Guy23

Threatening to unseat council members over the vote is an extremely bold move and I don’t think they realize it could backfire spectacularly- if their campaign does nothing to change the next election, it basically proves to council that community councils and NIMBYs can be ignored with zero consequences.

Looks like most or all of the vacant lots across from Local Post and Streetside were purchased by an Eastern Avenue Apartments LLC. Anyone know what the plans are? Would be an excellent location for multi family and I think these lots were just rezoned with Connected Communities.

Does anyone know if this is expected to pass the council vote? Kearney abstaining makes me wonder if there’s going to be a fight over it in council.

The quotes in this article from Pureval and Long seem highly questionable to me. Why go through the trouble of issuing an RFP, then shut it all down and say you want community engagement instead of a large housing development? It seems like an obvious delay tactic for the site but I don't understand the motive to be so secretive about it. I doubt that many people are paying attention but it seems like a really bad look for the mayor.

This seems like such a bad decision that I have to assume that arena talks are much further along than they're letting on. I can't imagine another reason to turn down such a large private development during a housing shortage. If that is the case, then I think this is a bad look for the administration being so disingenuous to the public about their motives, pretending like it's an issue of too much change for the West End?

So what does this mean for the CROWN if there’s no Oasis Trail to connect downtown to Lunken? Maybe the city could convert the Eastern Avenue bike lanes into a protected two way cycle track.

Is the Oasis Line officially dead? I keep holding out hope that the city can acquire the rights from the railroad, but I haven’t heard anything in a long time.

This looks like a great project, though I’m curious to see if it receives opposition from the neighborhood council, and if that ends up impacting final designs. It’s pretty far removed from neighbors, and I’m sure the businesses nearby would love it, but I’d assume there will also be a few very vocal NIMBY opponents due to the size.

I think it’s important when considering the plans to remember it’s not housing verses a stadium. It’s housing verses a feasibility study that would lead to negotiations with the city that could maybe lead to a stadium years down the road. Unless there’s funding guarantees and advanced plans the public doesn’t know about, I think it would be a dumb move to pass up desperately needed housing or hotel space for what still sounds kind of like a pipe dream.

This is why I think we need to limit community councils’ having a say in developments- 15 unelected people (out of the thousands that live in Madisonville) arbitrarily said they don’t like the original plan, and now a city with a housing shortage just lost 100+ housing units?

The unspoken issue here is that some of the largest surface lot owners in the downtown area are also amongst the biggest donors to the local Democratic Party. A logical move to pressure surface lot owners towards selling to developers would be to implement some kind of tax on surface parking, but I can’t see that happening for political reasons.

Compared to the Cranley era we’ve made huge progress in that we’re not doing bad things, and we’re even saying the right things, but we’re not yet doing a lot of the right things and I think this is an example of that. This does sound good on paper but I think if the goal is to reduce surface parking, this won’t do too much and there are more effective options that just might’ve been a little tougher to pull off politically.

I love historic architecture as much as anyone but outside of the rare true historic neighborhood like OTR, I don’t think it makes sense to say if any building is built before a certain year, it can’t be torn down. I think we need to accept that cities grow and change over time and occasionally that means buildings built a long time ago will be replaced with newer buildings, and we should focus more on putting guidelines in place to ensure the new buildings don’t look like crap.

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing- Cincinnati is lucky to have amazing architecture in places like OTR, but we’re also seeing just how hard development becomes due to historic district regulations. CUF currently has an extreme housing crunch and stopping demolition of any historic building in the neighborhood is a good way to ensure that almost nothing gets built. Id focus on preserving key buildings, like the mansions on Auburn, and as sad as it is seeing some other old buildings go, I think ultimately it will be worth it in exchange for housing thousands of new residents and more affordable rents.

Do you know if there is any political will to push for these changes? Seems like an easy non controversial act for council.

I think that would work in other neighborhoods but I believe that this one was held up in court because of issues relating to the historic district. The regulatory process slowed the project down but it received all the approvals it needed from the city. Unless we got rid of the historic district designation- which I don’t think is a good idea- I’m wondering what the city could do to eliminate this process of using the courts to stall development.

What could the city do differently so that this wouldn’t happen again? Are there any laws or ordinances that could stop NIMBYs from holding up developments with lawsuits?

Occupancy isn’t a problem right now but growth is. Despite all the great things happening in the neighborhood, population growth is low and in my opinion, there’s less development going on than there should be. There’s multiple reasons for this but crime/ gun violence definitely factors into the equation. It reduces the pool of potential residents which lessens the demand on developers to create new housing.

I’m not saying OTR is dying or anything. I lived there for 5 years when it was much worse than it is now and I know how great it is. It’s just that the gun violence is keeping it well below it’s potential. Like I said, there are many people who choose not to live in OTR solely because of the gun violence, and that reduces demand for the neighborhood and lessens population growth.

Cities are going to be fine, but certain neighborhoods are more fine than others. There’s many people and families who would love to live in OTR because it’s dense and beautiful but just won’t do it because of the gun violence. Until we can get rid of the gun violence in OTR it’s going to suppress the market from reaching its potential.

OTR being classified as a historic district has done so much good for the neighborhood but this is the downside- it gives NIMBYs like this guy an extremely powerful tool to use to block development. I might be wrong but I don’t think the path he took to get here would’ve worked in other parts of the city. If it does end up getting cancelled it’s hard to see a single big project like this being built in OTR in the near future.

I agree but what law changes could realistically be made to keep this sort of craziness from happening in the future? From my understanding it’s OTR’s status as a historic district that makes these kind of legal appeals possible. I don’t think it would be the best move to strip away it’s historic district status but maybe there’s some move the city could make that would still ease the development process?

So what’s the process now/ how long can one well financed NIMBY delay a construction project?

I don’t get why you’d put townhouses at this awful intersection. My guess is this was supposed to be a much larger apartment development, but the Oakley Community Council shut it down?

I love the concept and definitely think a major street calming should be done but I’m a little confused about the price tag. Also, I’d think you’d want a city financed project this expensive to generate a lot of development, but the section is already filled out pretty well by FCC, Music Hall and Sam Adams, with additional projects already in the pipeline. If this can be done with private donors, like FCC, it makes a ton of sense, and if not I’d say it’s maybe worth cutting out the European fountains (whatever that is), just do a sizable street calming and spend the remainder on other road diets like Linn and Ludlow.