edale

^What previous iterations? You mean City West? That is mostly public housing, with some market rate added in. A new neighborhood of entirely market rate, owner-occupied housing is quite a bit different, no? Furthermore, I would say that this development is proof that City West IS spurring new development in the West End. Do you think we'd be seeing a proposal for 50 market rate homes in this location if Laurel Courts was still in the neighborhood?

It's not the highest and best use of this land, I will say that. However, I don't think this is all that terrible of a proposal. When you look at neighboring blocks, 50 homes in this parcel doesn't seem too out of whack. Most of the surrounding neighborhood to the east is comprised of single family homes, albeit older and more densely packed together, and it has a really pleasant, almost sleepy vibe. Adding more families and owner occupied housing will help to keep this area safe and stable. I can also see this neighborhood being a good option for young couples who live in OTR or Downtown who want more space to start a family, but don't want to move out of the core. It's another housing typology that can now be found in the basin. At least that can be the positive spin. I get that the density isn't really what it could be here, but there are so many other sites available both in the West End and downtown, that I'm not really worried about the loss of this particular development site. If this Citirama is successful, perhaps it will jump start further development and redevelopment of the greater West End.

Any recent pics? This thing has to be about done now, right? I would love to see the view of it from the art museum and red line!

^Nice to see a current view comparison that doesn't completely crush my soul.

Or drive an SUV. EEEEEASY KJP[/member]. My cousin has a Toyota Highlander Hybrid so he can be earth-conscious whilst over-compensating for his L.I.D.S. (Little Irish **** Syndrome) LOL this is the first I've heard of L.I.D.S. Hilarious!

^ That is a pretty cool video, but some of those 'icons' aren't very iconic. Is there any sort of deadline for the MLS to announce whether the Crew is moving or staying?

The link Jake posted does not show the current design of Firehouse Row. Milhaus is developing the project. You can see the renders in the article below. Not great architecture, but not terrible, and like thebillshark says, it will add population and diversity to WH, and is very much needed. This neighborhood is at the beginning of its renaissance, so it's naive to think that infill would be high end or architecturally significant. I agree that it's a shame that so much of the neighborhood has been torn down, but other than advocating for preserving the existing historic building stock, all we can do at this point is fill in the gaps with new construction. https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/12/08/first-look-at-13firehouse-row-development-in.html

^ That actually seems like a pretty sensible plan. Is there a down side to switching Metro's funding source from the City's income tax to a countywide sales tax? I hope whatever is proposed, Metro gets its funding considerably increased. Also, I hope the sales tax will be for transit, generally, rather than just buses, so we can keep the door open for rail at some point. A system of BRT routes along the major corridors in the city could be remarkably helpful too, though.

And yet, Cincy is all in on getting into this league :-X What does this even mean? Look at what Detroit and Nashville are doing? What are they doing? Nashville doesn't even have a USL team. Sadly, the use of past tense (might have been more successful) seems like a bad omen for the Crew. If the MLS wanted to keep Columbus as a viable market, why would they have not worked with the city and team owners to counsel them on how things could be improved? You know, share some of that knowledge of success in Sacramento and Nashville and what not. It's my understanding that the movement to move the team didn't stem from a single issue like a stadium, but rather a lot of different factors loosely tied to attendance, corporate support (?), aging and poorly located stadium, etc. Obviously the biggest reason for the potential departure of the Crew is the ownership group, but I do wonder why the MLS is so complicit. Maybe they just want to be in a city with better name recognition, as sad as that is. I wonder if things would be different if they were named the Ohio Crew. Columbus still is relatively unknown to people on the coasts (even moreso than Cincinnati), so I could see the MLS wanting to ditch it in favor of cities that have more 'major league' reputations, or that are more widely recognized nationally. Either way, this whole situation has really sucked for Cbus, and I think it's foolish for Cincy to be so eager to join a league that is majorly screwing over a city 1.5 hours away up 71.

The Browns have messed up so many QBs over the years, and never really seem to learn their lesson. The Bengals do a LOT of things wrong (most things, tbh) but one of the best moves Marvin Lewis ever made was to sit Carson Palmer his whole first season, in favor of the old back up Jon Kitna. Nobody thought Kitna was going to be the answer, and there was a vocal segment of the fan base that wanted to put Palmer in, as he was a first round pick and had so much promise. But giving him the whole year to learn the playbook and adjust to life in the NFL was so key for his development. It also allowed the Bengals to build two draft classes around Palmer, so when he stepped on the field, he had a better group of guys around him. I don't understand why this concept is so hard for so many teams, Browns included.

Bond Hill and Roselawn is where I would perceive that to be. Elizabeth Place and Oberlin Boulevard in Bond Hill have some nice larger houses. Same for Roselawn west of Reading and South of Section. Most of the rest of the houses are not huge, but they're cute and well-kept. These were the earliest pre-built subdivisions from the 1920s through 1940s. Hyde Park is two or three decades older for the most part and is a bit more varied. Bond Hill has its share of crime (and stigma) still, and there aren't many amenities there for residents, especially young ones who are looking for a walkable neighborhoods with stores and restaurants. This isn't necessarily a problem limited to Cincinnati, fwiw. Neighborhoods like Baldwin Hills or Ladera Heights (wealthy black neighborhoods in LA) are still pretty rare, nationally.

Woah, that is a beautiful unit! Does anyone know if the Town Center has begun construction? Or the next phase of the townhomes near Children's? One of my friends lives in one of those townhomes, and it is very nice inside. She's a black dentist, and she told me she moved there explicitly to be in a black community, but she was frustrated that, as a black professional, she basically had to pick between living in a white neighborhood like Hyde Park, or a pretty run down/hood adjacent neighborhood. I'm hopeful that Avondale, or maybe Walnut Hills, can become a destination neighborhood for upper and middle class blacks. We don't really have such a neighborhood in Cincinnati proper, though places like Forest Park and Springdale serve this niche in the suburbs.

From the project thread for the Terrace Plaza: JJakucyk: "I talked with a contractor who walked through recently, and the real problem with the 8' ceilings is that's only available where there's no utilities, basically concrete to concrete. Over the room entrances, bathrooms, and hallways where you have pipes and ductwork (more of which will be required for all new mechanicals, since what's there is shot) that means you're pushing down to the 7' level which starts to get quite oppressive."

Many of the spaces that Frank Lloyd Wright designed had very low ceilings, too. I got a chance to tour Taliesin West in AZ, and much of it seems cramped and small by modern standards. Low ceiling heights in a high rise building like the Terrace Plaza definitely present serious challenges. I don't know if there are enough die hard enthusiasts of MCM that would be willing to put up with 7 foot ceilings in a residential building. Did anyone on the tour discuss potential uses for the bricked in portion of this building? I would truly love to see it saved, but it seems like there are just so many challenges, and the building really isn't inherently beautiful, at least not at street level. That block of 6th also feels pretty cavernous, with the huge blank red wall fronting the whole block. I never cheer for demolition of historic structures, but this one seems like a real challenge, and it has created a dead space in the heart of downtown for far too long.

I don’t think the streetcar’s shortcomings stem from it not going where people want to go, as the professor from Florida State claims in the article. It hits the majority of points of interest in downtown and OTR, minus the convention center and main hotel area, which is a big omission. I do think a more central and easy to understand loop would have been preferable to what we have now. A loop using Race and Walnut, or a dedicated lane both directions on Vine probably would have been more successful. KC uses that linear approach, and it seems to serve its purpose well as a pedestrian accelerator. The Cincy streetcar zig zags east-west, gets stuck at way too many lights, cuts across lanes of traffic, has too many stops, and just generally doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. If the city can find a way to give the streetcar prioritization at traffic signals, that should help. I do think that some stations should be removed for the sake of expedience. Increased development at the poles of the line is also key. The Banks and Findlay Market areas are key sources or ridership, I think, and it sounds like the Findlay area is kind of booming right now, so that’s good news for the streetcar. Make some fixes, speed the thing up, run more streetcars when it’s politically possible so frequency can go up, and let development take root along the line, and the streetcar will prove very successful, I think.

A Cleveland dingbat!

Yeah, I was just going to say, up by the famous (infamous) Indian car dealership in the Carthage/Bond Hill area, there are several numbered streets in the 70s and maybe 80s. I remember when I first saw them, I thought “is this area actually 79 blocks from the river?”

^Hm, I wonder if a prominent player in Walnut Hills who lives in Bellevue has anything to do with this...

I'm glad to hear that. I obviously have no problem with restoring vacant buildings for market rate housing, but evicting residents for the purposes of converting low income housing to market rate does give me pause. It's inevitable that it will happen, but if we're serious about keeping OTR a mixed income neighborhood, then we really need organizations like OTRCH there to provide safe, clean housing for the poor.

No, I think the link was changed since I made my post. It says the article was recently updated, so that must have been what happened, because I clicked the link at the end of the article, and filtered by location, and there were about 10 Ohio restaurants listed. Glad to see they cleared it up. There are a bunch of Philly restaurants on the list, though, so the claim that none of Ohio's bordering states had any places on the list is inaccurate.

Only three Ohio restaurants made OpenTable's Top 100, and they're all in Cincinnati 1) Orchids at Palm Court 2) Restaurant L 3) Sotto https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/12/06/only-three-ohio-restaurants-made-opentables-top.html I'm confused by this article, though. It says that these are the only three restaurants from Ohio on the top 100 list, but when you click the link for the full list, there are lots of other restaurants from each of the 3Cs, and the 3 restaurants listed above aren't there. The article also claims that "none of Ohio's bordering states house restaurants that made the list", but that also doesn't seem to check out both when you check the list, and just by using common sense. I could understand Kentucky, Indiana, and W. Virginia not having anything on the list, but Michigan? Pennsylvania?? Something seems off.

^ That looks like a really nice spot. I've been impressed with the quality of tenants they've been able to land at the 84.51 building, though it would be cool if they could bring some actual retail in to complement the restaurants. Still, not too long ago, something like this opening downtown would have been pretty big news. Unrelated but still concerning Cincinnati restaurants: I saw Bakersfield is expanding to yet another city- Detroit. Bakersfield is now in Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Charlotte, Indy, Detroit, and of course the og location in OTR. While it kind of sucks that some of our local places are turning into chains, it's definitely good for Cincinnati's economy to grow these one off businesses into chains.

LOL Marvin Lewis is a really good coach!? The same Marvin Lewis who has been in Cincinnati 15 years and never won a playoff game? It's literally the same thing every year with the Bengals. As soon as the Steelers got the field goal at the end of the first half last night, I knew the Bengals were toast. It's so predictable, and the game played out pretty much EXACTLY like I knew it would. Sloppy play, dropped passes, stupid penalties (the offside at the end was SO classically Bungles), conservative play to cling to whatever lead they managed to create in the first half. Throw in some bad calls from the refs, which also seems to be a fixture in Bengals games, and the loss last night was all but assured. You have to realize, it doesn't matter who we throw out there on the field, as long as Marvin and Co. are around, the Bengals will never do anything. I realize I sound like one of those angry dudes who calls into 700 WLW after games, but I think the records speak for themselves at this point. I used to be a very optimistic Bengals fan, and managed to shrug off disappointing season after disappointing season due to the hope that if we just add ____ player, this team will finally get over the hump! Yeah, not how it works in Bengaldom. Even when the team is supposedly stacked, and going against lesser opponents such as the 2013 playoff game against a weak Chargers team, we lose and lose badly. The 2015 playoff game against the Steelers is what really opened my eyes, though. When they found a way to lose that game, that was it for me. I've watched maybe 3 quarters of Bengal football this year, and that's 3 too many.

Ensemble Health Partners to build 1,100 employee regional HQ https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/12/04/firm-to-build-massive-regional-hq-in-cincinnati.html Seems like it would be a great fit for the open office pad on Walnut. The company's current presence is up in Deerfield Township, but if they're primarily building this HQ to work with Mercy, a location closer into the city would make sense.

Agreed that the area needs more population, but the lack of retail could also be a result of lack of purchasing power of the residents who do live around there. A little socioeconomic diversity would help the West End quite a bit. You could have 20,000 people within a half mile of Linn St, and it wouldn't make a difference if they don't have money to buy stuff.