Matthew67

The rate of return is usually much higher on lower-income residential. There is a stigma attached to being a "slumlord", which means there are fewer buyers, which means prices are lower, which means returns are higher. Suckers like our commander-in-chief and his son-in-law buy and build high-end vanity properties, and as such, they borrow huge sums and overpay. Then when a recession hits their tenants bail and they're foreclosed on and have to cut deals with organized crime and foreign entities. The LLC who just sold to 3CDC paid too much for the property. No margin for error. 3CDC has access to cheaper money and has better relationships with contractors. Interesting.....

Every time you say "street people" I cringe. People living desperate existences on the streets may be unpleasant to discuss, but it's part of the reality of OTR. If we can't manage to overcome our genteel sensibilities to acknowledge something of the real world, our discussions here aren't very useful.

Wages are apparently not high enough for Butler County to "NOT need massive amounts of credits and government help" either. When Butler County is dangling huge subsidies and free new infrastructure in front of investors, it IS hard to compete. If Butler County wasn't playing that game, money invested there would be available to be invested elsewhere, including in OTR. Investment dollars are fungible. If the net return is faster elsewhere, the money flows there. Existing investment in OTR proves that can be OTR. But, if you add in the very real costs of policing or buying off the dealers, poverty industry, and street people, the finances don't work, as you say. Still, OTR isn't up against all-powerful forces that we must accept. There are choices that Cincinnati can make to change these calculations for investors. One important one is the the people of the streets of OTR.

I referred to non-farm wage reports, not the labor force numbers that you use. Austin is clearly a very different place. It's virtually a colony of the west coast tech economy and it's pace of growth is something that has to be seen to be believed. Still, Austin shows what's possible for mid-sized metros.

The total value of the credits is all that matters, not what they are called or how they are justified. There are no "standard" credits. There is a complex game of negotiation between developers and public authorities. The developers who choose not to invest in OTR turn to Butler county to invest and they also receive tax credits there. You assume that developments in Butler county are less subsidized than in OTR. That may not be true. Butler County paid for all the new infrastructure for Liberty Square in addition to the $30 million in tax credits. We don't know if demand for retail or offices in Butler County is "to the point where they wouldn't need the credits" either because no retail or offices in Butler happen without them today. No place in Cincinnati, or most of America for that matter, has unsubsidized development. We can't know what an unsubsidized free market in property development would look like anywhere, including OTR. OTR may be less subsidized than Butler County development today. The only differences between OTR and Butler County is that there are no street people or poverty industry in Butler County trying to scare away investors and OTR's infrastructure is already there.

I've discussed nothing but OTR development here. Maybe this should be called 'OTR Architecture Review." Discussing form without discussing function seems odd to me.

A lot of investors seek out the worst parts of town. That's where the biggest deals often are. Really? Who? Where? I'd love to learn more about this.

Tax credits are a universal part of the development game now. Butler County gave $30 million to that Liberty Square thing a couple years ago. No commercial development anywhere in metro Cincinnati happens with out credits from local, state, or the national government. You can't hold OTR developers to a standard that no suburban development could meet these days.

I don't know why you'd be sorry. Just be honest. Everything's better when people say what they think. We aren't disagreeing about what's happening. We're disagreeing about why it's happening. Findlay Market doesn't allow the street people to loiter and deal and that allows the demand for property in the area to be realized. What people do and why they do it are two different things. Actions don't speak for themselves. It all begins with the street people, not the investors.

..and he or she couldn't make the financing work as soon as investors actually visited the location and saw the mass of loitering people. It all begins with the efforts of the dealers and the street people to keep others out. It's not a lack of demand for property in OTR.

Dropped the ball. "I never realized how much we rely on idioms." They made money on the property. How's that dropping ball? No they didn't. They sold for $20,000 more than they bought. They had to pay property tax while they owned it, plus closing costs, plus tax on their tiny capital gain. That's why 3cdc exists...to take on the risks of developing property in the face of the "poverty industry" and the 'street community' that surrounds this building. It is located at the epicenter of OTR's remaining dysfunction. This purchase shows that OTR's issues are not a failure of demand but a failure of supply. OTR can't supply the property that the market demands without the work of removing the chaos and violence of "the community" from the area.

Good to know, but I wonder about longer term trends. Cincinnati has had a net gain of 50,000 jobs since 2008 while Columbus has gained 150,000 jobs, Nashville 200,000 jobs and Austin 325,000 jobs in the same period. All are similar sized metros. My numbers are from here https://www.bls.gov/eag/. Can you imagine what Cincinnati would be like right now with an additional 100,000 jobs?

Dropped the ball. "I never realized how much we rely on idioms." They made money on the property. How's that dropping ball?

1400 Sycamore says Cincinnati doesn't need economic growth. I say Cincinnati needs economic growth. That's my point.

Exactly. I don't know how to make this point without sounding facetious. To have to make an argument for the essentialness of economic growth is is like having to make an argument for the essentialness of food and water. How can some Cincinnatians have such delusional fantasies about how the world works that they think they can opt out of it and just decide to not have economic growth?

Right. The car companies weren't able to grow. The workers only left once their jobs left. Without growth, cities cannot survive. Growth isn't an option.

What does he mean by "Lays an egg and hands off to 3cdc?"

Hahaha. That is like saying the patient died because he stopped breathing . . . when he was shot in the head. Of course the growth stopped when people started fleeing Detroit like it was was an open house in Hell. Here, try this: http://bfy.tw/HNEY No, You've got it backwards. People left Detroit BECAUSE the growth stopped. The growth stopped BEFORE the people left. They left in RESPONSE to the end of growth. Human migration isn't random and spontaneous. People move for clearly understandable reasons. Ford and GM started the move out of Detroit, not the workers. To think otherwise is preposterous.

Detroit died because its growth died.

This isn't about loyalty, personal relationships, or 'being on the right side' of OTR's development. No one has special claims to control OTR no matter how long they've been there or how much they care about it. OTR's past and present is about money and power. Projecting Cincinnati's various battles on OTR about who is an authentic cincinnatian and who isn't is beside the point. As are the issues of poverty and gentrification. There is no inherent reason that Cincinnati can't experience the growth that Columbus or Austin are experiencing. The actions of Cincinnatians themselves, some of them OTR residents and property owners, are the only thing preventing it.

I'll keep trying. OTR's success is key for Cincinnati's success. It's something Cincinnati's competitors don't have. Columbus is trying to recreate it in its Short North such is the value of such a place. It could be a premier professional startup location. It's location alone, between downtown and midtown, makes it the linchpin to Cincinnati's economic geography. In a well-functioning economy, OTR should be the most expensive location in all of metro Cincy. It should be experiencing the amount of investment Columbus' Short North is receiving. It's property values are not a bubble but a sign of it's real and sustainable value. There are individuals and groups who oppose OTR's growth because they think their very existence depends on opposing it. These include the 'charity industry,' local politicians, and some owners of property in OTR. THEY are the reason OTR's growth is slow. These groups and individuals have special power to stand in the way of growth that such groups in other cities simply do not have. As Jake mentioned and as I've noticed, they get paid off or washed away on a wave of money in one way or another in other towns..and not just those that are booming. Cincinnati will only change it's economic trajectory by decisively moving these people and organizations out of the way. OTR's pace of developing is not inevitable and it isn't like other historic neighborhoods in location, form, or history. OTR is not just another generic story of gentrification to be found in many cities. It's Cincinnati's 'trump' card. Cincinnati, and OTR, have a choice to make. Both can let incestuous local politics and romantic delusions about the poor and 'community unity' block new money and people, or they can encourage new people and money to come. They can't have both.

Luck is just what we call things that we don't understand, things in which we cannot see cause and effect relationships. OTR wasn't 'lucky,' it's fortunes are clearly explainable in economic terms. It wasn't even worth tearing down to anyone in the 50s, 60s, and 70s because Cincinnati didn't create the demand for it.

I also hate the loser mentality. I hate the 'mind your own business' mentality, too. I encounter it regularly among natives. The best boosters of Cincinnati I find are transplants. You have no idea what "the individual" does with respect to OTR or anything else in Cincinnati. You're instinctive hostility to "the individual" is the issue, not the development of OTR. Why would OTR have been bulldozed if there HADN'T been a demand for new economic uses of OTR? Bulldozing costs money. OTR wasn't bulldozed because there wasn't a demand to use it in new economic ways. Queensgate was builldozed in a racially-motivated move to get rid of a predominately black neighborhood and to create new economic uses for land immediately next to the new i-75 and the rail yard. The rail yard that extends from Queensgate almost to Northside is an important economic activity for metro Cincinnati. It ain't pretty but it has its uses.

They aren't looking at their phones all the time. The in-person networking, and socializing, opportunities of expensive cities are clearly worth it to them. All those restaurants, coffee shops, meetups, and conferences in expensive cities are where the most important connections are made, not online.

Thanks for making it so easy for me to make my points about Cincinnati with your helpful examples. You do my work for me! OTR is something special. If it had been lost because Cincinnati had been more aggressive economically, 20 story buildings would cover much of OTR today. They'd house many thousands of professionals and metro Cincinnati would be much larger today than it is and Cincinnati's problems would be those of a larger and more prosperous city. That didn't happen and it provides an opportunity for Cincinnati to get back in the game....but only if it actually tries. The world owes Cincinnati nothing. Cincinnati has to justify its existence to professionals and investors. OTR is a way to do that which cannot be replicated easily elsewhere. Still, OTR's success is not a given. It will depend on the ability to get non-Cincinnatians to invest in OTR and Cincinnati more broadly. Telling people to shut up or leave is exactly the wrong response.