Does anyone know what's going on with these two buildings?  This is an old streetview but seems like they've been doing some work on these and it has a developer sign on them but no details.  It is straight East of Eli's

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1179063,-84.4423353,3a,75y,176.35h,96.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjhwZJykzfhX79cWZ-SHm1A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Major riverside housing development approved despite flood concerns

 

 

A riverfront housing project that would develop 44 lots along the Ohio River got the Cincinnati Planning Commission’s unanimous approval on Friday, despite concerns by the Cincinnati Fire Department about access to the site in the California neighborhood in case of major flooding.

 

The developer – Gary Osterfeld, who has worked on the Sanctuary at River Green for nearly 10 years – views the approval as a major precedent that signals the city is open to building housing in the flood plain, particularly in California, which has seen none of the redevelopment boom the rest of Cincinnati has enjoyed.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/07/07/major-riverside-housing-development-approved.html

While development in California sounds great I am very concerned about this type of development. Developing in the floodway is usually not allowed in communities that accept FEMA flood insurance. If we have another 100-year flood event these houses will very likely only be accessible by boat.

I assume the first floors will be unfinished garage/storage spaces, so really how is this that different to all the coastal Carolina houses that exist in storm surge zones or on barrier islands? Also the Riverview East Academy down the road sits on stilts, and that is OK. As long as the residents moving in are aware of the risks involved why not build them?

There are tons of homes pushing $1 million planned or going up on the Ohio side of the river but Manhattan Harbor appears to be stalled. 

As long as the residents moving in are aware of the risks involved why not build them?

 

Without FEMA flood insurance, these houses would not be built, because private insurance companies will not insure homes that are built in a flood zone. If the houses do flood, taxpayers are on the hook to bail out these homeowners.

^ I live in Corpus Christ, Tx and my Farmers home insurance does not cover wind or flood even though I'm not in a flood zone.  I have to have three seperate policies to fully insure my house and I have to get both wind and flood separately from my regular Farmers home insurance and my flood is thru FEMA.

There are tons of homes pushing $1 million planned or going up on the Ohio side of the river but Manhattan Harbor appears to be stalled. 

 

Well, access to the Manhattan Harbor site is terrible and the area immediately surrounding it is depressed.  To say nothing of the fact that the houses in Manhattan Harbor would look more at home in Mason than on the riverfront.  :roll:

$1 million riverfront homes coming to East End

 

 

A luxury custom homebuilder plans to build four new homes along the Ohio riverfront.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/09/19/exclusive-1-million-riverfront-homes-coming-to.html

^ Is it the site of this building that just vanished one day earlier this summer? https://goo.gl/maps/1UkvQwPUTeF2 That's the kind of "death by a thousand cuts" demolition that really hurts the city, along with the de-densification and upmarket pricing that comes with it. 

Luxury residential community going up along Ohio River

 

 

Construction is underway on the first homes in a long-planned luxury residential development along the banks of the Ohio River.

 

Sanctuary at River Green, a 44-home development in California, already has 12 home sites either sold or under contract. Construction has started on the first five. 

 

Developer Gary Osterfeld has worked on Sanctuary at River Green for about 10 years. I recently toured the property with Osterfeld, which has views of the Ohio River and the hills of Northern Kentucky. Osterfeld said living near the water has a special appeal, as he still stops to watch barges coming up the river. The property is quiet, removed from major roads, but still close shopping and other amenities.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/10/29/luxury-residential-community-going-up-along-ohio.html

The development by the river on the East Side has actually been some of the best in the city imo. I hope the trend continues here.

Here's what it takes to bring the first Homearama to Cincinnati

 

 

About a decade ago, T.J Ackermann and Ralph Meierjohan first looked at a nearly 6-acre site in the East End for an infill development.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2019/09/24/what-it-takes-to-bring-the-first-homearama-to.html

$1.1 million for Homerama homes:

https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1639788/35-Walworth-Ave-East-End-OH-45226

 

 

 

I wonder when/if some of these high prices will start pushing into the little Appalachia area along the sharp bend on Eastern Ave. Between Streetside and Terry's it feels like you're in Pikeville, Kentucky.  

13 minutes ago, cincydave8 said:

I wonder when/if some of these high prices will start pushing into the little Appalachia area along the sharp bend on Eastern Ave. Between Streetside and Terry's it feels like you're in Pikeville, Kentucky.  

I have a friend who bought a piece of the land in that little section and is getting ready to build a duplex. When you drive down there you’ll see a lot of the empty lots have for sale signs. I’m sure I’m a couple years it’ll look completely different. 

There's already some semi-inflated prices for houses along there, but they're not really selling.  It's a bit of a noise double-whammy with Columbia Parkway in the back and Lunken Airport out the front. 

13 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

$1.1 million for Homerama homes:

https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1639788/35-Walworth-Ave-East-End-OH-45226

 

 

 

 

Randomly walked down that street not too long ago, they were clearing everything out, it's a huge site, I bet most of the cost of these homes are from making the new land for them to sit on. It definitely is a cool area now where you have unmitigated views of the river, and there is even a tunnel on Walworth to Riverside Drive to get on your bike and go if you are into that. I will be curious to see how long these lots take to sell and start building on, probably 5 years at least with the prices the way they are.

There has to be some sort of cleanup/remediation costs in the land.  It was the Little Miami Railroad's original terminal yard in the 1840s and later became their maintenance yard after the terminal was moved to Sawyer Point.  It's got to be contaminated with oil and who knows what else. 

37 minutes ago, jjakucyk said:

There has to be some sort of cleanup/remediation costs in the land.  It was the Little Miami Railroad's original terminal yard in the 1840s and later became their maintenance yard after the terminal was moved to Sawyer Point.  It's got to be contaminated with oil and who knows what else. 

 

One of the articles about it talked about how they hauled out a ton of soil and brought in all new soil.

3 hours ago, cincydave8 said:

I wonder when/if some of these high prices will start pushing into the little Appalachia area along the sharp bend on Eastern Ave. Between Streetside and Terry's it feels like you're in Pikeville, Kentucky.  

 

Yeah, it's amazing.  I used to work with an Appalachian guy who grew up on Eastern roughly where Eli's BBQ is now.  He told me that they used to play a game where they tried to throw baseballs from Delta Ave. over the Grandin Rd. Viaduct, and only the strongest kids could do it.  Also, the bridge itself was a regular focus point for idle teenagers.  It's no coincidence that the rich Hyde Parkers had the viaduct torn down.    

 

At the April 19th Planning Commission meeting, they approved the Homearama plans in the East End. This will extend Walworth Ave to the west. One thing that isn't clear to me is whether or not Walworth will connect to Hoff. Or will it be a dead end cul-de-sac. Do any of you know?

 

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/04/17/homearama-gets-key-approval-but-event-will-be.html

I need to know all the details about this:

 

The petitioner already owns the 2 triangles that are the railroad station and the lot behind it. He apparently purchased them back in 1985 and transferred them to a LLC out of Kentucky in 2008 and 2009. SORTA owns the two slivers directly on the rail line. It does not appear that he owns any other property in Hamilton County and there's no obvious signs of him or his businesses through a general internet search. There is a gap in property between what he is asking for and private property on Gladstone so I'm assuming he'd use public ROW that is technically Torrence Road to get to the development. I'm real curious what he would do with the former train station.

^Interesting. The Planning Commission packet says that the project would be for 35 single-family homes... and that the petitioner "has control of the land to the east of the subject property that front on Hoff Avenue and is proposing an urban infill development known as the Torrence Station Project". I'm assuming the "Sawyer Place Company" is affiliated with the developer. 

 

I assume the properties would be accessed via extensions of Gladstone and/or Hoff. I would love to see the right-of-way connect all the way form Hoff to Gladstone. Hopefully the fact that the development is named "Torrence Station" means that the station will be maintained/integrated into the design in some fashion.

 

 

Sawyer Place Company was initially registered back in 1983 in Ohio and owns a lot of property along the river in East End, not just these properties along the paper street. All the properties appear to be vacant land. Associated names and addresses don't match with the person making this request, who is out of Kentucky. Doesn't mean it's not the same interests, I just didn't see the overlap.

I really hope they keep the station. It's one of my favorite historical oddities in the City. I also noticed several months ago that someone had clear cut that lot, which makes sense. I was not aware it was privately owned at the time and had assumed SORTA must have cut back all the invasive plants. Connecting Hoff and Gladstone would be really interesting, especially after the fight over the Walworth Junction development.

 

In any case, the guy has been sitting on at least those 2 lots for 35 years. Land speculation is crazy.

Starting at Delta, I rode my bike east along Walworth through the Homearama site (circled in yellow), continuing on to Hoff,. When Hoff ends, I took the trail through the woods all the way past the old Torrence Station to where the old road connected to Columbia Parkway (circled in blue). I tried to find a path/trail through the woods continuing westward but couldn't find anything so I just rode along the train tracks (circled in red) until I hit Gladstone. It was too bumpy along the tracks to hold my phone in one hand, so I had to cut out the video, but if you want some video footage of the rest of that ride, here ya go. If Homearama is successful (and I expect it will be), there is a ton of potential for infill along this corridor. 

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WpuuEX1ep9qFVHgh7

 

48 minutes ago, jwulsin said:

 If Homearama is successful (and I expect it will be), there is a ton of potential for infill along this corridor. 

 

They keep finding places to jam more new homes in on the east side.  

 

What I don't like about this is it diminishes the likelihood of the Oasis rail line being used for commuter or passenger rail.  The case for commuter rail on the corridor has always been weak but that would change if Cincinnati's metro population reaches 3 million.  

 

Similarly, there is no anticipated need for passenger service the shuttered freight railroad to Portsmouth, but in time that might change.  

It always seemed like the upside to commuter rail was limited here because of the great access Columbia Parkway provides. The City should just let the hill take back the road.

Imagine if instead of spending millions of dollars ($17m estimated) building new retaining walls, the city conceded that one or two lanes of the parkway were a loss and put up some jersey barriers and re-striped the road for a fraction of the cost.  Then they could use that money for alternative transportation modes.   

The reason is, of course, that very few people want any "alternative" forms of transportation.  And, short of kidnapping commuters at gunpoint, very few persons will use the alternatives. Simply look at the excellent 71X service which saves driving, parking, traffic frustration and vehicle costs and rivals auto commute times. Maybe 1 in a 1000 commuters who could benefit have chosen it. There are reasons, but not top down command and control reasons. So, until the communists take over, expect more traffic lanes and less "alternatives."

You do understand that "everyone must drive" and "no road project is a bad road project" is just as much a "communist, top-down, command and control" situation, right?  

I think the first of those two statements is not driven by top down control but agree that the second one is. where does that leave us? Same place as everywhere. People who can afford cars buy and drive them no matter the availability of public transportation or the condition of the roads.

Please let us keep this thread on topic. Conversations debating what is and is not communism may be undertaken elsewhere on the Internet. 

Homerama 9/19/20:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trouble in Paradise:

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/11/02/homearama-homeowners-face-10-000-year-special-assessment/6043435002/

 

The oldest trick in the book!  I remember when we moved to a new subdivision in the 1980s that the developer skipped town and saddled the HOA with the mess he left.  Another developer did the same thing to a condo development nearby.  
 

Quote

 

McAndrews said he thinks the developer is trying to make a huge profit and get residents to shoulder some costs that the developer could have covered on his own with state and federal grants.

 

According to an itemized breakdown of the costs of the development that McAndrews obtained from the city law department, the developer spent about $8 million on environmental remediation and soil import to the site.

 

"They could have easily gotten grants to remediate that old brownfield, but they didn't do any of that, now they want us and taxpayers to pay for it,'' McAndrews said, noting that the development has also been approved for $5.74 million in tax increment financing by the city.

 

 

 

 

 

^Unsaid in this article is whether the homeowners are also getting a tax abatement. I assume they are. In which case they are still probably paying less per year, inclusive of the assessment, than similarly priced homes without an abatement in the city.

2 minutes ago, JohnClevesSymmes said:

^Unsaid in this article is whether the homeowners are also getting a tax abatement. I assume they are. In which case they are still probably paying less per year, inclusive of the assessment, than similarly priced homes without an abatement in the city.

 

The amount of site prep for this project was unbelievable for just 39 houses - so maybe 120 residents including kids.  The real shame here is that as the Oasis line gets crowded with hundreds of millionaires the likelihood of the line being used for transit purposes or longer-distance rail into the Transit Center becomes more and more remote.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why didn't the developer just include these costs in the cost of each lot? if they would make the lots to $$$, I would think they would have to disclose these HOA payments, $10K a year in nothing to sneeze at. Or maybe the buyers never read the HOA documents.Sounds like there will be some lawsuits and it will hurt any future sales of lots knowing there is yearly $10K fee on top of your normal HOA costs. 

57 minutes ago, jmblec2 said:

Or maybe the buyers never read the HOA documents.Sounds like there will be some lawsuits and it will hurt any future sales of lots knowing there is yearly $10K fee on top of your normal HOA costs. 

 

Yes and Yes.  I think the developer was able to pull a few fast ones on the buyers because it was branded as Homerama and so people let their guard down.  And just wait until these people realize that they're living just above an active freight railroad with random train movements in the middle of the night.  I have been down there at night when they move those hopper cars down to the terminal next to the Boathouse and the thing is a lot noisier than you'd expect.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I lived on Hoff for years, which is adjacent to the Homerama site. The Oasis Line was in my backyard. The freight there is random, yes, but negligible, and it travels so slowly that it makes very little noise. I would think it would be even less now, since that was about 20 years ago.

Commuter is another story, of course.

Terry Inman is at it again. View from on Watson Street:

 

May, 2019:
Google Maps - Street view

Currently owned by The Sawyer Place Company: https://sawyerplacecompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Available_EastEnd_WatsonWenner.pdf

I stumbled onto an interesting development going in along Eastern in East End. A firm is designing 6 side-by-side duplexes. 2 are currently listed on Zillow at $709k and $791k. Views will directly overlook Lunken.

 

 

 

 

The same firm is planning 5 SFH further down after the turn on Eastern, which I believe is technically Columbia-Tusculum. These are on the north side of the street and will view the river but might be able to see the airfield to their left. Two are currently listed for $682k and $734k.

 

This development is called Tusculum Ridge and has its own website with optional layouts. Looks like the firm has purchased several other lots along Eastern and have long-term plans for this area of town. Their offices are located down the hill near the air field.

If I had an unlimited supply of income, I'd acquire every parcel available along the river. 

I have a friend who is building a duplex basically across from this on I believe 4141 Eastern Ave. I’d say in the next 10-15 years this whole stretch of Eastern Ave will be modern luxury homes. 

31 minutes ago, Ucgrad2015 said:

I have a friend who is building a duplex basically across from this on I believe 4141 Eastern Ave. I’d say in the next 10-15 years this whole stretch of Eastern Ave will be modern luxury homes. 

Oh yeah, for sure. Imagine lightrail or streetcar going along the riverfront from Downtown.

40 minutes ago, Cincinnatus said:

If I had an unlimited supply of income, I'd acquire every parcel available along the river. 

I'm right there with you. I spent a lot of time fresh water boating growing up and it was wild to me when I moved here that there isn't more investment on real estate along the river. I then learned about the long history of flooding in the area but still.

A developer, BMC Visions, has approached the City for a zone change that would eventually allow them to build an 80-unit apartment complex located at 3754 - 4759 Beechmont Court and 4761 - 4773 Bloor Avenue in Linwood. The current proposal asks to change the zoning from Manufacturing Limited (ML) to Planned Development (PD) for the roughly 2.2 acre site. The site would include 84 units, all 1-bedroom, and 96 surface parking spaces for a ratio of 1.14 spots per unit. 70 of the 84 units are at 650 sqft with the rest being 750 or 950 sqft. There will also be 13 marked on-street parking spaces created on an expanded Bloor Avenue. There is a pool, fitness center and a small public café in the plan. There will also be bike and kayak racks.

Interestingly, the 3 existing billboard's are an adjacent lot and the owner will not sell. They are now non-conforming and could not be replaced if removed. The site is in the 100-year flood plain but only needs to be lifted a few feet higher to get out. The developer is aware of the potential redesign of the Wooster and Beechmont intersection and does not believe that this interferes with that. The Linwood Community Council voted against the development.

More at the City Planning department's website.

^The Linwood Community Council voted 1-8 against supporting the development because they believe the rentals will have a high turn overrate due to the undesirable location and small size of units resulting in residents who will not invest in the neighborhood culture. 3 East CDC, which covers  Columbia-Tusculum, East End and Linwood, supports the development.

Sounds a little anti poor people to me.

1 hour ago, Yves Behar said:

Sounds a little anti poor people to me.

 

Outside of typical tax abatements, I'm not seeing any financial incentives with this proposal. Their presentation includes attracting tenants with an active lifestyle so I think this will be 20-something working class professionals. I don't think the rents will be remotely affordable for moderate and low income residents.