Chas Wiederhold

Looks huge because it is huge.

P&G names it Tide Stadium. Their logo already looks like a tide pod. It makes too much sense.

Blue Moo Cookie Dough Stadium (Super Moo Stadium also accepted) Dinosaur Egg Field Paintball Blast Pitch

*comes to UrbanOhio to read about new project developments in the city. Conversation about half loaves of bread dominating the SW Ohio board.*

I've seen some members of the arts and philanthropy communities posting pictures on social media inside and around the building over the past month.

Central Parkway is certainly poising itself as an important spine in the city as the development in Over-the-Rhine is balanced by development in the CBD. I do think that the FC Cincinnati stadium will impact the corridor positively. The zoning change packet shows 6 story future development screening the stadium and I could imagine that density of development infilling from City Hall to Liberty between Plum/Central Parkway and Central Ave. Interesting because, while it may have taken 100 years (1929-2029), the vision predicted in the image below might actually happen (with contemporary architecture rather than Second Empire/Beaux Arts, of course):

Findlay Playground and the Findlay Market Parking lot as the parking garages suggested by the county would be a catalyst for ramped up development north of Liberty. Sort of off topic but with the office development taking place at 15th and Vine, I imagine 15th, Vine, and Liberty becoming a bit of a office hub in Over-the-Rhine.

Of note in this packet are sections and elevations of the building, that of which have not been seen or shared yet. As a neighbor to this site, this has been the representation I have been waiting for to truly understand its impact on the immediate neighborhood. Because we've asked Elevar and Turner to produce some renderings that show the building from the street and they haven't, I'm planning to model it myself. Once I get some time to do this, I'll post some of those results as well.

Wow, that metal panel system is so flat and disappointing. Just a little bit of depth in the windows would make a world of difference.

non-ironic being the modifier for Post-modern, haha. EIFS is never ironic and is always unfunny and wrong and please never use it.

Haven't seen this project listed but it could be grouped in the ongoing efforts to reignite the West 4th Street corridor. This one story building was clad with some non-ironic Post-Modern EIFS. They've scraped all that off and built two floors above and are preparing another right now. Not sure how high this is going but they probably won't be able to go higher than 4 stories above the podium with a stick built construction. Building on the northwest corner of 4th and Plum is being entirely gutted. It was the former home to SFA/PDT (now Elevar Design Group, the architect of record for FC Cincinnati Stadium) and now the Ashley Builders Group is moving in.

I don't know if I agree with your dooming crystal ball predictions. 2700 jobs is just 18% of the jobs that existed at the airpark before DHL left. Depending on their circumstances a person in Wilmington may be able to live comfortably at a $15/hour working for Amazon. It might be difficult to imagine what might make a different cultural group (rural Americans) stay in one place instead of pursuing their distant, latent ambitions, but if folks are still similar to the people who I grew up knowing, a $15/hour high turn-over job in job opportunity rich Cincinnati could be a $15/hour steady job in badly underemployed Wilmington.

And on Amazon and their relationship to the region. If the Amazon Prime Hub didn't go to CVG it would have gone to Wilmington. Ohio government expressed their dismay of losing this to the state of Kentucky as Amazon had narrowed their options to CVG and ILN (the local airport code) AND Amazon had been operating at the Airpark for a year at this point with around 300 jobs created. So to add insult to an already injured small town economy, Amazon not only didn't bring 2,700 jobs to a town that already knew how to do that kind of stuff, they also moved 300 out that had been created. Numbers from this: https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/amazon-chooses-cvg-over-wilmington-airport-bring-thousands-jobs/CUI7NSJiPBi8pEirjxT0ML/ But, in the news Monday, Amazon is returning to Wilmington... or maybe just using it for overflow/flex space until they can build more capacity at CVG. You can read it on NPR or others, but most thoroughly in the local paper which needs your ad revenue more https://www.wnewsj.com/news/89146/breaking-amazon-announces-flights-sorting-facility-headed-for-wilmington

What it is important to note about the economic tragedy of DHL is that the Airpark has been an important part of the economy in Wilmington for almost (9/10ths) a century. The Airpark was the Clinton County Air Force Base before it was used industrially. The Air Force got their start there in 1929. It was decommissioned in 1972 and the Airpark became home to Midwest Air, which merged with Airborne Express in 1980 and then merged with DHL to form ABX Air in 2003. If you understand the story this way, you can see that DHL did not just get into their groove in 2003 and hire enough people to create 15,000 jobs within a rural economy. They sort of hosted themselves within an American company, became their largest customer, and then took their business elsewhere leaving the shell of Airborne Express without any customers or prospects. I don't have a chart of how many people since 1929 were working at the Airpark, but I can say, anecdotally, that many multi-generation Wilmington families, some working multiple generations for the Airpark, lost their good paying jobs in 2008. This was not just a sorting center. It was/is a logistics and fleet maintenance hub. As I understand it from others, the facility has been reconsidered to purposefully NOT accept a large company and turn Wilmington into a "company town" again. That's an economic gamble, too, however the thought process in the aforementioned millennial uprising that tends toward localism being: Wilmington does not want to be a gigantic city. It wants to be a great city. And if that means filling up the air park with dozens of small businesses instead of one large business, thereby increasing the likelihood of local dollars staying local and lower impact when a business leaves, then it is a gamble worth taking. And to comment about a rush of homebuilding or business building as a result of the Airpark's robust economic presence in the city, just look at the city grid. You can see that it has had a development in most major urban typological growths. The DHL announcement killed a major development project (for "tiny" Wilmington as Meck says) called "Marine Meadows" which was a 100 acre housing development on the northeast corner of town which would have kept anywhere from 400-800 people in the city, rather than bussing them in from surrounding communities.

Pretty great that downtown Cincinnati will gain over 50,000 SF of grocery stores by the end of next year with the Court and Walnut Kroger and this unnamed Market, all within 3 blocks of a streetcar stop.

About a month late to contributing to this conversation, but it's worth jumping in as I'm interested in the general health of rural Ohio. I was born and went to high school in Wilmington, Ohio and grew up 20 miles south in the tiny (but historically mighty) village of St. Martin in Brown County. Parents taught at schools in both Fayetteville and Wilmington and I grew up sort of claiming a large swath of Clermont, Brown, Clinton, and Highland Counties the "community I was raised in". That introduction aside, I can't disagree that drugs are playing a role in life there. Many people who had labor intensive jobs getting addicted to pain pills and ramping up from there and blah blah blah yes, read Hillbilly Elegy. It does give good insight to what seems to be happening out in the sticks of Ohio. I'll share my perspective, which isn't as drug laced and more positive. Wilmington losing DHL was a gigantic blow to the region. 15,000 jobs gone/sent to Erlanger is, as some news report at the time "the economic equivalent of Hurricane Katrina without any of the physical damage." This didn't really reflect with a gigantic population loss as I think people in this area are fiercely committed to the land they are "from" which can be seen in this awesome map from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/19/upshot/facebook-county-friendships.html That commitment perseveres through good times and bad as if it were a covenant for the non-college bound resident (or the college-bound resident who attends Wilmington College). Considering the bad times, which really started to hit in 2008 on the heels of DHL's departure from the city, what was the city's reaction? Well, what started with two young people who were starting their Peace Corp service, realizing their hometown had just been hit by a disaster, returning to the city to start an economic/development think tank, morphing it into one of the early Buy Local movements of the late 00's, and getting draft beer at the General Denver (Wilmington's version of the Golden Lamb) has turned into a bit of a revival of the town in a new economic age. Not to suggest that things are going as good as they were in 2007 when there was zero vacancy in the historic downtown core and the city was preparing to expand their street grid by over 100 acres, but there is an air of positivity, at least among the people who are working on "saving" the town. What does this positivity look like? The metric I'll use is engagement of youth. As of 2017, the Wilmington City Council is majority millennial. https://www.wnewsj.com/news/59008/millennials-step-up-city-looks-to-next-generation-of-leaders Is this a useful metric? I don't know... but it is something other than drug overdose deaths and population.

So, first pass reading on this. EDIT Second Pass 1) It looks like they are lifting the entire stadium concourse up on a plinth that will face Central Parkway. This should do two things. First, it will make the overall building seem shorter from the East. Second, it allows for this "future development" of what is likely gear shops, cafes, and bars to be on the concourse level and face the street. There is a question as to whether you would be able to enter a bar in the stadium from Central Parkway or if you would have to go up those steps onto the plinth before entering. 2) The EFTE is looking way more stripey instead of the plastic "pillows" we had seen before. 3) The Bailey, the section of stands facing south, looks gigantic, which will make the tifos look awesome. 4) It's really refreshing to see a stadium design that understands the injustice of putting the same number of women's bathrooms as men's bathrooms. If you notice, all of the women's bathrooms are about a third larger than the men's. This is a big step forward for equity in design. 5) Historic building fatality 1. I'm a tad bit emotional about the theater, but alas...

Not a ton of folks in this stands for the B roll, but I have been to pretty packed games at Taft before. I can especially remember right before elections last year, Tamaya and PG were sort of holding court in the stands for a very packed game. One of my roommates is an assistant coach for the team.

I think the point about power is an important one. I was at a conference this weekend where the daughter of a very famous (very dead) architect commented something to the effect of, "young designers today just aren't producing buildings that are as good as they used to be [i.e. when her dad was practicing]. To which about 40% of the audience clapped enthusiastically, I sat on my hands. I turned 28 yesterday and its going to be another 12 years or so before most designers my age are the ones leading the discussion about what should be built. So the comment, from the boomer, should either be applied to other boomers who are still practicing, or the Gen-Xers who are leading design agencies.

The city of Cincinnati benefited from the enslavement of black people for its early history. These folks worked their entire lifetime with no opportunity of upward mobility. When freed, they then encountered Jim Crow Laws, Red Lining, and other forms of economic exclusion and discrimination. Federal demands for reparations have come in many forms but have NEVER materialized. This activity is the least that could be done to provide some kind of economic equity. Society only stands to benefit from the upward mobility of historically disenfranchised groups. One person's success does not make me less successful. EDIT: This is great news. MORTAR is a HUGE asset to Cincinnati's business community and if you ever wonder what you could do to help lift up aspiring entrepreneurs from historically disenfranchised backgrounds, they are a great group to donate to or volunteer for.

That's a lot of demo. I wonder how those existing buildings are on the inside.

I think the west block is architecturally successful. It does not impose artificial granularity. The east block, as already mentioned, does the exact opposite very frustratingly. I don't know if people remember, but the corner of Race and 15th was supposed to be a ONE STORY BUILDING... ON THE STREETCAR LINE! Just really unbelievable. I'm happy to to see the extra two stories. The consistency makes this a really solid block. Height would be great, but I'm not nitpicking this one outside of the unsuccessful granularity.

I heard that it will be the new location for Staggerlee's.

The Prairie-style former Alumni Center, just like the Usonian-style outlook at Bellevue Hill Park are just that: FLW-style. Not FLW.

Pretty certain the ballet has been interested in finding a new location since before FCC has grown to what it is now, but that doesn't mean that FCC's success hasn't expedited their search. I personally wonder if the story could be triggered or linked to the North Wing of the Main Library. Things that make you go hmmmm.