Jeff

Around 1988, 89, 90 or so 4th Street was sort of an art gallery district. A number of those storefronts on the westernmost block of 4th where gallery spaces....i guess the idea was to develope lofts above them, or more galleries. For some reason this scene petered out and the street is pretty dead now.

Maybe, but a lot of that is going on-base. The market is really spin-off from consultants and subcontractors to the on-base activity...and the research park is competing with spec office bldgs closer to the base. The interesting thing to stay tuned for are public-private partnerships that might move things that are on-base off-base, by moving the fence.

Nice corner.

Oh, I don't know about the Columbus zoning or density regulations. I was just commenting that Lexington isn't a fair comparison example due to that growth control policy that had a big effect on the local housing market and what was built, as well as having the side-effect of encouraging retention and remodeling within the city. Combine that with in-migration, a real-estate investment boom generated by Eastern Kentucky coal money, and a big state university and the situation in Lexington is totally unlike Cincy (or any other city in Ohio). Incidentally, the Lexington urban services area was not driven by good planning or anything like that, but was intended to protect the horse farms, as the equine industry was a big contributor to the local economy. Good editorial, and also a challenge to work together as these are all peices of the big picture. If the schools are failing (I dont know if they are or not), perhaps Mallory should recruit and run his own slate for the school board, with a mandate to turn the situation around. One good thing about crime thats been reported elsewhere on this board is whats happening in OTR, with those citizen patrols, and the county jumping in the help patrol the neighborhood....which is a good sign of city-county cooperation on a crime issue.

Indianapolis and Lexington didn't just annex, they merged their cities and surrounding county, and this happend in the very early 1970s, which was over 30 years ago. Whats more, for most of those 30 years Lexington had a fairly strict growth control policy, which is one reason their older parts of town remained viable, due to concentration of population within the urban service area.

Its not so ridiculous to do a comparison between Columbus and Cincinnati as they are both in Ohio, thus are governed by the same state Consitution, legislation and body of law dealing with local governments, annexation, and so forth. In any case the comparison would, at this point, be more historical, as to the politics and decisions that led Columbus to sucessfully annex areas of postwar suburbia and Cincinnati to not.

This "restauranitzation" of Tower Place sounds like what happened to The Galleria in Louisville, thought that was sort of a planned all-at-once thing, transforming the Galleria into Fourth Street Live. Whats happening with Tower Place seems to be more evolutionary, with some retail still there, and nearby (Saks and that downtown Macys.

I think there is still a TJ Maxx in there. Wasnt the Express for Men the old Structures. I remember when that opened..that was sort of a fun mens store. Architectural theme throughout.

Some pix look like West Third before they remodelled it for that Wright-Dunbar thing.... East St Louis waterfront. There's no there there.

Driving through the Dublin area on that US 33 expressway and the Cols beltway this weekend...that would be good Ikea country, too.

yeah, that big sod farm next to the Jesus. Someone should photoshop the Ikea logo in between the Jesus' outstreched hands.

Tell me more about this pretzel festival.

The new Cocos doesn't look quite as hip as the old Cocos. But they have a parking lot now. I didn't know this place stopped showing movies as early as the start of the talkies. Wow. The guy whos organizing the paint project is the same guy who is restoring the old Edgar House, just off Wayne. @@@@@@@@@ Interesting about the demolition of Roosevelt. Maybe time to take some pix of it before it comes down.

Those graphics Dffly posted makes me think Cincy is the likely choice. From what I recall of the Chicago one, Indy is within the Chicago delivery area for Ikea, so the larger circles are probably the max in distance for their market area. And a site off of I-75 or I-71 would be where they would be going, or someplace visible from the beltway. Union Centre would be my put, but someplace of of I-71 would work to.

You should read the comments on the Dayton Arcade, or just the comments in general at the Dayton Daily News online forum to really appreciate some hard core negativity and bad attitudes as well as out and out racism. It is really kind of amazing, and explains alot about the failure of the Dayton area.

My favorite town in Montgomery County (Miamisburg is close, too). The Germans here came from Pennsylvania, not Germany. Founded in 1814 it was somwhat late after places like Centerville and Miamisburg. Set in the Twin Creek Valley: Lutheran church tower in the valley....marks the townsite The old VFD is now home to the local newspaper (which also serves nearby Farmersville) The downtown is sort on two or three streets. This is one of them. Big bldg on the left is the Masons Lodge on the second floor Small town movie theatre, still in operation: Neogothic Odd Fellows Hall The trees obscure these old rowhouses, which are quite nice. Log house with new chimney Built the year Illinois became a state, 1818, and only 4 years after the founding of the village, the Florentine Hotel is perhaps one of the oldest commercial buildings standing in Montgomery County. There used to be a bar and restaurant in it, where bluegrass bands played in the 1980s. I think its closed now. Sidestreets and vignettes of Germantown...plenty of houses with porches. Very well landscaped yards here...the church in the backround used to the United Brethren. This was the church the Wright Brothers' father joined after a split in the UB congregation in Dayton. Orville and Wilbur left too, but didn't join this church, nor any other. "Pleasantville" Some scenes from the outskirts... The old mill. A bike path starts here and will eventually connect to the Germantown Reserve and Twin Creeks metropark The old mansion on the west end of town. This was built by a distiller The covered bridge, wich is really in town, but on the east edge. It was built of steel and made in Dayton. This towns big industry in the 19th century was tobacco. They grew on the farms around town, and rolled it into cigars in town. This was also an industry in Dayton back then. Another interesting feature is that the orginal plat had these diagonal alleys meeting in mid-block squares. Some of these are still in use, though probably not worth taking pictures of. It is sort of tough to do this place justice. Best to just visit it. Germantown has avoided too much sprawl and is still set in open country, but last time I've been there I'm seeing more things going up outside of town, on the Dayton side, including a new strip center.

I am really into how Hamilton really is a small city. This place is just so much like Aurora or Elgin, out in the Fox River Valley outside of Chicago. True small cities with their own distinct neighborhoods and such. Hamilton is so much like that. This was a great tour, man. I think I know vaguely where this neighborhood is at.

Ollies Trolley, using that prefab trolly diner thing. The only other surviving version like that that I know of is in Louisville. There is an "indoor" Ollies Trolley in Washington DC Ollies was a fast food franchise venture by the developer of KFC and former Kentucky governor John Y Brown Jr. " John Y. Brown Jr. didn't invent Ollie Burgers. Kentucky's former governor and Col. Sanders' star-maker found Ollie Gleichenhaus cooking burgers at his restaurant in Miami Beach. Brown ate five burgers, suggested turning the concept into a fast-food franchise and said he could make Ollie a colonel, too, according to "Hamburgers and Fries" by John T. Edge (Putnam's, 2005). "We ain't going to do nothing unless you make me a five-star general," Gleichenhaus told Brown, according to Edge. Gleichenhaus invented the Ollie Burger, complete with 23 seasonings and special sauce. Brown invented the Trolleys, and plunked them on street corners across the country, at least for a few years in the mid-'70s and '80s". (I thought the orginal Ollies was in NYC or Brooklyn and was in a real trolley. Miami Beach? Oh well.) (More on the Louisville Ollie's at this link (apparently they are still using the orginal sauce recipe). One thing I remember about Ollies Trolley (the original chain) was that the burgers where medium rare ..sometimes more rare than that! ...and the fries where spicey. But I digress. I really like these local street food pix. Good to see that!

^ dont forget Fountain Square News. Check out their international section if you are in the neighborhood somteime.

That actually could be a plus for downtown.

Welcome to metro Dayton. I'd love to see that study. I wonder if its published anywhere, or online. I can see that sorting process happen here in the Centerville/Washington Township area. The houses built here in the late 1940s and 1950s where not necessarily that large, but as this has become an upper middle class area the values are higher here now, and new construction is more upscale than what was built here 40 to 50 years ago. This has even led to a few "teardowns", where a 1950s ranch is torn down for one of those supersized houses one sees in the newer plats. I've seen at least two examples of this in the Centerville area.

well, I'm impressed at how techincally adept these kids are,...for a 15 year old to put out a website and animations and all, and here I am still trying to figure out powerpoint. I am in a similar position as I supported the war too. Yet I am hardley a Bush supporter, and one can certainly question the execution of this war.

Their is rumored to be another CDs worth of Wilco/Billy Bragg material on that Woody Guthrie collaboration, but it hasnt been released, nor are their any boots available either as far as I know. A good Woody Guthrie tribute/cover CD is one I picked up years ago. A bunch of Austin singer/songwriters did this live gig at a place called La Zona Rosa,doing covers. Some pretty good versions on that, esp. of his "Pretty Boy Floyd".

That stretch of Main, south of the Hamilton County Courthouse, plus nearby streets like Court, is one of my favorite parts of downtown Cincy. It just has a neat funky vibe going on there, though it seems to be losing the poorer population with the gentrification thing. There is a greengrocer, a neat little tie and shirt shop (or used to be) and the great Ohio Bookshop for used books on Main. There used to be some interesting things on Court too, but they closed.

That is pretty amazing news to this former northern Californian. Codys was a real insitution, a great indy bookstore (and they branched out selling graphics too). Telegraph Avenue was legendary. It started at Sproul Plaza and the Sather Gate, famous in one of Alan Ginsbergs poems..Sather Gate Illumination. Sproul was the flahspoint of the Free Speech Movement that kicked off the 1960s student protests...and Telegraph Avenue was the epicenter of all this, too. True about Telegraph Avenue having pandhandlers and crazy people. It was that way in the 1980s when I visited. But it had a lot of shops and stuff too, sort geared to the students/bohemian crowd. A bit like McMillan up by UC, or maybe a big like Ludlow in Clifton, too. The situation must have gotten worse as UC Berkley had a pretty liberal student body, or was reputed to. But, man o man sorry to hear about Codys closing!!!