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I'll be out of the state the weekend of the 18th, but if you guys plan it for a week after that, I'd love to go and meet everyone!

I'm really excited for this! I just wish they'd build it taller 😁 I live close-by and it always bothers me how underutilized West Lane is. It should be just like High Street considering how much foot traffic the street has. I dream of a dense uninterrupted-streetwall all the way from High Street to the Olentangy River...

Speaking of RTA stations in Ohio City, has there been any movement on the plans to add a new red line station somewhere around Fulton or W. 41st? It seems crazy to me when I visit Cleveland that there's not a station there considering how popular that neighborhood's becoming. There's also lots of opportunities for TODs, especially along Fulton. Also, I never even considered how much opportunity there is for a cap over the redline until @viscomi's drawing above. Personally I think capping the entire block between Abbey and Lorain and turning it into a park would be a really cool way to connect Ohio City and Duck Island/Tremont better!

I think a better solution (that's probably not viable) would be to totally vacate West 13th and the remaining drivable part of University Road and simply make it one big pedestrian space. Even if the terrace is a must-have for better views, I still think this would be better. Having a covered roadway right there is an interesting aesthetical choice to say the least. If it were me, I'd do that and add the retail/restaurant spaces to the ground level and add a rooftop bar/restaurant which would give some of the best views of the city

Honestly in Steubenville, any development is good even if it's auto-centric. But the neighborhood is already pretty auto-centric and isn't even that well connected to the university since there's a big steep hill between them. As long as they maintain sidewalks through the whole development, I'm good with it personally.

Sandusky Hopes to Attract New Downtown Hotel: https://sanduskyregister.com/news/385719/city-looks-to-book-hotel/ The city of Sandusky has released a plan calling for the redevelopment of the Jackson Street surface parking lot. The plan calls for a 120 room hotel, ground floor retail, a rooftop restaurant, a conference center, and a 300 vehicle parking garage. The bidding process will remain open until June 9th. This project would be a huge deal for Sandusky if it pans out and would be amazing infill for the downtown area!

There's a big untapped market for downtown apartments and condos in my opinion. To my knowledge, every existing apartment building is fully leased or sold pretty much. My dream is one day Downtown improves enough to justify a new condo/apartment building on Front Street overlooking the amphitheater!

I'm not really a fan of the gigantic mural planned, but I guess there already is a huge mural covering the building anyways. Hopefully it turns out looking nice!

I totally forgot about this ferris wheel but this picture unearthed a ton of memories of me riding it when I went to the car shows at the I-X center as a kid 😁

Am I the only one who the bridge design has kind of grown on? I used to hate it but I think it actually looks pretty decent now. Obviously there were significantly better proposals, but I don't hate it by any means. That being said, I still question why exactly we needed a bridge there, it doesn't take that long to simply walk around the harbor to get to the other side.

Demonstrating what I was saying about the sharp decline in Downtown business since the pandemic, this article just came out today about the indoor food court at 20 Federal Place being virtually empty now. Today, a popular long-standing Lebanese restaurant shut down. The article also says how the coffee shop, pizza shop, and vegan restaurant inside the food court all shut down recently as well. Now the only thing left in there is a Subway and a small lunch restaurant. To add insult to injury, it looks like the Lebanese restaurant is planning to relocate to Boardman. Not that I blame them by any means, but it's yet another blow to Downtown. Downtown was in great shape pre-COVID, but now it's barely holding on, especially as about half the bars never reopened. That combined with remote work has made it unviable to open a business Downtown unless it's right next to YSU. I have hope that it will turn around, but it's pretty sad to see.

This isn't really big news, but I found a cool site plan for the Commercial Street and Federal Street portions of the SMART2 road diet project. A cool part of this plan is that the Federal Street landscaped median will be extended all the way from Fifth the Commerce which is really cool! Also, preliminary work has begun on the water pipes under Commerce Street to get ready for construction to begin. I'm glad things are moving so quickly! Hopefully when it's all done, Downtown can get a big comeback because it's struggled a lot post-COVID. Here's the pdf for the plan.

Sorry for the poor quality images, but there's some progress on road diets for two major Downtown streets: South Phelps Street between Federal and Front (two blocks) has been converted into a "living street" model in which one way traffic is still allowed but highly discouraged. I'm not sure why they didn't just go ahead and block the road off to cars, but this isn't a bad deal either. The street parking has been removed so there's significantly more pedestrian space. And because the road is the same elevation as the sidewalks, it can easily be closed off for pedestrian only space for events. This is significant because it completes a pedestrian oriented corridor between the Wean Park Amphitheater and the bars and restaurants along the new Phelps Street Gateway pedestrian street. Additionally, you can keep walking beyond that up the public steps to YSU's campus! Also, the Silver's Vogue Shop Building (to the left in the first picture) has been sold, but I haven't seen any work done on it. I believe the plan was to turn it into a local business incubator of sorts where local businesses can set up shop there for a decent price. Secondly, work on Front Street has begun! I'm pretty surprised that they started working on it already. This is a much needed improvement which will transform a bloated and crumbling 5 lane road into a two-lane road with a beautiful two-way separated bike lane! I hope they actually make this bike lane nice and don't just throw down concrete and ugly orange cones as barriers and call it a day like they seemingly have done on Mahoning Avenue. Either way, this is a big deal for bikers as it means you can now get from Mill Creek Park to the center of Downtown and beyond almost solely by protected bike lane. This project is important of course because it is the road in front of the amphitheater - my dream is that eventually this street will see a new apartment building or something! It's a great location but most of the road is only being occupied by ugly surface parking lots. The rendering below shows the corner of South Phelps and Front, which shows what both of these projects will hopefully look like. The Front Street project is pretty massive and covers a 6 block span between South Avenue east of the Covelli Center and Vindicator Square/Marshall Street. After Front Street and South Phelps are done, the next project is a road diet for Commerce Street, then Rayen Avenue by YSU, then finally Federal Street.

Everyone knows Toronto is the real Gem City, not Dayton! 😁

New Coffee Shop in Restored Goucher Hotel Building in Toronto: I have some good news to report out of my hometown, Toronto, Ohio! I was thinking recently how much potential there is in the main street, which still has a solid block of uninterrupted streetwall on both sides of the road, and was casually looking around the area on Google Maps when I noticed that a new coffee shop had opened in an old building on Fourth Street! So naturally, when I visited my family down in Jefferson County this week, I had to make a stop there to support the new business! Tri B's Coffee Shop is located in the now beautifully restored Goucher Hotel Building, which was most recently used as a haunted house. The interior is beautiful and rivals the "hip" coffee shops I've seen in much bigger cities. They also lined the walls with bricks made in town (with "TORONTO" imprinted on them) and had lots of cool Toronto historical photos and artifacts hanging up! I'm pretty sure the bricks, based on the color, were reused from the old high school which would be really cool if true. Overall, I'm a bit nervous though - I'm not sure if the town can sustain a coffee shop like this. But I will say, it did good business while I was hanging out there, and the town does come together to support its businesses! Plus it was fun listening to all the townsfolk coming in and asking questions like "Oat milk? Now how the hell do they make that?!" in a full Yinzer dialect! 😁 The Goucher Hotel Building: Fourth Street Building Restoration in Toronto with New Restaurant Location: On the same block, another old brick building has gotten some life breathed back into it by a local (a great guy and something of a hometown legend I might add!) and is now home to the new Baby Boyz Barbecue location! Luckily, they decided to stay in Downtown Toronto and now have a much better location. I can't find a great picture of the whole building, but here's a before and after I found on the Baby Boyz Facebook page: So could Toronto finally be becoming something interesting? I sure hope so! I love the town and it has really good bones still. The whole town is very walkable and the commercial district has so much potential. It's dense and walkable enough that it feels like a neighborhood in a much bigger city rather than just a small town. I'm biased, but I also think it's by far the best maintained town along the Upper Ohio River Valley. But hey, with the new coffee shop and the surprisingly great taco place that opened a few years ago in an old car wash down the road, I may have to consider moving back home to the "Gem City" after all! 😁 Rusty Bull Taco Company:

This is a great project but are there any plans to develop the giant surface parking lot next to it at Nautica? Flats West Bank (and especially the viaduct area) has a ton of potential but currently so much of it is just surface parking.

I'm gonna have to take a little day trip out to Kent some time! It's honestly a great city to visit even for non-students. I'm glad there's so much effort to link campus and Downtown as well as removing some of the surface parking and stuff from campus. When I toured the school a couple years ago, I was super impressed by Downtown Kent, but the campus still just felt way too suburban and car-centric to me. I know one thing, even though I spent a year at their rival school (Univ. of Akron), I must admit, Kent is far more impressive to me and there's a lot more to do near campus despite it being in a small town. If I didn't end up getting accepted into OSU I probably would've went to Kent instead.

I obviously am a big fan of this, especially as it preserves the historic storefronts, which I think add a lot of character to the Old North End. But I have one complaint about this - I think the way they have two buildings linked together by an overhead bridge/part of the building (not sure what word to use) looks ridiculous. You can see what I mean in the picture below. I'd much rather there be two independent buildings rather than one mega structure. Have the CVS tower and then extend the Alhambra courtyard plaza all the way to Pearl, then have a separate free-standing building along Norwich and Pearl. Maybe it wouldn't look as bad from the ground level, but in these renderings, it looks way too bloated. Also, not gonna lie, this project makes me pretty nervous - if they use cheap boring materials and designs like we see on most new "luxury" apartment buildings these days, then it has the potential to be a humungous 17 story eyesore. But if they get it right, it'll be amazing. The problem is just that this is probably the most visible and iconic corner of the University District, so I hope to god that they get it right.

Honestly the biggest takeaway for me is just how much a good streetscaping project can improve the looks of an otherwise abandoned street. I can't even imagine how grim that city would look without it. There's lots of potential there, but not enough money (or people) to make it happen I'm afraid.

They act like this 4.5 story building will kill their neighborhood or change it into the Short North or something. In reality it will probably end up being way more aesthetically pleasing, less traffic, and more peaceful than the Giant Eagle that was there before. It's a no brainer really. Also, I had to update you guys - this project has gone so insane that my professor talked about it in one of my classes the other day 😁

After all the drama over this project, I actually forgot that this development isn't officially called "The Whale" 😁 In fact I casually referred to it as "The Whale development" to a random person recently lol

City, Downtown Stakeholders Oppose First Energy Power Line Proposal on Youngstown Amphitheater Property https://businessjournaldaily.com/city-downtown-stakeholders-concerned-over-power-line-proposal/ So this news has pretty much made my blood boil... First Energy is planning on building a six mile transmission line along the Mahoning River which will go right behind the new Youngstown Foundation Amphitheater. Just as the city has finished investing millions into cleaning up the former brownfield into a new amphitheater and park, there are now plans to run power lines right through the property. The city is obviously extremely opposed to this as it has the potential to really hurt the aesthetics of the amphitheater and park. It hasn't been approved yet, but frankly I don't have much hope in First Energy caring too much about it. Just imagine how bad it would look to have 60-135 foot tall power lines blocking this view:

It's ridiculous in my opinion. I don't think the diocese even wants to build anything there besides a green space. Which let's face it, no one will use that green space. It could have had so much potential as a unique events space or something, but oh well. It's ridiculous that it couldn't have just been moved to Wick Park like originally planned but I guess one person on the board had a problem with that.

Since you guys want some good news about small town Ohio towers: The Huntington Bank Building in Steubenville (10 stories tall) has been undergoing a slow renovation project and the developer thankfully removed the god-awful metal awning that was added at some point during the craze of "modernizing" old buildings. It needs some cleaning up of course, but the original facade has returned and it looks a million times better in my opinion! Before: After:

Not sure if this counts as a "tower", but East Liverpool finally got around to demolishing the Golden Star Dairy Building on Weber Way which had been abandoned for decades. It was a pretty cool old building and at 8 stories, it was pretty tall for East Liverpool. Obviously it was beyond saving, but it always held a special place in my heart because it's the first building you see when entering East Liverpool to go between my two hometowns, Youngstown and Toronto, OH. It was a very noticeable landmark and East Liverpool looks quite different without it. Oh, and apparently my own grandma was the one that first noticed and reported the fire that ravaged the building decades ago, but I have no way of empirically proving this claim 😁 Regretfully I never got a chance to take pictures of it before it got demolished.