August 7, 20177 yr I sincerely hope this improves the quality of life for residents over there. I don't know a whole lot about that area, I have driven past there a couple times, but it just seems like a urban highway rolling through, the city needs to do a lot of work to make the quality of life better for those residents.
August 7, 20177 yr Unfortunately I think much of the original plan was scrapped when Cranley got into office and started meddling. The original plan was to make both of the streets two way, with the bulk of the traffic routed onto Westwood Ave., which would allow Queen City Ave. to become more pedestrian friendly with slower travel speeds and very little thru traffic. However I think this idea was scrapped and the current road configuration will be kept. So this will be a nice park, unfortunately located in between the eastbound and westbound lanes of a highway.
August 7, 20177 yr Is this the final plan? http://www.projectgroundwork.org/downloads/lickrun/Lick_Run_Greenway_poster_web.pdf It's basically Calhoun/McMillan except there's a creek on one side. There appears to be redevelopment potential on the south side of Queen City between Grand and Quebec, but by just showing it as an unlabeled green lawn it really screams "I was designed by a landscape and traffic engineering firm." On a drawing like this I want to at least see the developable parcels labeled, and preferably show future buildings to illustrate that they actually have some idea of what they want to see go in here. Unfortunately with these 3-laner one-way streets that will at best have street parking only on one side and not during rush hour, if allowed at all, I fear any new building that might happen will be single-story low-value crud with parking on one or both sides. At least they managed to detangle the whole State/Beekman abomination, but these streets are going to be asphalt wastelands like ODOT has turned MLK into at both I-71 and I-75.
August 7, 20177 yr ^^ Pretty sure that is it. At one point the family Dollar wasnt on there but looks like it is sadly back. If you haven't seen it it looks like a pole barn and the back and dumpsters will welcome you to the west side from the viaduct. Lovely. They at least saved the funeral home garage as a facility building and one home that didnt sell out will survive .Also staying is the strip mall with the site & sound stereo place that has been there for like 40years. The previous plan where Queen city was a local two way saved more buildings on the queen city side but the Cranley meddling lead the the fancy median look of it and it became more scattered.
August 11, 20177 yr Gosh, these are terrific photos. Thank you! Roxanne Qualls really put a lot of time and thought into the initial plans. It's sad that they won't be realized.
August 12, 20177 yr The concept of burying streams and channeling them into culverts is thankfully long past in most areas. The idea of building over those buried culverts wasn't wise but it probably made sense at the time when land was more limited. At the least, we are reversing some of this damage to the environment and hydrology - and greatly reducing one of the biggest combined sewer overflow source points, which will help reduce contaminants in the Ohio River.
August 12, 20177 yr Well, if you treat every brook/creek/stream as sacrosanct then you can't ever build a city. You'd clip the grid of streets so often you'd never be able to get anything more than suburban density. Manhattan has thousands of creeks in pipes, and if they were all daylighted the only street that would remain continuous is Broadway (which runs on a ridge). If you do that, then you're making the flooding/pollution problems worse by spreading the population out over a larger area that requires more paved streets and parking lots and single-story buildings while still severely harming the hydrology and overall ecology over all that supposedly lesser-impact development.
January 4, 20187 yr They really should be pairing this with the creation of a 3CDC type developer to actually build along it and create a functional neighborhood.
January 4, 20187 yr Yeah that is a LOT of land to just have as vast amounts of green space in a neighborhood that has seen lots of neglect. If they could at least develop some of the corner lots that would go a long way. Also - i wish this was turning each of the streets that run along it to two-ways as opposed to what are treated as mini-highways.
January 4, 20187 yr They really should be pairing this with the creation of a 3CDC type developer to actually build along it and create a functional neighborhood. Ha, now that's funny. This neighborhood is on the Westside, it never had a chance of being seriously respected at City Hall. It's a shame that the best buildings that were torn down in the middle trench, weren't relocated across the street along Westwood and Queen City. It would have gone a long way towards helping the area maintain some context and character. Right now, it's a damn mess. This is a perfect example of a once functional urban neighborhood literally giving its life so that sprawl beyond it could exist. The first blow came when Westwood and Queen City became one-way streets that that turned them into a freeway system to shuttle cars to the viaduct and I-75. This latest sewer project is only needed in order to handle the runoff created by all the development up on the hill and beyond.
January 4, 20187 yr It's a shame. Because if you took the one-ways, made them two-way with street parking, created this park, had relocated the existing buildings (preferably all to one area to create a continuous block(s)), and then developed infill there's no reason it couldn't be a great neighborhood. It's close to a lot of things, including Downtown, has some nice natural elements, and could be really unique. But instead it's now going to be a pretty nice park with highways strangling it and then...nothing.
January 4, 20187 yr It's a shame. Because if you took the one-ways, made them two-way with street parking, created this park, had relocated the existing buildings (preferably all to one area to create a continuous block(s)), and then developed infill there's no reason it couldn't be a great neighborhood. It's close to a lot of things, including Downtown, has some nice natural elements, and could be really unique. But instead it's now going to be a pretty nice park with highways strangling it and then...nothing. The original plan proposed under the Mallory administration was to make both Queen City Avenue and Westwood Avenue two-way. This changed some time after Cranley got into office. This neighborhood is on the Westside, it never had a chance of being seriously respected at City Hall. Funny that Cranley is supposed to have West Side Cred and yet he has no ability to see the potential in a project like this.
January 4, 20187 yr This project is doomed for failure with this road configuration. No one is going to want to cross 3 lanes of freeway-speed traffic to go to this park let alone 3 more to get to the other side of the neighborhood. This creek will collect litter thrown out the windows of all the speeding cars. They should take the risk of slowing down the traffic and making the streets two way. The Western Hills Viaduct isn’t the only or even the most direct connector from the West Side to the city anyway. The Hopple Street viaduct is more direct to Uptown and the 8th Street viaduct or US50 is more direct to downtown. www.cincinnatiideas.com
January 4, 20187 yr Funny that Cranley is supposed to have West Side Cred and yet he has no ability to see the potential in a project like this. When your crowning achievement as a developer is "saving Price Hill" via the Incline District's Vinyl Palace, you're sure as heck not going to have enough vision to imagine anything good ever coming out of South Fairmont. “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
January 4, 20187 yr Funny that Cranley is supposed to have West Side Cred and yet he has no ability to see the potential in a project like this. During the campaign I saw rich east side donors extolling Cranley's west side roots, insinuating that he was tough and scrappy because of his "working class" origins. Yet nobody can identify a single manual labor job John Cranley ever endured (caddy? cut grass?) as a teenager. Tough to have a "working class" summer job when your parents are paying for you to travel to poor countries on mission trips that give you essay material for your college applications.
January 10, 20187 yr South Fairmount has SO MUCH potential. This project could've been transformative, but Cranley's meddling into the plan really botched things. I'm sure the final product will be a lovely park, but it won't be nearly as accessible to the surrounding neighborhood for the aforementioned reasons.
January 11, 20187 yr South Fairmount has SO MUCH potential. This project could've been transformative, but Cranley's meddling into the plan really botched things. I'm sure the final product will be a lovely park, but it won't be nearly as accessible to the surrounding neighborhood for the aforementioned reasons. The catalyst could be renovating the Powell Valve building into housing.
January 12, 20187 yr Powell is in Camp Wash. That's Lunkenheimer. Also that should happen to the Midwest Textiles building as well. Very cool views of downtown from there.
January 15, 20187 yr This is a perfect example of a once functional urban neighborhood literally giving its life so that sprawl beyond it could exist. It's interesting how our topography has worsened this. These narrow cross valleys had the easier grades up to the hilltops, making them natural transportation corridors, but there's not a lot of room to build in the valley bottoms themselves. The steeper hills on the west side and the funneling of traffic across the Mill Creek Valley's rail yards concentrates traffic into fewer corridors than you see on the east side. Still, it might be worth comparing some other neighborhoods in a similar predicament. Sedamsville is probably the most directly comparable, though at a much smaller scale. Northside is big enough and has enough flat land to not be totally decimated by I-74, Colerain, or Hamilton Avenues. Columbia-Tusculum is in a similar predicament, though the major transportation corridor is running parallel to the river via Columbia Parkway and Eastern/Riverside/Kellogg Avenues, while Delta Avenue is a relatively constrained surface street by comparison. West Pike Street, Montague, and Amsterdam in Covington are similar on the west side of Covington, spared somewhat by I-75 providing an alternative route to Dixie Highway. I would say that the most Fairmount-like neighborhood that was completely obliterated was the Deer Creek Valley between Eden Park and Mt. Auburn. A rough and tumble industrial neighborhood for most of its life, it was cleared out between Reading Road and Glibert Avenue in the 1920s or so in a manner similar to what they're doing to South Fairmount today. The old factories and railroad trestles and steeply cut hillsides were smoothed out for ballfields and parkland. That and the relatively easy grade up the hills made it a prime target for I-71 to come later, so now it's nothing but roads and highways.
March 5, 20187 yr Biked around the area this past weekend. It's an incredible swarm of activity. A channel for the creek appears to have been dug for most of the length. Also, a bridge for Harrison Ave. is under construction and nearing completion. A small strip mall and 1-2 small buildings remain standing and open for business in the center on the western end...not sure what the plan is for them.
March 5, 20187 yr That top image makes me think of what parts of Queens looked like when subways were initially constructed out into literal fields in the 1920s. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Queens_Boulevard,_New_York_City_(1920).jpg
May 15, 20187 yr I'm guessing that this big gash through the woods is Lick Run related: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.118383,-84.5670481,896m/data=!3m1!1e3
May 16, 20187 yr I'm guessing that this big gash through the woods is Lick Run related: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.118383,-84.5670481,896m/data=!3m1!1e3 Yep, and probably why the end of Quebecc has been closed for weeks as they tie it into the new tunnels. There is another similar cut from around Orland down to near the end of Sunset that is just starting to wrap up. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1302158,-84.5756047,1056m/data=!3m1!1e3
June 1, 20187 yr Noticed some pretty heavy duty demolition equipment parked next to Lunkenheimers yesterday. Anyone aware if this equipment is intended for that specific building or others in the area?
June 1, 20187 yr Noticed some pretty heavy duty demolition equipment parked next to Lunkenheimers yesterday. Anyone aware if this equipment is intended for that specific building or others in the area? I've been watching that. The "destrcto-Hoe' has been there a few weeks with the other thing getting there more recently. Doesnt seem to be connected to the project with the Water Works so I was thinking perhaps that Lee's Family/Twin Trolley was going to be coming down soon. Lukenheimers big building seems relatively stable and buttoned up despite how rough it is cosmetically but Lees keeps geting broken into and or having the plywood boarding it up ripped or blown off all the time. Makes me think the reapers have come for it and not the factory. The other Lukenheimer building down off beekman is REALLY open now with huge window casements entirely gone.
June 3, 20187 yr Welp the gathered equipment was for the former Twin Trolley/Lee's Family Restaurant at the corner. It was knocked down today.
August 21, 20186 yr Just wondering if anyone else had had a similar discussion. Twice this week people i trust to be fairly caught up with things mentioned how the Lick Run will have open sewage flowing thru it during rain storms so they were wondering the purpose of the whole project. Are other people of this opinion out there? I thought it was fairly well known that the creek would be storm water while the sewage would run in an enclosed pipe underground. Maybe it isnt played up enough but if this is the popular opinion maybe they need to step up the PR a bit. Hopefully the finished project will change opinion but I was surprised that intelligent people would believe that hundreds of millions were being spent to make an open sewer and no one was stepping up to complain.
August 21, 20186 yr Most definitely not a sewage stream. It's daylighting a stream so that stormwater runoff goes into it instead of into the sewer where you THEN get sewage flowing openly into the Ohio River as a result of combined sewer overflows. People seem to have gotten their understandings of what's happening crossed.
August 21, 20186 yr Most definitely not a sewage stream. It's daylighting a stream so that stormwater runoff goes into it instead of into the sewer where you THEN get sewage flowing openly into the Ohio River as a result of combined sewer overflows. People seem to have gotten their understandings of what's happening crossed. Yep I guess driving thru here twice a day has me a bit touchy that everyone else isnt in the know. If it was the other way around and i was putting up with this chaos for an open sewer id be the first at the pitchfork store.
August 21, 20186 yr Drove through there this morning. There is definitely a new sewer pipe going in along Queen City. The new stonework looked better than I expected. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
August 21, 20186 yr The idea is that rainwater will flow through the new Lick Run stream and into the Mill Creek and eventually into the Ohio River. Sewage will continue to flow through underground pipes and will not be flowing through the new stream. Anyone claiming that sewage will flow through the new stream is either extremely confused about the purpose of this project or is intentionally spreading FUD.
August 21, 20186 yr Right now most stormwater goes into a combined sewer with "sanitary" sewage like what is flushed down the toilet or disposed of at factories. The Lick Run Watershed project has been separating the stormwater from the sanitary sewage so they travel in completely separate pipes for years. Once this project is completed, stormwater will dump directly into the new Lick Run, which will then run into the Mill Creek. Since not all of the Lick Run Watershed will be immediately diverted to the new Lick Run, there will still be combined sewers in the area, but they will continue to be diverted into the Mill Creek during large storm events as they do now. The plan is to expand the number of separated storm and sewer lines to make less stormwater cause overflows of combined sewage lines. There will be no combined sewer overflows established in the new Lick Run as far as I know. So unless there is so much rain that the Mill Creek runs backwards and into the Lick Run, there shouldn't be any raw sewage going into the Lick Run. The one thing I will say, is if trash goes down the new stormwater drains, that will be deposited into the Mill Creek, so there will likely need to be some maintenance to make sure trash doesn't pile up.
April 22, 20196 yr I rode my mountain bike around the construction today and managed to get a flat tire in a tubeless knobby mountain bike tire, a first. The internet is full of tubeless road bicycle tire demos running over nails and broken glass but somehow Lick Run ruined a much more robust mountain bike tire.
September 15, 20195 yr Took a minute to read through this thread today... this project is so emblematic of typical Cincinnati it's ridiculous. What started off as a noble effort to make a nice urban park in South Fairmount turned into decimating half of it (or at least it feels like half of it). What's particularly sad is the fact that there's plenty of vacant lots right across the street on either street to have relocated the houses. Or they could have auctioned the houses off for people to relocate. It's pathetic how short-sighted the Crancellers are. Regardless, it looks like the end result will be nice. Hopefully decent infill comes to either side of the park in those vacant lots to make it all worth it.
September 15, 20195 yr 2 hours ago, SWOH said: Regardless, it looks like the end result will be nice. Hopefully decent infill comes to either side of the park in those vacant lots to make it all worth it. This is what I'm hoping for. The park is good enough to bring foot traffic and interest to the neighborhood and get some development on the near-west side of town. Selfishly, I just want the Mill Creek Greenway extended to meet up with the Lick Run trail here, but that won't happen for another 10+ years at this pace
July 1, 20204 yr Some photos from July 1. The website says the project is on track to finish by end of 2020. It's starting to look really nice and I'm excited to see it completed.
July 1, 20204 yr It's beautiful now, if not antiseptic. All that rock is the design out of someone's head and not Mother Nature. Can't imagine it won't look like crap in 5 years.
July 1, 20204 yr 24 minutes ago, Rabbit Hash said: It's beautiful now, if not antiseptic. All that rock is the design out of someone's head and not Mother Nature. Can't imagine it won't look like crap in 5 years. I had a similar thought/concern... are they planning on treating the rock stream like a park that requires ongoing maintenance, or are they expecting it to just sit there and age gracefully? What - if anything - will be done to clean the rocks?
July 1, 20204 yr Once they "daylight" the stream, will there be water flowing through there regularly? Or will it be dry most of the time and only have water flowing during really heavy rains?
July 1, 20204 yr Last night I drove up Colerain Ave. through Mt. Airy Forest and noticed that the rebuilt rock wall on the forest side of the hill finally looks "old". It was rebuilt around 2005 and looked harshly new at the beginning, especially in contrast to the original wall on the uphill side of the road. Unfortunately the Lick Run nightmare is about as horrid as I feared it would be. The whole thing is cheap and fake. Who exactly wants to go for a stroll along this thing, with all of the obnoxious traffic still whizzing by?
July 2, 20204 yr 3 hours ago, taestell said: Once they "daylight" the stream, will there be water flowing through there regularly? Or will it be dry most of the time and only have water flowing during really heavy rains? They will be pumping some portion of the stream back up to the beginning so there will always be running water.
Create an account or sign in to comment