Took a few photos of the Ashland condos. Looks like they’ve sealed up the “garden/basement” windows under the largest building. But they retained the lower level windows in the building closest to MLK. 

 

 

That's a pretty stark change!! The old building almost looked uninhabitable

11 minutes ago, IAGuy39 said:

That's a pretty stark change!! The old building almost looked uninhabitable

 

People were squatting in it after it was vacated.  Like women with toddlers.  It was crazy.  

New paint, new shrubs!

8 minutes ago, oakiehigh said:

New paint, new shrubs!

 

Fortunes in Flipping!  

It appears that some entry doors have been converted into windows, which leads me to believe that they reduced the number of units and made them larger as well

 

Edited February 21, 20205 yr by 513to424

2 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Fortunes in Flipping!  

 

Hi, I'm Nick Vertucci.  

There used to be a neat 2nd floor deck/balcony. I wish they had re-built that, though I'm sure they already had a very squeezed budget. I'd be surprised if there were any other new (or fully renovated) condos in the inner-ring of the city selling for as low as $135k (the list price for the 1-bedroom condos), so I appreciate that they're offering condos for sale at a lower price point than most other condos on the market: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.130454,-84.4819825,3a,74.3y,286.6h,102.5t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skXLCnT3lrCyRSu4_f90jpQ!2e0!7i3328!8i1664

I recently found two photos I took with a cheap camera phone of the Alms Hotel around 2011 or 2012.  I haven't been in it since they renovated it but I assume these two paintings are gone, along with the portraits of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston in the main lobby.  I recall that the Whitney Houston painting was embellished with some sort of bible verse. 

 

 

 

There were about 7 pickup trucks milling about inside the Anthem site today. I'm expecting work to start this month.

14 minutes ago, brian korte said:

There were about 7 pickup trucks milling about inside the Anthem site today. I'm expecting work to start this month.

 

any word on whats taken this so long to get going?

No. They didn't start the pre-development meetings with the city until May 2019 and they didn't submit their building permit application until December 2019 (which still hasn't been approved). Would guess a combination of finalizing the plan, getting approval from the neighborhood, lining up funding, and doing environmental remediation all contributed to the delay.

I can confirm that the girls are still working the corner of Lincoln & Melrose.  

On 3/23/2020 at 12:07 PM, jmecklenborg said:

I can confirm that the girls are still working the corner of Lincoln & Melrose.  

 

I hope you tipped them well.

makes it a lot kinkier when they wear masks

 

Edited April 1, 20205 yr by RJohnson
spelling

There is a church I never noticed before being torn down.  It is on Woodburn, possibly in Evanston, not Walnut Hills:

 

Also, it is sad to see the Brew House boarded up:

 

Well damn. That sucks about the church on Woodburn. Quality architecture that will become a vacant lot, or something horribly boring. 

9 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

There is a church I never noticed before being torn down.  It is on Woodburn, possibly in Evanston, not Walnut Hills:

 

Also, it is sad to see the Brew House boarded up:

 

Is the Brew house just temporarily closed? I saw where the old church was torn down to close out orders from the city for multiple things. Sadly whoever owned it prolly just bought it, let it deteriorate, demolished it and will prolly just sit on it waiting to sell it for a lot more than they paid for it. The city really needs to hold these people accountable and have some sort of system in place that the people who buy these lots have to have some plan in place to rehab or build on the lot, show that they have some of the funds or a plan to get the funds in place and that they have to start construction on site within a certain time frame. 

 

 

2 hours ago, Ucgrad2015 said:

Is the Brew house just temporarily closed?

 

I assume so.  Yesterday the owner was on WVXU but I literally only heard the last 10 seconds of the interview.  I'm too lazy to hunt down the podcast. 

2 hours ago, Ucgrad2015 said:

The city really needs to hold these people accountable and have some sort of system in place that the people who buy these lots have to have some plan in place to rehab or build on the lot, show that they have some of the funds or a plan to get the funds in place and that they have to start construction on site within a certain time frame. 

 

 

 

Demolition by neglect was the strategy of slumlords in Over-the-Rhine and similar neighborhoods around the country for 50+ years.  No city really figured out how to put an end to it.  The exceptions might have been New Orleans, Savannah, Boston, etc., where they were able to install draconian regulations on their historic districts.  New Orleans enacted preservation laws in the French Quarter in the 1920s while it simultaneously tore down similar neighborhoods nearby, especially the one near the old train station.  Which old train station?  The one that was torn down. 

 

The area sung about in The House of the Rising Sun was here...the greenway you see was the railroad track approach to the station:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/New+Orleans,+LA/@29.9605732,-90.075871,929m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8620a454b2118265:0xdb065be85e22d3b4!8m2!3d29.9510658!4d-90.0715323

 

 

1 hour ago, jmecklenborg said:

Demolition by neglect was the strategy of slumlords in Over-the-Rhine and similar neighborhoods around the country for 50+ years.  No city really figured out how to put an end to it. 

 

Land tax.  Stop rewarding depreciation and demolition with lower tax bills.  

1 hour ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Demolition by neglect was the strategy of slumlords in Over-the-Rhine and similar neighborhoods around the country for 50+ years.  No city really figured out how to put an end to it.

Wrong thread but the owners of the OG Izzy's & Former Poppies are doing just that as a tantrum for not getting their way to demolish it and build a ultra modern condo/daycare/school. It is just a block from city hall and couldnt be more of an eyesore to all around it. Grrrr. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1048592,-84.5175721,3a,75y,164.51h,103.01t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1smHBC8tvnnrh2z39Eo8LqNA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DmHBC8tvnnrh2z39Eo8LqNA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D238.56712%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

 

2 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

I assume so.  Yesterday the owner was on WVXU but I literally only heard the last 10 seconds of the interview.  I'm too lazy to hunt down the podcast. 

@Ucgrad2015 she basically said that it's not permanent but they have a tough layout for social distancing, so they'll be more cautious than many. She said they were going to use the time to make repairs and give other businesses more opportunities who are better suited to carryout.  

Probably boarded up so that it doesn't get broken into. There have been an elevated number of non-essential business break-ins in Columbus these days since burglars assume nobody's around.

On Saturday I heard that The Greenwich Tavern plans to reopen.  Apparently it was forced to close because "they weren't paying their bills".  The previous owners, Mark and Ken, still own the place, and intend to reopen when everything is straightened out.  It has now been closed for upwards of a year.  I think they closed in August or September of 2019. 

The following drone photos appear on a current listing for a condominium in East Walnut Hills...what's interesting to me is how decidedly not dense Walnut Hills is.  The McMillan St. and Woodburn Ave. commercial strips and the occasional midrise building give the impression of a dense city neighborhood akin to those in Chicago or Philadelphia but the reality is decidedly casual. 

 

 

Yeah, as soon as you get out of the basin, density just plummets in nearly every direction, save for a few exceptions like CUF. Places like Walnut Hills and even the northern half of Clifton certainly feel a lot more "suburban" at street level than architecturally-comparable neighborhoods in other river cities like Pittsburgh or Louisville.

2 hours ago, BigDipper 80 said:

Yeah, as soon as you get out of the basin, density just plummets in nearly every direction, save for a few exceptions like CUF. Places like Walnut Hills and even the northern half of Clifton certainly feel a lot more "suburban" at street level than architecturally-comparable neighborhoods in other river cities like Pittsburgh or Louisville.

On the Ohio side yes. Parts of Price hill feel dense though. As well as Newport,Bellevue,Covington in KY. 

Conversely, follow the Mill Creek Valley north and, with a couple of interruptions, it doesn't become truly suburban until you're past Lockland/Reading.  

The lot sizes are bigger and it's a lot less common to see a building built close to the rear lot line.  A 35x150 lot is roughly 2X the size of a 25x100 lot, but the real issue is how far back does the building go.  In Los Angeles, many unassuming multifamily buildings come within a few feet of their rear lot lines.  That's why much of LA is deceptively dense - denser over a much larger area than are Cincinnati or Pittsburgh.  

 

You can see from these aerial photos that almost nothing in Walnut Hills hits its rear lot line aside from McMillan St. and Woodburn Ave. 

^are ADU’s legal in Cincinnati? seems like they could be a good fit for neighborhoods of a certain vintage with detached garages (like Walnut Hills or Westwood.) Gives  options to homeowners to get more use out of their property be it from housing extended family or using as a rental or AirBnB. (Or could even help a family member quarantine if they got coronavirus.) Plus they would be hardly even noticeable. 
 

something to think about now that some of these original detached garages are becoming dilapidated and will need to be rebuilt soon

Edited May 25, 20205 yr by thebillshark

17 hours ago, BigDipper 80 said:

Yeah, as soon as you get out of the basin, density just plummets in nearly every direction, save for a few exceptions like CUF. Places like Walnut Hills and even the northern half of Clifton certainly feel a lot more "suburban" at street level than architecturally-comparable neighborhoods in other river cities like Pittsburgh or Louisville.

Yeah I just moved to Pittsburgh. The city as a whole is so much denser, I was honestly caught off guard because everyone talks about how similar the two cities are, but Pittsburgh has much more "east coast" density to it once you get out of downtown. 

1 hour ago, seaswan said:

Yeah I just moved to Pittsburgh. The city as a whole is so much denser, I was honestly caught off guard because everyone talks about how similar the two cities are, but Pittsburgh has much more "east coast" density to it once you get out of downtown. 

 

Prewar Pittsburgh was almost 2X as big as Cincinnati.  They were roughly the same population in 1900 but Pittsburgh blew past Cincinnati in the 1910s and 1920s.  FFWD to 2020 and the two metro populations are more or less the same size. 

That growth slowdown in Cincinnati is probably why the city ended up with its old-money neighborhoods retaining some of their pastoral character. The boomtowns of the 10s and 20s either obliterated all of their country estates or dramatically subdivided the land to squeeze in more housing for factory workers, while the wealthy and middle class moved into the more top-down planned (and consistently dense) areas like Bexley or Cherokee Triangle. Meanwhile in Cincinnati, you have homes along Clifton and Lafayette that sit on roughly the same lot size as they did in the 1870s when it was still positively rural up the hill. Cincinnati is really the only city that I can think of where those formerly-wealthy close-in neighborhoods didn't get totally consumed by cramming in as much housing stock as humanly possible.

4 hours ago, thebillshark said:

^are ADU’s legal in Cincinnati?

 

They are not.  A few exceptions exist in neighborhoods that adopted form-based code overlays, but I don't think it's universal among those either.  Cincinnati's overall lack of alleys is a factor in this as well.  Large deep lots where there's no access to the rear except walking path.  

On 5/25/2020 at 12:05 PM, jjakucyk said:

 

They are not.  A few exceptions exist in neighborhoods that adopted form-based code overlays, but I don't think it's universal among those either.  Cincinnati's overall lack of alleys is a factor in this as well.  Large deep lots where there's no access to the rear except walking path.  

 

Long time reader, first time post:

Can confirm. I live in Madisonville and was digging through the zoning for reference as it was. The form-based code allows for a "carriage house" in 7 of the 9 forms. The two exceptions are "Main Street" and "Urban Core" which would be too dense for them anyways. Madisonville, Walnut Hills, College Hill and Westwood are the neighborhoods with form-based code overlays that I have found. I assume their adoption died off when Cranley came into office but would be interested to hear more.

3 hours ago, Dev said:

 I assume their adoption died off when Cranley came into office but would be interested to hear more.

 

Yeah that's pretty much it.  The city was on the verge of implementing a whole new zoning code as well.  How form-based it was, I don't know, but for a time they had a "new zoning" layer on the CAGIS maps and draft copies of the code for review.  Cranley put the kibosh on that as well because he doesn't think they're "developer friendly" and he just doesn't understand them.  

 

Welcome to the forum!  

I think Cranley understood but killed it just because it came from the previous administration like he killed Brewery X in Eden Park, killed the original 4th & Race deal, killed the original parking deal, etc. 

Quote

The new rules are unfamiliar, even scary, to developers, according to Cranley. "I know all of the major developers in town," Cranley said at the February council meeting. "They don't want form-based codes."
 

Chris Dobrozsi, vice president of real estate development at one of the city's largest developers, Neyer Properties, said he'd at least be open to the idea: "We are in full support of form-based code, but we have not actively engaged in any area that has it."

The rest of the article is filled with BS quotes from Cranley, including warning Westwood that they might regret it: Zoning code alternative in limbo - Enquirer

Form-based codes are good for everyone involved--developers, neighborhood residents, and city staff. The process of implementing the FBC allows residents to have say in prescribing what types of development will be allowed in their neighborhood.

 

Cranley does not like form-based codes because they eliminate the part of the process where a developer has to come to City Hall and ask for a zoning variance. That eliminates an opportunity for the mayor to take the developer aside and ask for a contribution to his re-election fund in exchange for his support of their project.

3 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

I think Cranley understood but killed it just because it came from the previous administration like he killed Brewery X in Eden Park, killed the original 4th & Race deal, killed the original parking deal, etc. 

 

So you're saying he's Trump.

Undo Mallory

45 minutes ago, ColDayMan said:

 

So you're saying he's Trump.

Nah when you have a small d*ck, you tend to act like a huge d*ck. Cranley in a nutshell...

10 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

Undo Mallory

 

Precisely.

A pair of construction trailers were parked on the Anthem site this past weekend.  When I drove past this morning they were gone.   

16 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

A pair of construction trailers were parked on the Anthem site this past weekend.  When I drove past this morning they were gone.   

 

They were not gone. They were moved into place and put together as one big trailer on the south side of the lot. There's also an excavator on the site. I believe the developer closed on their financing on Friday last week. Activity will be picking up and dirt should be getting moved this week.

On 5/24/2020 at 2:24 AM, jmecklenborg said:

what's interesting to me is how decidedly not dense Walnut Hills is.  The McMillan St. and Woodburn Ave. commercial strips and the occasional midrise building give the impression of a dense city neighborhood akin to those in Chicago or Philadelphia but the reality is decidedly casual. 

 

In rapidly growing cities, neighborhoods like Walnut Hills are seeing insane densification where single family homes are getting demolished and replaced with tall, narrow apartment buildings, sometimes around 7-8 stories.

 

 

Or in some cases, multiple buildings are being built on lots where a single-family home once stood.

 

 

That's why it's so funny to me when Cincinnatians complain about new 5-story infill developments that "change the character of the neighborhood" and successfully NIMBY them down to 4 stories as if that's some big win. If we had a booming economy instead of one that grows a modest 1-2% per year, then we would see some real character-changing infill like what's pictured above.

On 6/4/2020 at 8:53 PM, taestell said:

Form-based codes are good for everyone involved--developers, neighborhood residents, and city staff. The process of implementing the FBC allows residents to have say in prescribing what types of development will be allowed in their neighborhood.

 

Cranley does not like form-based codes because they eliminate the part of the process where a developer has to come to City Hall and ask for a zoning variance. That eliminates an opportunity for the mayor to take the developer aside and ask for a contribution to his re-election fund in exchange for his support of their project.

Which John is allowed to do but Tamaya is not?

 

I'm split on FBC, mostly because of its referential nature. I probably just don't understand it enough. How does FBC allow for increased density of a neighborhood? 

Implementing a FBC itself doesn't necessarily increase or decrease the density of a neighborhood. What it does is clearly define the rules, and then allows property owners or developers to build according to those rules. It reduces the need to ask for variances (therefore reducing the opportunity for bribery) and reduces the ability of one loud NIMBY to kill a project that would benefit the entire community. Maybe an actual expert on this topic like @JYP can provide some more detailed info!

1 hour ago, Chas Wiederhold said:

Which John is allowed to do but Tamaya is not?

 

I'm split on FBC, mostly because of its referential nature. I probably just don't understand it enough. How does FBC allow for increased density of a neighborhood? 

 

27 minutes ago, taestell said:

Implementing a FBC itself doesn't necessarily increase or decrease the density of a neighborhood. What it does is clearly define the rules, and then allows property owners or developers to build according to those rules. It reduces the need to ask for variances (therefore reducing the opportunity for bribery) and reduces the ability of one loud NIMBY to kill a project that would benefit the entire community. Maybe an actual expert on this topic like @JYP can provide some more detailed info!

 

A good form-based code has a extensive front loaded public engagement process to determine community values and goals for development. We did this in 2012. The public engagement process was city-wide and lasted for a month. There were other smaller stakeholder engagements for the four initial neighborhoods and opportunities for engagement at every level of code adoption from the text to the new zoning map. It would be during this process that code calibration would determine the desired density and development patterns for the neighborhoods being regulated under the FBC.

 

A standard feature of FBC's is that they allow for "by-right" development which means that more intense development can be allowed if it meets all the parameters of the code. If not it can pursue variances like under normal zoning, or a zone change. 

 

What is great about a well designed FBC is that it allows for "pick-up truck" level developers to build some of the middle-range housing typologies that are often hard to allow with conventional zoning, like 4-plex's or cottage courts. In many historic and urban areas it allows for new construction to follow the existing urban scale of the neighborhood since that is often what community stakeholders want.

 

IMO we did a few things wrong with the Cincinnati FBC but it gets most things right. Right now it is hard to change the FBC because there is a lack of political will. In 2013 the Mayor ran on a platform opposed to the FBC and put up roadblocks to implementing and expanding it. When it was implemented there were a few map errors and regulatory errors. In at least one case, a developer requested a FBC zoned site to be rezoned to a PD because the land (which was on a main business street) was accidentally zoned for multi-family with no retail storefront. In this era, it is easier for a developer to go with a PD zoning than to fix the FBC. And for city leaders it is easier to play master developer under a PD than to adhere to a community calibrated code that gives political leaders less control.