10albersa

If a minor Republican vendetta against electric vehicles is what helps get transit money passed in this legislature, it is a worthy sacrifice. There's no reason other than they want to protect fossil fuel interests, or at least appear to protect them.

Freeport Row is the NW side of Liberty & Elm, which is not getting extra developable land. That lot on the SE corner of Liberty & Elm looks even more attractive if the diet does indeed go through.

That's horrible. This was one of the developments I was most excited for, to help push other spots along the trail to go with dense developments (specifically the Norwood Depot @ Montgomery Rd), which I'm worried is going to be a wasted prime location for another dense development.

My wife (then fiance) was in grad school at Toledo for 2 years during the height of the algae bloom issue. I visited during some of the water shutoff times in 2014 and 2015. The entire time I visited those summers, I was wondering to myself, why would anyone live in a place that has no access to tap water for a week every summer? (not even mentioning how wary I was when the water even when bans were not in effect) She loved Toledo, and I actually like the city too, but I told her the biggest reason I was staying in Cinci and not moving to Toledo after she graduated wasn't the snow, it was the ridiculous notion that I don't know how clean my water is at any given time in the summer and may be asked to not even use it. That's unacceptable. I'm glad this passed, but the fact that it will get shot down in the court is disappointing. I guarantee you Toledo is a much more attractive place to live to potential outsiders if this mess gets cleaned up.

I apologize in advance if this has already been addressed, but if the original design (freeing up space on the south side) was implemented, would the city own those newly developable parcels? So the mayor's complaints about the water main being too expensive to move could just be offset by selling these new highly desirable parcels correct? I'd rather have that money from the sales to "help support future projects" rather then crossing our fingers that DOTE actually assigns that saved money to other projects.

The idea itself is a good thing. I know Liberty Center isn't well-done, but it is a nice way to introduce the concept of (I know this is a stretch) "urban living" to the people living in the burbs. Even out there, there is a growing interest in walkable communities, and this technically fits the bill, even though you can't enter or leave said walkable campus without a car. The only thing I've ever been there for is Bed Bath & Beyond with the wife, and dinner at Northstar (which is easily the best part of Liberty Center). Austin Landing is moving onto phase 2 and expanding. They are located in an area much less dense than WC and Liberty. The difference is that they have office tenants and Kroger as the anchors instead of retail/some apartments. There are too many traditional 'discretionary' retail anchors out in northern Cincinnati for Liberty to be anything other than a weekend stop/date night for some WC/Liberty/Mason residents. Weekday numbers are important for the long-term success of tenants, and LC isn't close enough to major employers to bring in a lunch crowd. As different as they are, it is the same basic problem we are discussing in the Mt Adams thread. How do you drive weekday traffic?

Just to tack on: The downtown bus lane is getting painted today. I (cynically, of course) figured they would purposely leave it hard to notice and call Bus-only lanes a failure. Great work from the BBC!

Yeah the BBC has real grassroots leverage right now (and an increasingly blue Cincinnati + Hamilton County). They've made a lot of good moves, so hopefully this ballot threat wasn't empty and they just got their bluff called. I wish we would put a Metro Moves re-do on the ballot in 2020, it would definitely do better than last time and they've got time and grassroots help to overcome The Enquirer, Cranley and COAST. At the least take that Chamber/OKI report (that dropped last week) on transit and job hubs and really overhaul the current system, I've had enough waiting around. Bus-only/BRT lanes should be a minimum on most of the big arterial routes, especially the highways.

I get that they are angling for a simpler 2020 vote, but I can't help but feel that this is mainly being pushed by the business community to find creative ways to kill the BBC proposal. I also have little faith that SORTA will promote and market the 2020 measure effectively, and fear that we will be sitting here November 4th, 2020 with the same .3 earnings tax and a transit authority on the brink of making drastic changes.

Yeah this is quite ridiculous, and I am surprised PG is pushing this. I'm assuming this has to be separately voted on since this only regards the City and not the county, but there's no reason this should be voted on now, instead of in 2020.

I was not alive when the Royals were around, but since then, other non-NBA cities have certainly surpassed our media market and demand for a team since the 60's.

To add to the above mentioned problems. Cinci isn't getting an NBA team before Seattle, and we would need the NBA to expand to 32 (which they don't want to do) just to have a chance at spot #32.

He does prefer off-street trails, but he certainly doesn't back other off-street trail projects like he's backed this one. This is the most ambitious I've seen him since taking office in term #2.

If John Cranley was as excited about our other multi-use trail projects the way he's excited about this one, we'd be the Amsterdam of the Midwest!

According to the article, it is in the Kettering Business park, so not downtown Cinci. https://goo.gl/maps/74cWUihPLhJ2

I highly doubt it. It probably is just to prevent service cuts and fare hikes, no route expansions. We'd need the 7 cents county tax to get to BRT. Which is why I think companies will be extra motivated to get SORTA pushing the conty-wide tax instead of the city tax, it would theoretically lower their tax burden.

Wow, right on cue! I'm loving what the BBC has done since it started a year and a half ago. They are now putting pressure on major employers in the city, if this does get the required signatures. The employers won't be happy with an earnings tax increase and (hopefully) will push SORTA to get a ballot measure out there so that the city earnings tax gets reduced in favor of a county-wide tax.

Interesting. IMO, the 8th floor and up (and the internal design) are the best parts of this building, not the 7-story brick wall. As long as those are preserved, I see no problem changing any of the facade on floors 1-7. I'm all for preservation, probably to a fault, but that brick behemoth is such an eyesore at the street level.

I don't know the exact contents of that window-less section, or the structural details of the building, but is there a problem with cutting large windows into the facade if this ever gets developed? I know cutting windows into a brick building is expensive, but it's going to be a huge project anyway.

The optimist in me hopes they shoot for the moon if they plan on waiting this out until Nov 2020, but the realist in me says they are just skittish because of a few loudmouth anti-tax people. They need to get ahead of any tax increase though. Have a comprehensive and 'sexy' marketing campaign to build some excitement, and please work more closely with the Better Bus Coalition on the marketing aspect. The 'well, we are considering increasing taxes, what do you guys think?' messaging they've been using the last few years will not work. You can't let COAST have the first or last word. Otherwise the local news will run with COAST's message and an army of 'concerned' Nextdoor users will have signed petition campaigns in all of their respective Hamilton County neighborhoods. I witnessed this first-hand in Wyoming this past summer. While my neighborhood is a fairly even mix of conservative and liberal views, most people were signing on to the anti-tax petition because those passing around the clipboards would phrase the questions: "Wouldn't you like a choice in whether your taxes go up?" Ignoring the actual reason they would be going up in the first place or the context behind it (state county funding being at an all time low).

At the very least, they aren't as good as the bakeries downtown. They may be having some trouble, but the suburbs (especially west) are their bread and butter (no pun intended), so they may just be refocusing on their core customers instead of trying to compete downtown.

I didn't realize that they simultaneously reduced property taxes when the stadium tax passed. That pisses me off even more. Middle income and rich people don't have to pay for the stadiums, poor people do! I can't wait until this crap comes up in 2026 so I can vote it down. It would behoove Hamilton County to put a metro levy (BRT and Rail funding with plan well drawn and presented) up against it and ask people what they'd rather vote for. Hopefully the Bengals still suck when it comes up, and hopefully the May Metro levy passes too so Hamilton Co pays for Metro instead of the city of Cincinnati.

^ I live mere steps from this place and I am dreading the toll it will take on my wallet and weight. CWC is top-notch, I have no doubt this will be too.

That's the problem, outside of downtown with the new Kroger combined with the streetcar, I don't know if I see it happening. I try hard to not use a car for groceries to help kick car-dependent habits (Kroger is 2 miles along a bike path away from me, and the Country Fresh store is 1 mile along neighborhood roads), but it certainly is not easy. I don't really know how regular people can be convinced to actually do this.

I've been on Spring Grove and Mitchell so many times, and never even knew that there was a Kroger back over there. Interesting spot for a grocery store. This is slightly off topic, but I think the problem with these co-op stores isn't so much their lack of economies of scale. It is just that Americans in general make large, less frequent runs to the grocery, and Kroger is perfectly tailored to that. These co-ops are meant to be neighborhood stores where you walk/bike and pick up a few things for the next meal or two, but not much further in advance than that. The gaslight district seems like a decent place to try out that experiment, but it's not easy to change habits. Especially if you are expecting a Kroger experience, one that none of these stores will ever be able to replicate.