jonoh81

That David Ettinger guy is well-known. He's often one of the primary naysayers of every project on the ColumbusUnderground FB page as well. He's all over the place trashing development. Most of these people have nothing going on in their lives and need a cause. Being anti-change is their cause, regardless of how dumb their arguments are. Neighborhood commissions give them FAR too much power, probably because some of the same types of people are also on neighborhood commissions.

Meh. It's reduced in size, it's boring in design, it's the worst rendering yet. And it hasn't started construction yet, so there's always ways to make it even worse. So basically, it's exactly what I figured we'd get 2 years ago.

Or this?

Anyone know what happened with this? It doesn't appear anything was ever done, but the same guy still owns it.

To be fair, the vast majority of Clintonville housing is pre-WWII, with much of it from the 1920s. You'd have to go east of 71 into North Linden to find mostly mid-century stuff. I have no problem protecting historic neighborhoods. The last thing I want to see it a bunch new proposals requiring historic demolition. We've seen too much of that. But again, if the history's already been lost, as with the Livingston site, it doesn't make much sense to scream about protecting the historic integrity of the neighborhood.

It's similar to what happened with the Price Avenue project in Vic Village. Maybe GV NIMBYers learned from that and figure if they can just cog up the process long enough with BS excuses, the developer will just abandon the project altogether. This is just another reason why the city needs massive zoning reform, though in this case, I'm not sure how it would conflict with historic preservation efforts. Still, nothing historic is being threatened here, and the location is essentially on the highway, so the outrage is wildly misplaced at best. Main corridors like Livingston and High should maintain what existing historic buildings there are, but in locations that lost them decades ago like this one, zoning should allow for denser development like this without a bunch of busybodies being able to stop it for irrational reasons.

This project sounds like Columbus' Millennial Tower and the Starks sound like Arshot. Maybe we should have a contest to see which one doesn't get built first. Can both win?

City proper Nashville is growing a LOT more slowly than people think. It wasn't even in the top 20 last year. This is especially odd considering it is combined with its home county, which should theoretically prop up growth. Nope. Despite the hype, the major growth in Nashville is all in the greater metro, not the city. It's almost entirely sprawl.

I think this is a little premature. The supposed losses are based entirely on estimates, so we don't actually know for sure if there have been any real losses. We'll find out for sure in early 2021. That said, I can say that in terms of Columbus only, New York has been one of the biggest out-of-state feeders for its metro domestic migration since 2010, so you're not wrong when you say Ohio might benefit.

The point about having more outside developers is about having a higher likelihood of seeing greater architectural diversity, and developers from other cities may also be more likely to propose greater density, especially if they're more familiar with that type of development. Columbus has a few really good urban developers, but many are also somewhat middle-of-the-road or more experienced with suburban development. There are FAR too many projects in urban neighborhoods being proposed as single-use, lower density, monotonous design or just poor quality construction. I could rattle off a long list of recent projects and proposals fitting one or more of these descriptions. More competition, IMO, will help with some of these issues. Getting back to the actual topic, it would be disappointing to have a really amazing stadium architecturally, and yet have the rest of Confluence Village look exactly like the rest of the AD. It's an opportunity to create a unique piece of Downtown, and the last thing I want to see is yet another neighborhood of single-color brick boxes. Their is nothing inherently wrong about them, it's just that we have plenty already. Let's do something else.

Perhaps the point was they hold onto land until they can get maximum return. Nothing wrong with that, exactly, but it may hold up development of sites longer than otherwise. And I think that had NRI developed that site themselves, the development would've had a lot more in common architecturally with Franklin Station next door than Gravity. But all this goes back to something I and others have said many times: The city needs more quality developers.

This is why I hate to see old churches torn down, like the one in Franklinton and recently in OTE. They have such unique architecture that adaptive reuse should always be the first solution instead of demolition (not that that's necessarily different from other types of buildings). A lot of developers seem to shy away from them, probably because of potential maintenance or renovation costs, but they really do make very cool projects.

I doubt accuracy of build date is all that important to them. It's more of a historical record than a tax purpose one, but the generic "1900" is kind of annoying. When I'm doing research for historic buildings on my site, I search through everything from telephone directories to Sanborns maps trying to find information, including the earliest or one of the earliest owners, as well as the closest build date possible. I've done probably close to 2000 buildings in and around the city over the last several years, and dates are consistently too new. The tricky part is when there have been multiple buildings at the same address over time. It's a bit like doing archeology, peeling back the layers of data.

http://www.andrewsmith.io/columbus-buildings I don't really know where to put this. Someone has mapped the age of every single building in Columbus and Franklin County. There are quite a few problems with it, as they use the Franklin County Auditor build dates. This is problematic as most records before 1920 were destroyed in a fire. Most older buildings that lost records are often listed on the auditor's site as being built in "1900" or "1910", but almost all of those are wrong. It often lists buildings as being newer than what they really are. The other problem is that the map also seems to use recent renovations as build dates. For example, 380 E. Town Street is color coded as having been built in the 2000s, but it only received a renovation. The actual build date for it is 1875, a full 125 years earlier. COSI was built in the old Central High School from the 1920s, but it again shows 2000s. Many of the homes on Hamlet Street in Italian Village were built between 1870-1890, but they're all listed as 1900 or newer. Most of the homes in places like the Short North, Near East and Near South sides, Franklinton, Clintonville, Hilltop, Grandview, Upper Arlington, Clintonville, Linden, etc. are shown as being years or decades newer than they really are. Still, the map gives a good idea of where the oldest sections of the city are, at least.

It may technically be possible, but I'm not sure any of that space was really meant to be converted at some future point, and I doubt they would with such a new build.

I don't think it's the architecture that cities were copying, but rather the layout, mixed-use characteristics and revitalization of a formerly declined urban neighborhood. You can find brick boxes literally everywhere. There is nothing unique about the architecture in the AD. And anyway, I wasn't criticizing the entire neighborhood, I'm criticizing Nationwide for not branching out architecturally or with height. And before anyone tells me they're just an insurance company... no. They're not. They've been in the development game for decades, and since they are, I have no different expectations for them than I would Borror or anyone else.

There is the riverfront and parks right across the street, and there is nothing saying that the intersection there couldn't have been pedestrianized further. You also have to consider longer term. When the Scioto Peninsula is built out, there will likely be some kind of bridge in this area connecting the two. All those people will have the option to cross the river into the AD, so restaurants lining the riverfront make sense.

Even those I thought were disappointing considering the location. No mixed use, no ground floor retail/restaurant space, too short for the location. They're not bad as far as design goes, but yeah, it's a small win.

If Nationwide had its way, everything in the city would be the same monotone brick and 5-6 stories. It's why I don't hold out much hope for any of the current sites they own Downtown and Franklinton. They have zero architectural vision anymore.

$40 million, 56 units, to be called Heritage Pointe.

Yeah, I'm sure a controversial Republican with a shady real estate history would be a welcome addition to blue Cleveland.

The AD is definitely Downtown. Most of it is in Tract 30, which includes everything north of Broad Street. Only the section of "Arena West", which will include the upcoming Confluence Village and includes the White Castle development, 600 Goodale, etc. is in Tract 32.

The differences are probably just from the area that each one is looking at. The "CBD" for Collier's is clearly larger than the traditional Downtown, though, and obviously Casto is probably including OTE, GV, Short North, etc. The traditional Downtown IMO would be census tracts 30, 40 and part of 32. You could also throw in 42, which is the Scioto Peninsula, if you wanted. So basically everything between 71, 70, 670 and the railroad tracts to the west. Tract 32 includes part of the Arena District, but also part of Victorian Village. Splitting that, the 2017 estimate was about 9,100 for that area, so I'm thinking the last graph is going to be the most accurate overall, though maybe a little undercounted.

It makes sense if you look at the census tracts. Columbus has more highs and more lows, but a lot more mid-range density between 5-7K. Cincinnati's are respectable at the top, but there are fewer of those really high ones and the densities drop off far more quickly than in Columbus. I might do the rest of the counties later today, but it'll depend on my job.

BTW, here are the weighted densities within the Cleveland and Cincinnati city boundaries. Cincinnati 2010: 5512.6 2017: 5470.0 Cleveland 2010: 6524.5 2017: 6297.8 Not sure how Cincinnati's declined when the overall city went up, but that's what the numbers say.