Just about every street in downtown Cincinnati and Over-the-Rhine is congested with utilities, as compared to say, one in Forest Park. The streetcar proponents picked just about the worst part of the metro area to build the streetcar as far as utilities are concerned.

 

That doesn't mean that the project is hopeless; it just means that enough money needs to be budgeted to deal with it, or maybe a different route would be more advantageous. Early in this thread I suggested light rail on the former CL&N. Jake pointed out that it does not go through the heart of downtown, and neither does it go to UC., which are both facts. But the advantage of that route is that it is mostly free of utiliites. Open trackwork on a graded right-of-way costs about $1 million per mile, which is much, much less than a streetcar track in Elm or Race will cost.

 

The football stadium was built one block east of where it was originally intended because of a conflict with a utility. So, these things really do matter.

 

The streetcar proponents should have paid more attention to utilities. That's all I'm saying.

 

In short, the streetcar supporters didn't allow for proper utility work.

 

 

Streetcar supporters didn't allow for proper utility work? Really? Which streetcar supporters were tasked with doing that? I guess I didn't get that memo.

 

Question: If the Brent Spence Bridge replacement comes in over budget, then the Chamber of Commerce, OKI, Barack Obama -- none of them -- have "allowed"  for that possibility either, so shall we blame them if that happens?

 

On the other hand, I think your concept of planning economic development infrastructure based on where there are few utilities is really interesting. I bet no one has ever thought of that before. Or will again.

 

"Your posts are becoming more and more ridiculous."

 

 

 

LOL. John came out blasting.

 

Sorry, I should have said the consultant who prepared the feasibility study, along with anyone who has been using the estimated cost numbers in the feasibility study to develop the streetcar project. My language skills are far from perfect, I admit, and I have been using the words "streetcar supporter" a little bit too loosely.  (I assume that the consultants were supporters as well as consultants.)

 

Locating new infrastructure where there are few existing utilities or other infrastructure is normal. I provided the example of Paul Brown Stadium, which was placed where it is now located instead of one block west because of an existing utility in Central Avenue that would have cost tens of milliions of dollars to relocate.

 

If the proposed bridge comes in over budget, then there will be a choice to either cancel the project or increase the budget, neither of which are happy outcomes, and yes, whoever authorized the project is to blame. A better choice would be to make sure that there are enough funds in the budget to complete the project in the first place.

 

As for ridiculous posts, sorry if I ramble too much. I am trying to do better.

LOL. John came out blasting.

 

I have a lot of respect for John. He has been a streetcar and light rail proponent for as long as I can remember. I met him at a public meeting a long time ago, but he probably doesn't remember me. I wouldn't mind meeting him again sometime, or going on one of his Portland trips.

Paul Brown Stadium's site was not moved west to avoid utilities. I remember that it cost something like $15 million to move the site one block west because of the high cost of riverfront real estate.  I doubt that anything approaching $15 million in utility work was required in a site closer to the suspension bridge. 

 

 

 

>one block east of where it was originally intended because of a conflict with a utility

 

For those who can remember the vote over Broadway Commons in 1998 -- a major argument against Broadway Commons was that some mysterious utility was going to have to be moved, at great expense.  I haven't heard a damn thing about it with this casino going in. 

 

 

 

Chabot was just on 700 WLW talking about getting the $25 million urban circulator grant returned.  He was factually innacurate, of course, in describing the project, and argued that since we don't have money to send out social security checks we shouldn't be building streetcars.

What comes around.....

GOP US reps from Ohio want turnpike funds back

Scmift & Chabot "stunned"

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/article/50773--gop-us-reps-from-ohio-want-turnpike-funds-back

^Paul Brown Stadium was moved one block east (not west) to avoid some major utility work in Central Avenue. The architect's first shot at location was straddling Central Avenue, until they found out about the utility. This was after it was established that the football stadium would go on the western riverfront. Some earlier concepts had the football stadium on the eastern riverfront and the ballpark on the western riverfront.

 

You may not have heard of the sewers under Broadway Commons, but they have caused a bit of cost to the casino project. There is a great big combined sewer about 40 feet deep which is the result of Deer Creek being enclosed. Basicly, they have decided to build over the sewer, designing the new structure in such a way to minimize damage should the old sewer collapse. Also, they have decided to rehabilitate an old hydraulic raceway from the casino site to the river for use as a stormwater outlet.

 

Sadly, some old limestone hydraulic control structures that were still in place from the Miami and Erie Canal have finally been demolished to make way for the casino - I would have liked to have seen those.

 

At the time of the Broadway Commons ballpark vote, part of the problem was that the exact location of the sewers were unknown. Of course, some folks who didn't want the ballpark at Broadway Commons exaggerated the problem and said the sewers would prevent the whole project. 

 

Marge Schott had at one time said that if the ballpark were built at Broadway Commons, people would not be able to find it, which is totally ridiculous. I think that the real reason why they wanted baseball on the riverfront was to be able to control the concessions, charge for parking, etc., plus set up a postcard view. Baseball at Broadway Commons would have resulted in lots of economic development for the surrounding area, which conversly might have resulted in less money for the owner, because people would spend their money in the neighborhood instead of at the ballpark. (For the record, I favored baseball at Broadway Commons.)

 

The casino folks didn't make excuses or try to get the city or county to pay for the sewer work. The casino folks quietly spent the money to investigate and came up with a solution to deal with it, and the media was never interested in the story. The Broadway commons site is a difficult one, being an old landfill in a filled valley, and crossed by several very large and deep sewers, and probably containing hazardous material left over from its days as a railroad terminal. and that's probably the reason why it has been undeveloped for so long. The baseball folks as well as the city and county were probably reluctant to deal with it, but the casino folks were more willing to take a chance. After all, they're gamblers.  :-D

I conceived the Second and Main location for the Great American Ball Park and chaired the 1998 campaign that resulted in Hamilton County voters choosing that site over Broadway Commons, a difficult thing for me because Jim Tarbell was and is one of my best friends.

 

One day in the summer of 1997, I met Marge Schott and Carl Lindner on the 28th Floor of Atrium II to show them how a new riverfront ball park could be built by removing the left-center field seats of Cinergy Field and dropping the new structure in-between the Coliseum and Cinergy. Lindner did much of the selling, having been briefed earlier on how it could be done. Mrs. Schott and John Allen, the Reds' CEO at the time, were not really opposed to Broadway Commons, but they did think the Reds had a significant history on the central riverfront and that a known location was better than an unknown. The never-told story is that the Reds, feeling that no riverfront location for them was possible, had earlier been prepared to go to Broadway Commons and probably would have but for a chance meeting.

 

A year or so before my meeting with Mrs. Schott and Mr. Lindner, I was invited to make the pitch to the Cincinnati Business Committee for narrowing Fort Washington Way. As the meeting was getting underway, I found myself in a small holding room with then-County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus who was there to brief the CBC on the stadium negotiations. Before he went into the meeting to make his presentation, I told Bedinghaus that there was a way to accomodate the Reds on the river, something that planners had by then given up on. The location I proposed had never been considered -- the "wedge" between Cinergy and the Coliseum. He was totally taken aback, but Bedinghaus has a really good grasp of the built world, and he quickly glommed onto the possibilities. The only problem was, we had to move FWW to free-up the site.

 

Soon after my presentation to the CBC and probably with Bedinghaus' prodding, local CEO's made calls to Governor Taft and soon the State of Ohio found most of $100 million for its share of the cost of relocating the highway. And a year later, the highway reconstruction began.

 

Those of us who favored the GABP site viewed is as the keystone building block for realizing a flood-proof riverfront for the first time in Cincinnati's 225-year history. Our thinking was, combining the roadway and parking budgets for both the Reds and the Bengals stadia in one place would allow Cincinnati to achieve the critical mass of infrastructure to lift the riverfront out of the flood plain, establish a new level of life south of FWW, and open the riverfront for development. We also felt that creating a close-in, 5,000-car parking bank available to downtown office workers 98% of the weekday working hours of the year would cure downtown's chronic parking problems, and it has. We said, and our TV commercials during the ball park campaign showed, that we would have a whole new neighborhood where before there had been nothing. One unintended consequence was that the new riverfront parking assets drew parkers away from the Broadway Commons parking lots in large numbers and probably motivated the owners to sell Broadway Commons for the casino site.

 

The best move I made in all of this was bringing Cincinnati architect Michael Schuster into the project to show Cincinnatians how this could be done. His first rendering showing Great American Ball Park on the new riverfront hangs in my office today. Mike's a genius. He carried the day visually, and Cincinatians came to understand that this crazy idea was possible and certainly desirable.

 

It's been a two-fer for the city. The Reds are where they really wanted to be, attracting two million or so visitors a year, while the casino site is expected to attract, what?, four million people a year.

 

And the Cincinnati Streetcar is the final piece of the puzzle, linking both of these assets together with the rest of the downtown basin and eventually to Uptown and beyond.

 

 

Great behind-the-scenes history recap John.  I too think Broadway Commons was a superior location for the ballpark, but you really couldn't argue with the economies of scale related to riverfront redevelopment and the spin-off benefits off the FWW reconstruction, flood proofing, garages, etc.

The combined FWW rebuild/stadiums on the riverfront + The Banks always seemed to me about raising the value of 3rd and 4th St for existing and future office towers, while the Banks itself would purposefully be unable to build large office towers.  I think the rush to get the Freedom Center on that center block was about using up the development's prime block as soon as possible by an institution, not a private development that could poach downtown of offices or a department store.  Why was there the push to move SCPA to its new location?  Same reason -- because the large parking lot that was there before was a potential downtown-poacher.  I'd bet the CAC was put where it was to keep the row buildings there and the Metropole from being assembled into a tower site. 

 

Also, I don't think that a Broadway Commons stadium site would have single-handedly influenced much in Over-the-Rhine because I don't see any anecdotal evidence, anywhere, that stadiums have a far-reaching influence on their surroundings.  The bar districts around Fenway Park and Wrigley Field really are dwarfed by Ohio University's bar strip.  There are still a handful of bars around Tiger Stadium, even though the team left 10 years ago. 

 

 

 

 

At the time of the Broadway Commons ballpark vote, part of the problem was that the exact location of the sewers were unknown. <b>Of course, some folks who didn't want the ballpark at Broadway Commons exaggerated the problem and said the sewers would prevent the whole project. </b>

 

FINALLY- you hit the nail on the head.  Replace "ballpark at Broadway Commons" with "Streetcar System".

 

Unless you're going to provide me with some alternative streetcar map that has 0 sewer lines underneath it and still connects Findlay Market, Fountain Square, The banks, The hospitals, and the Zoo, I'm going to continue believing that you're just saying things to be confrontational, simply for the fun of it, and not because there is any sort of feasible alternative to anything you're criticizing.

^ It seems E&S likes to make wild guesses, then get satisfaction when like 5% of them are right. (The census comes to mind.)

 

At least it's something different and sometimes leads to interesting discussions. He also has some interesting knowledge and is willing to do some research (which often would be better done prior to making said wild claims, but I digress).

 

Overall, I'm glad he's around.

Every road has a sewer system, except rural dirt roads. I mean when it rains where is the water suppose to go?

 

 

^Thanks John for that history, and for all you have done for Cincinnati. And thanks natninja for the kind words.

 

Not to turn this into a stadium thread, but back in 1996 I favored keeping giving Riverfront Stadium to the Bengals and building a new ballpark at Broadway Commons. This idea was presented among others by Mark Purdy of the Enquirer, the same guy that took a long, continuous walk through Cincinnati neighborhoods, staying at hotels along the way, and wrote a daily piece for over 20 days. Unfortunately, Hamilton County cannot afford two new stadiums without cutting something else, as evidenced by the debt problems we are having now. All of that interest on the stadium debt could have been used for other economic development projects, either public or private, and the untold story is what hasn't happened as a result of that debt.

 

A distinct advantage of the Broadway Commons site for urban fans would be the opportunities for street vendors. I have always enjoyed the urban environment around ballparks as much as the game itself. One of the problems with the riverfront is that the vending is highly controlled, being written into the lease agreement.

 

Nevertheless, the ballpark turned out better than I expected, mostly because it showed some quality urban design. The new Fort Washington Way way is a smashing success, the only drawback being that it wasn't built that way the first time. The transit center showed courage and foresight but so far has not lived up to its potential due to lack of use. The Banks is encouraging, but being vacant for most of the last ten years, I would have to say that it hasn't quite lived up to its potential. Paul Brown Stadium (which I do NOT think is a good example of quality urban design) is great for just 8 days a year; if you like tailgate parties, then I'm happy for you, but that's just not my thing.  The Freedom Center - well,  I visited it on the day it opened and haven't been there since. It has nice curved walls of Italian stone.

 

Natninja, I'm glad that you mentioned the Census. In another thread, I correctly projected that Cincinnati would come in under 300,000 in the 2010 census. This was not a wild guess at all, but a careful mathamatical projection. I took the rate of change from 1990 to 2000 and applied that rate to the 2000 numbers. No big surprise there. I suppose the thing to mention is that it was a very unpopular guess, but it was based on a rational assumption that trends would be similar to what they were in the past. What is somewhat disconcerting to me is that so many on this board were predicting big increases in population not because they made their own rational projection but based on emotions of what they thought or felt was happening, or on an interpretation of an intermediate estimate that was just plain wrong. I've been sort of a contrarian on this board, which attracts attention, but my goal is not to attract attention to myself, put someone down or rain on their parade, but to make Cincinnati the best it can be by sharing information. I have learned a lot from this board, and I hope that someone has learned something from my posts.

 

And yes, this discussion does in fact bring us back to streetcars. In 1920, Cincinnati's population was growing. For that reason, the leaders at that time had some grand plans for expansion - the subway, new parks and parkways, new bridges (or replacement of old ones,) Cincinnati Union Terminal, new skyscrapers, and a general upgrade of all infrastructure everywhere. Also at that time, they were able to pay for much of it with new tax revenues.

 

Today, things are different. Cincinnati is SHRINKING in population, jobs, and tax revenue. This is not necessarily bad, as the general health and well being of everyone seems to be going up, but the raw population is dropping, and is likely to do so for the forseeable future. The bottom line is that Cincinnati has a low birth rate and a low immigration rate. The population cannot grow without bringing in new people.

 

I think everyone agrees that if the streetcar opened today, it would be underutilized. The whole point was to facilitate development and bring in new people. My main question - and I think a lot of folks outside of this forum agree with me - is, "where are these new residents going to come from?" Of all places, why decide to build a streetcar in Over-the-Rhine?

 

Portland does it with foreign immigration, plain and simple. I have shown already in this thread that 20% of new Portland residents reside in the area near the streetcar. The key is NEW residents. Cincinnati doesn't have any NEW residents to speak of; we are LOSING population. 20% of zero is zero. Marketing to a declining demographic is not usually a great business decision for long-term growth. Declining population spells trouble for future mass transit in Cincinnati, because mass transit by definition is for moving a lot of people.

 

Sorry if I have rambled on too much about utilities, but the basic issue with the utilities is that the proposed streetcar project is going to cost much more than intially expected because of issues with existing utilities. This is not an excuse not to build it, but a real concern that the project is never going to really get started, because there are no provisions to do the required utility work.

 

So, in my humble opinion, the streetcar project has a poor chance of success for two reasons. Since 2007 when the feasibility study was published, 1) the probable ridership has gone down along with population, while 2) the probable cost has gone up with more information about utilities. Both moves are in the wrong direction. Add to this the negative attention from WLW and the Enquirer, warranted or not, and some increased cost due to inflation over the intervening years, and the chances do not look good.

 

Does this mean I am a backward naysayer? I hope not, and it isn't meant to come across that way. I am not opposed to the streetcar, but am highly skeptical that it will actually get built, and even if it does, skeptical that it will be successful. (My definition of "success" includes a healthy ridership and proper budget for construction and operation, not one with unexpected debt left over like Paul Brown Stadium.)

 

Hope and optimism from enthusiasts are no replacement for actual riders and cash on hand. Voting for council candidates that support the streetcar does little if they don't actually do anything about it, but I guess it's still better than voting for council candidates that outright oppose it. Selling buttons and T-shirts is good fun and probably gains some attention but it is no comparison to what Mike Brown did for his stadium project: he spent a couple million dollars of his own money on a political campaign and got a sales tax passed to fund his project.

 

I know everyone is occupied by the election and COAST shenanigans at present, but what I feel  this project really needs is a healthy source of funds: $250 million for starters, not the $110 million or whatever the current budget is supposed to be, because it isn't enough. Just relocating the Duke Energy utilities alone is going to be $30 million. And that $250 million that we need is real money, not hope that we might get it from the state or any other source.

 

Lacking $250 million, we need to take a realistic look at what to do with this project. Scale it back? Or - dare I say - cancel it and starting discussing another project? Or find a good, solid $250 million to get it done as originally proposed?

 

A couple of posters have asked for alternatives. No one here seems to like mine. But since some of you keep asking, I'll bite. All of these are viable alternatives. Please don't hate me.

 

1. Build a LIGHTER streetcar, with lighter cars and lighter track. I don't know where to find a manufacturer of a lighther streetcar, but this is not unreasolvable. Too bad no one makes PCC cars, Curved-siders, or Brill Trolleys anymore, and they wouldn't be ADA accessible anyway. The advantage of light track - and this is key - is that it may not involve relocating so many utilities, and so it would reduce construction costs. Lighter streetcars would be historically accurate, if that matters to anyone. The drawback is that they wouldn't look like the ones in Portland, and won't have as high capacity. (The need for more vehicles may not really reduce operation costs much if more drivers have to be hired.)  By the way, this wasn't my idea. I got it from a post by JJacucyk.

 

2. Pick a different route. No, there are basicly no streets without utility issues, but one street may have fewer utilities than another. You have to map the utilities to know for sure. I'm not going to suggest one now, but suffice it to say that there are millions of possible routes, all with their own advantages and disadvantages. One might even think outside of the current proposal and propose a streetcar in a different neighborhood. The streetcar doesn't necessarily need to go to Findlay Market, Fountain Square, The Banks, the hospitals, and the zoo to be successful. It could go to any combintion of possible destinations. (I still don't understand the need to go to Findlay Market, as opposed to, say, the proposed casino or any other destination.)

 

3. Swallow pride and switch to rubber-tire coaches. ("The Winburn Plan.")  I know, I know, never send a bus to do a train's job. A train is better than a bus, but a bus is better than nothing at all, which is what we have now. Leave the option open for streetcars in the future. Louisville has a "trolley" route that is actually a dressed-up bus route; it came with stops to match and it is reasonably successful, judging by the number of people using it. I would like to know more about it.

 

4. Switch to trackless trolleys. Clean, quiet, no-emission  trackless trolleys running on overhead electric, like Dayton has, are almost as good as streetcars, at a fraction of the cost. Share purchasing and maintenance resources with Dayton, or perhaps purchase some of Dayton's used ones. Cincinnati would then be one of five cities in the United States with trackless trolleys, for a better "cool factor" than cities with common buses. Trackless trolleys would yield big cost savings in trackwork - and avoids most if not all of the underground utility issues, though overhead utilites would still be affected. The need to work under the wire might still be a source of complaints from MSD and CWW, but they wouldn't have much leverage to do anything about it if their pipelines are not affected, and they wouldn't be asked to help fund the project. Leave the option open for streetcars in the future.

 

5. Cancel the streetcar plan altogether, and focus on a different aspect of redevelopment, such as a marketing campaign to bring in more foreign immigrants, better access for pedestrians, better access for automobiles (the biggest complaint by suburbanites is parking and traffic), or a hundred other things that can be done to improve Over-the-Rhine. When it redevelops, then build the streetcar.

 

6. Build light rail on the former CL&N instead, between Downtown and Norwood. There are hardly any utilities, so trackwork shouldn't be much more than $1 million per mile. Need new right-of-way in the area of the Baldwin Building. Divert some of the ridership from the existing Montgomery Road and Reading Road bus routes to the light rail by altering bus routes to establish connections. Instant ridership, and might actually result in a net decrease in operation cost for Queen City Metro while at the same time improving travel speed for downtown commuters. Win Win!

 

7. Build horse cars on Fourth street. Just for fun. Be the only city in the United States with horse cars! Photo op! Historically accurate. A quality modern horse car costs just $250,000. I actually took the time to get that price quote from a manufacturer.  Made in USA! Still need to work out the ADA requirement. Trackwork would be very light. No overhead wire required. Might be able to do it for $1 million or less, just 1% of the cost of the proposed streetcar, but it will carry more than 1% of the traffic, so its at least as cost effective. Manhole in the way? build the tracks right over it, leaving the manhole between the rails. MSD won't mind. They deal with a lot of poop anyway. For that matter, add a special pooper scooper to the horse car to collect the horse poop and deposit it into the manhole. Win win situation! Allow corporate sponsors to adopt a horse and give them funny names like Duke, Chiquita, Delta, and Great American.  Start a marketing campaign to attract domestic Amish immigrants - they will have no objection to horse cars, and they are one of the few if not the only demographic group in Ohio with a birth rate above replacement level: 6 children per woman! (I looked it up on the 'net: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/01/the-inevitable-rise-of-amish-machines/  I'm not making this stuff up.)

 

Anyway, horse cars are going to win the technology contest in the end, because they are sustainable, unlike all the other rail technologies that run on fossil fuels.  Once traffic is established, and we have a local Amish population, build another horse car line on another street, not necessarily connected, and attract more Amish. Fill all of Over-the-Rhine with Amish. Their population doubles every 20 years! Plus, they don't drive cars, so there is no need for all that parking, and Over-the-Rhine can become a proper city neighborhood, like it used to be in 1890, by filling all those empty buildings and building infill in the vacant lots. In fact, this is the ONLY way to bring Over-the-Rhine back to its old population, because any other ethnic group or demographic segment other than the Amish, such as the so-called young professionals, is going to bring their cars with them, defeating the whole purpose of the streetcar, and requiring all those vacant lots for parking instead of infill development. And even if the buildings were all filled up, the population density would still be low, becauses in today's world more people live alone, or in households with 2 or 3 people, instead of big families like they used to.

 

A neat side benefit is that the Amish actually go to church, so there is some hope for all of those neat old church buildings in Over-the-Rhine that no one cares about anymore. And they will bring the skills necessary to keep all the old buildings in good repair, since no one else seems to know how to do simple brickwork or timber work anymore. Except the Amish don't believe in architectural ornamentation, so we will have to work on that. And if you think Findlay Market is something now, just wait until the Amish farmers start using it. Ever been to an Amish farmer's market? We'll have to build 5 more markets! Pearl Street would be a good place for one - that football stadium is useless 357 days out of the year, and it wasn't designed to last more than 30 years anyway. And Amish are good fiddlers, so Music Hall will be put to good use again, and the Emery is conductive to live plays, rather than, say, movies. And the Amish would fill up all those empty storefronts with shops and manufactories, that make real products like rope, candles, wooden furniture and wholesome food and then the Amish would actually shop at those stores, instead of driving to the suburban big box to buy useless gadgets made in China. Hey, I think I'm on to something here. To repopulate Over-the-Rhine, we need to forget the YP's and go after the Amish.

 

Thanks for reading another long rambling post.  :|  And yes, item 7 above is ridiculous, and I hope someone got a laugh out of it. :-D But I started this post at 11:00 at night and now it's almost 6:00 in the morning.  :-o This might be the longest post on this whole forum. Why do I do this?  :wtf: You guys are driving me to ruin.  :drunk:  Or at least to lack of sleep.  :cry:

 

If there's anything I can do to help on the streetcar project, please let me know.

 

 

 

 

Good Lord.  Who is this Barry Horstman?

 

Absolutely going after the project this morning.  3 Different articles

I just picked up this Sunday's Enquirer--and I cannot begin to describe my outrage and total sense of betrayal as I scanned the headlines: "Most call streetcar 'wasteful.'"  What can I say here (especially about the infamous Barry Horstman) that hasn't been expressed so many times before?  Just check for yourselves, everyone.  Infamy!

I've said this about the rag in my own town---the Columbus Dispatch---and I'll say it about the Enquirer. They aren't mainstream at all. They're shills for the likes of the Koch brothers.

 

People need to get mad enough to start organizing a boycott of this so-called "mainstream media." These newspapers are shaky, financially. Even a small boycott might force change. People need to get mad and do something about this maybe in connection with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Remember, only currently registered voters in the city of Cincinnati who will vote count. That leaves 85% of Enquirer readers out of the equation. I am convinced that the attacks on Cincinnati are mostly former Cincinnatians who feel that their ancestral homeland is being defiled by barbarians and that they must come to its defense. The fact they will do anything but actually move to Cincinnati to protect their homeland is the problem for cincinnati just as the intereference of many Americans who identify with countries they don't live in but claim to care about affect perceptions of some countries in the world. Think Israel, Ireland, and increasinlgy Mexico and their involvement in how America deals with these countries. Most critics of Cincinnati are like ethnic immigrants championing and lobbying their homeland while living in the U.S. But like all immigrants, they slowly but consistently change from their experiences after they leave their 'homeland' and at some point are more american than wherever they came from. That movement of cincinnatians outside cincinnati is much the same. They can't let go of the idea that cincinnati is 'theirs' even though they don't live, vote, work or pay taxes here. That explains why cincinnati politics can ressemble Israel. In both cases outsiders, whether Americans or suburbanites respectively, feel entitled to interfere in the politics and society of places they don't live in or have any real self-interest in, but deeply identify with. They become blind to how their perceptions differ from those who actually live in the 'homeland' they all claim to be devoted to. They periodically visit, they observe from a 'safe' distance, and they come to develop the delusion that they understand cincinnati and that they have its best interests at heart. They have changed without realizing it and they don't understand the place of their origins anymore. We need to make clear to them that Cincinnati is OUR city and NOT their city and they will increasingly mind their own business. A few might even decide to come 'home'.

 

I'm reminded of visiting Portugal with a friend who had left it many years earlier and was returning for the first time. He found the many changes in Portugal since he'd left overwhelming. He sobbed as we stood overlooking a new highway that had replaced the neighborhood he had lived in. He constantly told me how the people had "changed". As we returned to the U.S. he solemly told me that he was fully an American now and would never return to Portugal. It was no longer his country. He loved a former Portugal that was now gone. Many former Cincinnatians love a Cincinnati that is now gone, partly thanks to the fact that they've left, and a new one is taking its place. Painful as it may be, they need to move on. They are suburbanites now.

 

It's been suggested by Eighth and State (I wonder why, as opinionated as he is, he doesn't use his real name, but I digress) that we "pick a different route" or "propose a streetcar in a different neighborhood."

 

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Tom Brinkman this summer. He's one of the five people whose names are listed on the petition that was circulated to get Issue 48 on the ballot. He said to me, "John, I think if you guys would buy a couple of trains and put them on the Oasis Line like Todd Portune has suggested, then we -- [i guess he meant COAST and its allies] -- probably wouldn't oppose it."

 

I asked him, "Tom, what do you think the objective of the Cincinnati Streetcar is?" He was unable to answer the question, but I don't blame him for that for the city and streetcar supporters have done a poor job of communication. I plead guilty as to Count Two of the Indictment.

 

I told him that I saw the Cincinnati Streetcar's main objective to be the re-population of the central city. He had never thought of that and didn't disagree.

 

Too many people like Tom Brinkman think streetcar advocates are a bunch of "trolley jollies" who just want a streetcar anywhere without place mattering much. We've never successfully made the link in most Cincinnatians' minds between the need to reduce the cost-burden cars put on inner-city development and the people who live and work there.

 

The idea is, the mostly vacant Over-the-Rhine Historic District plus the upper floors of obsolete downtown office buildings have huge potential for housing development. Projects in these areas of the city have been very successful, but they have had to be heavily subsidized by the city or by 3CDC or both. Reducing the need to building parking for housing in these areas will have two effects. First it will lower the cost of new residential development by causing less parking to be built. At $25,000 per structured parking space (and higher sometimes), building two parking spaces for a two-bedroom apartment adds a lot of cost. Plus, if people have fewer cars -- AAA says a car costs $8,700 per year to buy and operate these days -- then they will have more disposable income to spend on housing, or health care, or a child's education or anything else.

 

So assuming cost of the "car-light" housing goes down and assuming the car-savings are spent on housing, you get equilibrium in the housing market at a lower point on the demand curve. You approach a free market in downtown/uptown housing as opposed to what we have now -- which is really a market that has been propped up by subsidies.

 

That's the housing equation. But more importantly, as people get accustomed to relying less on cars, they come to rely more on local retailers and services. People tend to spend where they live, and so if this plays out the way it has in other cities, you get a whole bunch of small businesses springing up in empty storefronts along the route to serve this demand, and that drives private investment and job growth.

 

COAST members, if they could get outside their ideological prison for a minute, should love this. But they can't see the forest for the trees.

 

Back to the route through Over-the-Rhine. We have sixty thousand people working in downtown and 80,000 people working in uptown with this largely vacant neighborhood in-between. OTR is a pre-automotive neighborhood, and you can't tear down buildings for parking. My guess is, development has north moved as far north as it's going to without the streetcar. The route passes within a block of every downtown/OTR cultural institution but one and rotates around downtown's once and future grocery store, Findlay Market. It gets within two blocks of the casino, and the casino operators will probably pay for a branch to their site once the shooting's over. No other city's modern streetcar system serves a major sports venue; ours will serve three when it is extended to the Banks. We have six Fortune 500 companies within two blocks of the route; all the other cities combined have just one.

 

Five routes were originally considered, and the Main/Walnut - Elm/Race pair or pairs was selected after careful analysis of the objectives of the project. I think it's interesting that no one since has ever proposed a different route, one that would be better. I doubt one exists as a starter line.

 

 

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20111016/NEWS0108/110160327

 

Most Cincinnatians believe a proposed streetcar would be a waste of taxpayer money, but say they oppose a ballot measure that would prevent the system from being built, a new Enquirer poll shows.

 

Fifty-three percent of city of Cincinnati respondents said they intend to vote on Nov. 8 against Issue 48, a proposed amendment to the city's charter that would prohibit City Hall from building the streetcar and perhaps other passenger rail plans through 2020, the poll found. Thirty-seven percent said they support the measure.

Almost all development in the U.S. today is “heavily subsidized” today. Much of suburbia wouldn’t exist without such subsidies. Mortgage interest deductions, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae purchasing of 90% of mortgages, fha and va mortgage guarantees without which mortgages wouldn’t be extended, tax-free local govn’t bonds that will only be harder and harder for many areas to pay back as their initial infrastructure crumbles, roads that are increasingly not paid for with gas taxes since 2002, and the relatively tiny special tax credits 3cdc has used in recent years all distort development in the U.S. Without all of these, a true free market in land and buildings would transform Cincinnati and American metros into much denser places. Any suggestion that some development is more subsidized than others is either uninformed or dishonest. We are all welfare queens now!

Eighth, your post was so long and so crazy I can't spend my whole afternoon responding to it, especially since you will simply go on posting whatever you want on your one-man mission to...I don't even know what. 

 

I will respond to this one comment though:

 

>All of that interest on the stadium debt could have been used for other economic development projects, either public or private,

 

 

What?!  You know, and even state later in your post that the stadiums were paid for with bonds sold by the county and repaid with the special 1/2 cent sales tax approved by the Hamilton County electorate in the spring 1996 election, yet you suggest that this money could have been spent on some other public project or projects.  That is just totally nuts. 

 

 

Mathew, that's a pretty good analogy for the city-suburb problem.  But the real problem is that people don't trust their own observations, so if they go into the city with some thought in their mind, it will refuse to acknowledge a different reality.  The power of the mass media is that its presentation of reality becomes reality. 

 

Two years ago my grandfather came to see something I was doing in the space that is now A Tavola pizza.  He looked around and was impressed by how the area had been fixed up.  Then he forgot that observation within a few months after several of his 60-80 hour FOX News watching weeks. 

 

Also, the old generation keeps repeating the anti-streetcar propaganda they heard in the late 1940s, which do not apply to modern technology and circumstances, or the actual streetcars from their era.  What they don't understand is that those people of their generation who created those arguments essentially had them working for them in all aspects of their lives, for their entire lives, and still do.  I get the impression that the monolithic conformity of that generation was such that 2% of those born in the 1910s-30s had the entire rest of the population doing their bidding.  Yes, Tom Luken was one of those 2%. 

 

It's been suggested by Eighth and State (I wonder why, as opinionated as he is, he doesn't use his real name, but I digress) that we "pick a different route" or "propose a streetcar in a different neighborhood."

snip

Actually, the downtown location is the only one that really makes much sense to me.

E&S, you seem to have a strong belief in the entropy of decline. Many, many cities aren't declining, and there's no reason we have to be one of them that is. Attracting immigrants is a great idea which I definitely support, but the way cities that prosper do so is by attracting the young, educated, and mobile.

 

Immigrants alone will not bring prosperity. See: Newark, NJ or basically any other coastal city which can't catch a break.

 

Your pessimism led you to a correct evaluation of the census numbers, but those who disagreed with you had a very good basis for their disagreement: the official census estimates. Those numbers don't materialize out of thin air, you know.

 

The metro area is growing. If a small portion (any portion) of that growth were occurring in the city, we would not be seeing decline. It's not unrealistic to bolster the city's amenities in a way which will attract some of that growth to the city. It's not unrealistic to think the streetcar is such an amenity, with the ability to guide that growth and boost the amount of people that come.

 

Even shrinking wouldn't be terrible if the tax bases weren't shrinking along with the population. That means attracting and keeping the educated, and enhancing accessibility to jobs for those with limited mobility.

^ Two-thirds of the regions in America are now showing significant growth at their centers -- even if the core city's total population is declining. This is the case in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Memphis, Boston and even Detroit. My sense is that a lot of cities will re-populate themselves in precisely the way they de-populated themselves, starting from the center and working outward. This seems to be the pattern that is developing here.

That explains why cincinnati politics can resemble Israel. In both cases outsiders, whether Americans or suburbanites respectively, feel entitled to interfere in the politics and society of places they don't live in or have any real self-interest in, but deeply identify with.

Excellent post.

 

Cincinnati is OUR city and NOT their city and they will increasingly mind their own business.... Painful as it may be, they need to move on. They are suburbanites now.

 

I disagree with you here. If Cincinnatians (people who live within the municipal boundaries and vote on the streetcar issue) want to build the streetcar without interference from the suburbs, then they need to stop asking the state for money, stop asking the county to pay for the required sewer work, and stop submitting articles to WLW and the Enquirer whose the market is mostly suburban. "Mind your own business" works both ways.  Hamilton County taxpayers are deeply concerned about their "homeland," and they support it financially, just as the United States supports Isreal to the tune of $5 billion per year. Hamilton County taxpayers support the stadiums, the Museum Center, and the Zoo, plus myriad county services that benefit the city such as children's services, MSD, and the sheriff, plus quasi-governemtn ones like county parks and libraries. Where would Cincinnati be today if the unincorporated suburbs and other municipalities just disappeared? Yes, the politics of the situation is messed up.

 

The idea is, the mostly vacant Over-the-Rhine Historic District plus the upper floors of obsolete downtown office buildings have huge potential for housing development....

That's the housing equation. But more importantly, as people get accustomed to relying less on cars, they come to rely more on local retailers and services. People tend to spend where they live, and so if this plays out the way it has in other cities, you get a whole bunch of small businesses springing up in empty storefronts along the route to serve this demand, and that drives private investment and job growth.

 

John, I'm with you there. Believe me, I drive way too much, and I'm tired of it. I would LOVE to commute to work by streetcar! The trouble is, I don't work downtown. 86% of the jobs in Hamilton County are not downtown. I know you have to start somewhere, but in Cincinnati the car is king, and it's a tough market to crack. I don't have the answer.

 

I think it's interesting that no one since has ever proposed a different route, one that would be better. I doubt one exists as a starter line.

 

I did! And I even published it on this site. It goes on Main and Walnut instead of Elm and Race, and passes by all the same major destinations except Music Hall and Findlay Market. It is 12 blocks shorter with fewer bends, which is a signficant cost savings for both construction and operation, and improves travel times between downtown and U.C. But then again, I'm just some guy on the internet who no one takes seriously.  :wink: Just sayin'.

 

 

 

NONE of the streetcar money is from the state. Some was federal money channelled through the state, but none was state money. All areas receive state transportation money and all lobby state govn't for their local interests. Cincinnati is no different.

NONE of the streetcar money is from the state. Some was federal money channelled through the state, but none was state money. All areas receive state transportation money and all lobby state govn't for their local interests. Cincinnati is no different.

How long is that state ban for funding on the street car in effect?

Eighth, the typical suburban Cincinnatian has zero idea what they are talking about.  Their opinions when it comes to public transportation have no credibility. 

 

This past year I've given about 10 talks to mostly suburban crowds.  Everything I say to them is fact, but it is totally new information to them.  Then they go right back to thinking how they thought before.  When you have been through what I've been through, you see how easy it is to become a con man. 

U.S. support to Israel is based on american perceptions of its interests in Israel, not Israelis' perceptions of their own interests. There is a real difference between these two. American and Israeli perceptions of Israel are different and no matter how much money we give Israel, we must accept their sovereignty just as suburbanites must accept Cincinnati's. We give it out of a perception of our own interests. We pay our money and takes out chances.

 

What would Mason, West Chester, and Florence be if Cincinnati just disappeared? To me the answer is self evident, but I have learned from this forum that some actually think they could continue to function as they currently do. I assure you they would not. The institutions and workers in cincinnati would leave the region and cincinnati would become the next Detroit. Mason could never support P&G on its own or Florence the banks nor West Chester support Macy's, UC or children's hospital. Until the suburbs admit they need cincinnati we have to move on without any concern for their interests. Only when they are ready to deal, can deals be made. Realpolitik.

>All of that interest on the stadium debt could have been used for other economic development projects, either public or private,

 

What?!  You know, and even state later in your post that the stadiums were paid for with bonds sold by the county and repaid with the special 1/2 cent sales tax approved by the Hamilton County electorate in the spring 1996 election, yet you suggest that this money could have been spent on some other public project or projects.  That is just totally nuts.

 

The plan for the stadiums was that bonds would be sold to raise capital to build the stadiums, and the bonds would be repaid over many years with interest. This is just a fancy way to say that the County borrowed money to build the stadiums, the alternative being to raise a one-time tax that was very high and pay for the stadiums outright.

 

Borrowing money makes a good business better, because the business has access to more capital to make investments to make more money.

 

On the flip side, borrowing money makes a bad business worse, because borrowing money results in a debt that prevents the business from making needed investments, and requiring the business to spend operating funds on financing the debt.

 

The question is whether the stadium was a good investment. The idea was that it would draw more people to Hamilton County, who in turn would spend more money and result in more tax revenue, and result in a net benefit to the county.

 

What actually happened is that the stadium got built, and it filled up for most of the games, but the sales tax revenue didn't increase. Actually, it increased for about 3 years, then decreased. Now, we have a stadium, but we also have a debt of some $14 million every year that needs to be paid back. This wasn't part of the plan - we were supposed to have a surplus. So, something must have gone wrong, and now we are stuck with it, and we need to either raise taxes or cut something else to pay back the loan. That's real money, and the untold story is that Hamilton County could be spending $14 million a year on something else - like streetcars. Which do you think was the better use of those funds, the stadium or the streetcar, or one of a hundred other things?

 

I will admit that having the Bengals gets us national attention, because anytime someone says "Cincinnati Bengals" on television, Cincinnati gets a mention, which is worth something. But is it worth it? Lexington, Kentucky has an economy that is growing faster than ours, and they don't have an NFL team, or the debt that goes along with it. Numerous studies have suggested that sports stadiums are bad investments.

Eighth, the typical suburban Cincinnatian has zero idea what they are talking about.  Their opinions when it comes to public transportation have no credibility. 

 

This past year I've given about 10 talks to mostly suburban crowds.  Everything I say to them is fact, but it is totally new information to them.  Then they go right back to thinking how they thought before.  When you have been through what I've been through, you see how easy it is to become a con man. 

 

I know. The typical suburbanite has never even ridden a Metro bus in his entire life, is afraid of Over-the-Rhine, has never been to Findlay Market, and thinks of the entire urban core from the river to Norwood Lateral as "downtown." I'm not defending suburbanites. There are quite a few of them that at least come to Riverfest, Taste of Cincinnati, Bengals games and Reds games, and some of them work downtown, so it's not a total loss. You may laugh at my streetcar on the OASIS line idea, but at least it would expose some of those suburbanites to a real streetcar, and get them used to the idea. There's nothing like first-hand experience.

 

Overheard in Cleveland: "When I found out that the waterfront line goes right to the stadium, I started riding it."

>the alternative being to raise a one-time tax that was very high and pay for the stadiums outright.

 

Jesus Christ -- under state law, there is no way an Ohio county with a population of around 1 million could ever raise an additional $800+ million in one year.  The 1/2 cent sales tax raises $60 million per year.  So you're suggesting that Hamilton County could have, in some weird time/space warp, could have for just one year levied a 8-10~% sales tax and paid cash for the stadiums.  Seriously, quit suggesting such nonsense as being some sort of possibility. 

 

And you do not understand interest.  Government pays a very low rate of interest on capital bonds -- so low that it often matches the rate of inflation, meaning there is no real interest paid. 

 

Suburbanite have been widely fooled into thinking that the homes they built in the 50s and 60s went up in value, when most of that was inflation.  Intelligent people love inflation because most people never understand it, meaning they can be tricked. 

 

E&S, you seem to have a strong belief in the entropy of decline...

 

I agree with all of that, except that a pessimistic attitude is what led me to a correct answer on the Census projection. What led to a correct answer was the assumption that the rate of change from 1990 to 2000 would be about the same as from 2000 to 2010. I don't think of myself as a pessimist, but a realist. A rational projection is neither optimistic nor pessimistic, though those terms have become associated with growth and decline.

 

^ Two-thirds of the regions in America are now showing significant growth at their centers -- even if the core city's total population is declining. This is the case in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Memphis, Boston and even Detroit. My sense is that a lot of cities will re-populate themselves in precisely the way they de-populated themselves, starting from the center and working outward. This seems to be the pattern that is developing here.

Glad to hear it. I wish the best for Cincinnati.

 

 

The metro area is growing. If a small portion (any portion) of that growth were occurring in the city, we would not be seeing decline. It's not unrealistic to bolster the city's amenities in a way which will attract some of that growth to the city. It's not unrealistic to think the streetcar is such an amenity, with the ability to guide that growth and boost the amount of people that come.

 

Even shrinking wouldn't be terrible if the tax bases weren't shrinking along with the population. That means attracting and keeping the educated, and enhancing accessibility to jobs for those with limited mobility.

 

The metro area is barely growing. Just wanted to make that clear.

 

Another way to direct some of that development to the urban core is to stop subsiziding suburban sprawl. This is something that the City of Cincinnati has control over, since CWW and MSD are controlled by the city. Yet, hardly anyone talks about sewer and water. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

Whenever I visit newly developing regions such as Union Center Boulevard, which just exploded in the last decade or two, I wonder what the urban core might be like if some of that development was directed to the core instead. Urbanites complain of the lousy built environment in sprawl areas, but if you really look at it the architecture is not that bad. The problem with sprawl development is not the buildings, but the spaces between the buildings, and specifically the design of everything around the automobile.

 

True story whick I am not making up:

I went to a city council meeting where a proposal to extend water service on Harrison Avenue to Blue Jay was on the agenda. One of the council members mentioned something about the water main extension promoting urban sprawl, but the motion was passed anyway. After they decided to build the water main, one of the councilmen asked, "Oh, by the way, where is Blue Jay?"

 

So, urbanites are clueless about some things, too. You can't blame everything on suburbanites. In this case, council voted for a water main extension that effectlvely encourages more people to move out of the city. Can you really blame the suburbanites for taking them up on it?

 

Suburban Sprawl and urban blight are part of the same problem. It is the result of population shifts from one place to another. What do to about it, I am not sure.

 

 

 

>the alternative being to raise a one-time tax that was very high and pay for the stadiums outright.

 

Seriously, quit suggesting such nonsense as being some sort of possibility. 

 

 

I'm not suggesting it as a real alternative - I was using it as a way to explain how borrowing works, to emphasize that the stadium project is not paid off yet, and that finding the money to pay for the stadium is a problem that has still not been solved, even though the stadium is built and operating. You talk about the government deliberately misleading people, and I think the stadium tax is one where the people were misled about the actual cost, and that's how the tax passed.

 

Government pays a very low rate of interest on capital bonds -- so low that it often matches the rate of inflation, meaning there is no real interest paid. 

 

I disagree with you there. The Hamilton County treasurer has to pay real money to service the debt - and that's money that could have been spent on something else. It's the same effect as a typical homeowner that make mortgage payments. If the need to make a payment wasn't there, then the homeowner could spend, say, $500 a month on new clothes instead of mortgage bills.

 

Intelligent people love inflation because most people never understand it, meaning they can be tricked. 

 

I agree with you there, and most people never understand the interest formulas, either. But inflation isn't the only reason why home prices have gone up. In some parts of town, home prices have gone down. 

Cincinnati's MSA is growing at a perfectly healthy 6% per census.

 

Put another way, our little metropolis has to find a place to put 12,000 new people a year. Even if I became dictator and diverted all of them to OTR, it would fill up in a matter of months. As you can see, when we are talking about infrastructure projects that have 30 year ROI timetables, 6% regional growth is more than sufficient.

 

As a species, do we really want perpetual growth even this fast? And if/when humanity stops growing, does this mean we cannot improve ourselves and our civilization without constant growth?

 

PS: 6% is actually faster than the '70-'80 and '80-'90 growth rate.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20111016/NEWS0108/110160327

 

Most Cincinnatians believe a proposed streetcar would be a waste of taxpayer money, but say they oppose a ballot measure that would prevent the system from being built, a new Enquirer poll shows.

 

Fifty-three percent of city of Cincinnati respondents said they intend to vote on Nov. 8 against Issue 48, a proposed amendment to the city's charter that would prohibit City Hall from building the streetcar and perhaps other passenger rail plans through 2020, the poll found. Thirty-seven percent said they support the measure.

 

They never did publish their word-o-gram on the streetcar when they got so many pro-streetcar responses.

 

On this one, they are practically urging people to vote yes on 48 if they are against the streetcar. Which is strange, because in their voting guide they urge people to vote no on 48 even if they are against the streetcar. They are literally talking out of both sides of their face. But why? It's totally inexplicable. Are they just that poorly run?

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20111016/NEWS0108/110160327

 

Most Cincinnatians believe a proposed streetcar would be a waste of taxpayer money, but say they oppose a ballot measure that would prevent the system from being built, a new Enquirer poll shows.

 

Fifty-three percent of city of Cincinnati respondents said they intend to vote on Nov. 8 against Issue 48, a proposed amendment to the city's charter that would prohibit City Hall from building the streetcar and perhaps other passenger rail plans through 2020, the poll found. Thirty-seven percent said they support the measure.

 

They never did publish their word-o-gram on the streetcar when they got so many pro-streetcar responses.

 

On this one, they are practically urging people to vote yes on 48 if they are against the streetcar. Which is strange, because in their voting guide they urge people to vote no on 48 even if they are against the streetcar. They are literally talking out of both sides of their face. But why? It's totally inexplicable. Are they just that poorly run?

 

I really don't believe they have an editor.  The day I saw them publish "Cinncinati" in a headline online I became convinced.  I think the only reason they have comments is so readers can point out the errors and they can scrub the article of glaring offenses before they go to print.

Cincinnati's MSA is growing at a perfectly healthy 6% per census.

 

 

Which is faster than some regions that most of us think have boomed over the past decade. NYC and SF come to mind.

Cincinnati's MSA is growing at a perfectly healthy 6% per census.

 

I'll take your word for it. Cincinnati is losing population, and so is Hamilton County, so the net 12,000 new residents must be going somewhere else. I can only assume that they are ending up somewhere else other than OTR for a reason.

 

I overheard a West Chester resident say that he chose West Chester because all the buildings are new. One of my buddies moved to Miami Township specifically for the schools. Another one picked Sharonville for the schools, and one picked Sycamore Township for schools. So, schools seems to be a pretty big factor to me. One friend moved in from out of state and seriously looked at Over-the-Rhine and had lots of good things to say about it but specifically rejected it because of the perception of crime - actually, it was his wife that rejected it.

 

Despite all of this, I am hoping for the best.

You don't have to take his word for it or rely on personal antecdotes. Here's the data: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_NSRD_GCTPL2.US24PR&prodType=table.

cincinnati is a world away from cleveland, detroit or pittsburgh in overall population growth. This makes a difference for the city of cincinnati as well as the larger MSA. It gives the region a broader base to build on for the future. Even if they don't live in cincinnati they are available to the businesses of cincinnati as customers and they do so on terms established in the interests of city voters without having to compromise within some broader 'uni-gov' arrangement as in Indy or Louisville.

 

 

Don't forget, also, the the Downtown and OTR census actually saw the highest population growth rates in the City (if not the whole metro). So people are moving there.

I conceived the Second and Main location for the Great American Ball Park and chaired the 1998 campaign that resulted in Hamilton County voters choosing that site over Broadway Commons, a difficult thing for me because Jim Tarbell was and is one of my best friends.

 

One day in the summer of 1997, I met Marge Schott and Carl Lindner on the 28th Floor of Atrium II to show them how a new riverfront ball park could be built by removing the left-center field seats of Cinergy Field and dropping the new structure in-between the Coliseum and Cinergy. Lindner did much of the selling, having been briefed earlier on how it could be done. Mrs. Schott and John Allen, the Reds' CEO at the time, were not really opposed to Broadway Commons, but they did think the Reds had a significant history on the central riverfront and that a known location was better than an unknown. The never-told story is that the Reds, feeling that no riverfront location for them was possible, had earlier been prepared to go to Broadway Commons and probably would have but for a chance meeting.

 

A year or so before my meeting with Mrs. Schott and Mr. Lindner, I was invited to make the pitch to the Cincinnati Business Committee for narrowing Fort Washington Way. As the meeting was getting underway, I found myself in a small holding room with then-County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus who was there to brief the CBC on the stadium negotiations. Before he went into the meeting to make his presentation, I told Bedinghaus that there was a way to accomodate the Reds on the river, something that planners had by then given up on. The location I proposed had never been considered -- the "wedge" between Cinergy and the Coliseum. He was totally taken aback, but Bedinghaus has a really good grasp of the built world, and he quickly glommed onto the possibilities. The only problem was, we had to move FWW to free-up the site.

 

Soon after my presentation to the CBC and probably with Bedinghaus' prodding, local CEO's made calls to Governor Taft and soon the State of Ohio found most of $100 million for its share of the cost of relocating the highway. And a year later, the highway reconstruction began.

 

Those of us who favored the GABP site viewed is as the keystone building block for realizing a flood-proof riverfront for the first time in Cincinnati's 225-year history. Our thinking was, combining the roadway and parking budgets for both the Reds and the Bengals stadia in one place would allow Cincinnati to achieve the critical mass of infrastructure to lift the riverfront out of the flood plain, establish a new level of life south of FWW, and open the riverfront for development. We also felt that creating a close-in, 5,000-car parking bank available to downtown office workers 98% of the weekday working hours of the year would cure downtown's chronic parking problems, and it has. We said, and our TV commercials during the ball park campaign showed, that we would have a whole new neighborhood where before there had been nothing. One unintended consequence was that the new riverfront parking assets drew parkers away from the Broadway Commons parking lots in large numbers and probably motivated the owners to sell Broadway Commons for the casino site.

 

The best move I made in all of this was bringing Cincinnati architect Michael Schuster into the project to show Cincinnatians how this could be done. His first rendering showing Great American Ball Park on the new riverfront hangs in my office today. Mike's a genius. He carried the day visually, and Cincinatians came to understand that this crazy idea was possible and certainly desirable.

 

It's been a two-fer for the city. The Reds are where they really wanted to be, attracting two million or so visitors a year, while the casino site is expected to attract, what?, four million people a year.

 

And the Cincinnati Streetcar is the final piece of the puzzle, linking both of these assets together with the rest of the downtown basin and eventually to Uptown and beyond.

 

 

 

This is an absolutely incredible story! Thank you for sharing it here!

86% of the jobs in Hamilton County are not downtown. I know you have to start somewhere, but in Cincinnati the car is king, and it's a tough market to crack. I don't have the answer.

 

80% of the City of Cincinnati's revenues come from downtown's 60,000 workers and uptowns 80,000 workers (source, Roxanne Qualls). The two largest, most condensed groupings of working people in all of Greater Cincinnati (2.2 million people). 

 

Our entire Metro region has just under 1,000,000 jobs. The fact that 140,000 jobs, a little under 15% of the 15 county metro's entire workforce, are in a roughly 6 square mile plot (in a metro of 4,465 square miles) is exactly why this is the perfect spot to begin rail.

Government pays a very low rate of interest on capital bonds -- so low that it often matches the rate of inflation, meaning there is no real interest paid. 

 

I disagree with you there. The Hamilton County treasurer has to pay real money to service the debt - and that's money that could have been spent on something else. It's the same effect as a typical homeowner that make mortgage payments. If the need to make a payment wasn't there, then the homeowner could spend, say, $500 a month on new clothes instead of mortgage bills.

 

Ahhhhh your logic is always flawed.  You're ignoring something huge in that statement.  If the homeowner didn't have to pay the mortgage on their home, YES they could buy more clothes BUT THEY WOULDN'T HAVE A HOME!  Almost no US government entity has the money to flat out pay for ANY capital expenses. Just like people do with major things that they consider important, governments pay for capital expenses to a major extent with debt.

Don't forget, also, the the Downtown and OTR census actually saw the highest population growth rates in the City (if not the whole metro). So people are moving there.

 

Not the whole metro, but the highest rates in the city and some of the highest in the County.  People are certainly moving to Downtown & OTR. 

 

In most older metro's right now we see a donut effect.  Growth in the urban core, losses in the inner suburbs (this includes older suburban style neighborhoods inside City's [westwood, avondale, etc]) and growth in the outer suburbs and exurbs. 

 

I predict that 10 years from now this urban core growth will begin expanding into the inner suburb rings (with a full, successful OTR, development and growth will spread to Mt. Auburn, Lower Price Hill, Walnut Hills, South Fairmont, etc) The outer suburbs will begin seeing stagnation of development and the Exurbs will continue to see heavy growth.

 

 

Relating this to the streetcar is.... That this is EXACTLY the time and place to be building a streetcar route based off of impact, importance and development potential, and not based on what streets have fewer sewers. With ideas like that leading the way, we might end up with a streetcar that travels up Central ave downtown, cuts over to main, then across 15th to elm, then over to Central Parkway and up Ravine, then all the way over to Vine and off to the Zoo....

Just to be absolutely clear. The overall Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)  of Cincinnati GREW by 6% in the last ten years and continues to grow while Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh DECLINED by more than 3% each over the same time period. Cincinnati IS growing. I don't understand where the popular perception that Cincinnati isn't come from. The small area of cincinnati itself may cause people to extrapolate its numbers to the entire region. MSAs are the areas at which people and businesses actually operate and are what matter.

Don't forget, also, the the Downtown and OTR census actually saw the highest population growth rates in the City (if not the whole metro). So people are moving there.

 

IIRC, OTR had minimal growth (or even a small loss). But that's hard to interpret, due to depopulation after the riots at the beginning of the decade (and subsequent repopulation in the second half). Downtown proper and the UC area, however, saw the biggest growth in the city and much of the region.

Let me back up for a second to talk about municipal bonds, a subject on which I do not claim to be an expert, but something I have done some reading on.  What's important is occasionally these clowns at COAST bring up the projected interest on the sale of bonds to pay for the streetcar project.  Currently, inflation is very low, so bond interest is an actual cost.  But there have been many times since the US Dollar was first freed of a direct relationship to the government's holdings of gold back in the 1930's when inflation has outpaced the interest rate paid on municipal bonds. Inflation began around 1940 and was used as a tool to get the US out of WWII debt.  This meant those holding old bonds during the 40's and 50's saw their investments virtually disappear (such a strategy might be used again to get the US out of T-bill debt, to the advantage of those of us with student loan, credit card, car loans, mortgages, or any other kind of debt).

 

Municipalities benefited massively from this development -- a great example being the Cincinnati Subway bonds.  $6 million of 50-year bonds were sold in 1916 and paid off in 1966 at a total cost of $13 million.  At year 25, the original 4% interest rate was reduced to 1.5%, so in combination with postwar inflation the subway bond service cost the city virtually nothing after the war.  But that doesn't stop COAST -- they hype up the fact that the subway was paid for with 50-year bonds, which was absolutely a standard practice in the 1910's.

 

The appearance of inflation in the 1930's meant 50-year bonds no longer were sellable, and instead 40-year bonds were common for several decades (Riverfront Stadium was paid for with 40-year bonds).  Since the 1970's almost all municipal bonds have been 30-year.  To some extent this protects the bond holder from inflation, AND it means municipalities pay off improvements quicker, meaning there is almost always room in the annual capital budget for new improvements, since old improvements are being paid off all the time.

 

This is a core reason why Cincinnati CAN afford the streetcar -- it pays off major municipal bond sales from 30 years ago all the time, freeing up space in the capital budget.  This is another reason why the capital budget is separate from general revenue in municipal governments. 

 

Back until about 1960, according to my own quite extensive reading of old Cincinnati newspapers, they regularly published the city's budget, including total indebtedness for capital improvements.  These graphs usually included info on income from unusual sources, like the Cincinnati Southern Railroad.  Now, The Enquirer's staff is completely incapable of informing the public about even the most rudimentary characteristics of municipal government, and flames the folksy sentiment that family budgets and government budgets are one in the same.  I mean, if families and governments are the same thing, why can't families sell bonds?!!!

 

Since many people believe that the US Dollar is on a crash course with hyperinflation, Cincinnati could get this streetcar, and any other capital project, built for almost nothing.  But it's critical to get this thing off the ground now, since the later we wait, the greater the chance that the project will be launched and inflation will appear during construction.  This is the exact reason why so many big subway projects funded with UMTA 1970 grants were scaled back -- Baltimore downgrading its second subway line to light rail, NYC abandoning the Second Ave. Subway, etc.