edale

The presence of the national park has nothing to do with why Cleveland-Akron isn’t a MSA. Furthermore, the area between the two cities along the I-271, SR8 and SR91 corridor has a decent amount of development (take a look at a satellite picture). SF-SJ, LA-Riverside have contiguous development between them but yet they aren’t MSAs. On the other hand Franklin County (Columbus) has two adjacent counties, Madison and Pickaway, that have no relationship in terms of development to Columbus but yet they are part of Columbus’ MSA. So the bottom line is that these MSA definitions have nothing to do with contiguous development. They have everything to do with politics and to a lesser extent, commuting patterns. And because there is so much overlap between the Cleveland and Akron areas in northern Summit and Portage counties and SE Cuyahoga County and southern Geauga County, the CSA would be a more accurate way of measuring the GDP. Using the MSA in THIS region just isn’t accurate. It’s a joke!! Why don't Madison and Pickaway have any connections to Columbus? Contiguous development isn't a standard used to add counties to metros, btw. Commuting patterns are one of the primary requirements. Politics only plays a role if one county elects not to agree to be added to a metro. So if there aren't combinations happening even with all other criteria being met, you'd only have your own regions to blame for that. So if there is obvious overlap and all the Census standards are being met, it would seem that maybe Akron doesn't want to be with Cleveland or Cleveland doesn't want to be with Akron. Same with Dayton and Cincinnati if that's the case. This is why I raised the question about regional cooperation. It’s been a few years since I saw the data, but Hamilton and Montgomery counties weren’t even that close to hitting the threshold for MSA commuting metrics. But Cin/Day is a bit different than Cleveland/Akron because there is a county between the two primary counties, whereas Summit and Cuyahoga are neighboring counties. I don’t think the Cincinnati-Dayton connections are all that strong, actually. They have separate tv, radio, and newspapers, after all. He situation in Cin/Day is one of the sprawl creating kind of a subregion of its own, that is neither entirely of Cincinnati or entirely of Dayton. Butler County alone has 400,000 people, and it really has no true core city. Warren County is over 200,000 now, and it too is almost entirely sprawl. Definitely more akin to DFW than MSP. I’m not familiar enough with Cleveland or Akron to speak on that dynamic.

With the abundance of surface parking lots that exist in the basin, it's absurd that this either/or scenario is even being entertained. Since Cincinnati Public Radio (CPR) still needs to raise funds for the construction of the building, I absolutely support going forward with the development of apartments on this site. It supports the general plan goals of adding housing and density in the core, and the CPR proposal is not dense, and contains no residential component. We don't need a plaza in this part of downtown. There is plenty of open space and unused plaza space already. The city should work with CPR and CET to find a new site that could accommodate them both, since it seems like that is a partnership that already exists, and it would make sense to keep them together. It'd be great to keep them downtown, and I think there are plenty of sites that could work, especially if CPR alone has $1.5 million to spend just on land costs. With that money, they could purchase any number of sites for their new HQ. Something seems a little off about this whole situation, and especially PG Sittenfeld's vocal involvement with a single development project. Someone needs to ask CPR why they are so attached to this site specifically. The city would probably give them land for free in any number of neighborhoods, and they could have a more sizable impact in a place like Price Hill or Walnut Hills than they could downtown.

^ My understanding was that there was a pretty transparent process for determining MSA and CSA boundaries, and it's almost entirely based on commuting patterns. More specifically, I think it's based on a percentage of commuters from county to county, which probably does benefit counties with fewer residents. 'Politics' shouldn't have anything to do with it. Who stands to gain, politically, from keeping Cleveland and Akron separate MSAs? Did these politicians feel that getting them in the same CSA was worth the political fight, but MSA would expend too much political capital? Please. I absolutely think the national park has helped keep the two MSAs separate. If that park land was developed with sprawl, there would be more residents in Southern Cuyahoga and Northern Summit counties, and there would almost surely be more commuting between the two as a result. Having that large gap in development basically right where the counties would have the most pronounced overlap definitely has an impact on the MSA designation. A similar situation can be found in Southern California, where there is almost contiguous development between LA and San Diego, save for a huge military base- Camp Pendleton at the northern edge of San Diego County. While the two would probably still be separate MSAs even if Camp Pendleton didn't exist (again, due to commuting patterns), the fact that they are not a single CSA has a lot to do with that development gap. There are some people who live in Southern Orange County who commute into metro San Diego, and I'm sure there are some commuters who do the reverse, but the military base prevents the seemless blending of the two that would otherwise have no doubt already occurred long ago. Same deal with Cleveland and Akron.

^ Oh sure, MSP does a lot of things well. They've got a great transit system, and they really seem to embrace regionalism there. The Twin Cities have been kind of under the radar cool for a long time, I think. I hear they have a great music and art scene. But again, I think a lot of that can be traced to being the only game in town. If you're a somewhat interesting person from small town Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, etc., MSP is basically where you end up gravitating to. There are a number of cities that benefit from this same type of situation: Denver, the PNW cities of Seattle and Portland, New Orleans, hell, probably even Boston, as it's the only real big city of New England. A kid in small town Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana has 3-4 bigger cities within a couple hours from home to choose from.

Oddly enough, the presence of Cuyahoga Valley National Park is probably the sole reason why Cleveland and Akron isn't a unified MSA. It's hard to be a contiguous region when you have a large national park right between the two cities. So the region gets the benefit of having a national park right outside the cities, but the tradeoff is not getting to be a consolidated MSA, a metric that few people outside of the real estate and planning worlds care about. It is interesting to note, though, that if you combine Cincinnati with Dayton and Cleveland with Akron, they become the 4th and 5th largest metro GDPs by a large margin. Indy and St. Louis don't have smaller metros around them, so their numbers really show the true picture of their region's economic production. Both SW and NE Ohio have secondary metros beyond the primary city of the region, so when you look at the data this way, it's much more impressive. And yeah, MSP is really over performing here. It's not THAT much larger of a metro than any of the 3Cs, but it has a very large GDP. I'd say this is probably due to it's geographic isolation as much as anything else. There is really no other urban area even close to MSP, so it serves as the metro area for basically the entire upper midwest. All that grain and agriculture from the plains gets sent through MSP. Agribusiness and food production is huge up there.

^ Yep. They own the Montgomery Inn. I bet they're probably pissed that they demolished their event center to make way for the last development attempt that never got off the ground, so they were trying to get a big payday from the Skyhouse developers. A real shame. Hopefully someone else will come along with a development proposal for this prime riverfront site, but I doubt it will be soon. If I remember correctly, an article came out right before the mayoral election stating that this project was back online after the last lengthy delay following the Skyhouse project announcement. I highly doubt anything had changed at that time, especially if Skyhouse didn't already own the land. So it was just the Enquirer doing a little last minute campaigning for their boy Cranley, saying that all these development projects are moving forward under his watch.

No, they had two stores open at the same time. OTR might have closed first, but they definitely had a store in OTR and Kenwood concurrently. A friend of mine worked there for a bit when they first opened, and he’d split work between the locations.

Yeah, but for most large projects, cooperation is needed between the city and the larger county, i.e. Cincinnati and Hamilton County. St. Louis City County is too small to do much by itself. From my understanding, the city to suburb relationship in St. Louis is more toxic than just about anywhere else in the country. As an aside, I have always found the city as county thing to be quite weird. I know St. Louis, Baltimore, and San Francisco all operate this way, but each set up probably exists for different reasons.

It looks like Kit & Ace closed all their American stores.

Shinola and Warby Parker are two brands that I think would be excellent fits in OTR. Anthropologie, too, but their stores are usually huge, so I don't know where they could fit given the small size of most OTR commercial spaces. Apple would also be pretty cool.

I love your drone pics taestell[/member] !

I love to see the zoo being expanded and improved. Parking and entry can be a bit of a challenge, so it's good to see those issues are being addressed through this massive project. I've been curious as to the zoo's plans for the old parking lot for a while, so it's great to see they're planning to expand the zoo, and give more room for both the people and animals to spread out. Great project all around, and one that could have a very positive impact for Cincinnati tourism.

Why is Clifton Heights confusing? Is it an issue for Cleveland and Cleveland Heights? Shaker Square and Shaker Heights? Since most people tend to already think of the area as one big neighborhood, a little repetition of ‘Clifton’ would make sense to me. The Heights sounds stupid to me, especially in a city of many hills. It’d be like calling Walnut Hills The Hills or Mt. Auburn The Mount.

A Cincinnati cop told me a while back that most of the street weed dealers know that possession under a certain amount is just a ticket, so they carry just enough on them at one time to not go over that amount. I had a friend who would stupidly buy weed or “loud” as the street dudes call it from corner guys in Walnut Hills and Coryville. They’d literally just give him like a handful at a time, and would probably overcharge the hell out of him. I always thought that was weird, but then I realized that scales and baggies can count as accessories to distribution. Intent to sell is a much bigger deal than merely possessing weed. Those guys are smarter than they look a lot of the time.

CUF is a terrible name for a neighborhood. It’s an acronym for 3 sub-neighborhoods, and it sounds ridiculous. I think Clifton Heights would be a logical name for the neighborhood. People already call the whole area Clifton, and ‘CUF’ is up the hill from Clifton, so it makes sense to me to call it Clifton Heights. Plus, I believe the Calhoun corridor is represented by the Clifton Heights CURC, or at least it used to be. CUF is just dumb.

This is an exciting project to watch go up. Thanks for the pictures, all.

To answer your question KJP, LA's did not require parking, surface parking, at least. I know because I just drove by LAPD HQ today. There may be some underground, but I don't think so. I think the choice of the PD building for CPD is a great use for that relatively new space and allows plenty of parking with nothing else having to be torn down and turned into lots. There are two levels of underground parking at the new HQ building. Source: I walk by it almost daily and https://www.vanir.com/projects/los-angeles-police-administration-building/ Most of the cop car fleet is parked at a garage about 2 blocks south, though.

Possibly another reason: https://mashable.com/2016/03/12/google-street-view-pulled-over/#h5o_TlpEePqX Over in the Wheeling, WV thread, I was shocked to read "I would put a Street View link here, but Wheeling has almost no coverage somehow..." How can that be!? Remote areas of the desert and mountains in CA are in Google Streetview, but a long established town on a major highway is not?

^ She sounds incredibly dumb and I call BS on 90% of her claims in that post. She's wearing an 'adorable deplorable' shirt in one of her other Instagram posts, so I think that says it all. She and her ilk are not the type of people who will see value in any urban neighborhood, so fu** her. Let her move back to Texas like she claims she's about to do.

I’m not sure about the Cin-Day-Col super regional airport idea. I could see such a thing inducing a ton of sprawl, and I think the airport would not serve as great a role for the different city economies if it was so far from each of the core cities. CVG is a huge jobs producer for the Cincinnati region now, with DHL and Amazon both establishing shipping hubs there. Would that go away/ever have happened if the airport was in the middle of nowhere? DHL already tried the Wilmington experiment, and it didn’t work. They were back at CVG in a few years where they have access to more employees and better living situations.

You know, I can so see them opening at Liberty Center. It's weird that the only 'Cincinnati' location of North Star Cafe is at Liberty Center. Talk about a great fit for OTR...they could do a carbon copy of their Short North location and probably make a killing.

I agree that it's nothing really special, but I think it's a solid spot for burgers and fries. I definitely like it better than In-N-Out (blasphemy in CA, but I really don't get the hype) and even 5 Guys which feels greasier and more 'fast food' than Shake Shack. It's like a better quality Johnny Rockets without the 50s nostalgia.

Shake Shack has announced it's opening in both Columbus and Cleveland, so I have a feeling Cincinnati won't be far behind. Strangely, Lexington, KY has also had a SS for a few years at this point, too. Cbus' is going to Easton, and Cleveland's is going to a suburban shopping center, too. I'd love to see Shake Shack open a location downtown (maybe at the Banks?), and they are one chain I wouldn't mind seeing in OTR either. Assuming Cincy gets one, it will probably land in Rookwood or Kenwood if the nearby locations are any indication, though. Some food for thought.

^ Right here, bud.

Sounds like a logical move. I knew all the discussion of a new skyscraper to house the police department was little more than a pipe dream fantasy.