surfohio

Sort of -- the existing Parkview in its old environs. This sucks. Why kill the places with character? There's so much open space that I don't understand the need to ruin the good that is already there. But then again, the new hood is not for me. It's for those d-bag looking people like this.

^ I hope this gets Lakewood on that crane watch map lol. Look out Austin!!!!

I'd take that over Dave's, which looks like a 1980's ghetto building.

^ There wasn't a formal submission process. FS group just had their act together and, unlike every other developer or SDSU, they were prepared to go forward if and when the Chargers left. They won over the mayor with their self funded plan that's almost too good to be true - it's transit-oriented development, it cleans up the property, it solves SDSU's stadium issue, it preserves park space, gives much needed residential, the people get pro sports, it has public support....and then the ballot initiative is blocked by city council lol. Now it could very well be vacant lot for 10 years. Well, SD's dysfunction does help FCC. I just wish both cities the best.

So I take it you don't want SD to get a MLS franchise lol. :-D I would rather see Cincy get in, but who the others are to be included I have don't care. I have a friend in SD who has followed this and has said the development deal does not require that the soccer stadium must be built, even with that they might not be granted a franchise. For the sake of SDSU football I hope a new stadium gets built somewhere in that footprint, cause where else would they play, PETCO Park? Nah, if they don't build a stadium by 2024 the property reverts back to the city. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/growth-development/sd-fi-soccerplan-20170217-story.html SDSU can play at Petco in the short term but it's not seen by anyone as a solution. I sure hope the good people of Cincinnati are spared the melodrama and political b.s. we have in SD.

So I take it you don't want SD to get a MLS franchise lol.

Oh I wish the Cleveland planning meetings were live on the internet.... That would be awesome to watch. And they could get the security guys from THe Jerry Springer show - I'm sure they're available!

San Diego's MLS stadium plan was to house SDSU football. Does an ownership group even exist in San Diego? Yep. FS Investors ($$$$) have already qualified from MLS to apply for expansion. Landon Donovan is their pitch guy. The holdup is that FS wisely hit the ground running as soon as the Chargers bolted. Other developers who were asleep at the wheel swayed city council to delay a public vote that would have certainly given FS the green light to develop the stadium site with no public money. SD's situation is indeed an interesting contrast to FCC. http://www.soccercitysd.com/ I heard that the fine print in the development of the Qualcomm site did not even require a soccer stadium (that SDSU football needs to use also). Was the city thinking about just giving away that real estate for next to nothing? Apparently the cost to develop the area is astronomical due to the fact it's a flood plain and there's a bevy of pre-existing issues with soil contamination . So it would be akin to a city selling a crumbling old mansion for $1 to an able and resourceful buyer. The "leadership" at SD State was unhappy with 1. the small size of the proposed stadium and 2. certain rules the MLS would have imposed regarding use that were seen as too rigid and unfair. Is SD's expansion bid dead? Maybe for now. But I do believe it's a no-brainer for MLS to have both Cincy and SD in the fold.

San Diego's MLS stadium plan was to house SDSU football. Does an ownership group even exist in San Diego? Yep. FS Investors ($$$$) have already qualified from MLS to apply for expansion. Landon Donovan is their pitch guy. The holdup is that FS wisely hit the ground running as soon as the Chargers bolted. Other developers who were asleep at the wheel swayed city council to delay a public vote that would have certainly given FS the green light to develop the stadium site with no public money. SD's situation is indeed an interesting contrast to FCC. http://www.soccercitysd.com/

It was fun skimming through this. Also interesting to see Gary IN and Dubai UAE gunning for title of worst place ever. Travelers of Reddit, where do you NEVER want to go again?

Cleveland, once called the mistake on the lake, is on the cusp of cool By Fran Golden July 16, 2017 6:00 AM I am sitting on the deck of a once-derelict building that is now the city's trendiest microbrewery, watching the sun set over old smokestacks, the arches of early 20th century bridges and a river that once burned, and I am thinking that something intriguing is happening in Cleveland. The city is getting, uh, cool. Cleveland? Yes, Cleveland. Count me among the most surprised to see amazing stuff happening in the Rust Belt. I fell for a local guy and moved here a few years ago, a baby boomer who spent 30 years in Boston, which in my mind is the center of the universe. http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-cleveland-20170716-story.html

San Diego's MLS stadium plan was to house SDSU football.

Glad to see the venue get some much needed investment. I'm cautiously holding out hope that they suc ceed without emulating the stuffy, overly corporate feel exuded by House of Blues. Man if I had the money I'd but up a boutique hotel right on site, just like Swingos. Each show would be a festival-type event. That's how you nurture a music culture. I'd lose a fortune, but I'd do it in the funnest way possible.

Well, I was resigned years ago that I'd be cruising the completed Towpath Trail in one of these babies.

Some insight on reddit by u/mattkaybe. It's been said on here multiple times, but I'll say it again: Nippert (or PBS, or "insert your own non-soccer stadium solution here") does not work as a long-term home for an MLS team. Even if MLS were to magically rescind their demand that all bids come with a soccer-specific stadium -- which they will not do (and, if they did, cities like San Diego & St. Louis would vault to the top of the list) -- the economics of soccer in the US simply don't work in a non-team controlled building. The first thing you have to understand about MLS is that it simply isn't as popular, nationally, as any of the other major sports. When you talk about economics in the NFL or the NBA, the leagues make billions of dollars in revenue on their TV deals alone. That money is divided up evenly among the teams . Each NFL team makes roughly $225 million dollars before ticket one or jersey one is sold. Under the NBA's deal, each team makes roughly $100 million dollars from the national TV deal alone (they each get to ink their own local deal on top of this) before any tickets are sold. MLS? Their last TV deal went for $90 million -- which means each team makes roughly $4 million (plus whatever they negotiate locally for a local TV rights deal, but these deals are incredibly small compared to other sports). What does that mean? It means that MLS is more reliant on outside revenue streams, beyond TV, than any other major American sport. An MLS team can't behave like the Cincinnati Bengals, which can cash a huge TV check every year to cover all player expenses and still have tens of millions left over for other expenses. It's also worth noting, at this point, that the likelihood of MLS ever "cashing in" with a huge NBA/NFL/MLB national TV deal of their own is incredibly remote. The business model of televised sports (especially cable televised sports) is currently dying. Networks like ESPN, TNT, and Fox Sports paid billions of dollars in rights fees for these sports to, in part, justify large per-household subscriber fees for their channels on cable and satellite. That was great when everyone was signing up for Time Warner or DirecTV, but people now have alternatives for entertainment that don't require a cable subscription -- and the cable industry is hemmorhaging subscribers daily. ESPN can't afford to hand out more billion dollar agreements because it's primary source of revenue -- the approximately $10 per month every person with cable pays for ESPN (regardless of whether or not they watch a single minute of ESPN) -- is drying up. MLS is a growing league, but it missed the window for getting a huge payday in the sports rights fee arms race. And, unfortunately, running an MLS team isn't exactly cheap. Moving from USL to MLS will mean an escalation in player costs: the MLS salary cap is currently $3.9 million. Not so bad, right? Well, the $3.9 million doesn't count "Designated Players" under MLS's salary structure. If you don't follow MLS, a DP is basically a player that can be paid an amount in excess of what would normally put a team over the salary cap. These are the "superstars" on your MLS team that get brought in from overseas or command large contracts to prevent them from going overseas, and each team gets to have 3 of them on their roster. Our friend Bastian Schweinsteiger from Chicago, for example, is a DP that's making over $5m in guaranteed money by himself. An FC Cincinnati side being promoted to MLS is going to be expected to go out and sign talent to allow them to compete on Day 1 -- Orlando City (our "model" in this process) went out and paid Kaka $7m for just one of their DP spots. This is just player salary, mind you; other expenses the team will have to incur include increased travel budgets (no more bus rides), higher salaries for coaching and assistants, maintaining a practice facility, and that little business of running a full youth academy. The TL;DR at this point: Moving to MLS is going to be really expensive, relative to what the team is doing at USL. Not a shock, though -- it''s a lot cheaper to run the Louisville Bats than it is to run the Cincinnati Reds. And we know that TV revenue isn't going to come close to covering the shortfalls. So, this is where a stadium comes in. In order to make ends meet, an MLS FC Cincinnati is, quite literally, going to need to sell and monetize every aspect of the club -- and that simply isn't possible at Nippert Stadium. Let's just look at the "big" aspects and see where it doesn't work: Naming Rights: UC (shortsightedly, but that's a different bag of worms entirely) agreed a long time ago to never rename Nippert Stadium. They also agreed to never rename the actual field itself (named after a former AD at the school). There is, as best anyone can figure, nothing that can be done about this. Naming rights to your average professional sports stadium easily run over $1m per year, and go even higher. That's revenue directly out of FC Cincinnati's pocket every year. Concession & Merchandise: Nippert stadium doesn't have the ability to offer premium concessions, where most teams make the bulk of their food money these days (it's no coincdence that every ballpark in America is upgrading from hot dogs and popcorn). For one, there's no ability to actually cook food inside the stadium, and for two there's no additional space available to build new concessions. Similarly, there's limited ability to offer merchandise for sale on matchday. Most, if not all, teams wants to have their team shop on premsies to get the captive audience that comes for matches each week. There's simply no space to build a team shop on Nippert's footprint. Again, all of those lost sales on matchday is money out of FCC's pocket. Seating Reconfiguration: Nippert's all-bench seating is fine for a minor-league soccer club, but when prices go up are people really going to be OK with metal bleachers for a premium price? Chairback seating is almost a must at any modern stadium facility (outside of a supporters section, where safe standing should be in place), and Nippert simply cannot accommodate it without massive restructuring. And, that's assuming you'd get UC to go along with it, given that chairback seating would significantly reduce capacity (eating into their bottom line for football sales). Non-Soccer Event Hosting: Clubs have the ability to monteize their own stadiums when they aren't in use by hosting things like tournaments, other sporting events (college football bowl games, in some cases), concerts, etc. Nippert stadium doesn't work for these events because it's also in use by the university on a daily basis, if not by the football team, than by student organizations and activities. I've described Nippert in previous posts as "Death by 1,000 paper cuts" -- some of the cuts are big (naming rights is a HUGE loss), some are small (not being able to sell a premium sandwich v. a brattwurst), but they all keep adding up. Financially, there isn't a workable model that leads you to FC Cincinnati surviving, as a successful MLS team, in a stadium like Nippert. Even if you could, in some fantasy universe, buy the building and "control it," you'd still need to solve the problem of Jimmy Nippert's name and the physics of fitting more facilities onto an already completely full footprint. Absent solutions to ALL of these issues, I don't see any way the math works there. And, at the end of the day, that's why MLS requires teams to own their own buildings and control all revenue streams coming in -- because they don't want to admit teams that can't pay their bills and/or can't run compettive teams. I understand we're all new at this, and that a lot of people don't follow MLS or really look at MLS economics -- but I encourage everyone to read up on it. I think when you do, you'll understand just how horridly uninformed people like Todd Portune really are.

Found it :-)

Speaking of Marlins, this week I heard more than one media member joking about how tacky their stadium is. It sounds like it has all the aura of a Vegas casino. Then again, what do you expect when your team song is by Creed:

^ That's bold. Surprisingly so. I absolutely predict that people who complain that Ginn Sr. and Smith are setting a bad example for children will not hesitate to get drunk off their ass on a beer named after Bernie Kosar.

Cyclists cause drivers a special kind of road rage. The situation of car vs. bike creates something of a superiority complex for the car. A few years ago I was biking home from a late at night after work. I was waiting at a light on Superior at Public Square when a few close-call speeding cars making turns got me nervous. I'm in the middle of the road feeling like a bowling pin. For my safety I ran the red light before any more cars could get near me. At the next block a guy slows beside me in his car and is livid, berating me for breaking the law and he's about to have a complete nervous breakdown. But then after he finally realizes I'm not going to fight him or something, he peels out and over the Detroit-Superior bridge easily going twice the speed limit lol. That's logic for you.

Like everyone, I immediately liked the Carnegie tower as THE option. However the Casto building is starting to grow on me. It looks unique and soulful to me. But hands down Carnegie's layout is really sweet. Check out how they open up the side of the Curtis building. If Casto wins out, that's certainly a design element they should steal from Carnegie.

Sweet plan. Hope to see it happen.

Those places are great, but North Coast Harbor should be a gathering place for people of all ages that want to congregate without having go to a bar or spend hundreds of dollars at a show.

Agree! My only complaint is the Rock Hall and Science Center should be the life of the party on a Friday night - lively and full of people, not sleepy and dormant. Hopefully that can change soon.

Heady stuff. Computer vision uncovers predictors of physical urban change Computer vision algorithms were able to find predictors of urban improvement, using millions of Google Street View images to measure how urban areas are changing, consistent with current theories, suggesting that such algorithms can be used to explore the dynamics of urban change with other methods. We find that both education and population density predict improvements in neighborhood infrastructure, in support of theories of human capital agglomeration. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/05/1619003114.full