Guy23

Have they slowed down construction to try to wait out the pandemic? It seems like this one is going up incredibly slow.

This is exactly why I have a huge issue with OTRCC having any political weight. It’s not at all representative of the views of the neighborhood it’s just like 10 very whiny NIMBYs who feel like they deserve a say in anything that goes on here. Hopefully council realizes this and still goes ahead with the plan.

This might be an unpopular opinion here but I totally agree with circumventing the OTR council. It’s an undemocratic body in the sense that even though it claims to represent the entire neighborhood, the large majority of residents did not vote on it, have no idea who represents it, and don’t even know it’s stances. It just seems like bad policy to have outcomes dictated by the very small group of people that show up to meetings, and there seems to be a strong correlation between engagement and NIMBYism. Id guess that if this parklet idea were run through the council, it would be delayed so an ‘impact study’ could take place and likely end up watered down or cancelled.

I think a lot of what motivates Cranley can be boiled down to ‘what will most upset the people he sees as his opponents.’ In this situation, the ‘opponents’ are the OTR residents that he fought against about parking permits, who feel entitled to easy street parking, and he absolutely is getting off on taking some of their spots away. This is one of those rare instances where his interests perfectly line up with good urbanism so I won’t question the motives and just feel good about the outcome.

Not arguing for or against the public stadium financing but this is a weak economic analysis. There are clearly many economic benefits that will come from the stadium, though it’s fair to debate whether they are worth the cost. OTR restaurant and bar owners- and their staff- will benefit from 25,000 extra people coming to the neighborhood, even if it’s just 20 or so nights a year. Hotels will benefit from increased demand during the season. Construction workers will benefit from the additional jobs created by the stadium and surrounding developments. And yes nearby developers and land owners- many of whom are actually locally based and all of whom will pay local property taxes (once those sweet abatements run dry)- will also benefit from the increased demand in their neighborhood because of the shiny new amenity. And of course all of this will produce tax revenues for the city as well. So again not saying I’m for or against the deal struck by the city but it’s way more nuanced than you’re making it out to be.

Not sure if this is the right thread for this topic, but does anyone recall how Jeff Pastor was a very vocal supporter of the 5 lane Liberty Street plan, but then at the last second backed out and ruined the deal, saying he misunderstood? That always seemed weird to me, but now I think it’s worth wondering again what exactly- or who- caused him to change his vote...

For ‘Garfield alteration’ do you mean 8th street or just the Piatt Park area? For that one block the urbanism actually seems pretty solid so I’d be surprised if they felt a priority was renewing the street scape.

I think you could get by just fine going way more ‘light’ than that- dedicated lanes on Jefferson, elevated boarding platforms with prepaid ticketing and signal priority at major intersections would cost relatively very little, and the result would still be an extremely efficient way of traveling between uptown and downtown. Obviously not as transformative as a subway but it would be I’d guess at least 100X cheaper, could be implemented almost right away and would still provide a great option to travel between the regions without needing a car.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to say ‘well we tried an extremely lackluster approach with our busses, it didn’t work, so the only way people will ride transit is a multi billion dollar light rail project.’ How about we first try to actually do a bus line the right way. It might take a rebrand of the line to convince potential riders it’s a cut above the sub par bus system they’ve grown used to. Also frequency and extended hours are a must, so people will know it’s there when they need it and they won’t have to wait forever for the next bus. I just don’t see why Cincinnatians wouldn’t ride a great bus line if it was presented in the right way.

It is pretty ridiculous that so many people feel they have to drive to get between these very closely located dense, urban areas. Light rail would obviously be great but I think just a very frequent BRT light line would solve most of the issue for 1% of the cost- call it something like the Bearcat Line and have it run up and down Vine, arriving every 5-8 minutes at stops at MLK, McMillan, Findlay, Liberty, Central and Fountain Square.

What’s this now? I don’t think I know this story

I generally agree but also think it’s tough to blame a corporation for closing a store that loses it money every year. Kroger operates on thin margins and is competing with Amazon and Wal-Mart. They’re not a nonprofit and I think it’s reasonable that they only run stores that make money. Still, you’d think they could maybe show some love for their hometown and make at least one exception to help out the community.

Those grocery stores are all easily accessible only if you have a car, which many Avondale residents lack. Even an efficient bus system- which we don’t have yet- is no substitute for being able to walk to a grocery store for low income residents in a food desert. A grocery store in central Avondale will definitely be a huge boost for residents of one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, it just comes with the huge risk of failing and being an issue the city has to deal with long term. Still I do think it’s a problem that should be solved. I don’t know what the best solution is but I don’t know if it’s the one the city is choosing.

Agreed- also seems like a red flag that it’s being managed by an operator that has no experience in running a supermarket, which is a notoriously challenging business to run. Reminds me a little of the EMC near Findlay Market, which closed down after a year or two and never came close to turning a profit. It seems like there’s a good chance that this market never turns a profit, and does the city have the contingency plan of funding its operating budget for the foreseeable future?

I can’t see why anyone would invest in commercial real estate right now. I’d guess it would have to either be converted to residential or else scrapped entirely:

I thought this would be part of the huge apartment development they’re doing at the end of the street. Is this unrelated to that?

That does seem like a bizarre move. Maybe he’s assuming their budget is going to get majorly reduced next year and is thinking their depleted resources will be needed just to manage existing parks?

All of this seems reasonable, but I think everyone here agrees that there is complete uncertainty here. It makes the decision on how to invest 10s or even 100s of millions of public dollars really challenging when there is so much we don’t know on the future of the market so because of that it might make sense to either choose the conservative approach or hold off making any decisions for a little while and see how everything shakes out.

I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘a really bad quarter.’ From talking to people in tourism related industries, it’s expected that the fallout from this could be years, and there’s a chance it ultimately changes the way we view conventions and large gatherings for a long time. Its just an extremely uncertain time to be making projections about tourism and conventions.

From what I remember they’re currently evaluating different options for size of the hotel and whether to expand the convention center. I’d guess that with the near term uncertainty in the convention and tourism industries, they go with a conservative approach. Maybe this is shortsighted and a few years from now people have totally moved past this scare, and we’d regret not going bigger, but I could also see this changing how conventions function in general so it’s a tough call to make.

Anyone here have any updates on the Liberty Street narrowing? I remember seeing somewhere it was supposed to start this summer but not sure if that’s still the case. I’ve heard 3CDC is involved now, which seems like it would help speed things up.

I feel like the Port Authority needs to just come out and level with the public on what’s going on here. Theres too much money involved and too many of what seem from the outside to be massive red flags that I would hope that there’s more to this plan than what is made public. Overpay for a large functioning hotel to demolish it with no concrete plan or financing to replace it- when you already own a large buildable lot a block away- seems so insanely dumb and risky that there just has to be more to this you’d hope...

New banner on the Flatiron building saying flats and ‘Neighborhood Retail’ coming this summer. Any idea what the neighborhood retail is going to be?

I think the issue is that being totally objective the architecture does look out of place, but it’s hard to discuss this project objectively, when most of its detractors were basically against its right to be built at all. Totally reasonable if you just objected to the appearance and design, but thinking back to its conception, many of the most vocal detractors seemed to have completely unfounded criticism, so when people hear others trash the hospital expansion, the immediate reaction is to assume the person complaining came from this group. Also it does make a huge difference that Children’s Hospital is one of the best employers and most altruistic organizations in the region, so if anyone should be given a little leeway to make some sh*tty design choices with their development it would be them.

Yeah, you really hate to see a world class institution that saves children’s lives expand in our city...