thebillshark

^Well, we can laugh or we could ask ourselves why Deerfield Township is attracting $140 million in investment and adding 362 households and probably a few hundred more people than that which is all that Downtown/OTR seems to add in a year for all the hype. Could it be an onerous approval gauntlet in the city for new developments? Could it be impossible to meet parking minumums? Is the insane profitability of surface parking lots downtown making land costs too high? Enquiring minds want to know.

Does anyone have a pic of the historic buildings on the north side of Fourth street that the garage replaced? Were they gorgeous like the buildings on the south side? What mass delusion was everyone under that made them think what they were building was as good as what they were tearing down? (Though the same could be said of our era I suppose) Should be interesting to see if the new design feels worthy of its neighbors once built.

^I do think Eggleston is an important route for bikes though, because it's the fastest and easiest way to get from the riverfront to OTR.

I'll tell you, for trying to bike someplace you need to go wouldn't it be easier to bike in the street? Seems to me if you were off in one of these shared paths it would be hard to keep track of who has the right of way when you cross intersections.

^I think it would have been a lot better to do an on street path and save the trees as well. But with our current leadership we just don't do things correctly. Nothing pleasant to form an edge between the street and that sweltering sea of parking now. I hadn't heard anything about this plan previously. Making the city a lot uglier and worse. As you said it's not clear how this would even work underneath the underpasses. I'd rather ride my bike in the street and keep the trees

Ehh, not much else you could do there, and it looks like it saves some green space. If someone was going to do a large mixed use new urbanism style development in the area, I'd much rather have it go in the traditional Mt. Airy neighborhood business district. Gotta choose your battles.

There already is a soccer specific site at UC. Gettler Stadium. Capacity 1,400. Could you take that site and possibly expand to say 25k? It would be tight, but the rest of the infasturcture is already there. What would be the point of building another stadium right next to Nippert to perform a function that Nippert is already doing? Except to expose the dedicated stadium requirement as ridiculous.

Historic building at corner of Reading and Kinsey knocked down today. Sad.

Question for the architects: how are large residential towers adjusting to everyone having huge Amazon boxes being delivered every week now? Is anyone designing in special package locker areas in the lobby?

I sincerely doubt the streetcars are having problems calculating an accurate GPS position. (What you described is pretty much how navigations systems process GPS data in general though, even in cars.) I think all the problems are in whatever wireless communication system they are using to transmit the data back to whatever "home base" is. The streetcars transmit their location back to Metro's servers via a radio signal. That's not the issue. I am getting my information from a very source and the problem is exactly what I described above. That's shocking then. I worked on testing navigation systems 10 years ago and that part was down pat within the first few months of development of the product we were working on. Sometimes it would get its position confused with a parallel frontage road or some strange circumstance but it would quickly correct itself. Are they trying to reinvent the wheel here? I wonder if CAF could have licensed the tech from someone who's already done it. That's terrible performance to have the icon drop out for minutes at a time.

I sincerely doubt the streetcars are having problems calculating an accurate GPS position. (What you described is pretty much how navigations systems process GPS data in general though, even in cars.) I think all the problems are in whatever wireless communication system they are using to transmit the data back to whatever "home base" is.

Count me in as firmly against any plan to sink Elm Street to expand the convention center. It seems like an expensive and gimmicky move that would be the type of thing cities did during the "urban renewal" era which we are now trying to undo. I do think it would form a mental barrier for pedestrians. Putting aside competition and politician egos, what would be better for the downtown economy as a whole: a larger Cincinnati convention center, or an expanded NKY convention center just over the river in Covington? Would being able to host two medium sized conventions at once be a more robust model for hotels, tourism, and restaurants than holding one large convention? I can see some advantages to a two convention center model over going all out for big conventions. Booking: not locked in an arms race with deep pocket cities trying to provide latest amenities to land big conventions. Less susceptible to changes in market for big conventions. Scheduling: continuous activity for hotels bars and restaurants as opposed to everyone arriving and leaving in town at once. Business: people and dollars are spread out over a wider area as opposed to dominating one part of town. (A larger NKY convention center could be great news for the Banks for example.)

I heard that the manufacturer of the polycarbonate stuff is from near Cleveland. Sounds like a favor to them that could have tons of unintended consequences if you ask me.

I think some of the Banks struggles retaining businesses stem from the fact that it's a top-down planned development with one or two landlords rather than an organic traditional city neighborhood... in the case of a city neighborhood you have many building types, many owners, different states of repair and thus price points, and businesses can line up more naturally with the spaces they can succeed in. That's part of the reason I'd like to see future banks phases broken up into several buildings instead of a superblock monolith.

Is it possible that having a hotel at a lower price point like the Millennium helps us land conventions though?

I make it a point to support the downtown Macy's so they keep the store open.

Nice! These look AWESOME, way better than the Skyhouse renderings (although I'd take a Skyhouse at another location if they want to come back to Cincinnati and try again.)

The Musk-Man sees all and knows all. The hyperloop is a silly idea, Mars is a silly idea, but this could move the needle towards EV adoption. Which would help with dependence on foreign oil, air pollution, and climate change.

Yeah I think you're onto something. Not just electric cars but electric city buses as well. Electric Busses (even streetcar in some cases) would be the critical first step because electric vehicle adoption is so low right now. But you could build the tunnels four lanes wide ( one lane in each direction transit-only and one lane in each direction for private vehicles.) the prospect of being open to private cars in the future might get the tunnels more support than something transit only.

Elon Musk had a series of tweets over the weeeknd implying he will be getting into the tunnel boring business: http://www.investopedia.com/news/elon-musk-starting-boring-company-tsla/?partner=YahooSA Here's what I think his angle is, even though no news articles have said this: tunnels for electric vehicles (Teslas) will be a lot easier to build and maintain than for tunnels that accommodate gasoline powered cars, because the equipment needed to ventilate the exhaust would be a lot less. If you could build a network of EV-only tunnels (with Government assistance of course,) under the hills of a city like LA, or even Cincinnati, the ability to bypass traffic by utilizing the tunnels would be a "killer app" that would speed up adoption of electric vehicles. It's a lot better idea than the hyperloop.

One thing I can't determine from the renderings is, does the planned new building at the corner of 15th and pleasant have upper stories that extend out over that planned parking lot (similar to how the just built condos on the race street side extend over their parking spaces) or not? If it does, it's really not that bad of a design because when you check it out in person it really wouldn't be that much open space.

I think Krogers secret weapon are its store brand products that match the name brands in quality, adding all those drug stores would give it more outlets to sell them.

^Man that proposed Cincinnati State bridge would really have to fly way up in the air to get over all that.

http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/buildings/historic-conservation/historic-conservation-board/december-5-2016-staff-report-and-attachments/ Zoning and parking policies haven't been touched for years, and still reflect a suburban mentality superimposed on the city. They really need an overhaul.

From my understanding since they don't own the real estate there's no incentive for a deal like this. I admit I don't know what a "ground-lease" is or if that applies to downtown Cincinnati though.