It will also be cool that drivers will see streetcars crossing the Main and Walnut bridges above them.

I remember when I went out to Denver for a friends wedding and I rented a car, drove out to my friends house and was sitting in really bad traffic.  I looked up and there zooms by a train.  I was thinking, dang that would be nice if I was just riding on that!

In Chicago the Metra has a bridge over the Kennedy expressway with a really big sign that says "We're on time, are you?" that just trolls all the people sitting in cars in traffic. I love it.

They had an aerial shot of the city during last night's game- the FWW "blocks" were outlined with lights, forming perfect rectangles- looked pretty cool. 

In Chicago the Metra has a bridge over the Kennedy expressway with a really big sign that says "We're on time, are you?" that just trolls all the people sitting in cars in traffic. I love it.

 

That's one of the best things I've seen.

In Chicago the Metra has a bridge over the Kennedy expressway with a really big sign that says "We're on time, are you?" that just trolls all the people sitting in cars in traffic. I love it.

 

Much of the Kennedy is paralleled by the Union Pacific Northwest Line, its great because you can watch traffic completely congealed as you go wizzing by.

 

 

It will also be cool that drivers will see streetcars crossing the Main and Walnut bridges above them.

 

Agreed, picture the below in downtown Cincy :)

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7234249,-122.4475006,3a,15.6y,189.06h,95.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1soThgmaUTJ4rbbu9_msnzAw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

Here is the image you all were talking about. Sooner than I expected, and from the enquirer today.

Looking great.

 

 

The Lytle Tunnel is being rebuilt with a much more powerful ventilation system, which seems to be larger than necessary. Cincyopolis is speculating that this ventilation system may be overbuilt so that it can be used for a future FWW tunnel. She also speculates that when Third Street was renamed in honor of Carl Lindner last year, this was a gesture by the city to encourage Great American to help pay for the tunnel.

A private individual paying for a large public infrastructure project? Is there recent precedent for something like this? It'd be cool if it's true, but I'm having a hard time picturing it. I think the honorary naming of Third Street probably had more to do with Carl's new 660 foot baby at 3rd and Sycamore.

I've spoken with Cincypolis about this exact topic and find some of her theories questionable. The ventilation system is much larger than before, yes, but that's because regulations have changed. From everything I've heard it's pretty on par with the systems in similar tunnels that have been upgraded.

 

But who knows, maybe it is sized larger and will allow for full caps instead of gaps like we currently have planned.

I think you have to look at this in the simplest terms. Could be the plan is to widen the tunnel through part of the cavity now being created. Would require widening under 550 East Fourth apartments and probably its demolition, but I assume the air rights could be renegotiated to allow a tunnel widening and a much larger building there.

A private individual paying for a large public infrastructure project? Is there recent precedent for something like this? It'd be cool if it's true, but I'm having a hard time picturing it. I think the honorary naming of Third Street probably had more to do with Carl's new 660 foot baby at 3rd and Sycamore.

 

Didn't Jeff Bezos pitch in with Seattle's Streetcar?  Or was it Paul Allen, I'm trying to remember...

Yeah, Amazon bought Seattle a streetcar.

Good to know! Doesn't the streetcar in Seattle go through the area where Amazon just relocated it's headquarters? If I remember correctly, the neighborhood is up and coming, and is currently a bit isolated from other areas of activity in the city. It would make sense that Amazon would contribute to that project, as it essentially serves to connect their headquarters with the core of downtown.

 

The situation speculated about up thread is a bit different, though. How would Lindner benefit from FWW being a tunnel? I also would imagine that tunnels and other large infrastructure projects would be in ODOT's domain, and would be subject to all of the transparency and competitive bidding processes that public projects are supposed to be held to. I'm sure it could be done, in theory, but I just sincerely doubt it. Especially because of all the public money that went into building QCS. If Lindner was just a city building philanthropist looking for his next project to fund, why wouldn't he have just financed QCS himself?

The Lytle Tunnel ventilation (and fire protection) is just being brought up to today's standard from the 1960's era standards. Maybe it appears much larger is due to a backup ventilation system?  The pit is for the new systems and is being constructed astride the existing tunnel.

 

The Lytle tunnel and the FWW tunnel cannot be connected, bridges over Broadway separate the two areas. The lowest part of the Lytle tunnel is at about elevation 505 (NB tube), the lowest part of the FWW trench is about elevation 489.  The SB tube is higher and the 3rd Street Ramp is in its own tube. This all would make using the Lytle Tunnel ventilation system difficult. Also, the residents would not be too happy iff all the exhaust from FWW was brought into the Lytle Park area!

The Lytle Tunnel ventilation (and fire protection) is just being brought up to today's standard from the 1960's era standards. Maybe it appears much larger is due to a backup ventilation system?  The pit is for the new systems and is being constructed astride the existing tunnel.

 

The Lytle tunnel and the FWW tunnel cannot be connected, bridges over Broadway separate the two areas. The lowest part of the Lytle tunnel is at about elevation 505 (NB tube), the lowest part of the FWW trench is about elevation 489.  The SB tube is higher and the 3rd Street Ramp is in its own tube. This all would make using the Lytle Tunnel ventilation system difficult. Also, the residents would not be too happy iff all the exhaust from FWW was brought into the Lytle Park area!

 

I was under the impression that FWW tunnels will be essentially just caps with enough opening to not require ventilation.  Am I just making this up? (Prolly)

That is indeed correct.

LOL, cincyopolis has no clue what she is talking about.  Linking the estate of Carl Linder to an ODOT managed ventilation system is some A Beautiful Mind type dementia. 

^I've attempted on multiple occasions to make her realize this isn't a suspicious project and that the tunnel has literally to do with what's happening around the park. There was serious concern for awhile from her that the hole was for a private garage to which I pointed out that no permits had been submitted (disregarding the lack of that ever being on the table).

 

The only thing I got out of those conversations was that several people in the 550 Apartments were told that leases won't be resigned because the building won't be around for much longer. Which could be interesting but has nothing to do with the hole either.

She was calling out coordination between Western & Southern and the Cincinnati Park Board. That turned out to be partially true as behind the scenes the Park Board has made promises to Western & Southern regarding ownership of certain portions of the park that would be given to W&S.

 

I'm not suggesting that the tunnel is being planned by W&S for their benefit, but to think that they  couldn't have any say or influence I think is a little naive.

Cincyopolis wouldn't even exist if the Enqiurer would do its darn job and actually look deep into where the money is going on things.  Yes they did some good investigative reporting on the park board, but they don't do it enough and too often will (even if investigative reporting says otherwise) throw their weight behind deeply dysfunctional status quo project/ ideas.

 

I'm happy she's at least asking questions even if the basis on some have issues, there need to be people like that to make the city more functional, because lets face it, Cincinnati is a deeply dysfunctional city.

Cincyopolis wouldn't even exist if the Enqiurer would do its darn job and actually look deep into where the money is going on things.  Yes they did some good investigative reporting on the park board, but they don't do it enough and too often will (even if investigative reporting says otherwise) throw their weight behind deeply dysfunctional status quo project/ ideas.

 

I'm happy she's at least asking questions even if the basis on some have issues, there need to be people like that to make the city more functional, because lets face it, Cincinnati is a deeply dysfunctional city.

 

And the dysfunction is headquartered at the corner of 4th & Broadway.  Insurance is just about the dirtiest business going.  Whole life insurance the investment products peddled by insurance salesmen like annuities are predatory products. 

 

I think we could have a single story building set back a little bit to give some room to festivals.  Put in the green roof that isn't open to the public so you don't need all the ADA stuff.  The greenery would improve runoff, reduce heat and improve air quality in the area.

^ So when people say green roof, are you meaning just a simple lawn on the cap? That's what it sounds like, but usually green roof references a pretty specific image of a building's roof covered in vegetation.

 

I think passive uses would be fine for the caps, personally. I don't necessarily think they should be park space due to the riverfront park being a block or so away, but I also don't think we need much new construction on them either. I would love to see some unconventional ideas when it comes to these caps, but of course those type of ideas would never gain traction because, Cincinnati. Think about a large, shallow reflective pool. That could be cool, and could host winter activities in the winter. A sculpture park ala St. Louis' City Garden could also be interesting.

 

But overall, I don't think these caps need to be hot spots of activity. They sit between the banks and downtown, so there's no need to compete with that in terms of commercial or office space. Residential is problematic for several reasons. The real benefit of the caps is not the open, developable land they'll create. It's the removal of a viable and audible barrier between the city and its waterfront. What goes on the caps is secondary.

In the Oktoberfest thread, I suggested that we build a 1 story building on the caps, which would be filled with retail and add to the street-level activity, and put a green roof on top which would provide a location for biergartens for events like Oktoberfest.

I think we could have a single story building set back a little bit to give some room to festivals.

2nd and 3rd Streets are already too wide... it would be a shame to add additional setback. If anything is built on the caps, then it should be built out to the sidewalk. Each of the "blocks" is ~350'x150', so you'd want to take full advantage of the 150' dimension.

Height also helps alleviate the discomfort associated with extra wide streets. They're designed to hold 4-5 story buildings and should be built out to the max. There's zero need for additional green space down there and anything other than normal looking urban infill will continue the feeling of division between The Banks and the rest of Downtown.

 

We have a huge new state of the art park on the riverfront. No need to draw people away from that with another large greenspace that has redundant spaces.

I think we could have a single story building set back a little bit to give some room to festivals.

2nd and 3rd Streets are already too wide... it would be a shame to add additional setback. If anything is built on the caps, then it should be built out to the sidewalk. Each of the "blocks" is ~350'x150', so you'd want to take full advantage of the 150' dimension.

 

^ Unless you take a lane out of each for light rail to the airport someday

I think we could have a single story building set back a little bit to give some room to festivals.

2nd and 3rd Streets are already too wide... it would be a shame to add additional setback. If anything is built on the caps, then it should be built out to the sidewalk. Each of the "blocks" is ~350'x150', so you'd want to take full advantage of the 150' dimension.

 

^ Unless you take a lane out of each for light rail to the airport someday

 

Wouldn't the festivals be incompatible with light rail on second and third? Should the rail go into the Riverfront Transit Center instead?  That's a decision we need to make before creating festival-oriented caps

I think the festivals should ultimately move to Mehring Way and Smale. They can stretch it out and have all the booths face the park from the north side of Mehring, and allow people to utilize to park to eat/drink/sit/etc. You could get creative and incorporate stretches of Vine and Freedom, as well. The caps, if built, should definitely add more density to the core rather than even more green space - Smale and Sawyer Point provide enough of that already, IMO.

I think the festivals should ultimately move to Mehring Way and Smale. They can stretch it out and have all the booths face the park from the north side of Mehring, and allow people to utilize to park to eat/drink/sit/etc. You could get creative and incorporate stretches of Vine and Freedom, as well. The caps, if built, should definitely add more density to the core rather than even more green space - Smale and Sawyer Point provide enough of that already, IMO.

 

Was talking to a coworker about this and I tend to agree, but if you use Smale - couldn't you see it getting trashed? If there's rain, the grass becomes mud. Even without the rain, Oktoberfest's clientele don't exactly leave the area very pristine in the morning.

The FWW caps are a conundrum. It would be kind of unusual to subsidize so heavily (I think caps are estimated at $80 million) any small scale residential development that could fit there and also be a weird location for residential period with the highway underneath. There doesn't seem to be huge demand for office. Leaving it a park or plaza for the festivals would be great for when they are in use but would run the risk of inactivity when not in use. Such a spot would require active programming to draw people in and we already spread ourselves pretty thin doing that with other areas in the city.

 

 

In the Oktoberfest thread, I suggested that we build a 1 story building on the caps, which would be filled with retail and add to the street-level activity, and put a green roof on top which would provide a location for biergartens for events like Oktoberfest.

 

This is a really original idea that would solve the problem of being "dead space" when there is no festival going in but I wonder how this would effect a retailer during a festival especially a week or more extended Oktoberfest which I see being discussed in Facebook.

The FWW caps are a conundrum. It would be kind of unusual to subsidize so heavily (I think caps are estimated at $80 million) any small scale residential development that could fit there and also be a weird location for residential period with the highway underneath. There doesn't seem to be huge demand for office. Leaving it a park or plaza for the festivals would be great for when they are in use but would run the risk of inactivity when not in use. Such a spot would require active programming to draw people in and we already spread ourselves pretty thin doing that with other areas in the city.

 

I think you just summed up the biggest problem with the caps. Why would we spend $80 million to build them when we could use that money building out future phases of The Banks, or providing loans or grants to encourage development on empty parking lots downtown? Those things are much higher priority IMO than building the cap. I understand that FWW serves as a subconscious barrier between The Banks and Downtown/OTR, but with the streetcar, that is minimized.

I understand that FWW serves as a subconscious barrier between The Banks and Downtown/OTR, but with the streetcar, that is minimized.

 

The streetcar most definitely helps fight that perception, but I think just having The Banks/Smale active in general helps too. 2nd Street used to be a dead zone before the streetcar, Banks, and Smale. Aside from Reds games or Bengals games, the only pedestrian activity seemed to be monthly parkers heading to the garage. All the landscaping and infrastructure was starting to look a bit grimy too.

 

 

I think the biggest hurdle to the caps is who would fund them? City? County? Joint effort amongst Federal grants?

 

Didn't the County apply for grants from the Americana Recovery and Reinvestment Act only to be denied?

How definite is the $80m figure? That cost is the key (in my mind) for figuring out how worthwhile it is.

 

When there is still so much empty space at The Banks, it seems unlikely that the Caps would make any sense from an investment perspective.

$80 million is a big price tag, but the city would almost surely not cover much of that cost itself. Pittsburgh was just awarded a very large TIGER grant to fund a cap there. We'd have to take a similar approach, I'd guess. Meaning that we would probably have to closely look at the metrics the Feds consider for awarding funding when deciding what the caps get used for and what is built on top of them.

 

The talk of using $80million for any number of projects ignores the fact that these caps would have to be funded through a combination of funding sources. Reminds me of the false narrative around allocating streetcar money to other things. Surprising to see that type of conversation on this forum.

Cincinnati keeps applying for TIGER grants ... for the new Cincinnati State overpass. If we would have applied for money for the FWW caps instead, who knows, we may have won.

The talk of using $80million for any number of projects ignores the fact that these caps would have to be funded through a combination of funding sources. Reminds me of the false narrative around allocating streetcar money to other things. Surprising to see that type of conversation on this forum.

 

I see your point, but there's a difference with the streetcar that already had specific commitments that could not be redirected. The caps do not have any funding commitments. Cities only have so much bandwidth to take on projects, and there are only so many funding sources out there. If you are asking for state, federal, and philanthropic dollars for one project, you are probably avoiding or limiting the request for others.

 

That said, I'm hoping the caps will one day become a priority and can get done.

Cincinnati keeps applying for TIGER grants ... for the new Cincinnati State overpass. If we would have applied for money for the FWW caps instead, who knows, we may have won.

 

The caps would certainly be a better use of TIGER funds than that ridiculous Cincy State ramp project that no one wants or asked for.  If we had a better mayor, we could be applying for TIGER grants for phase 2 of the streetcar, but alas...

 

The talk of using $80million for any number of projects ignores the fact that these caps would have to be funded through a combination of funding sources. Reminds me of the false narrative around allocating streetcar money to other things. Surprising to see that type of conversation on this forum.

 

I see your point, but there's a difference with the streetcar that already had specific commitments that could not be redirected. The caps do not have any funding commitments. Cities only have so much bandwidth to take on projects, and there are only so many funding sources out there. If you are asking for state, federal, and philanthropic dollars for one project, you are probably avoiding or limiting the request for others.

 

 

That's true, there is always going to be a tradeoff involved with pursuing a project that requires public funding.  I was referring more to the point that TIGER grants, state funds, etc. can't be diverted to private development projects on surface lots.  The city's contribution to the project could be allocated elsewhere, to be sure, though.  Pittsburgh's cap project was funded through $19 mil in TIGER grants, and 7.5 mil from state and local funding.  I've seen the split between state and local shares of funding somewhere, but I'm too lazy to spend time looking for it.  Let's assume the local share is half.  That's only ~3.5 million, which is a really feasible amount for a city like Cincinnati to raise for such a project. That's what I was getting at in my original post; the notion that there is a pot of $80 mil that could either be allocated to the caps or other projects throughout the city is simply not true.  If Pittsburgh is the funding model, the more accurate discussion would be if a few million dollars is better spent on a couple development projects, or as a way to leverage state and federal funding for the freeway caps.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/13/next-up-riverfront-decks-over--71/99131430/

There's been a newfound energy by Hamilton County to cap Fort Washington Way.

 

Todd Portune has been involved in this. Pittsburgh was recently awarded $19 million for a similar project in Downtown. County officials estimate that the cost of a single deck would be $25 million. As noted below, from the linked Enquirer article, they would want to develop on top of the deck to help finance future decks.

 

County officials, though, say they will try a go-it-slow approach by asking for only about $25 million, enough to cover the first of the four decks needed. The goal would be to develop the land atop the first deck and use the tax revenue generated from those developments to bankroll work on the next deck, and so on, until all four are complete.

 

Personally, I want the center two decks to be made into park space that can be utilized for various events, and the two outlying decks to be used for development. I think the most logical deck to start with would be the one between Main and Walnut by Great American Ballpark and right on the streetcar route.

This is actually a really pragmatic plan to spur financing for future caps.

 

I wonder how they are going to assemble the match for the grant.

Amazing what happens when you get the turd Republican out of there.  Now if we can just get the turd Democrat out of the mayor's office. 

These really need to be fully developed. There's zero need for more park space down there. I see essentially zero point in spending that money to cap FWW if it's just for more park space. That won't help knit The Banks into Downtown and it will add to an already large amount of park land in the areas. Smale is gorgeous but it's massive. Even there I think there's more than necessary and that above the garages should be purely development opposed to park space. But that's another point.

 

I really hope they push for this. And it's not just more talk.

Also, the roof of any low-rise flat-roofed building on a cap will be visible from the slopes down from 4th.  So new construction needs attractive roofs, be they flat or gabled or whatever.   

If you did buildings with one story bases, and 3 story courtyard shaped buildings above that covered all four caps you could fit approximately 600-650 units on top. Even if you left the two central caps partially open, by only building smaller buildings that fronted Walnut and Race, leaving an open plaza space on both sides of Vine you could still fit almost 400 units and still provide some open space to be used for Oktoberfest or whatever. Personally I agree that there is plenty of open space along the riverfront already and all four caps should be fully developed, my only question is what can you do with all that first floor space?  Retail, parking, more residential? Thats a lot of space on two very wide non-pedestrian friendly streets. The sides that face the North/South streets could be retail but the 2nd and 3rd street frontages would be difficult to fill; see phase two of the Banks and it's block long blank wall along 2nd.

Now that 2nd and 3rd is the new location for big festivals, I'm more in favor of a plan that includes some amount of plaza space on the caps. It would be a really interesting compromise if you covered the caps with a 1 or 2 story retail space, and put a public plaza on top of that. You would still get street level activity year round but also have additional space for the big festivals. Alternatively the rooftop patios could be used for a restaurant dining space or biergarten.

I think the caps create a really interesting opportunity to create a unique public space in Cincinnati that we won't get again. I understand the Riverfront Park is close, but I think a large park space on the caps could be advantageous to Cincinnati and also help connect The Banks to the rest of Downtown. There's already an abundance of retail/restaurant space available at The Banks and in OTR (as well as Main and Walnut along the streetcar route). We aren't in any kind of shortage for areas to redevelop (empty storefronts, parking lots, etc).

 

Creating parks on the caps would create an versatile space we could use for Opening Day, Oktoberfest, Taste of Cincinnati, etc. I think creating a Munich-style Oktoberfest on the caps would be cool. You could still block off the surrounding streets, but adding tents to the caps that are sponsored by breweries (Sam Adams, Rhinegiest, etc) would be awesome. It could still be a usable public space when there aren't big events. I just don't see the huge demand for additional retail/restaurant space there when The Banks hasn't exactly excelled at attracting tenants.

Why can't we do literally every single one of those things in Smale? There's space for it. And building $100 million worth of infrastructure with the idea that it'll be useful for a handful of weekends per year and then sit as an excessive amount of open space every other time seems backwards to me.

 

You can design buildings that meet the ground nicely and create street interaction without the ground levels being filled with retail. There is a once in a lifetime opportunity to connect the riverfront to Downtown's fabric with these caps. Open space would very likely not achieve that here.

 

It would also present zero opportunity to create revenue from the caps and, in my opinion, cheapen the massive investment made to create Smale.