edale

Lol, yeah that's not feasible in a city of 4 million people. People will figure it out...evidently 2000 people did in the first year of the new law. And I think you're incorrect that this will be unfeasible for all but the rich. I worked with an immigrant family in the Valley on legalizing a unit they had been using in the back of their 800 sq foot ranch home. They had been using it for their adult daughter, but now that the extra unit is legal, they performed some very basic renovations, and now will be able to rent it to someone else. Even if they continue to use the unit for family, the presence of a legal accessory unit will enable this family to sell for quite a bit more than they bought the property for. Predatory ADU gangs? Come on, man.

Hm, I guess I don't know what you mean. Maybe some examples would help. Sure, some of the large office buildings are dead at night, as is the case in basically all CBDs, but most of the towers have ground floor retail or restaurants. How is the US Bank building or Wilshire Grand any different than Key Tower or the BP building in this regard? Bunker Hill street level: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0490447,-118.2601923,3a,75y,268.65h,106t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1scV_omc2TGPVja18OCq3t1A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0461231,-118.2577276,3a,75y,157.67h,99.02t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssgZQnxbTZvsxCKkVixY85w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 Some of the buildings in Bunker Hill have corporate plazas that insulate them from the street a bit, perhaps this is what you're referring to? https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0521334,-118.2522178,3a,75y,339.61h,98.65t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sarbF_LQnUGoUnvUeRlao3w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0531337,-118.2528921,3a,75y,294.97h,102.36t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skAojd99qjPJTmrgLrxWLCw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 You do know that Bunker Hill is only one portion of DTLA, right? Much of it looks more like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0458438,-118.250825,3a,75y,311.55h,97.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sWcAzluPXVO47CC5oK9ClfA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@34.048205,-118.2508832,3a,75y,132.9h,95.79t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMDqTZj6ZMtGOCrv_Yr_PAw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

What are you talking about?

This is pretty good infill. While not part of OTR's traditional built environment, I dig the long stairs/stoops. Whoever designed and built this project should be jailed.

The state and city laws are about creating more housing, not providing new sources of income for people.

^ Couple of points: 1) There are a lot of houses that have had illegal/unpermitted ADUs behind them for years. The new state and city laws allow for owners to legalize these units, as well as undertake repairs and expansions now that they are legal. 2) If you're in a historic district or within a half mile of a transit stop (rail or two intersecting major bus lines), there are no parking requirements for the ADU. So if someone has a detached garage, that could be converted to an ADU pretty easily. I believe home owners would still need to provide one covered(?) space for the primary home, but no additional parking would be required for the other unit. That really helps facilitate the conversion of garages and sheds to legal units. 3) Owners of rental homes can, and have been, taking advantage of the new law. This allows for ADUs to be built in poorer neighborhoods, too. I guess if you're stretched to capacity just buying your home, and you don't have money to construct an extra unit, then the law doesn't really benefit you. But, thankfully, there are plenty of people who can afford to build these units. While ADUs aren't going to solve the LA housing crisis, they present a quick and easy way to create relatively affordable housing without really changing the character of neighborhoods. As in most places, homeowners tend to think of their neighborhoods as being sacred and worthy of being preserved in amber. Attempts to densify these neighborhoods is usually met with a lot of resistance- with the most common gripe being about losing the character of the neighborhood. Hollywood residents are big on using the word "Manhattanization" in reference to the new high and mid rises that have exploded in the area in recent years. So the great thing about the ADU regulations is that we can now add density to these neighborhoods in a discrete and palatable way that doesn't throw single family home owners into fits.

It just means the city owned it. Just like how Cincinnati owns a strip of land over 200 miles long from Ludlow, KY south to Chattanooga. But this is different than City of Dayton's situation with their airport?

The city of LA doesn't help finance ADUs, and I actually don't think the city really helps finance any projects. The State of CA passed a law essentially making ADUs by-right projects on single family zoned properties, and the city had to defer to the state law until it had one of its own. Making these by-right has drastically sped up the approval process, and has made these projects more affordable by removing fees associated with entitlements. Having worked in project planning for the city, most of the ADUs I came across were proposed by individuals who saw the potential to monetize part of their lot. What kind of financial assistance do you think the city would provide?

Cincinnati owned the Blue Ash airport site until recently. Don't know if that means that land was part of the City of Cincinnati, or if it was still the City of Blue Ash, just with the land owner being Cincinnati?

Posters were warned previously by ColDayMan to get back on the topic of Short North development. This is not the thread to discuss Cincinnati development issues.

6 of the top 10 are in the Bay Area (counting Sacramento, which no doubt is receiving a lot of people fleeing the Bay for cheaper housing).

^ Ah, so THAT's the key to economic growth! People just have to want it really, really badly, cross their fingers, wear their pajamas inside out, and chant "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can." Damn, if only someone would have told every midwest city not named Columbus or Chicago this secret! Seriously though, what are the institutional and social changes you speak of?

There's give and takes to the topography issue. For example, Pittsburgh's skyline is dense like Chicago or NY's, but in an extremely confined space, the topography necessitated that. Not great for volume in inner city neighborhoods though, as you note. Yeah, the obvious example in Ohio is OTR. If Cincinnati was flat, there's no way OTR and the other basin neighborhoods would have been built at the density they were. Many Cincinnati neighborhoods were similarly influenced by topography. Mt. Adams is super dense, but it truly exists as an urban island due to its hilltop location. Hills often create scenarios where you have spikey density.

Love that shot of Lakewood. I was procrastinating at work the other day by looking at Google satellite images of Ohio, and I was really taken aback by the residential density of Lakewood. I had heard it has the highest population density in the state, and maybe even between Chicago and Philly, but I assumed that was mostly due to the lakefront high rise cluster where my sister lives. I didn't realize how large an area there was of nearly uninterrupted dense detached housing south of there. While it looks completely different at street level, the development pattern looks kind of similar to what one might find in Los Angeles. I tried to find a comparable area in Cincinnati, and while there are pockets that appear somewhat similar in the Evanston/Norwood area, the topography just doesn't allow for a Lakewood type of situation to occur.

^ The fact that the IE is its own metro area is completely ludicrous. Southern California (outside of San Diego) is one giant urbanized area, and splitting the IE off from LA metro makes no sense. I work with quite a few people who commute to downtown LA from Riverside, and if you were to visit Union Station around rush hour, you'd see tons of people scrambling to commuter trains that take people out to San Bernardino, Riverside, etc. The area really doesn't have much of an identity aside from being a dustier, cheaper LA with even worse air pollution. There are little historic downtowns in some of the older cities out there, but nothing notable, and I definitely don't think they really have their own economic pull. There are some notable institutions in the IE, like UC Riverside and Cal State San Bernardino, and there is a ton of manufacturing and light industry out there, especially around Ontario, but for the most part, it's just sprawl. I think they actually do have some minor league teams, but everyone out there identifies as being part of the Los Angeles area, and they lack the money and prestige that coastal Orange County has, so I can see why they don't have more in the way of sports teams. It's a pretty weird, soulless area outside of small, old pockets.

Hey, now I know how to make a Jeeyapaneez Cacktail!

Or, you know, they care about their neighborhood and are inherently distrustful of mega projects being foisted upon them. You know that NIMBYs in rich neighborhoods complain about EVERYTHING and they usually get what they want, or at least some sort of compromise. 4 story developments are proclaimed to be skyscrapers that will forever ruin the ambiance of the neighborhood. But here is a development that actually will have big impacts on noise, traffic, light, etc. and the community is just supposed to shut up and be thankful that anyone is wanting to invest in their neighborhood? Why is that?

Yeah, because stadiums have such a great track record of spurring other development. How many studies need to be prepared that show that stadiums do little to actually spur development for you to believe it? Look at the hotbed of activity around Paul Brown Stadium! Such a thriving part of the city, huh? LOL! Yeah, FC is choosing to put their stadium in the West End to better the community. That's totally it. You and I both know the reason they're looking at a West End stadium is because MLS told them they want stadiums in urban areas, and there's some vacant land in the WE that's proximate to OTR. If it were at all feasible, I'm sure Lindner and Berding would love to demo a couple blocks in OTR and put the stadium there. This has nothing at all to do with investing in the West End, and everything to do with putting a stadium in a core location to satisfy MLS, and in a neighborhood that doesn't have much power to fight it. And you know it. Columbus built the arena district from scratch. There was no existing community to be had. 3CDC has developed housing and retail and office space in OTR, not a frickin stadium. How are these situations comparable at all? If Lindner and co want to invest in the West End to bring housing and mixed use development, have at it! They could have done so long before FCC was even dreamed up, but of course they did not. This isn't an altruistic move for them. I was like the only person on this board who was defending the Cityrama proposal, because it would bring 50 new market rate, single family homes to the West End. It does need to 'gentrify' a bit, and there does need to be more economic diversity in the neighborhood for it to improve. Now we can debate whether that proposal was the highest and best use for that site, and we did on here. But don't confuse me with an anti-development, anti-gentrification activist. Funny how seemingly everyone was against that proposal, but is seemingly fine with a stadium and associated parking facilities that will get used a handful of times a year taking up a large amount of space in the West End.

I stayed at the Westin hotel on my first real visit to Cleveland (as an adult at least), and when I left the hotel to go explore, I was naturally drawn west toward the malls, Public Square, Terminal Tower, etc. I found the malls and the buildings around them to be beautiful, but very dead. I don't think I saw a single retail outpost between the Westin and Public Square. I also remember looking at the lake and the Rock Hall from the end of the malls, and wanting to go down there, and being a bit puzzled on how to do so. I ended up going down to the Lake to watch the sunset that night, and 9th street actually was very convenient to the hotel, but the connection of the malls to the lake should definitely be a priority. It's interesting that both Santa Monica and Chicago have their waterfront districts cut off from the rest of the city by pretty huge barriers. I mean, just to get down to the beach in Santa Monica, you have to scale a cliff and cross a bridge over the PCH. Chicago has Lakeshore cutting off their lakefront, too. The whole 'freeway by the water' thing was a pretty huge misstep in urban planning, but these cities show that people will overcome barriers to get to places they want to go. Cleveland's lakefront is a place that people want to go. It's beautiful and peaceful, and it's an asset that Columbus and Cincinnati and most other Midwestern cities don't have. I don't know what the solution is for increased connectivity, and I don't know if a long pedestrian bridge from a pretty much dead zone (malls) is the answer, but it's worth looking into. Is there anyway for the grid to be extended to the lake? On paper it looks like maybe Mall Dr. could be extended, but I don't know if that's logistically possible at all. I think that a real street would be preferable to a pedestrian bridge, as it would almost certainly be more active and lively, and would be more intuitive for visitors as well.

Why do you think that? What is the appeal of living next to a stadium? The whole process has been a complete joke from the beginning, and the West End residents SHOULD be royally pissed off that they're being seen as dispensable yet again. The neighborhood was obliterated by I-75, and residents there have some of the worst respiratory issues and health outcomes because of it. Urban renewal further destroyed the community, as large swaths of the neighborhood were demolished to make way for the failed Queensgate suburban style business parks and the massive public housing complexes. The West End was a large, established African American community WELL before the Great Migration, and its residents and urban fabric were completely dismantled due to top-down planning. They have every right to be skeptical of the FCC stadium plan, even if they were engaged from the start. Instead, the Lindners and Berding have been playing this secret game, acquiring purchase options of CMHA land, and not letting anyone know where they are considering placing the stadium and associated parking facilities, and they think they can use Mark Mallory as a token to satisfy those pesty anti-progress black people in the WE. And they're surprised it's blowing up in their faces? Just goes to show their arrogance and the lack of respect they have exhibited to this neighborhood. Imagine if FCC was proposing to place the FCC stadium at the Withrow HS stadium site in Hyde Park. Do you think all the neighbors there would just be thrilled to have the stadium in their back yard? Do you think they'd object to noise and traffic and general incongruence with a stadium locating in a residential neighborhood? Of course they would, and most Hyde Parkers don't even send their kids to Withrow. The fact that people are stumped as to why the West End might be opposed to this is really crazy, and I think there is definitely an element of racism and classism at play. Yes, we can write off the neighborhood's demands for retail and a grocery store as being naive given the demographics of the place, but look into what they're really asking for when they make those claims. They don't want to live in an impoverished ghetto where people have some of the worst health outcomes in the state. They don't want to send their kids to crappy schools and have to worry about their safety getting to and from school. They want what all of us want- save, livable neighborhoods. A soccer stadium does nothing to help them, and it furthers the idea that their neighborhood is a blank slate and a development site, rather than a community, albeit a struggling one.

Hey I've never heard anyone ever say that the streetcar is better/more convenient for every trip, right? It just needs to be better/more convenient for a significant number of the possible trips. And, yes, it can be, for more than enough trips to make the streetcar a genuine asset to the core region. I don't think you believe that, but I do. The only way to tell is to remove the various things that are current operational impediments. Everyone should agree to do at least that. No, I do believe that the streetcar can be an asset to the core, and I do think it serves a purpose for some trips, for sure. The problem I see with it, is that it is not more convenient for a significant number of possible trips, for a few reasons. I've long said that I think the largest ridership for the streetcar will come from the 'poles' because when you get to the far northern and southern sections of the route, the distance to other desirable locations becomes long enough to warrant taking transit as opposed to walking. Movement within the CBD, or from the riverfront to Fountain Square, or Fountain Square to 12th/Vine is just generally not an arduous task to the point where most people would be looking for alternative transportation methods besides walking. So right off the bat, the utility has already been limited. Add in the service issues and lack of real time arrival info, and the scales become even more imbalanced, because the margins for time improvement with walking vs the streetcar are already pretty thin for most rides, and requiring someone to wait 15 minutes basically eliminates whatever time savings might have occurred. Finally, there just aren't that many people in the core who RELY on the streetcar for real transportation purposes. The vast majority of workers downtown drive, and the vast majority of new residents downtown and in OTR also own cars. It's hard to convince people to ditch their cars if parking is affordable and relatively easy. Unless the alternative presents an obvious advantage in time or ease, people will generally drive. This isn't a Cincinnati phenomenon, but occurs everywhere. The people who are moving to OTR are increasingly wealthy and not transit dependent, and when that occurs, transit usage generally goes down. We're seeing this now in LA, where transit usage has been declining pretty steadily, in spite of Metro adding more and more rail lines. Large swaths of LA are gentrifying, and the poorer people who used to take transit are being replaced by rich people who have and use their cars. All of these situations are in play in with the Cincinnati streetcar, in my opinion.

Wow, I've never been to Nashville, but my opinion of the place is pretty low, especially after seeing some of these scenes that Jake shares. One of the things I find odd about Nashville, though, is that it seems to be really popular among totally disparate groups. A friend couple of mine did a cross country roadtrip as they moved from Brooklyn to LA. The girl is from San Francisco, the guy from Seattle. Both are very liberal, somewhat hipsterish. They said Nashville was one of their favorite spots of the road trip, and that they thought it was a pretty cool city with great nightlife. I asked about whether it felt really conservative, which I often find to be the case in the South, and they said not really at all. The guy remarked that the amount of bachelorette parties was a little odd, but that was the only knock either of them could find. Maybe it has a really unique culture, where it functions as the bastion of liberalism in the forest of red around it, similar to an Austin. I just think I must be missing something, because on paper, Nashville does not appeal to me at all. I don't like country music or super conservative places. I find the urban form of Nashville to be pretty lacking from what I've seen online. There just must be something I'm missing...

You can't walk faster than the streetcar, but you can definitely walk to a destination faster than taking the streetcar. If you're walking from Fountain Square to 12/Vine, you're talking maybe a 10-15 minute walk. Currently, you'd often have to wait longer than that just to get a streetcar. But even if you only have to wait 8-10 mins for a streetcar, you still have to walk a two blocks over to Main Street, and take a 3-5 minute ride up to 12/Vine, so it ends up being about the same amount of time or slightly longer to take the streetcar. Add in rush hour traffic, and you can certainly cover more ground on foot than the streetcar. If the route was longer, then those wait times become less significant, because walking wouldn't really be a viable option.

Where has John Schneider gone, I wonder? He was the lead champion and guru of all things streetcar, and I would be interested to hear what he has to say about the state of the system. I think there is more to the struggles of the streetcar than just the city administration leaving it out to dry. Minimizing disruptions in service from things like track blockages, and fixing the arrival time displays would be moderately helpful, but I don't think those two things will get more people to ride the streetcar. Mixed traffic streetcars are just kind of limited in their utility, especially those that have circuitous routes. There just simply aren't many scenarios where taking the streetcar presents an advantage over walking, driving, or taking Uber or Lyft. Each day, I take a neighborhood circulator bus to and from my nearest Metro station. This bus operates similar to the streetcar in that it runs continuously(roughly coming to each stop every 15 mins), and the line is kind of a figure 8 shape, also similar to the streetcar. The bus usually only has a handful of people on it, and almost all of them are either going to or coming from the Metro. There are a few people who work at the hospital or grocery store who will get off at those places to go to work, but I'd say 90% of the people use the system to connect to the subway. For getting to destinations within the neighborhood, it's simply way easier and faster to walk or bike rather than wait for the bus, sit in traffic in the bus, and then walk to your destination from the nearest stop to wherever you're going. I think the same problem affects the streetcar. If there was a regional rail line under Fountain Square or on the riverfront, the streetcar would probably be seeing much greater usage, as it would serve a valuable purpose of bridging that first/last mile problem that rail often runs into. Commuters from the suburbs could exit their riverfront train and take the streetcar to the financial district on 4th and 5th, courthouse area on Court, and the growing office cluster in OTR. Without this, though, I don't really think there are enough people who need to be circulated throughout the basin. I think it might be time to admit that the streetcar has some very serious limitations, and the answer isn't just run more so more people will use it. A relatively easy strategy for increasing ridership would be to funnel all the commuter bus routes into the riverfront transit center, and have free transfers from the bus to the streetcar. That would get more people using the system at morning and evening commutes, at least.

Love seeing all the photos. It looks like there is a fair amount of small, one-off type projects going on. The Findlay Market area seems to be seeing quite a bit of investment these days.