neilworms

^- The problem is too many people would want to build garbage like this in the link below - from my understanding few Cincinnatians demand high quality architecture of any style: http://g.co/maps/2sgm2 (Fixed link! :) ). I'll agree that some of the abuses described are bad such as the rooftop deck example and the fact that 3CDC was able to basically walk all over them due to their clout, but how does one prevent suburban style spew like above from completely killing the character of OTR?

^-I walked by there as well last night and couldn't believe the crowds and along with that came more traffic on 2nd street, and tons and tons of taxis. I guess there is a market for a Toby Keith related bar in Cincinnati - though I wouldn't count myself as part of the demographic that would appeal to. Made me wonder how long it will be until someone in the leadership gets the idea to encourage intercity buses like megabus to relocate to the transit center.

I'd say 10 years at the rate things are going :-) . Change is happening at a remarkably fast rate in Cincinnati, its baffling me in the best kind of way possible :P - plus wait until Mercer Commons is done as just about everyone else here states, it will be a game changer.

^Couldn't agree more, I was one of the people who liked the image, because it illustrated a mentality in the region in a funny way. Its a mentality that i IMO will be gone in a few years, but still something that is persistant in people's consciousness. On that note I'm in town, went to Bakersfield, had Horchata in Cincinnati along with Tacos Al Pastor... something a few years ago I never thought I'd be able to do. OTR is becoming a slice of larger city life in the middle of "stoic, conservative" Cincinnati, and that is a good thing that makes the cartoon all the more funny. ;)

Never went to Belugas, but I kind of feel the same way about Gilpins, fantastic place, terrible crowd.

^-I'm glad to see that section 8 building being remodeled, that place was always pretty run down. I wonder if they'll redo the porches, it looks like there is a nice 2nd empire underneath brick porches that were added later, or or those in fact originals? Credit is due where credit is due and I do give uptown props (pun intended) for improving the neighborhood. My older critiques still stand though until I see better designed infill from them :).

Someone needs to collect all these pics and put them in a blog post. Then have someone post the link in the enq. comments thread on every streetcar article. Post print outs, etc, etc.

Its quite the opposite, retail will follow residents and money, here are but a few examples from Chicago: Best Buy in expensive dense lakefront neighborhood: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/212/487638549_287ea76fe7.jpg Target coming to Downtown Chicago: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/theskyline/2011/02/target-on-state-street-good-news-but-god-or-the-devil-will-be-in-the-details-.html Grocery Store comparable to Kroger - near downtown Chicago: http://www.greenbeanchicago.com/green-grocery-green-jewel-energy-efficiency-water-efficiency/ Cincinnati is just behind the times, when there is a critical mass of people downtown and if current trends continue as well as local developers start to catch on to what's happening nationally, this will happen, its only a matter of time. 20 years ago there weren't Best Buys in dense urban neighborhoods, its a new phenomenon in the last 15 years for them. Its coming to Cincinnati, there is no doubt - more expensive real estate is not an issue, or else the way more expensive real estate from a market that is 2x more expensive than Cincinnati's wouldn't be developed by these big box guys in urban footprints.

There are two exceptions to your rule, San Francisco and Boston. Both cities have an abundance of "riches" and both cities were early adopters Boston actually had the first adaptive reuse in the country with their old City Hall, and San Fran, has maybe too many regulations designed precisely to support its own urbanity. Other places have that have just as many "riches" if not more get it and do what they can to protect it. Cincinnati just is like the slow step-cousin of the two cities that hasn't caught on just yet. It even amazed me how much both in the streets and on the City Data forum people in San Fran were quick to lament the destruction of Fremont, when in all actuality not much was lost, and what its been replaced by is incredibly urban for 1960s era renewal. I think its probably more a result of Cincinnati being behind the curve, along with a general anti-urban attitude in the region - I don't know how complacency in having riches can develop in Cincy but not in those two other cities that have bounties of riches.

I'm more critical of design choices than the casino itself. They plopped a suburban style building the middle of one of the most urban built neighborhoods in the US, I think that's poor judgement and hurts the appeal of the area around it for those of us who value urbanity. A casino is developed by people with a lot of money and the goal was to be more inviting and respectful of the neighborhood. Take a look at what they are doing with the casino in Cleveland and tell me that's not a better idea. Btw, Cleveland is a slightly smaller metro area now, so its not a matter of market size.

I didn't really appreciate this about Ohio until I moved away. N. Illinois besides the lake (and anything manmade of course ;) ) is ugly and boring in a natural sense. Even the hilly areas around the Wisconsin border in the Northwest part of the state aren't as nice as what Ohio has. While Ohio isn't like the west, it at least has a nice amount of hills and the occasional beautiful natural area, which is something I can't really say at all about where I'm at now.

Being able to live safely and comfortably in a densely populated environment which is more oriented towards transit than driving (though both are still an option). See San Francisco, Boston, a good chunk of Chicago, and New York City. Much of this forum would agree with me that Cincinnati has the basic ingredients (Build of the buildings and neighborhoods particularly OTR) but is lacking in the execution (transit is lacking, retail isn't to the level where you get an environment like the cities above for the most part).

Its this and the "need" for a large event lawn in front of the casino that is really telling of the massive suburban oriented bias of Cincinnati. Its incredible how people can be so unappreciative of the intense urbanity Cincinnati once had and are so willing to just toss it away.

Except the article states that the developers are going to bring down more. I'm happy some stuff is saved, but again the worry comes back to sheer quality of infill in Cincinnati, which all too often is really low.

I'll admit its not a perfect building, but cut off the bit on the back and the building gets the basic shape and substantial feel down perfect for a building that would look good in OTR - the building gets the basics right and fails on the details, which is a lot better than a ton of other infill I've seen where sometimes its the other way around. I'll reiterate, it looks terrible where it is, but I actually feel that I'd like something better like that which actually interacts with the corner and matches the basic proportions of the other buildings in OTR than City Home, where the bay windows are completely wrong (it looks like a weird mix of federalist with late circa 1890s victorian, the later of which is rare in OTR), the vinyl is cheap and the buildings on the corner as others mentioned on this forum before just end with a nasty side facing the other street and have no interaction with the cross street at all. You aren't seeing me complain about Trinity flats one bit, its really one of the nicest post modern urban interpretations I've seen anywhere... though the building that Skinner Posted is amazing, I wonder where that one is?

The pic I supplied was not good quality, I was playing around with tapatalk and it didn't upload it the right way from my phone (too small). It looks nicer than that. Its also really hard to get a pic of that place because its frankly a terrible location. In terms of execution the context is horrible - it's on a highway as wide as Liberty Street in an area that was once a working class turn of the century neighborhood with (typical midwestren) frame houses. On the other hand if this was put into OTR it would look quite nice. Is it as good as the old stuff in OTR? Not really. Is it beyond much of what's going in down there? Yes it is and all I'm trying to do is get people in Cincinnati to start thinking about what kinds of infill can be built. There may be economic restrictions, but if the developers valued creative thinking there are always workarounds to produce similar results. Here is a higher quality pic: ----- This is a really extreme example, but here is what an area with tons of glass buildings and a few historic buildings looks like for those to at least get a good image of what's being discussed, and also keep in mind the modern stuff will most likely not look as good as what's being built in Vancouver given the tastes/economic realities of local developers in Cincinnati: (copy paste this into the url box on your browser or else it tries to embed which doesn't work very well -http://maps.google.com/?ll=49.284618,-123.124833&spn=0.001352,0.001561&t=h&z=19&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=49.284682,-123.124934&panoid=mYuBGSXGFZHoghW8bEw55w&cbp=12,130.24,,0,-14.69 )

Here is an infill bulding in Chicago that is kind of inappropriate for the area its in but would be absolutely stunning in the middle of OTR, when I harp on and on about upping the quality of infill in Cincinnati its because I see buildings like this around me quite a bit: I like most of what 3CDC has done, but I wish mercer had more stuff like the photo of the building above

I did, when visiting my brother over the Holidays, it was mostly empty though it was kind of late for dinner on weeknight near the Holiday away from a major shopping district (well not far from downtown, but far enough away that I doubt there was spillover). Its nothing special other than the fact that they actually have Yeungling, and I've been meaning to try it out ever since I heard it was coming to Ohio. Mission accomplished there and I never though Johnny Rockets of all places would have it...

I used to live in that area, there are tons of dense large brick apartment buildings there. I lived in a unit that was 40 units of mostly studio apartments myself. The lack of retail while disappointing is not going to turn the development into a mega suburban style project, in fact it will get rid of a nasty and glaring gap in the urban landscape, an absolutely humongous parking lot that serves the 1940s era Sears and provides parking for the metra station right next to it.

Hey its Cincinnati, where the motto should be "let's tear down the old buildings and forget to build them back!" Maybe he could bring the guy redeveloping Corryville in to put up more vinyl monstrosities :evil:

I would love to know the story behind those renderings, and whether it was anything more than a marketing ruse to get people to buy into building a Stadium on the Riverfront instead of Broadway commons. :P It set false expectations for me too, I was really looking forward to the banks based on that rendering alone.... hmmm....

^-I can't wait for that station to be finished. That neighborhood has so much potential to be a lively destination (down the street it already kind of is). This will make things better :).

Since this was bumped, there has been a bit of a side conversation on the Streetcar thread regarding this article posted in channel 9 news about how this development has been wasted: http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/i-team-48-million-transit-station-sits-empty I agree that it has been wasted. Was it good foresight to build it ahead of time? Yes, but its still not being used for anything which IMO makes it an easy target for not building facilities like this again. Also why pay for something when you aren't going to put it to good use. I already mentioned this, but its buried deep in the streetcar thread, so I figured I'd state it again and expand on my original argument: we should focus on working to make this a intercity bus station for Cincinnati until other uses can be found. At the very least a good place for curbside buses to stop as a big criticism of crubside operations is that they don't have any shelters for people to be able to wait for them in harsh weather conditions. Here is a giant underutilized facility that could meet that need and help promote usage of intercity buses. With the neighborhood growing around the station it could be an excellent place for people using these buses to shop while waiting and would benefit business in the area. Not only that but it would also get the curbside buses off the main streets and into an area dedicated for them to be used. Right now, given the economics of gasoline prices combined with the massive growth in these types of buses, its only a matter of time before the Megabus gets decent competition outside of the Northeast, particularly since there is an opportunity I believe to provide better service than they do while still being competitive with prices. As a result long term their could be multiple curbside intercity bus operators operating and this would be a good means to manage the chaos that could come with that. Any thoughts about this idea?

I know this is veering a bit off topic, but I'm wondering why there hasn't been a push to lobby to make that the Megabus stop for Cincinnati? Its a sheltered area, close to other transit options, which would be very nice for those who have to wait for the bus in the middle of the winter if its running late. Maybe we should all write the city, stagecoach etc to make something like this happen then the transit center will actually be utilized and less prone to be attacked.

^-I've always wondered why the Buildings at Main and 3rd which are excellent Victorian downtown buildings are vacant? Its a good location and would be a great place for retail and apartments. Any thoughts?