Mr. Anderson

A Delta-Northwest merger would shift strength of hubs By Jim Tharpe The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 01/31/08 More international flights from Atlanta. A smaller role for the Memphis airport and a bigger one for airports in Detroit, Salt Lake City and possibly Minneapolis. Those are just some of the implications if Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines merges with Minnesota-based Northwest Airlines, a marriage many analysts think is likely to happen soon, even as some politicians have vowed to vigorously oppose it. A Delta-Northwest merger would create the nation's largest airline — possibly the biggest in the world — and could have long-range consequences for many existing hubs as well as routes now controlled by the two carriers. "It would truly, truly be 'THE' U.S. global carrier," said Minnesota-based airline consultant Terry Tripper. "It would be No. 1 to Europe. It would be very close to No. 1 to Asia. And it would be very big in Latin America, Mexico and the Caribbean." Full story at http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/delta/stories/2008/01/31/hubs_0131.html

Did this guy sleep thru 2007?

I'll be honest...you might be the first person I've heard suggest that Clifton doesn't have enough upscale housing. Clifton (in and around Ludlow) doesn't have any "new" housing to speak of - there are plenty of apartments suitable for students and fledgling families. Some "new" upscale units (in the form of mixed use of course) would be a plus on Ludlow. There are some apartments that were renovated into new "upscale" condos along Ludlow called Parkside - but I think that's about it.

I think this should be qualified by adding sub- because this area is a far cry from anything remotely urban. This project is Liberty Twnship's effort to create jobs (and taxes) to pay for all the exurban single-family mess that they've created.

Ex-country club fight not over Amberley Village votes to appeal BY STEVE KEMME | [email protected] AMBERLEY VILLAGE - The controversy over whether the former Crest Hills Country Club is developed or remains a golf course or a park might be decided by the Ohio Supreme Court. Click on link for article. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071212/NEWS01/712120336

Must be something in the chocolate... :-D Seriously, I'm sure they have their fair share of sprawl and other ills but when you view these picks and realize that they haven't abandoned their towns like we have and continuously building sprawl it's no wonder that the swiss always rank highly in terms of quality of life, income,etc. they don't squander their national wealth by continuously building junk like we do. Nice pics.

Sheriff wants illegal alien ballot issue Wednesday, November 14, 2007 Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones wants a federation to initiate a state ballot issue that would force legislators to pass legislation on illegal alien issues. In a letter sent to state legislative leaders today, Jones expressed concern about the lack of activity on illegal alien issues and said he could contact the Federation for Immigration Reform to see if it was interested in initiating illegal alien reform as a state-wide ballot issue. Jones sent letters to Ohio House Speaker John Husted and Senate President Bill Harris asking them to join state Rep. Courtney Combs and Sen. Gary Cates in trying to get legislation passed on the issue. MORE: http://www.journal-news.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/11/14/hjn111507sheriffletter.html

Where Cleveland went wrong It's too easy to blame the city's housing collapse on Rust-belt economics. How bad government and greed made it one of the nation's foreclosure capitals. By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer November 13 2007: 3:16 PM EST CLEVELAND (CNNMoney.com) -- As the Treasurer of Cuyahoga County in Ohio, Jim Rokakis spends a lot of his time trying to deal with Cleveland's foreclosure crisis. When asked recently just how bad it is, Rokakis unfurled a six-foot by four-foot Cleveland city plot map. Each lot was covered with dots of red ink where foreclosed homes filled the plots. From a few feet away, the map looked heavily freckled, while some neighborhoods nearly melted together in crimson masses. Foreclosures hit Cleveland early and hard. By the summer of 2007, it had four of the top 21 ZIP codes for foreclosure filings in the United States. According to RealtyTrac, the city's 44105 ZIP, known as the Slavic Village, was the hardest hit U.S. community with 783 filings. ... More at: http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/12/real_estate/Cleveland_foreclosure_factors/index.htm?postversion=2007111315

The latest from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Follow link for graphics. Regional Activity The Cincinnati Metropolitan Statistical Area November 8, 2007 By Tim Dunne and Kyle Fee The Cincinnati-Middleton Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) comprises fifteen counties in three states, including five counties in Ohio, seven counties in Kentucky, and three counties in Indiana. It is the twenty-fifth-largest MSA in the country, with a population of 2.1 million people in 2006. Cincinnati’s distribution of employment across industries is quite similar to the nation’s as a whole, with a few important exceptions. Comapred to the national economy, a greater share of Cincinnati’s workforce is employed in professional and business services and manufacturing, and a substantially smaller share is employed in the information and government sectors. Cincinnati’s employment has grown less than the national average since the last business cycle peak in March 2001, but it has significantly outpaced overall state employment growth. During the 2002 recession, Cincinnati experienced less employment loss than the rest of the country as well as Ohio, and its employment rebounded relatively quickly. By the end of 2002, Cincinnati’s employment had recovered to pre-recession levels, whereas U.S. and Ohio employment levels continued to fall well into 2003. However, since late 2005, Cincinnati’s employment level has been relatively flat, as has Ohio’s, while the nation’s has continued to expand steadily. Looking at the changes across broad economic sectors, Cincinnati’s weak employment growth relative to the nation’s can be explained largely by weaker growth in the nonmanufacturing sector. Cincinnati’s nonmanufacturing sector expanded about 2 percentage points more slowly than the nation’s since late 2005. On the other hand, the pattern of growth in manufacturing employment was quite similar in Cincinnati and the country as a whole. The MSA’s manufacturing employment showed a steep decline of 16.7 percent over the period, while the country’s fell 17.4 percent. Breaking down employment growth into industry components provides a more detailed look at Cincinnati’s labor market. Positive employment growth for the MSA was driven largely by two sectors of the economy—the education, health, leisure, government and other services sector, and the financial, information and business services sector. From 2001 to 2006, these sectors grew at average annual rates of 1.5 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively. Not surprisingly, Cincinnati’s manufacturing sector acted as a drag on employment growth, showing declines in all six years. A year-over-year employment growth comparison provides a snapshot of the employment situation from September 2006 to September 2007. During this period, the nation’s total employment increased 1.2 percent, whereas Cincinnati’s total employment was essentially flat, rising only 0.1 percent. The MSA lost goods-producing jobs faster than the nation due to particularly sharp declines in manufacturing. Cincinnati’s service sector added jobs at a much slower rate than the nation as a whole (0.5 percent versus 1.7 percent). This lack of job creation in the service sector has been at the heart of slow employment growth in some of Ohio’s major cities. Cleveland (on the) Rocks, a recent Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Economic Commentary, looks at this issue in terms of Cleveland’s employment growth. A look at unemployment rates over time reveals that unemployment levels in the Cincinnati area were below the U.S. average for quite a while—1990 until late 2004. (In fact, between 1997 and 2001, Cincinnati’s unemployment rate was under 4 percent—a very low rate.) However, since the 2002 recession,the area's unemployment rate has generally hovered between 4.5 percent and 6 percent, and recently, they surpassed the nation’s. In August 2007, the area’s unemployment rate stood at 5.0 percent, 0.3 percent above the U.S. rate. As with many other Midwestern MSAs, Cincinnati’s population growth has lagged the nation’s over the last several decades. While the MSA’s population grew 24.5 percent from 1970 through 2006, this growth fell well short of the nation’s 47 percent. Still, the Cincinnati metro area has grown much faster than the state of Ohio as a whole, where the population has grown only 7.7 percent over the last 36 years. A look at income trends shows that Cincinnati’s personal per capita income has tracked the U.S. rate closely over the last several decades. Compared to Ohio, Cincinnati’s per capita personal income growth has been somewhat stronger than the state’s, especially since the mid 1990s. In 2006, Cincinnati’s per capita personal income was $36,366—very close to the U.S. average ($36,629) and higher than Ohio’s ($33,217). http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/trends/2007/1107/02regact.cfm

Editorial from Citybeat Bite the Hand That Doesn't Feed BY John Fox | Posted 10/03/2007 What better represents Cincinnati: the Bengals on Monday Night Football or the MidPoint Music Festival? Luckily for us Cincinnati is a big enough city that this isn't an either/or question. We can have both, even on the same weekend, and both can be successful. Click on link for article. http://citybeat.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A141947

Speaking of rail/transit coverage - from Opinion Section of Enquirer. :whip: Group behind transit study has rail agenda BY JIM EMERSON Forbes magazine lists Cincinnati as the sixth most expensive city for commuters, with "annual expenses devoted to transportation to work" equaling 20 percent of household expenses ("Commuting expense? We're No. 6," Aug. 20). "Forget taking the train," laments Forbes, "there is no commuter rail system." When I read this in The Enquirer something didn't seem right. We use our cars to get to lots of places, not just work, so car payments and maintenance will not go away with light rail. Gasoline costs come nowhere close to 20 percent of household expenses. Click on link for article. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070829/EDIT01/708290311/1090/EDIT

Ha.ha ..that must be one heavy chunk of copper :-D

News: Alien Removal Proposed immigration legislation plays on fears BY Margo Pierce | Posted 08/08/2007 Proposed laws targeting immigrants will lead them to fear police, according to Marilyn Zayas-Davis, immigration lawyer. A bill in the Ohio House of Representatives would set significant new requirements for law enforcement and businesses, with a mind to making it more difficult for undocumented immigrants to live and work in the state. The bill, proposed by State Rep. Courtney Combs (R-Hamilton), is so new that it hasn't yet been assigned a legislative number. But advocates for immigrants are already criticizing the bill, saying it will feed a growing animosity to newcomers, encourage racial profiling and create cumbersome requirements for business and law enforcement. The bill would make it a felony to knowingly transport or "conceal" an undocumented immigrant and would regulate the issuing of government ID cards. Other provisions include: · a requirement for businesses that have state contracts to verify the immigration status of job applicants; · a requirement for law enforcement and prisons to verify the immigration status of those who are arrested; and · a presumption that undocumented immigrants are flight risks and should be denied bond. MORE: http://citybeat.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A140747

Cincinnati schools need big levy BY BEN FISCHER | [email protected] Predicting a “devastating” financial crisis within a year without new tax dollars, Cincinnati Public Schools Treasurer Jonathan Boyd on Thursday recommended a 10-mill emergency levy for the November ballot. If the district cannot pass a levy by the end of the upcoming school year, Boyd said, it will be faced with a $79 million budget gap in 2008-09 – and the gap would grow from there. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070802/NEWS01/308020057/-1/back01

Jail tax vote headed to ballot BY JESSICA BROWN | [email protected] It looks like those who wanted a Hamilton County sales tax increase on the November ballot will get their wish. The Board of Elections has verified that more than 38,000 of the more than 50,000 signatures turned in by petitioners are valid. Click on link for article. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070802/NEWS01/308020040&GID=zDYy3zzj3cJZAJT2N53rB30Ps3J23dnJfOe/+4q8TGg%3D

Judge orders Cincinnati to pay fees Restaurant owners awarded $335,000 in eminent domain case BY STEVE KEMME | [email protected] Cincinnati must pay $335,000 in attorney and witness fees to the owners of two fast-food restaurants in Clifton Heights who successfully challenged Cincinnati's right to use eminent domain. That's the ruling by Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Ralph Winkler, whose written decision included a stern scolding of Cincinnati for the way it tried to take the owners' properties. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070731/NEWS01/707310387

The study seems pretty thorough, just from glancing over it. We also cannot forget Norwood. Norwood, a city within the City of Cincinnati will not be added into the census numbers (of course our MSA though). Norwoods adds over 20,000 residents and has a whopping 6,956.5 people per square mile! It drives me nuts when people compare Cincinnati's population to other cities and leave out Norwood. Don't forget about St. Bernard and Elmwood Place -- that's another 8,500 people.

Hmmm...Didn't we read that Smitherman is in league with the COAST folks i.e. the guys that helped put the kibosh on the Metro Move light rail initiative. That can't be very Green!

July 3rd & 4th Events in Northside July 3rd 6pm to 1am Northside offers up an event as unique as Northside itself: A pre-4th of July Rock ‘n Roll Carnival! Held the night before the now infamous annual Northside 4th of July Parade, this one of a kind Cincinnati event will be an experience to be enjoyed by all. Mysterious, bizarre and bold: Cincinnati’s only Rock ‘N Roll Carnival! Hoffner Park will be transformed into a festive playground of great Rock ‘N Roll, Fire Breathers, Jugglers, Magicians, a Burlesque Show and a carnival side show featuring Sword Swallowers and a Bed of Nails! Also available will be: Beer sold at the pavilion Food by The Hideaway, Boswell Alley, Madisons Market, and NYPD Pizza Works by Local artists PERFORMANCES BY: Event Proclamation by MC Soft J (of the Spurzz) The Blue Rock Boys 6pm-6:40pm Straw Boss 7pm-7:40pm The Hiders 8pm-8:40pm Bad Veins 9pm-9:40pm Pickled Brothers Sideshow 9:55pm-10-20pm Buffalo Killers 10:40pm-11:20pm Cloven Hoof Theatre featuring Barnyard Burlesque 11:35pm-12:10am Banderas 12:30am-1am OFF-STAGE SIDESHOW PERFORMANCES BY: Magic by Dion 6:30pm Pickled Brother Juggler 7pm Incendium Fire Arts 9:40pm July 4th Parade and Festival Parade starts at Hamilton and Ashtree at noon and travels south on Hamilton Ave. to Hoffner Park. Festival at Hoffner Park 1:30pm-4:30pm DAY OF THE 4TH PERFORMANCES BY: Baoku & the Image Afro-Beat 1:30pm-2:30pm Comet Bluegrass Allstars 2:45pm-3:30pm Jibri 3:45pm-4:30pm Educational art activities for kids Taste of Northside Demonstration by Cincinnati Fire Dept Water slide and misting tent - It’s Hot! Parade awards at 2:30 at band tent Beer Garden at the Pavilion http://www.myspace.com/northside3and4

ODOT chief: State has highway projects planned it cannot afford BY MARGARET A. MCGURK | [email protected] Ohio has promised $1.2 billion of road projects it cannot afford, the new head of the Ohio Department of Transportation told local officials and business leaders Friday. James G. Beasley noted the deficit is another $7 billion for projects without financial commitments, including the Brent Spence Bridge that carries Interstates 71 and 75 across the Ohio River. Early estimates top $3 billion for that project alone. Aside from the state's own financial pinch, the federal gas-tax trust fund that for decades provided most highway money has nowhere near enough coming any more to pay for all the work states are requesting. ........ http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070630/NEWS01/706300418/1056/COL02

Free movies playing this summer on Fountain Square Cincinnati Business Courier - 9:56 AM EDT Friday, June 29, 2007 From now through September, the giant screen over Fountain Square will play two free movies on Saturday nights. The idea is to make the square a place for affordable family fun, Fountain Square Managing Director Bill Donabedian said in a news release. "Think of this as a free drive-in without the cars," he said. This week's movies are "The Incredibles" and "Batman," and the weekend of July 21 will offer a Harry Potter double feature in honor of the release date of the seventh book in the popular series. Beach Weekend is set for Sept. 1, with "Finding Nemo" and "Jaws." Movies start at 8 p.m. each Saturday, and the Square's snack bar will be open during the showings. More information is available at www.myfountainsquare.com. http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/06/25/daily54.html?jst=b_ln_hl

Double WOW!

A combination of quality companies, plus good starting salaries and affordable living, helped Cincinnati to an 18th-place ranking on Forbes magazine's recent "Best Cities for Young Professionals" list. Forbes ranked 40 cities according to criteria such as: where graduates of elite universities locate; where a city's businesses rank on Forbes' "best big businesses" and best "small businesses" lists; which cities had the most young and single people; and starting salaries versus cost of living. Read full article here: http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/06/25/daily44.html

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.

Leis: Don't sign jail tax petitions Cincinnati Business Courier - 3:17 PM EDT Monday, June 25, 2007 by Lucy MaySenior staff reporter Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis on Monday asked an Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce gathering to support commissioners' efforts to increase the county sales tax to fund a new jail. Click on link for article. http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/06/25/daily10.html?jst=b_ln_hl