Rusty Shackleford

Jeffery, another fantastic historical thread. Great work once again. I love the inclusion of the old maps showing Tadmore (!), Phoneton and Taylorsville as distinct small towns. I left D8ton in 1980 and moved back to the area in '90. The (now non-existent) Wagner Ford traffic circle existed in 1980 when I left. In the 60s and early 70s you'd see local nightly news reports of multiple traffic fatalities at intersections like Needmore and I-75, pre-grade-separation. I-75 at the time was basically a high speed boulevard.

I think this mall opening has captured a lot of attention (and bile) because it's another decisive link in the "Cincinnati-Dayton Metroplex". We're seeing the region transform before our eyes. The Cincinnati-Dayton region is becoming a scale model of New Jersey. I have a fatalistic view of it: yeah, it's ecologically questionable, but it will make Christmas shopping much easier. We were out today driving south on 741 near Austin Pike in Montgomery County and I was just thinking that that is gonna be another Union Center type deal.

I'll vouch for that. The inner west side was scary as in "we need Robocop" scary. This looks surprisingly civilized.

Johnny's Pizza in Centerville (used to be named Roc-A-Fellas, same owner, I think) is an OK pizza but is not really "NY style". The crust is way too thick and doesn't have the sear that you'd associate with an east coast pie. IE, this is not going to be a clone of Flying Pizza if the methods of "construction" are the same as Johnny's Pizza. However, it's a better product than almost any chain pizza.

Warren County reporting in here. Our tomatoes are fine so far.

Which is where I would spend my time... the great empty void between Toledo and Findlay.

One persistent image display problem I've had with this forum is with Firefox, with all versions right up through 3.0.x. FF will not display all of the images if there are many images in a single message. It seems to cut off at the first several dozen (say the first 50 or 100 or so) and there is just blank space in place of images. It seems to be a capacity issue specific to Firefox and it is difficult to even get information that anyone in the FF developer group is aware of it. I get around it by using a Firefox add-on called "IE tab" that allows fast switching of a Firefox display tab to IE or back. IE doesn't have this problem. So, if you use FF, I recommend trying it with IE or another browser.

I found this explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange I kept looking at the picture you posted and I didn't believe what I was seeing - traffic routed into the opposite side within the intersection. Then I studied the way that the "left" or "right" would be made onto the highway and it makes perfect (but insane) sense. Is the "diverging diamond" the style actually planned for Monroe?

The SR 63 interchange badly needed a redesign. The left turn from Rt 63 west bound onto 75 south has been a tedious and risky bottleneck. At certain times of the day you simply don't get a break from the eastbound traffic on 63. The interchange at rt 122 is all torn up to redo that interchange as well and SR 122 under the highway is also a PITA. I believe they are eliminating the merge that northbound I-75 traffic had to do with traffic entering I-75 from rt 122 in order to exit the freeway. The road construction around Warren County is driving me nuts and even short trips need to be preplanned. Even Rt 48 is closed just south of Centerville.

http://pages.prodigy.net/john.simpson/highways/ohhwys.html I have this long bookmarked from past participation on misc.transport.roads. Apparently John Simpson is still around and updates his site, just not the road listing (check out the files directly above /highway, there's some game scores from 2009 there.) I *really* wish he would update this site. It's been frozen in time since 2001.

My comment was based superficially upon driving the circumference of it at night. Maybe it's because the outlying sidewalks force the radius of that drive to be relatively large. I think that whoever designed the site really showcased the buildings and was trying to make it seem larger than life. The setting contributes to the feeling of scale. Also, this was at night (I've never driven back there during the day) so having the mall highlighted against a dark parking lot adds to the size perception. The malls in Pigeon Forge area tend to be spread out more linearly. They don't give quite the feeling of scale that this one does. I am thinking of one (I think it's Tanger Five Oaks) that is so freaking loooong that you need a tram to cross it from one end to the other. I've been to that outlet in Waterloo NY. It didn't give me quite the same impression of scale. Totally subjective impressions on my part...

Re: SPUI. Yeah, those are good points. I drove through it last night, and the outline of the SPUI is becoming evident. I think the main thing drivers have to do is not be distracted by all of the turning arcs painted on the road that they drive across. Given that drivers around this area don't understand left lanes on narrowing highways that merge to the right, I just don't expect good judgement from local drivers. The SPUI will be an immense safety improvement. The old left turns from 63 onto I-75 were very treacherous and time consuming, particularly Rt 63 WB to to I-75 SB.

We drove around this outlet for the first time last night. OMG, is it huge. We've visited lots of outlet malls in other states. This place overshadows all of the malls that we've seen on trips. One net positive is that now we won't feel like we're missing out to not go to outlet malls when we're on vacation, thereby freeing up our time to do worthwhile recreational things on vacation. :) And, it has a Books Warehouse. The two that were in the area before (at Cincinnati Mills and Jeffersonville) are long gone.

The SPUI will cause an aneurysm of shock for most Ohio drivers. The layout of the intersection is just so different than anything around here. The closest one I know of is in Columbus, IN at I-65 and SR 46. I drove through it a few years ago. It gives a high-tech vibe to the roadway. And, they look very risky to cross on foot or by bicycle, but the local mentality around these suburbs is so anti-human-power ("get the hell out of the road, @$$hole!!!" is a pretty popular refrain in these parts :x) that this should be no problem at all. Only God-ordained motor vehicles will use the intersection.

Many thanks, I appreciate it.

Thanks for the detailed summary. Yeah, the new entrance to Traders World looks more like an industrial or business park entrance. I kind of look on flea markets as a low value use of land, like drive-in theatres. So it makes sense that Trader's World will be on the sales block as industrial land some day. Or maybe will become an annex to the outlet mall.

Guys, can one of you please change my name from "The Donald" to "Rusty Shackleford"? I would like the change to be on existing posts I've made. Thanks.

Seems pretty evident. Related question: where these flea markets (Trader's World, Caesars Creek, etc) are located, what were the properties supposed to be before they became flea markets? Some kind of trucking distribution hubs? Surely they weren't built just to house vendors of 99 cent tube sox and formaldehyde laced Chinese toothpaste. :evil:

It is the building complex that is at the north dead end of Kings Island Drive. I believe that the buildings now house GE Capital. It is probably not very similar to outlet malls being built today. There was no food in the place, IIRC. And it was quite compact, and completely enclosed. IMO it was built as a low-budget version of enclosed shopping malls, which were starting to be replaced by open air type malls. It certainly wasn't leading any design trends. My thought in posting this was that a close-in outlet mall has already been tried in the Northern Cincinnati suburbs, and failed. Of course, the developers of the Kings mall made a lot of erroneous assumptions, such as the visitors to Kings Island being receptive by default to a nearby shopping destination. And the Kings outlet was 10 years ahead of the curve on the growth of the Mason area. I wonder what else this failed mall could tell us.

Deja vu time. This article (redacted!!) on the Factory Outlet Mall at Kings Island was published in April, 1983. It closed in the early 1990s, after several years of decline that resemble what has been happening to the Middletown Mall: large stores pulling out and store fronts going dark or increasingly being occupied by small, underfunded "ghetto" local stores. Reading, PA already had factory outlets, so contrary to the story, the Kings mall was not a "first". But note the grand projections of growth around the mall, that the outlet was going to be an anchor for huge retail and commercial development. "It eventually could become the largest outlet mall in the nation."

Massive speculative commercial development projects like this - stuff being splashed in the middle of cornfields - can go one of two ways. 1) They can develop proportionate credibility due to snowball effect and mass hypnosis of the human lemmings, and become suburban centers in their own right; or 2) they can wind up looking like the "north" Jeffersonville outlets at exit 69 on I-71 - a "self evident" stupid idea. I never really get why one location takes off like a rocket with tremendous momentum and another one is 80% vacant after a couple of years. US consumers are like children, having to be dazzled and stimulated by brand new, sparkling concrete and chrome and bright lights of new crap all the time. So it appears to be necessary for developers to take these massive gambles.

I, for one, welcome our new retail overlords. :) Just some random thoughts: This will further eviscerate the feasibility of Cincinnati Mills, which was already dang limited. Also, it will damage Jeffersonville's viability by draining much of the demand for that kind of shopping environment from the Cincinnati market. I expect the Prime Outlets there to decline. In our family, outlet malls are kind of a mini-vacation get out of town excursion. For the local Butler and Warren area, the location is superb. Compared to Jeffersonville, for a Cincinnati or Dayton local the location is "eco-friendly". Driving 5-20 miles as opposed to 35-50. I honestly think it will be a success.

Wow. Thanks for the background on the Breitenstaters. I recall reading somewhere else that the shopping center was built on a former truck farm. Thanks also for the analysis of early Belmont. I've seen old 1900 vintage USGS topo map quadrangles of that area and you can see the main streets like today's Bellaire radiating out from Smithville. Right, there are these old neighborhoods along Wilmington out through Beavertown.

My family lived near Eastown, in Eastmont in the late 50s-early 60s. I remember as a very little kid tagging along with my brothers to go to stores at Eastown like Goldman's (or perhaps Beerman's.) I recall that the surrounding area was semi-rural at the time and we seemed to have to walk through woods and we entered at the back of Eastown. Re: "In the 1950s the office housed medical offices, credit agencies, and, apparently, a defense contractor." We had a dentist, Dr. Richard Ingle, at Eastown in the 1960s through the early 1980s, who was based in a second story office in that office center. I recall seeing an office door next to his that said "Hallicrafters" - radio equipment - could be the DoD contractor? I doubt that it was a sales office for ham radio enthusiasts. There was a major fire in the office complex at Eastown in the late 70s or early 80s that forced most of the office holders there to relocate. Dr. Ingle moved his practice to another building on Burkhardt, but he kept some of his equipment, which was smoke damaged and then repainted a different color.

Totally off-topic: Jeffery, have you ever run across any information on the history of Breitenstrater Square or the early history (pre-1950) of the Belmont area in general? Information about Breitenstrater is completely absent from the web. A few years ago Cold Beer and Cheeseburgers at Breitenstrater Square had a picture allegedly of the "Breitenstrater sisters" on their farm on the same site, from the early 20th century. But last time I ate there they had taken that picture down.