^Don't feed the trolls.

 

Every single dorm building in this country that has one entrance because of security concerns.  Why would a college dorm have its only entrance opposite of campus itself?  Don't overthink it. 

 

I lived in one built around 1940 with 10-12 entrances.  Your room key also opened any of those exterior doors.  Turner Hall, built around 2003, has three exterior entrances.  Parents and college administrators can't figure out that the biggest threat to students is other students, not boogie men out in the bushes.  The irrational fear of surrounding neighborhoods is part of what has caused college costs to explode -- large university police departments patrolling outside campus boundaries, blue emergency phones that never get used to report actual emergencies (I remember OU's blue phones were used to report just one actual emergency in their first eight years), and night ride vans that ostensibly ensure student safety but are really just bar and party taxis.  Even rural in-the-middle-of-nowhere schools like OU and Miami and Bowling Green spend huge money on "safety". 

 

And again, I'm almost positive a lot of this was mandated at a much higher level than the individual schools themselves.

 

And just because something was done one way when you experienced it doesn't mean it was smart. People back then also didn't have thousands of dollars in electronics that are essentially a requirement for college these days in their possession at all times.

 

You seem to have this inability to realize that how you experienced something might not have been the best version of that thing. You spend so much mental energy coming up with really quite stupid roundabout reasoning to justify, in your own head, why things changed after you experienced them, as if it was perfect during your time. You're just flat out wrong about so much of it too it's comical.

 

Safety in one's residence isn't something to brush off. Having a bunch of entrances that are unlocked at all hours is stupid. Pure and simple. Just like I wouldn't leave the front door to my house on Flora during grad school unlocked I would really damn well hope the doors to my residence hall weren't being left wide open. There's no actual good reason for doing so.

 

In the case of Calhoun and Siddal they chose a single door as the "front" door for sake of ease in implementing measures that literally every college in the country is doing. Of course that door is going to be the one that faces campus. Why wouldn't it be? Most students are going to be coming from that direction and that direction leads people towards the other buildings on campus in which they'll be spending most of their time, towards the rec center, towards common spaces, towards the book store, etc. Why would you choose the door that leads to a sunken plaza that has really awfully designed connections to anything else around it?

 

I truly believe you have convinced yourself that nothing has improved in this world since the "heyday" of the 1990s which is super questionable.

 

*I'm done ranting, this entire conversation is stupid*

College students are getting a lower ROI now than they were in the 80s and 90s, when a degree virtually ensured a professional job at a much lower cost.  The state universities have been in an arms race since the 90s to recruit students from wealthy families, especially out-of-state students, in order to collect revenue to continue their effort to recruit even more out-of-state students.  The losers in all this are the first generation college students and others who have little or zero financial support from their families.  Their pile of loans *literally* is the hangover from the university's attempt to recruit the fickle upper class. 

 

Anyone can get into a dormitory just by waiting by the lobby door and waiting for someone to come out.  Hotels have open front doors and you can walk up to any floor and they don't have a rash of problems.  Yet somehow people think dorms are different. 

Yeah, the arms race of university recruitment is really putting a damper on first generation college students.

 

Even for myself where I went to school, costs were quite low and I ended up with around $40k in debt for a Bachelors in Economics and I didn't have much help from family, though if I didn't have some, it would have been near impossible for me to complete.

 

I think the college student debt is going to keep the economy from booming.  I want to buy a house, but all my debt makes it nearly impossible to afford a house without a roommate, which isn't something I am honestly trying to do.  Then on top of that, it is so difficult to save for a down payment, pay off a used car loan, pay student debt, rent, all of that.  I could do better at all those if I didn't like to go get dinner on the weekends with my girlfriend and travel to weddings, but I don't want to be a hermit right now in my life.

 

I came out lucky compared to a lot of people I knew.  A lot of people never got a good job and had to stay at their parents and some still do because of their crushing student debt and lowish paying jobs. 

UC’s Fifth Third Arena renovation lands $5 million gift

 

 

The largest cumulative athletics donors in the University of Cincinnati’s history donated a $5 million gift to the $87 million Fifth Third Arena renovation.

 

Margaret “Peg” and Michael Valentine announced their lead gift at the UC Department of Athletics Annual Legion of Excellence Gala on Nov. 3.

 

More below:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/11/04/uc-s-fifth-third-arena-renovation-lands-5-million.html

Anyone can get into a dormitory just by waiting by the lobby door and waiting for someone to come out.  Hotels have open front doors and you can walk up to any floor and they don't have a rash of problems.  Yet somehow people think dorms are different. 

 

No actually that's not true. When I lived in the dorm getting someone past the counter that didn't live there was next to impossible. You have to show your ID which says where you live if you live in a dorm. Don't have that? You have to check in. You can't just waltz in if someone leaves the building and you catch the door.

 

Last time I checked hotels didn't have shared bathrooms, shared living spaces (outside of the lobby), and a person's entire portfolio of worldly items in them.

 

A person getting up into a dorm can cause more problems than one getting into a hotel.

 

And again, give me one good reason for leaving your doors wide open to the world. What does that achieve? What does that give you that having a simple key system doesn't? Give one actual solid reason for having your building as easy to access as simply opening the door.

 

Do you leave your front door unlocked in your home? Do you just let random people wander about your property? Or would that make no sense to you like it makes no sense for a dorm to allow people to just wander in?

 

*I'm now feeding into the troll against my better judgement*

Any news on the updates to Nippert for FCC?

Any news on the updates to Nippert for FCC?

 

Some renderings have been posted on the FCC thread: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,30259.0.html

UC, FC Cincinnati launch $2M Nippert Stadium renovation

 

 

The University of Cincinnati and FC Cincinnati are launching joint renovations at Nippert Stadium that will be in place for the 2017 season.

 

The project, which is expected to be complete in March, will move the existing field wall back to increase the size of the sidelines for football, create a safety buffer in the end zone corners and expand the soccer playing surface to FIFA regulation size.

 

More below:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/12/02/uc-fc-cincinnati-launch-2m-nippert-stadium.html

Here's an updated picture of the Sears building. Sorry for the poor quality, since I was actively driving.

Wha???! Now it looks like they are replacing all the brick on the front? I'm happily surprised, that render that they showed from the back made me think it would be glass all around with only the tower left in brick poking through. This may look really nice from the Reading Road side.

 

It looks like they added windows and then replaced the brick and the ornaments

Yeah they basically reconstructed the entire facade, but with windows on the 2nd floor, insulation, waterproofing, and concrete block backup.  I assume there were probably issues with water intrusion and perhaps damaged lintels or who knows what else, on top of the difficulty of cutting in new windows on the 2nd floor where there were none before. 

This will be a big upgrade over the old Wherry Hall.

http://www.urbancincy.com/2016/12/98m-health-sciences-building-to-create-striking-landmark-on-ucs-east-campus/

 

Here's a picture of the site plan:

Source: http://healthnews.uc.edu/news/?/27758/

 

 

This new building will be constructed on the surface parking lot to the west of Wherry. Normally, I would prefer having the new building front on Eden because I don't like having buildings set back far from the street, but in this case I think it'll be nice because it will expose the southern facade of the Hannaford-designed <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/06/08/ohio-gives-6m-to-renovate-historic-uc-building.html">Kowalewski Hall</a> (formerly known as the Health Professions Building). The combination of this modern design will juxtapose nicely against the Hannaford brick.

 

 

It will be nice for the medical campus to get a "quad" (even though it's an oval in this case) where students can hang out and interact. I feel like the medical campus doesn't have a lot of those spaces now so people don't really spend much time on campus outside of their classes.

^Agreed. In terms of landscape design, I hope they try to make that "quad" a place people will actually want to linger. Too many of UC's outdoor spaces are beautiful to look at, but not particularly welcoming to hang out in. For example, the green space surrounding the Vontz center is landscaped very ambitiously with expensive and striking features (triangular earthen mounds, large fountain, meditative spiral mountain, huge terraced steps) ... but I rarely ever see people hanging out there. 

There's actually a ton of space inside the rehabbed Medical Sciences Building for co-working and studying space that students often use and hang-out in.

^^It's because they tried too hard.

^^It's because they tried too hard.

 

They aren't nice too look at in real life.  It was all to dazzle people in the planning stage who couldn't see that Sigma Sigma Commons, etc., were going to be a late 1990's version of Boston's City Hall plaza. 

McMicken Commons is quite successful at being a place where people want to hang out and Schneider Quad is pretty successful too. Sigma Sigma Commons feels way too artificial to me, with way too many concrete paths and too many access roads and parking garages nearby. Hopefully when they build the new College of Business building they can fix some of the issues with SSC.

Unless things have changed since I went to UC, Sigma Sigma Commons was always one of the most occupied ares, especially when it was warm in the summer evenings. Lots of soccer and cricket, people skateboarding, chilling, playing frisbee and the like.

^Same. Main Street leading down to the southern end of Sigma Sigma was always packed when it was nice out. The large green spaces in Sigma Sigma were always being used, the tree groves always had people in hammocks, the paths had the least use, but those weren't ever actually intended to be places would stop and occupy.

 

McMicken Commons never has people actually using it outside of walking through it except when there's an event there. On a typical day take a look at how many people actually stop and use McMicken Commons for anything other than getting to their next class or activity. People don't occupy the space for more than a minute or two at a time like they do Sigma Sigma or Main Street.

 

Then there's Mews Gardens. Which might, every once in awhile, capture a Subway guest who can't find somewhere to sit inside. Otherwise it's always empty. Which is a shame since it's actually a nice space. It's just a touch too shaded for people to gravitate towards it.

UC is renovating the Gehry-designed Vontz Center.

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/01/13/exclusive-uc-planning-17-million-renovation-of.html

UC is renovating the Gehry-designed Vontz Center.

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/01/13/exclusive-uc-planning-17-million-renovation-of.html

 

In other words a brick Frank Gehry building isn't a "Frank Gehry" building.  UC dropping $17 million to make its Gehry building look like "Gehry" building. 

 

 

 

So it will be metal clad now? Can't read the article.

^I wasn't totally clear from that article if the plan is to replace the brick facade entirely, or just repair it... is your understanding that they are going to replace the brick with the metal facade that's more typical of other Gehry buildings?

^I wasn't totally clear from that article if the plan is to replace the brick facade entirely, or just repair it... is your understanding that they are going to replace the brick with the metal facade that's more typical of other Gehry buildings?

 

I wasn't sure either, but it's crazy that the lifespan of the roof and flashing are so short. Is this as typical as the article made it out to be, or is this a case of the unique look and cost cutting needed to get said look leading to issues in the near future? I cant imagine that it would require so many millions in repairs EVERY 17 years would it?

 

Depending on the type of flat roof system they used, it's not crazy to believe that it needs to be redone after 17 years. It's a little soon, but complexity obviously generally shortens the lifespan of any material.

 

I didn't take it as changing the brick cladding at all. Just that they're fixing some of the issues that have arisen with it and the glazing over the past two decades.

Pedestrians hit in Calhoun St:

http://www.wlwt.com/article/2-pedestrians-struck-by-car-near-university-of-cincinnati/8598815

 

Calhoun was blocked off by police for about three hours on Saturday night.  The McMillan and Calhoun St. area is really turning into a mess thanks in large part to the 1-way streets, on-street parking, and erratic behavior of Uber drivers.  Plus the motorcycles, plus the drunk college students drifting out into traffic.   

^ I'm guessing based upon that one picture, but it looks like that BMW hit those pedestrians at a pretty high speed given the damage to the windshield. It also looks like they might have been in that crosswalk that's in front of the Brass Tap (which is why charges would be pending). There's no stoplight there, just an overhead sign, and I see drivers speed through it on a regular basis without even checking for pedestrians - I've actually been honked at for stopping there when someone was crossing. It's usually hard to see pedestrians waiting to cross there because someone is illegally parked/stopped right at the crosswalk about 90% of the time... even in the Google Streetview there's a car idling there, blocking the view.

 

In bigger/major cities this wouldn't be a problem at all. These two streets remind me a lot of places in Queens or Chicago. However, in Cincinnati (especially around UC) neither the drivers nor pedestrians are used to this.

The weird thing about the area is that people don't seem compelled to speed on the wide mile of Clifton between Hughes High School and Skyline, but do feel compelled to speed and change lanes aggressively on the narrower 1-way McMillan and Calhoun/Wm H Taft.  There is something about the streets that conjures up an impatient and excited energy in drivers.  It doesn't seem to happen in Walnut Hills but from Reading Rd. to Clifton there is a different vibe.  There is also more impatient and reckless driving on Ohio Ave. and Warner than there is on W. Clifton or Ravine or Moerlein or Fairview. 

 

 

^ I wonder if there's some deeper psychological explanation to this. Particularly on Calhoun, there's a bit of a funnel effect, as the street gets narrower, the buildings get taller, and the parked cars become more frequent. I've seen people get irrationally mad over something as subtle as a car in front of them parallel-parking - they'll pull around to pass them and speed off at 40MPH. This doesn't happen on streets like Clifton because there's almost always room to easily and calmly pass people when needed. Warner has some sightline issues because of the topography that might also be making people uncomfortable.

Depending on the type of flat roof system they used, it's not crazy to believe that it needs to be redone after 17 years. It's a little soon, but complexity obviously generally shortens the lifespan of any material.

 

I didn't take it as changing the brick cladding at all. Just that they're fixing some of the issues that have arisen with it and the glazing over the past two decades.

 

I had a friend who worked at UC in the University Architect's office, and there was a team of staffers whose job it was to run around the building chasing leaks every time it rained. Because of the funky angles, it was very hard to track exactly where the leaks were coming from, whether roof, wall panels, or windows. This went on for years and for all I know could still be going on. This thing was a beautiful trainwreck from the beginning.

I recall hearing (could very much be an architectural legend) that some of the precast panels had their weep holes draining directly into the glazing which was one of the main sources of water infiltration. I've always wondered if that was actually true or just a bastardization of what was actually going on. But knowing Gehry it wouldn't surprise me.

 

I still question why anyone hires him. I can count on one hand the number of buildings he has done that I respect and they're generally the "least Gehry" Gehry buildings. The Vontz Center, understandably, is not one of them. It just looks like a melted pumpkin. Or an angry monkey. Either one works. And neither are good.

 

Being an architect I obviously really appreciate the variety of world-class architects who have worked on UC's campuses. But some are big old duds. DAAP. Vontz Center. TUC. Buildings of this caliber shouldn't have issues as basic as water infiltration but alas.

^ I wonder if there's some deeper psychological explanation to this. Particularly on Calhoun, there's a bit of a funnel effect, as the street gets narrower, the buildings get taller, and the parked cars become more frequent. I've seen people get irrationally mad over something as subtle as a car in front of them parallel-parking - they'll pull around to pass them and speed off at 40MPH. This doesn't happen on streets like Clifton because there's almost always room to easily and calmly pass people when needed. Warner has some sightline issues because of the topography that might also be making people uncomfortable.

 

I think Clifton Heights draws a lot of drivers who rarely drive on urban streets so they're not familiar with things like mid-block crosswalks or someone in front of you trying to parallel park. I'm not sure what the solution is here. Maybe some flashing lights at the mid-block crosswalks would help.

It's off to the races when the light turns green at White Castle.  Drivers love to burn up that hill toward Eden Ave.  There is a race-track sort of feel to the whole thing even before the "funnel" effect on Calhoun St.  Some of it might be because cars are getting off the interstate.  But the cruising aspect of Calhoun and McMillan is a recent development.  There was cruising on Short Vine for decades but there were always stop signs or lights at each side street and the cruising didn't impede through traffic.  Now there is a mix of people actually going somewhere for a legit reason and then people cruising around trying to impress girls.  I think I shared my anecdote from early in the fall when I saw teenagers riding the wrong way and on sidewalks on motocross bikes through the area. 

^ I wonder if there's some deeper psychological explanation to this. Particularly on Calhoun, there's a bit of a funnel effect, as the street gets narrower, the buildings get taller, and the parked cars become more frequent. I've seen people get irrationally mad over something as subtle as a car in front of them parallel-parking - they'll pull around to pass them and speed off at 40MPH. This doesn't happen on streets like Clifton because there's almost always room to easily and calmly pass people when needed. Warner has some sightline issues because of the topography that might also be making people uncomfortable.

 

I think Clifton Heights draws a lot of drivers who rarely drive on urban streets so they're not familiar with things like mid-block crosswalks or someone in front of you trying to parallel park. I'm not sure what the solution is here. Maybe some flashing lights at the mid-block crosswalks would help.

 

Raised intersections. Slow them down at Ohio before they get to the densest part, again right in the most pedestrian area at Market Street which helps with the upcoming mid-block crosswalk, then again at West Clifton to help with the large amount of pedestrians that cross there.

 

Drivers hate them but my general opinion of that is that, "that's too damn bad."

I have been told by DOTE that they don't do raised crosswalks on "through streets", however they define that.

Its the fire department that nixes these as "traffic calming" on fire routes. That certainly includes Calhoun and McMillan.

Well you know, we need wide, smooth, high-speed streets so fire trucks can quickly get to all the car crashes caused by wide, smooth, high-speed streets. 

I have been told by DOTE that they don't do raised crosswalks on "through streets", however they define that.

 

I've heard that same thing.

 

It's off to the races when the light turns green at White Castle.  Drivers love to burn up that hill toward Eden Ave.  There is a race-track sort of feel to the whole thing even before the "funnel" effect on Calhoun St.  Some of it might be because cars are getting off the interstate.

 

The drag race that starts at the White Castle is almost entirely due to the timing of the signals, and the fact that ~75% of the people getting off of I-71S know that timing. If you pull away from the stoplight at Taft and Reading, heading west, at a reasonable pace, you always get caught at the very next stoplight, and potentially subsequent stoplights. If you floor it as soon as the light turns green, you get all the way to at least Auburn and occasionally to or even past Vine. The fact that the timing has been this way for over a decade leaves me to believe these signals are programmed together in some capacity - otherwise they would have gone out of sync during various power outages.

I think UC made a pretty significant mistake by deleting University Ave. from the campus after MLK was built.  The vestiges of it still exist (DAAP Drive, or whatever it's called, and then the dumb turnaround heading one block west from Jefferson with the traffic circle nobody respects) but getting rid of University turned MLK and Calhoun/McMillan into car sewers to an extent that might not have been necessary if not for the loss of the university's historic access point.  Also, the terribly unimpressive engineering building now forms the view termination of a once-handsome unplanned street that peters into over-planned non-existence.  Mega-fail, UC. 

Most of the traffic signals in the city have a fiberoptic interconnect that keeps all of their controller clocks in sync.  That doesn't necessarily mean a green wave was deliberately programmed, but it ensures that various adjustments made over time as a sort of ad-hoc synchronization don't wander.  There was a story a few years ago about a Maryland suburb of Washington DC where the interconnects failed for one reason or another, and while there wasn't explicit synchronization of the traffic signals there either, when the clocks drifted from one another it created significant rush hour traffic backups. 

Google caught a good in-progress view of the Sears building restoration in progress. Shows all the various layers of underlayment and structure going in behind the brick. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1320741,-84.4976073,3a,64.1y,60.84h,96.57t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sF7Q4w0Ftvpu8Z-Ko_Pou7A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

UC moving campus landmark, finalizing plans for $87M arena renovation

 

 

The University of Cincinnati will move the landmark Oscar Robertson statue, marking one of the decisions it has made in finalizing its upcoming $87 million renovation of Fifth Third Arena.

 

That’s just one of the noticeable changes coming outside and inside the arena over the next year and a half.

 

Photos and more below:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/02/07/uc-moving-campus-landmark-finalizing-plans-for-87m.html

EXCLUSIVE: UC reveals details of $60M medical center

Feb 16, 2017, 6:30am EST

Barrett J. Brunsman

Staff reporter

Cincinnati Business Courier

 

 

The University of Cincinnati and UC Health revealed today that $4.5 million in donations were recently made to help build a $60.5 million outpatient center in Corryville that will treat people with neurologic and psychiatric diseases.

 

Ground is to be broken later this spring at 223 Piedmont Ave. for the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute, a four-story building that will bring together more than 100 faculty doctors and researchers with specialized staff when it opens in 2019.

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/02/16/exclusive-uc-reveals-details-of-60m-medical-center.html

Anybody have details on the new dormitory / dining hall that is being built next to Scioto Hall? Has UC published design details? I don't think it has been covered in any detail, either by UC or the local press.

 

I found a rendering posted here from last August: https://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,2749.msg814576.html#msg814576

 

Here's a short blurb from UC from last summer: http://magazine.uc.edu/editors_picks/recent_features/housing16.html

Slated for a 2017 opening, that space, adjacent to Scioto Hall, will be transformed into a mixed-use high-rise, including:

• 275-seat dining center
  
• 330 beds of suite-style housing
   
  
• Office space for housing/residential development
   
  
• Bridge to/from Scioto Hall
   
  

Just like Morgens and Scioto, this high-rise will include a curtain wall glass exterior, but will also include brick, tying in surrounding buildings to, what some may call, the “new and improved three sisters.”

Has construction on that started yet? Or is it still in the planning phase? If it were to open sometime this year it would have to be be fairly far along by now.

It's something like 6 stories tall already.

Wow I had no idea it had even begun. I don't think I've ever seen pics of the construction yet. Does anyone have any?