cincinnati leaders should be screaming bloody murder to change UC to “R1” then. This growth-limiting policy really doesn’t do the state as a whole any favors either.

There’s path-dependency in play in stuff like this. May I suggest as a first step: https://cincinnatiideas.com/2017/04/20/cincinnati-needs-people-vision-10000/