ragerunner

"Guess what...places like Cbus, Indy, Atlanta, and so on have an abundance of land and were eager to take in the developers." What? Cincy's metro area has just as much abundance of land and its just as cheap as Indy, Columbus, or Atlanta (actually many parts of Atlanta have more expensive land). "When society changes again towards places that are built similarly to Cincy, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh then we will see those cities boom once again." Change to what? Cincy has just as much sprawl that is freeway oriented as Indy or Columbus. So if sprawl becomes out of date, Cincy will feel the impacts as much as an other cities. PERIOD!!! Once again, you act like Cincy has some kind of major topography that limits its sprawl and growth. We have hills and a river, not mountains or oceans. Our topography has not stopped the metro area from sprawling over 15 counties now. :?

Actually only you said anything about rental rates crashing etc... You won't find that in any of my post. Nice try though. So far they have only attracted tenants from other downtown buildings.

He wasn't giving excuses (that's not really jmeck's style), but rather he was citing the historical facts of development patterns/trends. Yes, I consider them excuses. Indy and Columbus could say, well if we had developed along a major river we would even be bigger today. Or if we had hills more people would move here, or mountains or oceans or ...... Indy could have said 20/25 years ago, we don't have this, we don't have that, they call us Indy-noplace and our flat terrain is to much to over come. Instead they create a plan, got the business leaders and politicians on the same page and moved forward. Now they are the fast growing metro area in the midwest, the biggest job producer in the midwest, a thriving downtown, they have become on of the largest Life Science cities in the US, and a major convention and sport destination. Cities are no different than businesses, you either organized yourself for true success (even better than your peers) or give reasons why you can only be mediocre or below average. The point still stands. These cities are growing and developing and moving towards a new economy faster than Cincy. Is Cincy growing, Yes. But at half or less the rate. The reality is, these cities decided to take a stand on their future and its is paying off at twice the rate of Cincy's efforts for their future (and this has now been the 'norm' for almost 20 years now). The sad part of all of this, Cincy really should be the one doing the best. It has the great old architecture, the scenery, the riverfront, the fortune 500 companies (double or triple most of these cities), the Delta hub, etc.... Yet with all of these advantages, its only translating into half the return of these other cities. The answer is actually simple, the business and political community doesn't have the same overall shared vision and it's now showing up in a lot of economic and quality of life stats.

Are you still searching for any thread of evidence that the markets are all crashing? No, the article said they are look to lease out the rest of the space the same way.

You forgot about the excuse that the sun decided not to shine on Cincy, only on Columbus, Indy, Atlanta, Charlotte, KC and Minneapolis. I believe that is one of the main reasons the City continues to grow slower than the US average and much slower than the cities listed above.

Great Idea. :clap:

I am telling you that his drop in leasing rates does not mean "demand is not supporting current rent numbers." It means that this one building owner made a wise move in a competitive marketplace, hence "prices attract two tenants to 600 Vine." And because I do work in the industry I can't imagine having a conversation with this owner and saying not to do this. Other building owners will not take the hit on yield and therefor will not follow this one owners lead simply because he found a savings where others may have not. He dropped rates and can maintain his yield, others can not, and therefor will not. I agree, if this is a one time event no one else will drop rental rates to compete for tenants. But what happens if they do this again for the other 370,000 square feet and other building do feel the need to protect their current tenant list and match these numbers?

Or it could mean Hertz realized that they could lower rates while still producing their desired yield. Now I am no rocket surgeon, but if I can have an occupied building by offering a lower lease rate and at the same time lower my expenses, it seems to me that building has a higher value than having held out for a higher rate while sitting on an empty building, especially in a competitive leasing market like we have in CBD. Good move if you ask me. Rental Rates to get financing means little to nothing, yield is king. I never said it wasn't a good move for the building owner! I said, it does very little for downtown if you just move people around. Nor does it do a lot of good for the other building owners if they then have to lower rates (without having a real estate tax reduction) to attract tenants. That would mean those other building would then end up with a much lower desired yield. Michael, You work in the RE industry. Are you telling mean that it good to just move people around with out increasing demand for a product and at the same time potential creating dropping rental rates and lower overall yields for downtown office space?

Very nice site. First, my comments above were based on the metro area not just the city. But, I would agree that if you draw a circle using fountain square as your radius, I would agree with that population. It takes in almost all of Mt. Adam and about the first 4 or 5 blocks of downtown Covington. Other interesting facts that come out of that info. 1 mile circle Cincy Population: 18,747 Average income: $34,200 Indy Population: 11,029 Average income: $47,269 Hamilton, OH Population: 16,793 Average income: $32,931 First, I was shocked at the income gap between the 1 mile Indy area and the 1 mile Cincy area (even with mt. adams in the data). I would say that income in downtown Indy is one reason it has such a strong retail environment and why downtown Cincy retail has not done quiet as well. Second, I was also suprised that Hamilton had almost the same population and income as the Cincy 1 mile. This is good data to have.

I hope they are new to downtown or new to the metro area. Just moving people around downtown just means you still have the same vacancy rate and employment numbers. The one big issue about lower rental rates (if it becomes widespread) is it usually means demand is not supporting current rent numbers and it may also hurt future building projects because most construction projects have to have a certain rental rate per square foot or they can't get financing. Commercial is very much like residential, if demand is low prices go down and the undercutting of your neighbors property to lease the space begins. There is a reason why the RE industry feels lower rental rates or prices of homes is not a good thing. It general hurts future projects and shows a lack of demand. With that said, if these new major leases happen and they are new to the downtown market that is a good thing.

So are these new tenants to downtown or just moving people around through dropping rental rates?

Acutally, If you look at Google there is a HUGE section of southwest Marion that is not developments because it is a major flood plain. Also Marion has two very large lakes that take up a lot of land as well. This could go on forever. The real point weather some Cincy people like to admit it or not is, the Cincy metro area really is no denser overall than Indy, Atlanta, Columbus, KC, etc... and I think the real issue is were are each city going. Right now, when it comes to construction, job growth, population growth, and many other economic indicators Cincy is falling farther behind these other cities. I am sure many of these other cities hope Cincy continues to live on what it once was, that means they have one less city to compete against for the future.

Just as a quick side note since we are talking about density. Marion County (Indianapolis) actually has more density than Hamilton County. Marion - 2,172 per square mile (403 square miles of land area) Hamilton - 2,075 per square mile (413 square miles of land area) I guess Hamilton County overall is even more suburban than Marion County.

So when you fly over Cincy, Cleveland or Columbus you don't see massive sprawl?

I can't speak about Columbus (maybe someone from Columbus can), but Indy has done NO major annexations since it because a Unigov government back in 1970 (almost 40 years ago). It is not growing it population through annexation.

I didn't say Altanta was denser, I was trying to say that it has good density compared to may cities in the north. Since Atlanta has grown by an estimate of 50,000 since the 2000 census that density has increased significately. Here some 2000 numbers (per square mile). Atlanta: 3,161 Miami: 10,160.9 (Who said the south has no extremely dense cities) Ft. Lauderdale: 4,803.1 Cincy: 3,879.8 Cleveland: 6,266.5 Dallas: 3,469.9 My main point really was that there are southern cities that can compare to midwest cities in density and in Miami's case, blow everyone out of the water except Chicago.

Not all southern cities are full of suburban sprawl. Atlanta, Ft. Lauderdale and Miami are southern cities that are very dense and getting denser.

The City of Miami is very dense in population and could compare to many NE and Midwest cities in density. I also think you have to factor in the future direction of a core city. Cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Providence, Buffalo, Detroit, etc... continue to bleed population (which continues to decrease their density numbers) while place like Altanta, Miami, Dallas are growing rapidly in their populations (which continues to increase their density numbers). Looking at the last 20 years I would say Atlanta is well on its way to becoming a more dense urban environment while places like Cleveland and Pittsburgh continue to see that density slowly erode. In the world of population and density is not so much about were you have been but were you are going.

I guess I don't consider 2 quick transfers as a big deal (did that when I lived in south Florida), since those transfers would get me from the Banks to the University. I would also say that these transfers are not the same as bus transfers. Many bus transfers have a gap of more than 1 or 2 minutes between when the bus drops you off and another bus picks you up. Also, these projects are also design to increase development, investment and tourism for the city, something a bus system general doesn't do.

Thanks for the info. So the cost might actually be a little less, but probably not a lot with current prices. I would love to see this built along with the streetcars. It would be great to see 3CDC step up and help fund this. These projects have just as much, if not more impact economically and socially on the community, than projects like fountain square.

Actually the length of the system is only about 3/4 of mile. http://www.portlandtram.org/

Tram Stats: Time from top to bottom - 3 minutes Trips per day - 1,500 Horizontal distance - 3,300 ft (about 3/4 of mile) Verticle climb - 500 ft Total finished cost - $57 million It would be much cheaper of a connection than trying to tie the two systems with some type of rail. The tram would easily keep up with streetcar movement. I would say the verticle climb in Cincy would be around 400 ft (give or take a little). This really can work. The capacity is there, and the wait between each car would only be about 3 minutes. I could be wrong, but I don't think the streetcars would be arriving at the station any quicker than that and the price tag is not bad. On top of this, you have a very unique transit system that would get a lot of tourist into OTR and other parts of Cincy.

Why not do two different streetcar systems. One for downtown and one for the University area and connect them with an aerial tram, like they have in Portland. Cincinnati is probably the only midwest city with the topography for such a system. (There are pics of it in Mr. Anderson's Portland Photos) It would make the connection easy and be a unique tourist draw at the same time. http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=13146.0 Great idea - like I said the current south terminus of the portland streetcar stops at the base of the aerial tram which carries about 25-30 people up to the hospital complex at the top of the hill (not unlike cincy). The portland aerial tram was packed with tourist too. Something like this could easliy link downtown/uptown. A fully loaded streetcar carries around 120-130, so a tram only carryin 25-30 might be a problem. Now a tram from downtown to Mt. Adams, that would be something. add a bicycle lift on sycamore and you have yourself a nice multimodal tranist system. Actually each car on the portland tram carries 79 people and there are trams out there that can carry even more. The Portland trams are not that large. So you could easily handle the load from streetcars. ALso, the Portland tram only cost around 65 to 70 million. Not a bad price to connect both streetcar systems.

Why not do two different streetcar systems. One for downtown and one for the University area and connect them with an aerial tram, like they have in Portland. Cincinnati is probably the only midwest city with the topography for such a system. (There are pics of it in Mr. Anderson's Portland Photos) It would make the connection easy and be a unique tourist draw at the same time. http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=13146.0

Better hurry, it looks like someone else may beat you to it.