Its ironic.

 

20 years ago I moved my office to OTR because of the bad parking situation in the CBD. I was at Chiquita and because of the construction at the Riverfront, there was never a space. People would come to see me, drive around in the garage for 10 minutes and not find a space because there was never a space, then go a couple blocks pay $10, walk two blocks a couple sets of elevators and promise never to meet in my office again. So, I renovated a couple of row houses I owned for my office and people loved it. Come off 471, turn left, pull up in front and park. Any time of day.

 

Now, here we are again facing parking crises. If I didn't have control of several parking spaces I'd be back where I was 20 years ago. And, the businesses on Main St., consultants and whatnot have that problem today. Someone coming to your atelier? Where to park?

Again, this is really more of a "convenience crisis" than an actual issue with a lack of parking. There's plenty of parking, just not where people want it to be and not to the level of what people coming in from the suburbs are used to. It's unlikely that downtown can build its way out of it and would probably be better served trying to change the on-demand culture of parking, but that could take a generation or more and isn't palatable to a lot of people for various reasons.

The proposed residential street parking is dumb, because all the side streets are already full of residents looking for places to park, and all this will do is make it harder for visitors to park and make residents buy permits.  There will be a lot more people trying to buy the permits than there will be spaces.

 

And because Cranley insists that OTR pay for everything themselves the program has to be financially self sufficient, unlike every other neighborhood it has been enacted in, meaning permits will probably cost a couple hundred bucks a year. Can you imagine the outcry when someone spends that money and won't even be able to use it?

 

That's the Cranley double standard. Those other neighborhoods are "real neighborhoods" where people live, so of course they are entitled to cheap residential parking passes. But OTR is an entertainment district, so the yuppies who live there and want to part on the street can pay a premium for that privilege.

 

With that being said ... I am actually okay with residential parking passes in OTR being somewhat expensive. I pay $90/month to park in the Ziegler garage. Why shouldn't an on-street parking pass in the neighborhood be worth half that amount? If the city charges $200/year for residential parking passes, that's still 80% less than the cost of parking in Ziegler for the year.

Now, here we are again facing parking crises. If I didn't have control of several parking spaces I'd be back where I was 20 years ago. And, the businesses on Main St., consultants and whatnot have that problem today. Someone coming to your atelier? Where to park?

 

A lack of convenient parking is a sign that the neighborhood is a place people want to go to. I'll be worried if it becomes easy to find a parking space on Main.

The proposed residential street parking is dumb, because all the side streets are already full of residents looking for places to park, and all this will do is make it harder for visitors to park and make residents buy permits.  There will be a lot more people trying to buy the permits than there will be spaces.

 

And because Cranley insists that OTR pay for everything themselves the program has to be financially self sufficient, unlike every other neighborhood it has been enacted in, meaning permits will probably cost a couple hundred bucks a year. Can you imagine the outcry when someone spends that money and won't even be able to use it?

 

That's the Cranley double standard. Those other neighborhoods are "real neighborhoods" where people live, so of course they are entitled to cheap residential parking passes. But OTR is an entertainment district, so the yuppies who live there and want to part on the street can pay a premium for that privilege.

 

With that being said ... I am actually okay with residential parking passes in OTR being somewhat expensive. I pay $90/month to park in the Ziegler garage. Why shouldn't an on-street parking pass in the neighborhood be worth half that amount? If the city charges $200/year for residential parking passes, that's still 80% less than the cost of parking in Ziegler for the year.

Yeah, but buying a pass doesn't guarantee you will find a place to park, does it?

Now, here we are again facing parking crises. If I didn't have control of several parking spaces I'd be back where I was 20 years ago. And, the businesses on Main St., consultants and whatnot have that problem today. Someone coming to your atelier? Where to park?

 

A lack of convenient parking is a sign that the neighborhood is a place people want to go to. I'll be worried if it becomes easy to find a parking space on Main.

 

No, a lack of convenient parking shows a mistake in the balance of parking regulations, cost and availability. When I moved to OTR I found out that the SCPA teachers took 100% of the spaces witihin three blocks and left their cars there all day feeding meters or not even paying because they arrived at 7am or earlier. It took a while to get them into compliance and then, fortunately, they moved. So it is a little more complex than ^^^.

It's an urban neighborhood. You can't provide enough parking to be convenient to everyone without ruining the neighborhood. It IS a sign of popularity and success when a dense urban place doesn't have an abundance of parking.

 

Do you think there's a single spot in Manhattan or most of Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, etc. that it's convenient to park? No, because urban neighborhoods don't prioritize people coming in from the outside and parking.

 

We USED to prioritize that to "balance" parking needs of people coming to the neighborhood and what we got were blocks torn down for surface parking, lifeless parking garages that kill the vibe of a street, gap toothed blocks, etc. It doesn't work either because the parking kills the place it's trying to service in the first place.

^^ I think you're both right. A problem with the current "system" is that council makes recommendations on things like parking rates based mainly on needs to fill budget holes, not on things like parking demand. They don't seem to have those data, and I'm not sure they even do things like ask parking enforcement for information about where there is parking congestion or where the most tickets are written.

 

This isn't going to change. That's why a technology solution like Xerox proposed (or some other, better, vendor) is probably needed. I mean, just put the technology into place, gather data, present in a format ideally suited for Council to digest for policy purposes, and make the appropriate policy decisions that are implemented through the technology. And then do this on a regular basis.

 

It's hard to park in Philly, NYC, Boston, DC, San Fran, etc. It's very easy to park in Detroit, Buffalo, and Youngstown. Which would you rather be?

 

When I moved here I was shocked how easy it is to park downtown, and I'm equally shocked how much people complain when they can't park right in front of their destination. I'd much rather walk a few blocks if it means unsightly and unproductive surface lots can be redeveloped into something useful.

I lived in OTR for two years. I exclusively parked on the street in that time. The only times I ever had any sort of issues were if I left the neighborhood on a Saturday night and came back at like 10 PM. Otherwise there were ALWAYS spots on Republic, 15th, or Pleasant Street.

^^ I think you're both right. A problem with the current "system" is that council makes recommendations on things like parking rates based mainly on needs to fill budget holes, not on things like parking demand. They don't seem to have those data, and I'm not sure they even do things like ask parking enforcement for information about where there is parking congestion or where the most tickets are written.

 

This isn't going to change. That's why a technology solution like Xerox proposed (or some other, better, vendor) is probably needed. I mean, just put the technology into place, gather data, present in a format ideally suited for Council to digest for policy purposes, and make the appropriate policy decisions that are implemented through the technology. And then do this on a regular basis.

 

This is exactly why I roll my eyes whenever the Enquirer cc's Donald Shoup on their tweets about Cincinnati raising parking meter rates. Shoup explicitly says that parking meter rates should not simply be raised as a revenue generating mechanism. And yet that's exactly what this administration does. We need to fill a budget hole...how much more money can we wring out of OTR?

When I go downtown on a workday (only happens a few times per year), I usually ride the bus, and when people want to validate my parking ticket, I usually get a wild look when I tell them I rode the bus.  Then when I drive they're stocked by that, because I'm "the bus guy". 

You're actually more free in decent urbanism when you don't weigh 3500 pounds and take up 120 square feet.

Oh, its just a calculation. Like Uber says, you need the data, you need to be able to respond to the data and you need compliance. That's all. If the parking in HP Square was 30 minutes free and $5 per hour after that, the businesses would flourish even more because all of the shop gals and food and drink service people would either bus in or find an appropriate parking spot. One only has to spend a few minutes in the park to see the employees re-metering. I am sure the same thing is going on on Main and Vine.

 

If the spots turned over through technology every 30 minutes of so a lot of problems would be solved.

Saw this brought up on the Cincinnati subreddit....What ever happened with Neons finding a new otr space? There were articles published about this in December of 2016, and the owner gave comments about about how they were commited to the Neons brand and that they would still continue Neons elsewhere in otr...but that never happened.

I don't think there was anything about the brand that was a draw, so I really don't know why they would be that committed to it. In fact the name was in reference to the previous owner's (Terry of Terry's Turf Club) neon collection, which he took with him to his burger joint before Neon's really got popular. So who knows, but I doubt it would make a difference if they were Neon's or not.

I think the post-2009 iteration was officially named "Neon's Unplugged", but there was no sign with that name on it, neon or otherwise. 

 

Neon's (unplugged) was opened by Michael Redmond, who used to post on this forum circa 2005-2008.  He and John Back (his partner) were spot-on with their OTR predictions and each made out huge. 

Someone told me that the Redmonds sold their ownership to Molly Wellmann so they are no longer involved in the company. In that case, I would assume there are no current efforts underway to build a "new Neon's" somewhere else. Michael might still browse here occasionally so maybe he can chime in at confirm/deny.

Cranley proposing to set fees that high for permits is ludicrous - the proposals he tossed around would have made OTR have some of the most expensive permit parking in the whole country - way more than what I spend in Chicago to park on a permitted street.

It's hard to park in Philly, NYC, Boston, DC, San Fran, etc. It's very easy to park in Detroit, Buffalo, and Youngstown. Which would you rather be?

 

When I moved here I was shocked how easy it is to park downtown, and I'm equally shocked how much people complain when they can't park right in front of their destination. I'd much rather walk a few blocks if it means unsightly and unproductive surface lots can be redeveloped into something useful.

 

Agreed... the Gateway garage is centrally located and usually 75%+ empty on weekends/evenings... its a helluvalot easier to park there and walk or catch the streetcar than it is to find street parking. I also find it amusing that the surface lot between Jackson and Walnut directly next-door is charging $10 to park (no such thing as hourly parking) when there is a huge, security-monitored parking facility 20 feet away for only $8 a day.

Cranley proposing to set fees that high for permits is ludicrous - the proposals he tossed around would have made OTR have some of the most expensive permit parking in the whole country - way more than what I spend in Chicago to park on a permitted street.

 

Or it's a sign that other cities' residential permits are too cheap. Especially in a city like Chicago that has a much more robust public transit system than Cincinnati, why not charge full retail price for the privilege of storing your car on public land? Put the revenues directly into improving transit.

I think the city, in conjunction with 3CDC, should be looking at sites to build more parking garages in OTR to satisfy residential demand. It's unpractical for each building to have its own on-site parking, but it seems like relaxing the on-site requirements to allow for more off site parking would be a sensible solution for alleviating parking shortages. Making most of the streets with commercial development be metered would better serve visitors, and it would allow for the city to collect more revenue this way, although I admit that should not be a primary concern when evaluating parking needs. It seems like residents, many of whom might not use their car frequently anyway, would be better served by having off-street garage parking. I am still kind of perplexed why the OTR community shot down the dense garage and apartment plan at 15th and Race, as a garage here would have probably allowed for much faster redevelopment of the surrounding buildings. Now, that site is home to only a handful of townhomes (plus a modest number of apartments now under construction), and is served by surface parking. Yet the defeat of that parking garage is seen as a win by the community, it seems.

I think the issue with the proposed race st garage is that it would have hindered people actually walking around otr and exploring otr.

 

I wasn’t opposed to the idea, tbh. But I could see the concern of over saturation of parking garages and essentially catering to the visiting suburbanites coming for the bars and restaurants

^ Not if spaces are sold off to developers of nearby projects.

 

I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of totally getting rid of parking requirements in the absence of any real mass transit*. I agree with others who desire a real parking study to be completed before any moves are made here. There are plenty of ways to solve parking problems, but you have to really understand the problems first.

 

*please don't say the streetcar. It is not mass transit.

Not allowing the Race St garage was just another idiotic move by the idiots on OTR CC.  Instead of having more people living in the neighborhood and more places for existing and future neighbors to park they got less residences built and a surface lot wasting prime real estate. 

That surface lot being the new 3cdc race street condos are quite small though.

That surface lot being the new 3cdc race street condos are quite small though.

It's a surface lot though which is a complete waste of space.  They either could have filled the space with more residences (if the parking restrictions didn't exist) or they could have added more residences and a garage (since people are so obsessed with parking).  Instead we got less of everything.  There aren't many open blocks like these left in OTR and we wasted this one.  Building up residences only around the exterior is not even close to the best use of that prime space. 

You just said it yourself, “people are obsessed with parking” so why are we catering to more massive garages and influencing more people to park and not explore by foot?

 

How is a parking garage any waste of space than a surface lot? They both sit there vacant 75% of the time on week days and fill up on weekends. So I’m not really understanding your argument.

 

Aside the developement on that block of race has been doing great with new shops, bars and resturaunts regardless of 3cdc previous plan for that block.

When people complain about not having enough parking, they are really complaining about how there is not enough "free" on-street parking. People in the midwest will cruise for the free parking before accepting the meter or the garage.

 

It would be great if the city instituted variable parking pricing like in San Francisco. Set the current rate as a maximum. I bet it would increase on-street parking usage and encourage more off-peak parking usage.

If I recall correctly, I think what happened with 15th and Race was the amount of parking being provided was much larger than the amount required by the city's zoning code. That was one complaint. Another was that it would have demolished most of the rear of the historic building on Race Street. Finally, most people just hated the architecture. It was Cincinnati Meh.

 

So it was about to face opposition from OTR CC and preservationists. Instead of facing another Mercer Commons-esque controversy, 3CDC backed down and changed their plans.

When people complain about not having enough parking, they are really complaining about how there is not enough "free" on-street parking. People in the midwest will cruise for the free parking before accepting the meter or the garage.

 

It would be great if the city instituted variable parking pricing like in San Francisco. Set the current rate as a maximum. I bet it would increase on-street parking usage and encourage more off-peak parking usage.

 

It's extremely frustrating because I believe our current meters and kiosks can support this type of variable pricing, and it would have been implemented if the Xerox partnership would have went through. After that was cancelled, we still got higher meter rates, we just didn't get the variable pricing which would have been ideal for OTR and Downtown.

Well wasn’t expecting this:

 

Cincinnati plan would allow new housing, businesses in OTR without new parking

 

https://cin.ci/2zuTUCT

 

Gonna need all urbanist hands on deck to support this one.

 

Big picture thought on parking minimums: how absurd (and how much hubris is it) is it that we think it’s possible to micromanage the parking spaces of thousands of residents, visitors, and downtown workers, with dynamic needs that change over time, that together function as an organic, non-linear system, anyway? No wonder minimums cause market distortions and prevent growth. They are ham-fisted interventionalism.

 

City Council actually first introduced this change in 2012, but the city administration is just now getting around to implementing it, because Cranley.

 

Also, I wouldn't quite call it a "done deal" yet. There's some possibility that neighborhood NIMBYs will object and this change won't go through.

 

If you support the elimination of minimum parking requirements in OTR, you should probably send an email to the address on this postcard.

 

Yup.

When I lived in Cambridge, MA, which has virtually zero off-street parking as most buildings are pre-automobile and built to the rear lot line, each apartment unit, regardless of its bedroom count, received one street parking pass and one visitor pass.  The two types of cars were chalked each day and every visitor pass car had to move every single day or else it got a $75 ticket.  A "resident" pass had to move every other day or else they got a $75 ticket.  The meter maids had a complex chalking system that made it hard to foil by buying your own chalk and mark your own tire. 

 

In addition to having to move your car pretty much every day, there was weekly street cleaning depending on what "zone" you were in.  There were five zones, so 5 days a week a team of tow trucks fired up at 7am and towed dozens of cars to who-know-where. 

 

So the goal of all of this wasn't to clean the streets, it was to give the city a way to make owning a car a huge pain in the ass and therefore encourage walking, bicycling, and public transportation.  It's worth mentioning that the city has a fantastic subway line that has been there since 1912, and that John Cranley is undoubtedly familiar with it since his parents paid for him to got to Harvard. 

 

 

https://cin.ci/2JieyFL

 

350$...damn

Fortus has applied for a wrecking permit for the Boys and Girls Club building on Logan Street. They purchased it last year after they joined in on Freeport Row.

 

https://cagis.hamilton-co.org/opal/apd.aspx?QSPerm=2018P06275

 

 

Fortus has applied for a wrecking permit for the Boys and Girls Club building on Logan Street. They purchased it last year after they joined in on Freeport Row.

 

https://cagis.hamilton-co.org/opal/apd.aspx?QSPerm=2018P06275

 

 

 

A perfect place for a larger than normal (for OTR) development and anything will greatly improve the streetlife in that area. They certainly won the FCC location lottery on this property.

Fortus has applied for a wrecking permit for the Boys and Girls Club building on Logan Street. They purchased it last year after they joined in on Freeport Row.

 

https://cagis.hamilton-co.org/opal/apd.aspx?QSPerm=2018P06275

 

Good news! Has anything been released about Fortus's plans for that site?

^ +Has anyone heard anything about Fortus's plans for Freeport row? Last I heard they were supposed to start this summer but... nothing yet.

I’m wondering about that as well...curious if they are planning to change there plans for that site at all? Or maybe, since the liberty street diet is finalized to occur next year, they would want to wait for that?

 

The lack of movement on that site is curious none the less...

The Liberty Street road diet won't modify the north side of the street, so there is no real reason for that development to wait for it.

Last I heard it was still moving forward. This could be a potential Phase II.

What are the chances they actually do ground floor retail and apartment units about (for the boys and girls club property)...

 

I know Logan st is mostly residential and the streets are small, but I love the feel of bars and restaurants when they are on narrow streets. Something very European I guess.

What are the chances

 

I would guess about 95% odds.

I think a good project at that site would have street facing entrances on both the Logan St. and Central Parkway sides.

Not everyone wants to live next door to a bar.

Then don't live there? There are plenty of spots where you can be away from nightlife.

 

Also, I'm almost positive I know troeros is referring to spots like 14th and Republic where the vibe is more relaxed, a little quieter, etc. It's a really pleasant spot, as is the intersection of 15th and Pleasant, several along Clay and Jackson, etc.

 

It's a mixed use district. There will be ground floor uses. If you don't like those, go to the streets that don't have them.

You missed the point . .  as usual. I wouldn't live there, bar or no bar. My point was that a sensible developer is not always going to invest $150,000 per door in apartments that are above or next to a bar. If you are putting up the money, good for you. Put a bar on the first floor of your multi-million dollar development.

You missed the point . .  as usual. I wouldn't live there, bar or no bar. My point was that a sensible developer is not always going to invest $150,000 per door in apartments that are above or next to a bar. If you are putting up the money, good for you. Put a bar on the first floor of your multi-million dollar development.

 

No, that wasn't your point and not what you said. "As usual" give me a beak.

 

An enormous portion of the development in OTR did just that without issue. Vine Street, Race Street, Main Street, parts of Republic Street, etc. all did exactly what you just said.

 

Everything I said is applicable. If you don't want to live above or next to a bar or other ground floor uses, don't. Nobody is forcing you to. There are a lot of great options in OTR that don't have ground floor commercial uses.

You missed the point . .  as usual. I wouldn't live there, bar or no bar. My point was that a sensible developer is not always going to invest $150,000 per door in apartments that are above or next to a bar. If you are putting up the money, good for you. Put a bar on the first floor of your multi-million dollar development.

 

There seems to be a trend among your posts? Do you even like cities? It seems that everything you argue for is very anti-urban.

Ground floor retail with some other usage (office or residential) above is the standard format for urban neighborhoods like OTR. Plenty of "sensible neighborhoods" have invested in buildings that use that formula. Residential-only buildings are really not that common on major streets.