Cincy1

I love the quote from Kilburn, who was the idiot who wanted to put electric fences up. These guys just don't get it, and the immigrants are simply going to go to other areas. I hope Heimlich does not get on board with this. Also, note to Kilburn: your statement sounds prejudiced because it is. These guys have no concern about the immigrants well-being, they are simply rednecks. This is now trickling down to the workers as a site raided today was the result of a racially motivated fight in Butler County. I assume it was flag waving hillbillies pissed off about Hispanics working at the site. Unbelievable. Kilburn said he wants to head off problems with illegal immigrants. "It's bigger than our economy tomorrow, it's our heritage," he told Fox. "It's our way of life. ... This sounds prejudiced maybe, but this is our country. This is not Mexico. ... Are we willing to have the whole face of America change?" Fellow Commissioner Dave Young told Fox: "All I can say is that we stand with you in Warren County."

The only building I have an issue with is the student housing above/attached to the rec center. I recall reading they had to make the windows small based on its exposed position in campus, although you would think curtains would work. The rec center itself has gotten some pretty good reviews in national publications, but I have not seen anything on the Lindner Center.

I realize this is a little late, but I just saw a copy of Cin Weekly and they have an issue devoted to bars in Cincinnati. They review hundreds of bars, and give samplings of the areas below. Who knew Cheviot was a place to go out? If a new issue comes out this is titled the 2nd Annual Bar Guide, but this could give you an idea: http://www.cinweekly.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060510/ENT06/60509045/1076/rss01 MAINSTRASSE Just south of the river is this historic German-influenced district, where you can check out Zola Bar & Grill, Chez Nora, Cock & Bull English Pub and much more. MAIN STREET Nightlife rules in this Over-the-Rhine entertainment area, where you can visit Neon's Tavern on 12th, Cooper's on Main, Club Dream and many others. NEWPORT From Levee spots such as Bar Louie to off-the-beaten path pubs Crazy Fox Saloon and Mansion Hill Tavern, this area is full of fun spots to check out. MASON & VICINITY The suburbs have their own scene going. Start out with Deerfield Township's Polo Grille, Mason's The Brazenhead, and Symmes Township's Porch of All Sorts. CLIFTON & CAMPUS There's a glut of bars of all varieties in the UC area, from cozy college hangouts to large beer gardens and more. Try Mecklenburg Gardens, Murphy's Pub or Arlin's Bar. MOUNT LOOKOUT All within the small square are several bars that pack in the crowd every weekend (and during the week). Bar hop to The Stand, Muz's?, Mt. Lookout Tavern and more. HYDE PARK & VICINITY From Oakley to O'Bryonville and Norwood to Hyde Park proper, the area abounds with must-visit bars. Try R.P. McMurphy's, The Edge Inn and Hyde Park Tavern and Grille. NORTHSIDE The eclectic bar scene includes newly remodeled The Fifth Amendment, drag shows and dancing at Jacob's on the Avenue, and live music and burritos at The Comet. CHEVIOT There's always something going on in this West Side entertainment district at Smokin' Monkey Lounge, Second Street Saloon, Shelton's Pub and Social Hall and other spots. MOUNT ADAMS Up on the hill, the scene ranges from laid-back hanging out at The Blind Lemon to sipping wine at The Wine Cellar and rocking out at Mount Adams Pavilion.

Awesome shots - I am glad someone got some pictures. The C-paw at the entrance looks great.

I am not sure if anyone else went to the open-house, but the buildings are impressive. The Lindner Center is awesome, with a Hall of Fame of sorts on the entire (fourth) floor. I had never seen the national championship trophies before. The offices, conference rooms, teem meeting rooms, sports medicine rooms, etc. are first class. I also went over to the new student rec center, which is part of the Keating Aquatics center and this is very slick looking space. I was not sure from the exteriors, but with these, the new baseball stadium, tennis courts, soccer and track field this will definitely be a great recruiting tool. The windows on the Lindner Center are a little oddly shaped, but you get great panoramic views of the facilities and campus. The football stadium looked great with the new buildings surrounding it, and the permanent open-end seats are nice - there is now a restaurant on this end and walkways allow you to walk the entire stadium at the concourse level. I think the campus looks great, and would recommend anyone who has not been to UC recently to check it out. As a bonus, I went through the Football Offices, and Mark Dantonio was there. He was extremely friendly, and very pleasant to my 4 year old daughter. I almost mentioned that I actually went to Ohio State (but growing up in Clifton I am a big UC fan as well), but was not sure how to insert that into the conversation. Anyway, I was very impressed with him and think the football program is in good hands. The only screw-up on my part is that I did not bring a camera.

It's as if you're a Scientologist, and I am losing control of my own opinion because I agree with your statements. Since I am new to the board, I will state that that is a joke. And I really do agree with your most recent post.

Riverviewer - it seems like we just have different points of view, but I certainly appreciate your arguments and agree with your distinction between immigrants and immigration. I think this is a federal issue, and they need to deal with it. It is disturbing to me to hear the comments from some of our local representatives, radio personalities, and average (or not so) citizens, and I just think this will hurt us in the future as legal immigrants will feel the pain as well. I think trying to go after illegal immigrants once they are here is like plugging a damn with ones finger. I would simply prefer for our area to not be considered a leader on pushing immigrants out. Jimmy - I think we are probably on the same page and consider the future benefit of the influx of new people a positive. Of course we would ideally like everyone to follow the legal routes, but that is not the reality of how many areas seeing growth from immigration is occurring. This topic was all over the national news today so maybe we are just a mirror of the nation. I hope our reflection is not distorted though.

I would say try Main Street - it has peaked out from being the "happening" place it once was but there is still a collection of about 15 bars there. If you are downtown (not far from the Main Street area), you could go for the trendier (and I think chain) McFadden's, or live music at the Poison Room, martini's at Havana Martini club, or the cheesy but cool Federal Reserve. Mt. Adams should be a definite stop with Longworth's and the Pavilion being larger and Yesterday's, Mt. Adams Bar & Grill, and Crowley's having more of a neighborhood bar feel. There are a few other places (like Alive One I think) as well. Mt. Lookout has 4 or 5 places and is popular now with the twenty-something's - try MLT's and/or Millions. Main Strasse in Covington also has a grouping of bars which makes it easy to walk among them. This would be a little out of the way, but Northside has a couple of cool places like Northside Tavern and the Comet (with a very cool juke box). At my age I am about 5 years out of going out consistently, but I thought I would try to help.

Great news about news about Cirque du Soleil, and I plan on taking the family. I think this will provide a hint of what some activity on the riverfront will be like. On a sour note, I was just wondering today how many times Phil Heimlich is going to declare victory on the Banks (kind of like it's been 1000 days since "Mission Accomplished"). He keeps coming out for press conferences to take credit then screws it up again. As mentioned earlier I also cannot wait to see David Pepper take care of him this fall.

No problem, although I prefer the Indigo's in Hyde Park. I guess this answers part of the question in that there are raids that are indeed occurring in other parts of the country. I continue to wonder if there are people in other large metro areas, and people in power, that are being so vocal with their animosity and making ignorant statements like the ones I mentioned above. On top of that we have the three ring circus known as Bill Cunningham who continues to pound the ultra-conservative drum on WLW and the sheriff in Butler county who really seems to revel in this: http://butlersheriff.org/blog/. He has a lot of time to invest in this apparently. The way the arguments have been presented do not really sound like intelligent points of view, but more of "stay out of this area because we are so provincial that we cannot accept anyone new or different". It seems to be building momentum, and I expect someone from Hamilton County to weigh in on this in the near future.

Most economists in the past few years have agreed that what slows Cincinnati's economy is the relatively slow population growth, not a lack of jobs. Riverviewer, Points taken. If the federal government shuts down the border and makes everyone currently here legal, fine. The issue, unfortunately, is not being taken up on a federal level at this point, and I fear we are going to be one of the only metro areas to go after illegal immigrants. This would very much follow the pattern of our notorious history battling the First Amendment, which was quixotic at best. This is a battle that should be fought at a federal level, and I just do not see why our metro should feel the need to pick up this battle. Is there a rash of news like this coming from any other city? I want us to be on a level playing field with everyone else, and if we are the only ones pursuing this we will not be. Much like offshoring, if anyone within a particular industry lowers their cost structure, they throw everything out of whack. As far as protecting the immigrants, they are obviously coming here for a reason so it must be better than there. I am also no expert on naturalization, but any children born here are considered citizens (I think) - so it's basically one generation and done (depending on how long the wave continues). Besides being the right thing to do since they are already here, we should drop this or I think this will be our new First Amendment debacle. This will likely be picked up on a national perspective, and we will be presented in a not so positive light. This will quickly be woven into a theme, and will be in the NY Times or a GQ expose or on CNN. Am I worried about how this would affect our image and future growth? Yes. Especially when you look at the quotes of Mike Kilburn and the owner of Pleasure Inn (what a fitting name).

Interestingly, an article appeared in the paper today, stating a Boone County sheriff's deputy was involved in the raid. As I stated before, I suspect a local whistleblower was involved as I have repeatedly heard the federal government is leaving it up to local jurisdictions. "A Boone County sheriff's deputy infiltrated a Fischer Homes development by pretending to be tracking a killer from Texas." http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060511/NEWS0103/605110403/1077 Meanwhile, the ball seems to be rolling in the metro as Warren County commissioner Mike Kilburn (an appropriate name based on the quotes below) wants to use the overzealous tactics of Butler County. He acknowledges the federal government will not do anything and that the Cincy area now seems to be on board: "I took a lot of hits for what I said. Cincinnati magazine even said it was the worst quote of the year," Kilburn said. "Now, everyone's jumped on the bandwagon." Kilburn's controversial 2004 quote: "The first thing we need to do is we need to go down to the Mexican border, pour a 40-foot wall and put about a gazillion volts of electric on top of that wall and then every 400 feet have a guard gate with machine guns." http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060510/NEWS01/605100353/-1/back01 We also get the feel good sign from the moron who gained fame for the "For Service Speak English" sign in Mason. This is Warren County Ohio, but seems to be in response to an occurrence in Boone County Kentucky (amazing). The Pleasure Inn, which stirred controversy by posting a sign saying "For Service Speak English," now has a second sign declaring "For Service You Must Be Legal." http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060510/NEWS01/305100019/-1/back01 Finally, we get the result: "Local Hispanics here gripped by fear", which adds a nice human element to the debate. http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060511/NEWS01/605110365 I did not previously mean to imply that Simon Leis had anything to do with previous occurrences around illegal immigrants, but his attitude of intolerance and shutting people out seems to be alive and well. Based on how quickly Hispanics will spread the word within their communities, and how quickly this attitude of getting them out is hitting our area this will soon be a non-issue. Unfortunately, we were just hitting a tipping point of sorts (an estimated 58,000 in the metro), but this number will likely stagnate or decline. On a positive note, we will be saved from the evil immigrants (especially the future "legals") - and other metros will likely thank us for the influx of people.

This seems to be a pretty idyllic world some us are living in based on newpaper editorials, where all immigrants are legal. The fact is a great percentage of the US population growth is due to immigration, much of it illegal. I am glad to see that many in the Cincinnati area want to stand on higher moral ground and only accept legal immigrants "with open arms". We have to look at the environment around us and if other cities (go to Atlanta and see who is doing the homebuilding - yet a company here gets nailed) are doing nothing about this we are only going to hurt our region in the long run. I realize this was federally backed, but I suspect there had to be a whistleblower involved. Is it that hard to see that the addition of some more Hispanic culture would be good for the region? This is actually starting to smack of something from Simon Leis in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. While other cities were letting their citizens take roads to perdition, Cincinnati was cleaning up all the gambling and porn because we had higher moral character. The first amendment battles continued to the point of lunacy with the Mapplethorpe exhibit (although we at least let it come to Cincy, and Boston refused altogether - but we got the rep). Meanwhile, while we were taking care of these important battles, we allowed Article 12 to be passed prohibiting protection of gays (since overruled), and allowed police/race relations to fester to the point of a riot. The theme with all of these occurrences is that we have gained a reputation for intolerance. While I am sure that most Cincinnatians are open-minded, fair people, I would be hesitant to add one more example of us being otherwise. Again, if we are are one of the only areas where stories of round-ups, and billboards against immigrants, and signs that say "speak English for service" are being written, this will be added as a strike against us. And frankly, we will have deserved this one.

We cannot view this in a vacuum. The fact is that our money is now going to Indiana so we are seeing the drain that opponents speak of while getting no reward. Whatever they start with (slots) is fine as we will keep some of the money currently going out of state in the city. It's amazing that local officials fell asleep on this one and allowed Cleveland to be in line for two casinos while allowing the Argosy to influence the sponsor to leave us out. Despite the naysayers I do not think anyone wants to turn downtown into a major gambling destination - this is simply one parlor and one additional draw and money generator for the city. I do find it interesting reading the negative comments from Indiana people, but I notice they have not closed any of their casinos. Also, is Stan Eichelbaum on Argosy's payroll?

This is only a good idea if other cities also crack down. In the long run, if this metro is the only one pushing out immigrants, we will slow our growth. This in turn will hurt in federal dollars as these immigrants and their children become legal. I cannot believe I am seeing all this backlash against illegal immigrants here when we have a relatively low percentage. I say be careful what you wish for as this will be just another drag on population growth. I am surprised metro Cincinnati has had 2 busts in one month for illegals, and I wonder if this is happening in other cities (where would cities in California, Texas, and Florida be without this stream of in-migration?). With these busts, and the goofball sheriff in Butler County we will quickly get a reputation and immigrants will just go to other cities. We will have cut the spigot off for Cincinnati, but will still pay the cost for them as they will still be coming to the US. As long as they are going to be here, we might as well get the payoff of productive people who will help to strengthen our region in the future.

Amen - bring on the ribbon board. With news of the day, stock information, downtown events, trivia...we always can use more information.

If this gets moving quickly now it will underscore how petty and ineffective our leaders have been for the past 10 years (since the sales tax passed). I am happy to see signs of progress, but the missed opportunity and additional cost is borderline criminal - and the whole delay will have been over a simple power struggle.

Exactly - the LED has a "big city" feel - I would actually make it bigger or string 3 of them together if I had any say. For this gone crazy, see Tokyo. I was thinking about it being done also - if they could somehow have the coming out party for Octoberfest, that would be a pleasant surprise.

I think this looks great, and I am slowly getting more excited about the new square. I was shopping downtown last Friday, and I went by 525 Vine. Somebody had previously mentioned that the new lobby area does not match the building (and they are right), but this is starting to look like pretty cool space (and Jos A Bank is signed). Add to that the renovation of 580 Walnut, upgrades to the Westin with the new McCormick and Schmick's, redone Rock Bottom (and the always awesome Palomino's), the renovation of the square itself, and there is going to be a lot of action in this area. They just need to fill the new space. This might be silly, but I also like the idea of the LED screen - people will pay attention to this.

I really hope they get additional funding to add these projects, and hopefully they do not continue with the same architectural theme. They really need to beautify a little more, and get rid of the overall Logan's Run look of this campus. It was part of the era I guess.

Wow - I should have looked at the listings because the range is deceiving. There is only one model at 189K, and it is 1 br, 1 and 1/2 bath, and only 992 sq ft. These are definitely pricey, and they quickly move to the 400-500k range. From the results of Captain's Watch there seems to be a market though. I do agree they need more in the 200-250 range that are nice, especially a high rise. The thing we seem to hear a lot is that development is expensive in and near the CBD so they need to cover that I guess.

Looks like 189-579K on Captain's Watch. I must say that I like almost everything Towne does, and I do not know how I missed this but with all the development they have changed Eastern Avenue to Riverside Drive, which sounds a little nicer. I actually saw a new street sign by Twain's Point. http://www.towneprop.com/captainswatch/

Yeah - Sara Lee has been great to Cincinnati. It sucks because Kahn's was an institution here. We have certainly been on the wrong side of mergers and acquisitions enough that I hope I hear no more complaints from other cities (i.e. Hasbro shutting down here, Duke Energy, National City, and Sara Lee). And Ford is shutting down in Batavia. I guess the good news is that the number of regional jobs keeps growing, but I hate losing a chunk at a time like this. I realize I am now going off on a tangent, but has anyone seen what the final numbers for National City and Duke energy will be post merger? I would hope Jim Rogers would look out for his former hometown in regard to Duke, but corporations always get a little shifty when pushed for the net job loss because it makes bad PR worse.

This whole thing gets more frustrating year after year and is exhibit A for the need of a uni-gov approach. There are now obvious financial challenges, and I still think if the city and county had worked together from the start this could have been started back in 1999 as originally planned. I am amazed that people in charge have let politics hinder this for so long, and with all the nitpicking over the years I see no end in sight. Hamilton County will pick a developer and the city will withhold approval as they own air-rights. We, the taxpayers, approved building the stadiums and even those got delayed as the city and county fought over land control and exchanges. I laugh whenever they say they want to get this done but nothing in their current or past handling of this supports that. Sorry for the negativity, but it is sad when the promo video and material begin to look dated before the project is even started.

I think someone already alluded to this, and I think it is great they are pushing more to clean up the area, but it is disappointing the police have not shown more of a presence until now. While I am sure there was work before, it really seems they are buckling down with the "threat" of Hamilton County assisting. The area obviously is an untapped treasure, and I miss the days when Main Street was more of an entertainment destination (at least there is more living space being developed). I hope we see the results improve, and more importantly the media reports on those improvements. I am very weary of the media-fed whining about it being so dangerous. Finally, last week there were a few obvious sound bites that should have been apparent - if you aren't buying, selling, or doing drugs (or other illegal activity) you'll be fine - really?