The city's parking requirements are fairly onerous.  For retail it's 1 space per 250 square feet, but for restaurants it's 1 per 150 square feet.  In CN-P districts (commercial neighborhood-pedestrian oriented) the first 2,000 square feet are exempt so that helps some but only in very specific circumstances.  Walnut Hills has a form-based zoning code overlay, and I don't know how that changes the equation here. 

New housing could fill Anthem site in East Walnut Hills

Bowdeya Tweh, [email protected] 7:16 a.m. EDT September 30, 2016

 

Health insurer Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield's move from its campus in East Walnut Hills could free up space to add more new housing in the neighborhood.

 

Al. Neyer and Vandercar Holdings are working with Towne Properties to complete a development plan for the seven-acre site near William Howard Taft Road and Woodburn Avenue. The Cincinnati companies do not own the property but have been working for several months on how they could be involved in the site's redevelopment.

 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/2016/09/30/new-housing-could-fill-anthem-site-east-walnut-hills/91305242/

This is good news, but 300 units over 7 acres is a bit lower than I'd hope for.

 

The number one goal in my mind is introducing a street grid through the site, even if it's only in pedestrian format, and building all buildings up to it and locating parking away from the street.

That would be great news!

 

I thought 300 was a bit low too.  I agree with you jmicha, if they can re-introduce the street grid, possibly construct a parking ramp, and give it pedestrian friendly features, I think it would be a great move to add onto the E. WH Biz district.  This area also falls close to the Walnut Hills proper NBD so would better help connect the two.

 

I'd be really happy to see some nice designs and some city money spent on it for street grid improvements and possibly TIF district to fix the wrong that Anthem Campus created.  There is a lot of room for improvement there, exciting news

They could easily build a large parking garage that is entirely ringed by residential development and then fill out the rest of the site with purely residential/commercial/retail/etc.

 

Woodburn has some nice momentum and the Walnut Hills NBD is starting to pick up and I agree they'd probably both benefit nicely from this central point being strong.

 

I just fear it'll be built out with surface lots, hence the low estimated number of units, or we'll be seeing townhomes and short multi-family buildings. I'm holding out hope that it is done correctly, but I don't feel all that optimistic we'll be getting something really amazing out of this.

 

But even such, 300 units is around 400-450 new residents which will definitely be a welcome addition to the area.

Vandercar did the awful Oakley Station development (right?) so I don't have my hopes up...

oh god yeah that was them.

Vandercar did the awful Oakley Station development (right?) so I don't have my hopes up...

 

Ugh, I missed that part. Yeah, this will be crap.

This is the same partnership of developers that are doing the Blue Ash development next to Summit Park.

Wait, they are only responsible for aspects of Oakley Station. The residential was Flaherty and Collins out of Indy. What was the partnership on the residential portion?

 

Maybe there's hope still...

I'm pretty certain Anthem owns the following Lots in addition to the buildings they are in:

 

SW Corner of WHT and Bell Place

 

The whole block besides two buildings in the southeast of the block bounded by: Bell Place to the West, East McMillan to the south, Woodburn to the east, and WHT to the north

 

The surface lot east of Woodburn across the street from the other surface lots

 

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cincinnati,+OH/@39.1262295,-84.4816788,413m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x884051b1de3821f9:0x69fb7e8be4c09317!8m2!3d39.1031182!4d-84.5120196

 

They could really put this block back together with street facing buildings and possibly an entrance to a ramp in the middle of the big block, with street facing residential on the other two sites seperate from the big block.

 

Just seems to me that they could fit more like 500 units in there.  I would prefer they do this in 2 or 3 phases to build it correctly and gauge the demand that way, though I understand that could drive up the costs a bit to split everything.

Vandercar did the awful Oakley Station development (right?) so I don't have my hopes up...

 

Ugh, I missed that part. Yeah, this will be crap.

 

From their website: Funny that there is so much similarity and abundance of parking even they cant tell the projects apart. (look at the last image slide). http://www.vanhold.com/gallery.aspx?ID=100004

 

I'd laugh but it's just so depressing.

 

I think I've made it clear in the past that I don't particularly like neighborhood groups, conservation groups, etc. meddling in new construction development, but in this situation I'm REALLY hoping there's a ton of opposition to anything they present if it looks even remotely like Oakley Station.

This is good news, but 300 units over 7 acres is a bit lower than I'd hope for.

 

The number one goal in my mind is introducing a street grid through the site, even if it's only in pedestrian format, and building all buildings up to it and locating parking away from the street.

 

I'll all for grids... but I'm curious how you'd like to see the grid work here. There aren't any cross streets (other than Locust) to potentially connect to. So any new grid will essentially be a "stand-alone" grid. And it's complicated by the fact that Taft and McMillan are one-way, but should be converted to two-way.

Cranley built his buddy a free parking garage in Oakley so maybe he'll get one here. 

I would place a large amount of money on a this getting a project based TIF that pays for a garage.

Well the loss of 400 workers from the area isn't a minor issue.  At least 100-200 fewer people will now be going out for lunch or buying something else during the day in the area, even if it's only a tank of gas and a cup of coffee.  My complaint is probably moot though, since we'll likely see some office development similar to Oakley Station or Rookwood along MLK thanks to the new interchange. 

I can bet that Skyline and Taco Casa gets a ton of business from Anthem alone

I was working on a project across the street and we wound up eating at Skyline many times (against my personal desires) and the crowd at lunch time never seemed like the Anthem crowd. It seemed like more blue-collar workers and residents than anything. But maybe looks were deceiving.

It seems like Anthem would be more of a brown-bag kind of crew.  Similar to Paycor and Medpace, where they even admitted that a lot of their staff is "suburban women who just want secure parking" more than anything.  Even at better paying jobs a lot of people seem to stay in for lunch, in part because so many people are living paycheck to paycheck no matter how much they're actually making.  So I think trading relatively insular office workers for residents would be a win.  It's not like there's a lot of lunch places here, but there's more bars, breweries, and esoteric food joints (like O Pie O) opening that would benefit more from having people living nearby and walking around, especially in the evening. 

Must be nice to be able to subsist on dry snacks and Tupperware smuggle.

Must be nice to be able to subsist on dry snacks and Tupperware smuggle.

 

Sounds like a good name for a Hall & Oates cover band.

 

Must be nice to be able to subsist on dry snacks and Tupperware smuggle.

 

People who eat at their desks think they're making America great again.  Really getting back to our rugged, no-nonsense roots. 

I'd laugh but it's just so depressing.

 

I think I've made it clear in the past that I don't particularly like neighborhood groups, conservation groups, etc. meddling in new construction development, but in this situation I'm REALLY hoping there's a ton of opposition to anything they present if it looks even remotely like Oakley Station.

 

I don't know what to say about this. One the one hand, you are to be applauded for your honesty, but I would have doubted there would be anyone who would say this publicly. Am I misreading this? Don't you believe that it is the "neighborhood groups" that is the smallest unit that has the most at stake, the best understanding of its own needs? It is top down planning that gave us things like the skywalks, a Riverfront of little used stadiums and acres of blighted buildings.

In theory, yes. In practice they rarely ever actually push for things that are truly the best for a community and almost always take on NIMBY tactics when it comes to new development. It becomes less about protecting interests and more about making sure a new development doesn't have any discernible effect on a neighborhood which is basically asking for a place to stagnate. It's a problem.

 

Good urban planning isn't what comes from neighborhood groups. Downsized projects with lackluster architecture are.

Well both Northside and Clifton kept fast food from destroying their business districts (the appearance of the KFC/Taco Bell on Hamilton was a watershed moment for Northside...it forced everyone to come together). Back in the 60s, Clifton prevented itself from being torn down by developers for multifamilies, kept Wendy's from tearing down the Esquire, and most recently got the IGA replaced by a co-op mostly owned and operated by neighborhood residents.  Also, Mt. Adams had the height limits enacted to keep more towers from destroying the streetscapes and views. 

 

People move to a neighborhood because they like the way it is at the time they make the decision to buy.  If it changes significantly, then it's likely no longer a place where they would choose to live, and so fight most big projects.  Recently, long-time residents in many neighborhoods around the country are seeing their neighborhoods destroyed by Airbnb.   

Should note, I'm speaking purely of neighborhood groups in 2016. Not saying there has NEVER been an effective neighborhood group. Groups lead by the greats like Jane Jacobs knew exactly what was needed and could spot problematic projects from a mile away. But those types of groups have mostly devolved into a bitch-fest about anything and everything new or different or that would result in any sort of change even if that change is objectively positive.

Andres Duany like to bring up the notion of subsidiarity, which is the idea that decisions are best made at the smallest/most local level possible.  So the decision about where to locate a new school, or a new electrical transmission line, or a rapid transit line, or even bike lanes should not be made only by those who are going to be immediately adjacent to them because they'll always say no.  It also means that decisions about whether or not chickens should be allowed or if speed humps should be installed on a street shouldn't be made at the city level either because it can't account for all the variables at hand. 

 

This brings up the broken public process in the US, which only considers the vested interests of the most affected parties in the discussion, without any neutral representatives of the community at large to weigh in on the greater good.  In Australia they select people from the jury pool to bring in, and while I don't believe there's any mandate for people to participate, there's some requirement of the community involvement process to make sure the participants aren't just those with a stake in the situation.  This way, the immediate neighbors and the developers (or the state DOT or whatever) are treated as they properly should be, as vested interests with strong biases on both sides.  These other people can then, as neutral representatives, give an opinion on whether the project will benefit everyone more than it might harm a few immediate neighbors.  That's how they get public beaches in a community of million dollar mansions, new transit lines, and schools that kids can walk to instead of being bused to some corn field. 

 

As it is, in the US, conservation boards, neighborhood associations, and environmental conservation groups have mostly been coopted by NIMBYs to the point of not serving their original purposes.  They're basically being used to stop any and all development, which leads to housing unaffordability, sprawl, and segregation.  It becomes self-reinforcing too, because as neighborhoods squeeze out any possible development, the demand tries to go into what few permissive locations remain, leading to the skyscraper in the suburb situations, which prompt further height restrictions, and more demand pressure.  It's similar to closing off streets to reduce cut-through traffic.  The more streets you close off, the more traffic gets diverted to the other streets, prompting those residents to close them down, until you have a nearly empty clipped internal grid surrounded by massively gridlocked and unpleasant arterial roads. 

None of this recent discussion I seem to have prompted mentions the fact that the top of this process, urban planners, City Council, 3CDC, The Zoning Board, etc., are utterly corrupt. Perhaps only the soft corruption of business and social club/political affiliation/contributions/nepotism, but none the less, corrupt.

 

The experts in the  late 90's, almost uniformly supported the giving away the riverfront for that fantastic new Hamilton County revenue generator, Paul Brown Stadium. (Yes, I'm still bitter about it).

The Business Courier's take on the Anthem Development:  http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/10/03/massive-residential-project-planned-for-anthem.html

 

Sadly, it includes this: "The team is still studying the possibility of street-level retail."

The 300 apartments only being a portion of the housing which will also include senior housing and condominiums is a good thing to hear. Higher density of units.

 

The fact that street retail wasn't an immediate part of the project and still might not happen is concerning though. I can get not having retail along all of the streets as that would be oversaturation, but it's necessary along McMilland and Woodburn is a necessity.

I would argue that street level retail is necessary at the corner of Taft and Woodburn, and south on Woodburn a little bit to Locust Street, but elsewhere it shouldn't be specifically required.  The problem with McMillan is that St. Ursula is across the street, and retail (especially walkable neighborhood retail) needs to be on both sides of the street.  So definitely capitalize on the corner of Taft and Woodburn, and work with the cool little curved building at McMillan and Woodburn, but otherwise it's a lot of frontage that faces residential or institutional uses and wouldn't work so great. 

This is true, the McMillan side would sort of be a lone retail spot on an otherwise institutional/residential stretch.

 

The corner of Woodburn and Taft could become something nice as an anchor when they redo that intersection to turn the rest of Woodburn and McMillan 2-way (is that still happening?).

The article states that DeSales Flats 2 is a finished project (like Delta Flats), when it hasn't even broken ground.

 

If the Athem site closes in mid-2017, we still aren't talking about a phase 1 completion until 2019, and probably sometime in the 2020's before it is built-out. 

Anthem also uses the 0.8 acre surface parking lot on the east side of Woodburn. I hope/assume that will also be a part of any future development.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1260323,-84.4797292,3a,81.7y,108.19h,85.95t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sd3DlFcjLZvoPV_Goqg4XaQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Here is a rare Northside-style renovation in Walnut Hills at a good price.  This is the only renovated house on the block which is why you're seeing the price reduction. 

https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1511928/2236-St-James-Ave-Walnut-Hills-OH-45206

 

Here is a 2-family right by Peeble's corner...definitely a good buy long-term:

https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1506744/2618-Melrose-Ave-Walnut-Hills-OH-45206

 

 

I saw that Northside-style house for sale when I drove by the other day and was surpised by the nice price.  That block is in pretty rough shape but if that Windsor Elementary School Project ever gets kicked off it could help spur some more renos

A friend of mine had 2236 St James under contract at one point but the inspection came back with so many problems that she decided to walk... this from a house that was recently renovated. The renovation was not done well at all and this is why you see it still on the market and with a price reduction. Because these guys couldn't get the renovation done right the first time my friend decided to walk rather than have them fix all of their mistakes.

You mean painting all the trim white and installing new countertops shouldn't have been their first priority?

Harriet Beecher Stowe house to be renovated:

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/walnut-hills/harriet-beecher-stowe-house-getting-1m-update

 

No doubt this money magically appeared at the urging of developers who are preparing to turn the corner of MLK and Gilbert into Rookwood South.  Frankly we should all be surprised they aren't trying to get the thing torn down. 

 

Nah, this one's been in the works for a few years. I was in a meeting with a couple of Ohio historical society representatives about plans to fix up the Stowe House, though if I recall most of the "upgrades" were related to a new parking lot and landscaping at that time.

A friend of mine had 2236 St James under contract at one point but the inspection came back with so many problems that she decided to walk... this from a house that was recently renovated. The renovation was not done well at all and this is why you see it still on the market and with a price reduction. Because these guys couldn't get the renovation done right the first time my friend decided to walk rather than have them fix all of their mistakes.

 

Who knows.  I've noticed an alarming increase is "inspection reports" that are nothing but alarmist bullshit over the past 5 years. I mean some CRAZY stuff. The reports no longer seem to simply report the condition of items, but negatively allude to worst case scenarios for everything they cover. "The home has a foundation. This foundation could fail, and the structure could collapse."  Meanwhile the doorbell that isn't hooked up properly gets no mention.  I've sold homes with BRAND NEW appliances that inspectors give a "fair" grade to for condition.  I'm not making this up. I could go on for hours...

Its like theses companies scare a buyer off of a home, in hopes the buyer backs out of the deal and finds another home that will need an inspection. Of course the buyer will want to hire the trusty inspector that saved from buying that last death trap!!

^ I have noticed the same thing, particularly for older renovated homes. There are a lot of older homes that have issues that are not cost effective to address, a lot of people see them as red flags of sorts but if you want an older home they are conditions you may just have to live with. I had an acquaintance pass up an amazing deal in Columbia Tusculum because of issues that were all pretty mundane old house things like a leaky basement (it was stacked limestone, what do you expect?). They bought a new build in Morrow because the inspection was perfect.

^ I have noticed the same thing, particularly for older renovated homes. There are a lot of older homes that have issues that are not cost effective to address, a lot of people see them as red flags of sorts but if you want an older home they are conditions you may just have to live with. I had an acquaintance pass up an amazing deal in Columbia Tusculum because of issues that were all pretty mundane old house things like a leaky basement (it was stacked limestone, what do you expect?). They bought a new build in Morrow because the inspection was perfect.

 

Yep..."Cost effective" is the key word. Especially in old homes. I have owned over 30 buildings in Cincinnati. None less than 40 years old, and many closer to 75 and even 145 years old. With our soil typology in Cincinnati, it's a near universal truth you're going to have some type of water intrusion in some very specific type of rain event in each building.  Especially te stacked stone.  Yes, they could all be made 'waterproof", if you are willing to spend the money.  I've seen plenty of waterproofed basements become leakers once again, years down the road.

Historic Walnut Hills building purchased by investors

 

 

A group of local investors purchased a historic building in the heart of Walnut Hills with plans to fill it with office tenants.

 

More below:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/10/27/exclusive-historic-walnut-hills-building-purchased.html

Walnut Hills unveils master plan to make it a destination neighborhood

 

 

For decades Walnut Hills was a city neighborhood that people drove through on the way to somewhere else, but community leaders there have crafted a new plan with a goal to capitalize on its burgeoning redevelopment while keeping long-time residents and the neighborhood’s character intact.

 

Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation executive director Kevin Wright presented the plan to the Cincinnati Planning Commission on Friday. The group's members said they were impressed.

 

More below:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/11/18/walnut-hills-unveils-master-plan-to-make-it-a.html

If changing the neighborhood’s streets so that they are more friendly to pedestrians and bicycling causes traffic congestion, so be it, the plan said, because it will yield better economic performance in the neighborhood.

 

Why is this so hard for people to realize???

That "plan" is just graphics and there is no new big idea.   

^It's actually an pretty extremely comprehensive study of the existing neighborhood and their vision for specific parts of it. It includes highly specific action items as well and visions for different corners of the neighborhood.  Did you actually see the whole 90 page document?

^It's actually a pretty comprehensive study of the existing neighborhood and their vision for specific parts of it. It includes highly specific action items as well.  Did you actually see the whole 90 page document?

 

No, that's not what the link linked to.  So is there new zoning?  Specific sources of new government grants and tax incentives?  Otherwise it's just another pep talk.

 

Looks like nothing big or mid-sized is slated to happen in the area in 2017 other than the MLK interchange opening.  But I'm sure we'll get a few more rounds of hype.