edale

I think it's a fantastic idea for multiple reasons for 3CDC to partner with the African American Chamber to try to get more black owned businesses in OTR. In addition to the noble goal of trying to increase diversity in the neighborhood, I think this is also great for the optics and helping to minimize the exclusionary, 'gentrified out of the neighborhood' narrative that always lingers over 3CDC’s work in OTR. Also, since there is a good amount of subsidy that has gone into turning OTR around, it’s reasonable for citizens to expect some sort of equity and inclusion in the neighborhood's new spaces, and I think this partnership helps achieve that. Cincinnati has huge economic and health disparities between its white and black populations, and any smart steps we can take to closing that gap is a good thing, imo. About a month ago, we talked about the urbanophile piece about the sameness of newly gentrified neighborhoods across the country. In addition to the ubiquity of craft breweries, third wave coffee houses, etc., another common feature of gentrifying neighborhoods is the racial dynamic that plays out. Whites move in as blacks and latinos move out, most of the time. Encouraging more black businesses, and thus increasing black visibility and participation in the neighborhood, is a concrete step OTR can take to differentiating itself from the rest of the crop of new hot urban places. We have amazing architecture and a built environment that would be impossible to recreate today, and we have the chance to layer on a truly diverse and accepting populace on top of that. If that vision can get realized, OTR will truly be one of the country's most special neighborhoods.

I am completely perplexed by Nashville. Why are so many people moving to this city?! It looks horrendous.

I like these urban area definitions(2018): Cleveland: 1,760,000 Cincinnati: 1,675,000 Columbus: 1,540,000 http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf Hm I wonder why you like those numbers better?

Yes that’s true! Happy to see things starting to come together in Madisonville!

I appreciate your optimism, but I lived right around the corner from the Walnut Hills Kroger for quite a few years, and the needle never really moved at all during that time in spite of the constant hype about WH being 'the next hot neighborhood'. The pace of development is soooo slowwww, and it's not like the rest of the neighborhood just stays as is while these new developments happen. The Dairy Mart next to the McDonalds, for example, is now shuttered and looks like a complete sh*t hole. While it was never great, it used to at least be a sign of life. I think the area south of Firehouse Row has gotten considerably worse in recent years, and there is just a ton of vacant lots and missing teeth all throughout the neighborhood. The area by the Stowe house is also a wreck, and more and more old buildings continue to be torn down around Madsion/MLK, leaving that area feeling even worse than before. Maybe once the Paramount Square project gets completed, and the Firehouse Row development actually gets built, the rest of the neighborhood will start to change, too. I'm skeptical of this, as I didn't see much evidence of one-off home repair or any of the other usual signs that a neighborhood is really changing organically. I don't mean to be a downer, but I found the state of Walnut Hills to be really depressing. I don't know how long you've been in Cincinnati IAGuy39[/member], but Walnut Hills used to be much more built up than it is now. The buildings weren't all occupied or in great shape, but there was a great deal more standing in the past, and the neighborhood really showed the bones of a significant place, and one could see how Peebles Corner used to be the second downtown of the city. With all the piecemeal demolition it was harder to see just how much had been chipped away, but seeing it now, with even more demolished than before, it felt small and deserted- both in terms of built environment and population.

I drove through Walnut Hills a few times when I was back in Cincy a couple weeks ago, and the neighborhood honestly looked awful. Maybe worse than I've ever seen it. For all this talk of revitalization, I sure didn't see any evidence. The Paramount building and a few others did have plywood in the storefronts, so I know renovation is at least underway, but it was pretty discouraging to see how crappy the neighborhood looked. Kroger is obviously empty (was still operational when I moved away) and the buildings across the street were in the middle of being torn down. I know those buildings weren't anything special, but they did at least have some occupied businesses and contributed to the streetwall. Their absence, along with some other demolitions, made the neighborhood feel like a bit of a ghost town. There was no sign of action at the Firehouse Row site, and the neighborhood to the south of it is a fu**ing disaster. I've been skeptical of the WH revitalization claims for years, as the talk and hype never matched my observed reality, but this last visit really validated my skepticism. I hope for the best for Walnut Hills, but it really seems to not be doing well. All this while the former WHRF director is writing books and claiming to be an expert on how to revitalize urban neighborhoods. What a joke.

It's going basically in the Crossroads parking lot, fronting Madison. So, basically a continuation of the suburban crap behind it. As disappointing as this whole area is, I will say it was at least nice to see some construction there when I was back in Cincy a couple weeks ago. I hadn't been back in quite some time, and I was surprised to see how little construction was going on (outside of the roads/highways) in the city. I guess I had assumed that a lot of the projects that had been announced a while back would have at least begun construction, but outside of this part of Oakley and pockets of OTR, I really didn't see much happening.

The Castellini years haven't all sucked, though the past 3-4 seasons have been abysmal. The Reds had some really stacked teams in 2010-2014 and they completely squandered the opportunity. They got swept out of the playoffs by a Phillies team that was objectively better than the Reds, including getting no-hit by Halladay in 2010. But the real kicker was the utter debacle against the Giants in 2012. The Reds had one of the best records in baseball that year, and they won both of the games out in SF to start the series, meaning they only had to win 1 of the 3 home games. Hadn't been swept all season at home that year. And in typical loser Cincinnati sports fashion, they lost all 3 of those games to get knocked out of the playoffs. I think the next year they made it to the playoffs as a wildcard team, and got pounded by the Pirates in Pittsburgh in that lame one game playoff. That was the window, and the Reds couldn't get it done. Even winning one series would have done so much for the local enthusiasm and mood, but like the Bengals, the Reds are professional chokers. I haven't watched much baseball since those years. I'd love to see the Reds get good again, but I really have very little faith in them to win when it counts.

I absolutely hate Firehawk, so I hope that’s it.

^ Cute. Why are you on this forum? Do you care about urban development? It's obvious you don't give a damn about preservation. Are you here to troll, or do you intend to start making meaningful contributions to the discussion?

^Good to see that change! I think PHS is my favorite part of downtown Cleveland from a built environment perspective. Just needs some more foot traffic and ground level retail. I bet as CSU becomes more of a residential campus, that will help a bit with pedestrian activity in this part of downtown, too.

So is there much of anything in terms of restaurants or retail left in Playhouse Square given these closures? I remember going over to PHS on a couple visits to Cleveland thinking there would be a bunch of places to eat and being shocked at how little there was. Given the abundance of theaters in the area, I thought it pretty weird that there really were maybe 2 restaurants around. Where do people go before and after seeing shows? Hopefully the new tower will help give this area some more life, but I seem to recall it lacks a ground floor retail presence, right?

Proposing to demolish a building, even a non-historic one, to only replace it with a surface parking lot in OTR should 'scare' anyone. We just got rid of parking requirements in the neighborhood, and now we have a proposal for a frickin' surface lot a couple blocks from Findlay Market? Nonsense. If the developer doesn't have the chops to pull off a decent project, then they need to get out of the way, and let someone who's better equipped to develop the site do so. I would definitely imagine if a plan was floated to put a surface parking lot in the heart of the Short North, Columbusites (Columbusonians?) would be similarly pissed.

^ I get that, but the commuting methodology has led us to counter-intuitive results, like having a rural county in Indiana that is 60 miles from Downtown Cincinnati included in the 'metropolitan area'. Stuff like this makes MSA seem like a pretty silly statistic to use for any sort of analysis. There should be some sort of contiguous development component to MSA designation, I think. Or maybe we should just use Urbanized Area for discussions, and eschew MSA altogether. I know (think?) all of this stuff is decided by commuting patterns, but if Cuyahoga and Summit counties are in separate MSAs because they are both self-sustaining and have large job bases, how does Orange County and it's 3 million people get added to LA's MSA? How does Alameda County (Oakland) get lumped in with San Francisco's MSA? It seems like there are several examples of this around the country, yet Cleveland and Akron remain separate. I have hypothesized in the past that Cuyahoga Valley National Park has contributed to the separation, but I have nothing other than a hunch to support that. Does anyone know if there is a database with commuting numbers by county? That would be very interesting data, I think.

Thanks for the correction. I should have looked at the information myself rather than just relying on someone else's post. It's pretty ridiculous that a county with 7,000 people (population density of 43 ppsm) is included in a MSA. It's quite obviously a rural county, with almost no connections to Cincinnati. I imagine a good chunk of the 7,000 people who live there commute over to Oxford or Hamilton, which is why they got included in the MSA, but I think this points to some pretty weird methodology. Cuyahoga and Summit Counties are adjacent to each other and are counted as separate MSAs, but this rural county way the hell out there in Indiana gets added to Cincinnati's MSA? Nonsense.

I saw some interesting MSA/CSA news over on SSP that I thought might spark some discussion here. The Feds changed and updated the MSA and CSA boundaries, and that has led to two changes for Ohio's big cities: 1) Cincinnati MSA adds Franklin County, Indiana (22,000 people) 2) Cleveland CSA adds the Wooster Micropolitan Area (116,000 people) It's notable that Cincinnati and Dayton have not been combined into a single CSA, and Cleveland and Akron have not been combined into a single MSA, either. Columbus experienced no changes at either the CSA or MSA level.

He's not any smarter than the average immigrant who opens a corner store. The difference is he was born into a huge fortune. The corner store pays a much higher rate of taxation than the guy born into it. Big money getting big tax breaks isn't breaking news in this country it happens all the time. So we should all just be cool with it?

Maybe not the right thread for it, but what exactly is Gilbert's connection to Cleveland? I know he's from Detroit, so it make sense that he's so involved in its redevelopment. But what is the Cleveland connection besides owning the Cavs? Does he just want to be the savior of all the depressed Great Lakes cities or what?

Unless I'm looking at the rendering wrong, the terracing faces north, away from Central Parkway. You're looking at the rendering wrong. Look at the third picture. The building that used to house a charter school on Central and Sycamore is in the top of the frame. This is the view of the third rendering: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cincinnati,+OH/@39.1090645,-84.5114666,204a,35y,90h,39.39t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x884051b1de3821f9:0x69fb7e8be4c09317!8m2!3d39.1031182!4d-84.5120196

Absolutely crazy. We need to bring a delegation from Kansas City to town to observe our system and make recommendations for improvement. I have a hard time believing that our poor ridership (and their incredible ridership) is all due to track blockages and lights that aren't timed correctly. I know their system is free, so that also must make a difference. But with such a vast chasm between the performance of the two systems, I think there must be something more to the story.

^ lmao where is that?

The streetcar right now is seen as a 'loser' due to the low ridership and constant media hit pieces. I can understand why corporations wouldn't want to attach their name to it when it is still largely seen as a novelty rather than real transit. Due to its limited scope, and the limitations inherent in mixed traffic streetcars, I don't think most companies would view the streetcar as a viable commuting option for their employees, so the connection to sponsorship would be seen as tenuous. What would make sense from a sponsorship perspective is a tourist destination ala Findlay Market or the Zoo sponsoring a line. Unfortunately these organizations don't have a fraction of the resources that a corporation would have, and they would not be in financial positions to sponsor. Just curious, are there any American examples of privately funded/sponsored mass transit? I don't mean back in the day when streetcar lines were privately owned and constructed by real estate companies, like what happened in Cleveland's Shaker Square, but a contemporary example. I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Pretty sure Renn is a Trump supporter, and his Twitter is filled with conservative BS hot takes. He comes off as an insecure Hoosier who made his way to the big city and now thinks he's hot sh**. Pass. Beyond that, I think his blog is generally lacking in nuance. For example, his post about domestic migration in Indy, Columbus, and Minneapolis was basically just a graph and a quip about how these cities need to step their games up. There was no discussion about how these cities have managed to grow despite domestic migration challenges, or any sort of analysis really. I don’t expect long form journalism from a blog, but for someone who seems to take himself and his blog super seriously, it’d be nice to see some more thought provoking content than graphs and generalities about the Midwest. His piece on the sameness of cities was really dumb, I thought. Oh, there are interior design and culinary trends that are taking root nationwide? How novel! I didn’t see much critical thought in that piece. It was something I’d expect to see on buzzfeed or something.

Why would Court St. be a landmark when OTR is a block away? Court is somewhat interesting for its median and parking arrangement, and there are some nice historic buildings along the street (hence the historic district) but I don’t really see what it so unique or special about it. The whole NW part of downtown has similar buildings too.

The fact that what isn't a landmark? All of Court St? There is a Court St. historic district, which is why 3CDC had to get approval from the HCB before renovating the structures on the northside of Court.