Here is CUF:

 

Light blue is CUF.

 

Dark gray is overlap between CUF and The Heights.

 

 

CUF/The Heights/Corryville need to be merged into a single neighborhood called Uptown.

2 minutes ago, taestell said:

CUF/The Heights/Corryville need to be merged into a single neighborhood called Uptown.

I disagree. I think Corryville is unique enough to have its own CC. The Heights was originally created because CUF didn't want UC students voting, and put in a requirement that you had to reside in the neighborhood for a certain amount of time before being eligible, which basically kept students from participating.

 

I don't know if they were doing that as a reaction to UC students with a certain agenda becoming members for a specific item on the agenda or something, but I think it happened like 15-20 years ago.

Everyone just refers CUF/Heights/Corryville as Clifton anyways from nearly all news media in the town to UC itself. When I lived on Loraine for several years, I just gave up and started saying Clifton-Gaslight so people wouldn't think I lived in some student shotgun house south of McMillan. 

Anything north of McMicken, east of 75, west of 71 and south of St. Bernard is "Clifton" to suburbanites.

^^ I recently listed my house on Klotter for sale and just put "Walk to UC and OTR" in the description to make it clear as mud.

 

MLS apparently has its own neighborhood designations. I was led to believe the neighborhood shown in the listing is automatically pulled based on the street address. Much like how everyone calls everything in the vicinity of UC "Clifton," so does MLS.

Edited August 13, 20204 yr by Ram23

16 minutes ago, taestell said:

CUF/The Heights/Corryville need to be merged into a single neighborhood called Uptown.

Even lifelong residents of Cincinnati have never heard of CUF or the heights. Whether they merge with Clifton or Corryville or like you said rename get renamed o Uptown, a re-branding couldn't hurt.

There was an attempt a couple year ago at the CUF council meetings to do a "rebranding" of the neighborhood name. It didn't end up getting anywhere, but there's definitely a known issue with the name. I remember some of the options were Clifton Heights (since that's already the name of the main business district), Fariview, and Bellevue.

 

Besides the fact that no one uses it, it's just a terrible name for a neighborhood. I do think CUF is unique enough to warrant its own neighborhood status, but I always describe myself as living in Clifton, or at most Clifton Heights. I used to say Fairview, thinking people might be familiar with the old school or the park, but no one was. 

 

We could just let the realtors rebrand it as "Above-the-Rhine."

Who is going to take home the CUF belt tonight at SuperSlam?

9 minutes ago, Ram23 said:

Much like how everyone calls everything in the vicinity of UC "Clifton," so does MLS.

 

Realtor neighborhood designations are so scammy. I have seen properties in Avondale listed as "East Clifton."

 

20 minutes ago, cincydave8 said:

Everyone just refers CUF/Heights/Corryville as Clifton anyways from nearly all news media in the town to UC itself. When I lived on Loraine for several years, I just gave up and started saying Clifton-Gaslight so people wouldn't think I lived in some student shotgun house south of McMillan. 

 

This is exactly why I made the suggestion to officially merge these small neighborhoods and call the new neighborhood "Uptown". Most people just incorrectly call everything from OTR to the Zoo "Clifton" now. The city and Uptown Consortium have been pushing the "Uptown" label but it hasn't really caught on with most people. If you rebranded CUF + The Heights + Corryville (which would include both halves of UC's campus and Burnet Woods) to a new neighborhood actually called "Uptown", you might have a fighting chance of getting people to use that name. Clifton and Avondale have enough of their own identify that I think they could and should remain separate neighborhoods.

everyone calls East and West Price Hill just Price Hill. No one knows Pendleton exists, and just call it OTR. Why do we have two Fairmounts? South Cumminsville? Just merge with Northside. People don't know where East Walnut Hills and Walnut Hills change. Maybe it should just be a single neighborhood? Evanston is also colloquially misunderstood. Throw it in with Walnut Hills. Avondale and North Avondale? Merge them. 

 

Putting together neighborhoods just because people don't know the difference is a bad idea IMO. Short Vine is a distinct business district from McMillan/Calhoun and I think it's reasonable to have two separate neighborhoods centered around those business districts.

7 minutes ago, ryanlammi said:

everyone calls East and West Price Hill just Price Hill. No one knows Pendleton exists, and just call it OTR. Why do we have two Fairmounts? South Cumminsville? Just merge with Northside. People don't know where East Walnut Hills and Walnut Hills change. Maybe it should just be a single neighborhood? Evanston is also colloquially misunderstood. Throw it in with Walnut Hills. Avondale and North Avondale? Merge them. 

 

Putting together neighborhoods just because people don't know the difference is a bad idea IMO. Short Vine is a distinct business district from McMillan/Calhoun and I think it's reasonable to have two separate neighborhoods centered around those business districts.

 

Anecdotally, I feel like people under 40 are better with the actual neighborhood names. In my opinion, it might have something to do with a renewed sense of neighborhood pride and ownership. When the city was depopulating, they didn't really care to learn the actual neighborhood names. Now that these neighborhoods are seeing renewed investment people take offense when they get lumped together. Obviously these narratives are driven by well-off white people. I'm sure the long time residents of some of these neighborhoods could tell you exactly where all the boundaries are.

1 hour ago, oudd said:

We could just let the realtors rebrand it as "Above-the-Rhine."

With 1010 On-The-Rhine being a thing, this unfortunately might happen. 

I thought that “The Heights” was Realtor speak for trying to rebrand Clifton Heights, University Heights, and Fairview Heights into one easier to understand area. 

24 minutes ago, NsideProp said:

I thought that “The Heights” was Realtor speak for trying to rebrand Clifton Heights, University Heights, and Fairview Heights into one easier to understand area. 

 

Sure sounds like it. But unfortunately, it's a real thing. 

1 hour ago, ryanlammi said:

everyone calls East and West Price Hill just Price Hill. No one knows Pendleton exists, and just call it OTR. Why do we have two Fairmounts? South Cumminsville? Just merge with Northside. People don't know where East Walnut Hills and Walnut Hills change. Maybe it should just be a single neighborhood? Evanston is also colloquially misunderstood. Throw it in with Walnut Hills. Avondale and North Avondale? Merge them. 

 

Putting together neighborhoods just because people don't know the difference is a bad idea IMO. Short Vine is a distinct business district from McMillan/Calhoun and I think it's reasonable to have two separate neighborhoods centered around those business districts.

 

I am not advocating for merging neighborhoods for the sake of merging neighborhoods. I am advocating for merging three Uptown neighborhoods to solve a few specific problems.

 

East and West Price Hill are each large neighborhoods with substantial residential populations and their own strong cultural identities. It makes sense that people use "Price Hill" to refer to the general area even though it comprises two neighborhoods (three if you include Lower Price Hill), and I see no benefit in merging them.

 

I'm not aware of anyone ever getting confused about where South Cumminsville ends and where Northside begins (especially since they are now physically separated by I-74) or referring to one as the other, and also see no benefit to merging them.

 

Pendleton, I believe, has been considered its own neighborhood at times and part of OTR at other times. But Pendleton has always had its own fairly strong neighborhood identity. I remember hearing "Pendleton Arts District" a lot even before the Broadway Square-era revitalization, and most of the businesses that have recently opened refer to themselves as being in Pendleton and not OTR (e.g. Nation Pendleton, Urbana Pendleton)... as opposed to Corryville (where you will find businesses with names like Taste of Belgium Clifton and LaRosa's Clifton).

 

If you are opposed to neighborhoods merging and think that the historical boundaries should not change, then we should really break CUF back up into its three component neighborhoods — Clifton Heights, University Heights, and Fairview — and each one needs to have its own community council. I don't know what the reasoning was for merging them in the first place, but it probably was some combination of the following factors: the neighborhoods were each very small, the boundaries between them were not well known, they did not have strong individual identities, they already shared a common business district, and/or they believed they would have more political clout or name recognition by combining. What I am basically arguing is that we should take that logic and expand it to include Corryville and The Heights, and give it a better name like Uptown which would lead to less confusion, a stronger community identity, and hopefully put an end to the extremely widespread belief that Short Vine is in Clifton.

A lot of the real estate ads are aimed at people from Stryker, Coshocton or whatever that have only lived in town 1-2 years. They go past ads located in areas they haven't heard of. It's not as big of a problem with the internet but is still a thing.

All of my other points were just to point out the arbitrary idea that because people confuse neighborhoods that they should merge.

 

9 minutes ago, taestell said:

and hopefully put an end to the extremely widespread belief that Short Vine is in Clifton.

If you think this would solve that problem, you're going to have a bad time.

 

I don't have any problem merging The Heights with CUF. My issue is merging Corryville into that conglomerate. Corryville has it's own identity. The Heights doesn't really have that. it doesn't help that there is CUF, Clifton, Clifton Heights, University Heights, and The Heights, which all shall portions of their names. If they wanted to merge CUF with The Heights and call it Uptown, I think that's fine.

 

But now that I think about it, you'll also run into issue with the confusion of Uptown and Uptown Consortium, which I believe includes Avondale, Clifton, and Mt. Auburn. There doesn't seem like an obvious way to avoid the confusion. I just think trying to consolidate Corryville into CUF and The Heights is not worth the hassle.

7 minutes ago, ryanlammi said:

But now that I think about it, you'll also run into issue with the confusion of Uptown and Uptown Consortium, which I believe includes Avondale, Clifton, and Mt. Auburn. There doesn't seem like an obvious way to avoid the confusion. I just think trying to consolidate Corryville into CUF and The Heights is not worth the hassle.

 

This would be the biggest problem with it, I believe. In my mind, Avondale, Clifton, and Mt. Auburn are definitely part of Uptown. Also, the Cincy Regional Chamber uses the term "Uptown Central Core" to refer to a much larger collection of neighborhoods that also includes Camp Washington, Northside, Walnut Hills, East Walnut Hills, and Evanston. 

 

http://staging.thecincinnatiexperience.com/live-here/uptown-central-core

There is no actual "Clifton" by itself, is there?

 

16 minutes ago, DEPACincy said:

 

This would be the biggest problem with it, I believe. In my mind, Avondale, Clifton, and Mt. Auburn are definitely part of Uptown. Also, the Cincy Regional Chamber uses the term "Uptown Central Core" to refer to a much larger collection of neighborhoods that also includes Camp Washington, Northside, Walnut Hills, East Walnut Hills, and Evanston. 

 

http://staging.thecincinnatiexperience.com/live-here/uptown-central-core

Uptown Consortium does confuse things, because the new developments at the corner of Reading and MLK use the uptown branding as well.

 

In some cities downtown and uptown is directional North/South, but in Cincinnati you physically have to go uphill to get to uptown from downtown, and therefore I refuse to lump Camp Washington and Northside into Uptown because they are in the extended basin, but that's getting pretty esoteric. 

12 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

There is no actual "Clifton" by itself, is there?

 

Yes, Clifton is the neighborhood north of campus and contains the Ludlow Ave. business district. Most Cincinnatians incorrectly call everything surrounding campus "Clifton". As a result, residents of the actual Clifton often refer to their neighborhood as "Clifton Gaslight".

^Oh, right or just "Gaslight".

3 hours ago, cincydave8 said:

I lived in some student shotgun house south of McMillan. 

Hey now.  

29 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

There is no actual "Clifton" by itself, is there?

 

Clifton used to be its own village back in the 1800s.  Clifton Ave. took the name because it traveled through farmland to the village.  

 

What's weird is that Clifton Ave. is a section line street but W. Clifton is a random road going up the hill that gets close but doesn't actually touch Clifton Ave.  You have to make two 90 degree turns to continue from W. Clifton onto Clifton.  There is a 2500 block of each street.  

 

East Clifton is a surveyor's street that happens to line up with W. Clifton at Vine St.  E. Clifton is a world away from...Clifton.  

 

Clifton Ave. fizzles out north of Spring Grove Ave. into the Waterworks employee parking lot.  

 

 

 

41 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

There is no actual "Clifton" by itself, is there?

 

For the longest time Facebook thought the only Clifton was the little village east of Yellow Springs and John Bryan State Park. 

^I remember that. You'd see a picture of one of your friends running a race in OTR and it would pop up that town.

7 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Clifton used to be its own village back in the 1800s.  Clifton Ave. took the name because it traveled through farmland to the village.  

 

What's weird is that Clifton Ave. is a section line street but W. Clifton is a random road going up the hill that gets close but doesn't actually touch Clifton Ave.  You have to make two 90 degree turns to continue from W. Clifton onto Clifton.  There is a 2500 block of each street.  

 

East Clifton is a surveyor's street that happens to line up with W. Clifton at Vine St.  E. Clifton is a world away from...Clifton.  

 

Clifton Ave. fizzles out north of Spring Grove Ave. into the Waterworks employee parking lot.  

 

 

 

East Clifton was originally Buckeye Street. I haven't found why they every changed it to Clifton, but it was sometime around the turn of the century.

Anti-Ohio hysteria 

15 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

Anti-Ohio hysteria 

I’d say more like anti Ohio state hysteria since it’s close to UC.

Did not get any photos but did drive around to see what the status looked like in some of the projects around CUF.

 

Innovation corridor: crane is up (currently working on the garage)

Hotel next to Kroger: Nothing happening yet

District at Clifton heights: Nothing (if I remember correctly they are not supposed to start till the fall)

 

Not sure if mentioned somewhere, but Sudsy Malone's is coming down next week. Apparently they saved a piece of the old sign and it'll be making its way to MOTR.

On Sept 18, the Planning Commission will be reviewing a proposal to subdivide the lots at 2350-2352 Ravine into seven lots, and would create seven attached townhouses facing Volkert. It would require demolishing the existing church/school on the site. 

 

Info starts on Page 72: https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/planning/about-city-planning/city-planning-commission/sep-18-2020-packet/

 

The 5/3 Bank branch and ATM on Calhoun St. have closed.  

Newman Development's proposed townhomes in Uptown get key approval despite parking concerns

 

Each of the seven townhomes Newman Development plans to build at Volker Avenue and Ravine Street will have a two-car garage accessible from the rear, but the parking is so tight in the Uptown neighborhood that some residents still oppose it.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/09/18/uptown-townhomes-get-key-approval-despite-parking.html

 

New houses on Hastings:

 

 

New apartments on University Ave. in Corryville:

 

 

 

 

Adding a floor:

 

 

 

That area keeps adding more and more density. We need quick light rail/tunnel connecting it to downtown. 

We need a powerful group like the Uptown Consortium to come out and say "we want great transit" in order for that to happen. Instead they used their political capital to push for the new MLK interchange and more drive-to urbanism.

3 hours ago, IAGuy39 said:

That area keeps adding more and more density. We need quick light rail/tunnel connecting it to downtown. 

It is pretty ridiculous that so many people feel they have to drive to get between these very closely located dense, urban areas.
 

Light rail would obviously be great but I think just a very frequent BRT light line would solve most of the issue for 1% of the cost- call it something like the Bearcat Line and have it run up and down Vine, arriving every 5-8 minutes at stops at MLK, McMillan, Findlay, Liberty, Central and Fountain Square.

^That already exists, it's called Metro Plus, and people barely ride it.  UC runs its own shuttles and people barely ride them.  

 

Meanwhile, scores of UC students take Uber from Short Vine to campus. 

13 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

^That already exists, it's called Metro Plus, and people barely ride it. 

The Metro Plus stop in Over the Rhine is on one of the most abandoned blocks in the neighborhood. They should add another stop south of Liberty to the route. 

Despite being called "BRT lite" by Metro, Metro Plus has none of the properties of BRT except for having a reduced number of stops, and many of those stops are not in ideal locations. After 5pm, the frequency drops to every 30 minutes. It doesn't run on the weekends at all. There are no bus-only lanes or signal priority, so it travels no faster than any standard bus. While the "Uptown Transit District" stops are a nice improvement over a standard Metro stop, they are not BRT-style stops with level boarding, pre-boarding fare payment, or any kind of prominence that would let anyone know there is "enhanced" transit along that corridor.

 

Neither the city, SORTA, or UC have made much of an effort to encourage students to use public transportation. There was a brief time when I was a student that UC and SORTA worked out a deal where you could ride Metro completely for free by showing your student ID. Even then, there was not much of an effort made to educate students about how to ride. The deal was slowly watered down over time and I'm not sure if it exists in any form today.

 

I think the UC shuttles are better used than you give them credit for. I remember a lot of people using the ones that connected campus to the surrounding residential areas. Back when I was a student, I think there were routes that went to Mt. Adams, Downtown, and Newport on the Levee, and I'm not sure how popular those were.

1 hour ago, Guy23 said:

It is pretty ridiculous that so many people feel they have to drive to get between these very closely located dense, urban areas.
 

Light rail would obviously be great but I think just a very frequent BRT light line would solve most of the issue for 1% of the cost- call it something like the Bearcat Line and have it run up and down Vine, arriving every 5-8 minutes at stops at MLK, McMillan, Findlay, Liberty, Central and Fountain Square.

 

How much of this is stubbornness and long-term habits.

 

I definitely think a low or no cost bus route up Vine and around campus is a great idea. Faster and cheaper to setup as well as operate. The Cbus seems to be working well for Columbus.

People who have never lived anywhere where you can walk literally think it takes half an hour to walk 1/4 mile.

41 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

People who have never lived anywhere where you can walk literally think it takes half an hour to walk 1/4 mile.

 

Also, the hills in and around UC exaggerate the sense of distance.  One time I remember walking from a party at Euclid & University to another off of Straight St., maybe Coy or Luna St.  It seemed like an epic walk but it was only 1 mile, maybe 1.25.  

 

I don't think there is a shortcut to better transit in Cincinnati.  A bunch of us have been discussing this matter online for 20+ years and nobody has come up with anything significantly different than the 1999 OKI "I-71" light rail line, which would have tunneled under Mt. Auburn to UC and then turned east along the north side of MLK in a series of bridges and underpasses.  

 

 

 

3 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

^That already exists, it's called Metro Plus, and people barely ride it.  UC runs its own shuttles and people barely ride them.  

 

Meanwhile, scores of UC students take Uber from Short Vine to campus. 

 

This isn't completely true. The MetroPlus route has limited hours and frequency. Despite that it has one of the highest number of riders per service hour in the entire system. It also has the highest farebox recovery rate. 

2 hours ago, taestell said:

Neither the city, SORTA, or UC have made much of an effort to encourage students to use public transportation. There was a brief time when I was a student that UC and SORTA worked out a deal where you could ride Metro completely for free by showing your student ID. Even then, there was not much of an effort made to educate students about how to ride. The deal was slowly watered down over time and I'm not sure if it exists in any form today.

 

When I went to OU students could ride Athens Transit for free and the university pushed it. I knew lots of people who regularly used it. I would walk to class from my apartment when it was nice, but in the winter I'd take the bus. There were always several other people waiting at my stop. 

2 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

I don't think there is a shortcut to better transit in Cincinnati.  A bunch of us have been discussing this matter online for 20+ years and nobody has come up with anything significantly different than the 1999 OKI "I-71" light rail line, which would have tunneled under Mt. Auburn to UC and then turned east along the north side of MLK in a series of bridges and underpasses.  

 

 

 

I don’t think it’s reasonable to say ‘well we tried an extremely lackluster approach with our busses, it didn’t work, so the only way people will ride transit is a multi billion dollar light rail project.’

 

How about we first try to actually do a bus line the right way. It might take a rebrand of the line to convince potential riders it’s a cut above the sub par bus system they’ve grown used to.  Also frequency and extended hours are a must, so people will know it’s there when they need it and they won’t have to wait forever for the next bus. I just don’t see why Cincinnatians wouldn’t ride a great bus line if it was presented in the right way.

BRT is never going to work on a large scale in Cincinnati and it's never going to work at all between downtown and MLK without grade separation at major intersections.  We all know that the light sequences at Schwartz's Point and MLK/Vine/Jefferson are crazy.  Now insert bus-only movements into an already very bad situation.  An underpass for buses at MLK/Vine/Jefferson would cost $50 million.  Another $50 million to pass under WH Taft between McMillan and Corry.  What are you going to do at Schwartz's Point - build an overpass?

 

Pretty quickly you're rocketing toward the cost of building the tunnel that was studied in the 1990s and getting nowhere close to its transformative performance.   

 

 

On 9/25/2020 at 6:36 PM, jmecklenborg said:

BRT is never going to work on a large scale in Cincinnati and it's never going to work at all between downtown and MLK without grade separation at major intersections.  We all know that the light sequences at Schwartz's Point and MLK/Vine/Jefferson are crazy.  Now insert bus-only movements into an already very bad situation.  An underpass for buses at MLK/Vine/Jefferson would cost $50 million.  Another $50 million to pass under WH Taft between McMillan and Corry.  What are you going to do at Schwartz's Point - build an overpass?

 

Pretty quickly you're rocketing toward the cost of building the tunnel that was studied in the 1990s and getting nowhere close to its transformative performance.   

 

 

I think you could get by just fine going way more ‘light’ than that- dedicated lanes on Jefferson, elevated boarding platforms with prepaid ticketing and signal priority at major intersections would cost relatively very little, and the result would still be an extremely efficient way of traveling between uptown and downtown.

Obviously not as transformative as a subway but it would be I’d guess at least 100X cheaper, could be implemented almost right away and would still provide a great option to travel between the regions without needing a car.