JYP[/member] is Seimer replacing Kulkarni?

JYP[/member] is Seimer replacing Kulkarni?

Looks like it!

I'm forgetting names, but does this mean suburban developer dude is out?

 

Are these new people proper preservationists? Or just friends of people with connections?

I'm forgetting names, but does this mean suburban developer dude is out?

 

Are these new people proper preservationists? Or just friends of people with connections?

 

Based on their resumes, the two women seem to care about historic preservation, but I'm not seeing much evidence of historic preservation in Siemer's resume (the fact that he worked for Uptown Rents for a decade is not particularly promising):

Ean Siemer: http://city-egov.cincinnati-oh.gov/Webtop/ws/council/public/child/Blob/46300.pdf;jsessionid=E70B00C387DF3C2ECD188B0BCEA53366?rpp=-10&m=2&w=doc_no%3D%27201601466%27

 

Pamela Smith-Dobbins: http://city-egov.cincinnati-oh.gov/Webtop/ws/council/public/child/Blob/46298.pdf?rpp=-10&m=2&w=doc_no%3D%27201601465%27

 

Allison McKenzie: http://city-egov.cincinnati-oh.gov/Webtop/ws/council/public/child/Blob/46264.pdf?rpp=-10&m=2&w=doc_no%3D%27201601436%27

I'm forgetting names, but does this mean suburban developer dude is out?

 

Are these new people proper preservationists? Or just friends of people with connections?

 

Yes he is out. I am not familiar with the new people.

The Business Courier has a rundown of the 14 local projects that have requested historic preservation tax credits.

 

(If you don't already, I'd encourage you to subscribe and support the work that the Business Courier does on topics like historic preservation, urban development, and transportation!)

(if you don't already, I'd encourage you to subscribe and support the work that the Business Courier does on topics like historic preservation, urban development, and transportation!)

 

Here here!

I saw bits of info that 10 of the 14 applied for Cincinnati projects got funded this round. Anyone have the full Round 18 list of who got what?

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3536470/Round-18-Applicants.pdf

WVXU has the list of winners at the bottom of this article:

 

http://wvxu.org/post/third-times-charm-union-terminal-project-funding#stream/0

 

Union Terminal lands final dollars for its big rehabilitation plan

 

In a move that gave project planners a huge sense of relief, Cincinnati’s Union Terminal has landed the last piece of its financing plan to restore the 1933 Art Deco masterpiece.

 

More below:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/06/28/union-terminal-lands-final-dollars-for-its-big.html

Two Greater Cincinnati buildings nominated for national historic list

 

 

A pair of Greater Cincinnati buildings has been recommended for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

 

Members of the Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board voted to recommend nominations for the Duttenhofer Building in downtown Cincinnati and the Main Theatre in Mount Healthy be forwarded to the keeper of the National Register of Historic Places for consideration.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/09/22/two-greater-cincinnati-buildings-nominated-for.html

National Geographic is holding a public vote for funding projects on Main Streets in the United States. Cincinnati's Woodward Theater is on the list, and if they win, the historic marquee will return to the facade. You get five votes every day.

 

I believe about half of the projects get funded. There is $2 million available, and I believe each project can receive up to $150,000 in funding, so as long as they finish in the top 1/3 or so, I would say they should get funding.

 

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/voteyourmainstreet/#/

The Woodward Theater successfully won funding to restore their marquee!

The republican tax plan currently calls for elimination of the Federal historic preservation tax credit (http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/inga_saffron/gop-tax-plan-kills-historic-tax-credit-driving-philly-revival-20171109.html).

 

This would be bad news.

I suppose this could be cross-posted in the Demolition Watch thread; mods can move it if the conversation belongs over there.

 

The New Deal Landmark That's Cannibalizing Itself

ALEX BACA  10:30 AM ET

 

Greenhills, Ohio, is a National Historic Landmark, but town officials have demolished some of its 1930s buildings, unable to bear the cost of preserving them.

 

Go north on Winton Road out of Cincinnati, through Winton Woods Park, and you’ll slice through Greenhills, Ohio, which at first looks like any aging American suburb. It has low-slung homes, a church, a small shopping center, and a village green. Late in the afternoon on a winter Sunday, with the custard shop closed for the season, the laundromat was the busiest joint in town, although a few customers shuffled in and out of the Ameristop food mart. (The lone sit-down restaurant on the Eswin Street strip had closed at 3 p.m.)

 

Tucked behind the retail strip is a surprise: an Art Deco swimming pool and community center. Behind them stand clusters of older attached houses and apartment buildings. These structures hint at Greenhills’ significance as a radical social experiment of the New Deal. Like its sister cities of Greenbelt, Maryland, and Greendale, Wisconsin, Greenhills was built by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Resettlement Administration to provide modern, affordable, community-oriented housing to working-class Americans. (The town’s motto: “Pioneering a Dream.”)

 

More below:

https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/01/the-new-deal-landmark-thats-cannibalizing-itself/550679/

 

Greenhills is interesting from a preservation standpoint because it really isn't, for the most part, renowned for its architecture, but its role in urban planning during the Depression certainly merits historic significance.

Another historic preservation article on CityLab, this time about the Terrace Plaza:

 

What's In the Future for Cincinnati's Modernist Icon?

 

America’s first International Style hotel was designed by a famed architecture firm in its early years and is filled with art by Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, and Saul Steinberg. Now, local preservationists are rallying to give it a secure future.

 

More below:

 

https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/02/whats-in-the-future-for-cincinnatis-modernist-icon/552968/

The non-profit Brewery District CURC has helped write and get approved the newest local historic district in the Mohawk neighborhood of OTR. The Sohn-Mohawk Local Historic District will complement the national historic district we nominated and got approved in 2015. The most exciting thing about the district, in addition to protecting another key historic neighborhood, is the new guidelines that were written from the ground up, using lots of graphics and photos, to make it easier for developers to meet preservation standards. There are two key tracks laid out, those alterations/renovations that can be approved at staff level to allow a developer the easiest path to approval (based on Sec of the Interior Standards) or the second track which gives more flexibility but has to be approved by the HCB and clearly explains what is never allowed.

 

https://www.citybeat.com/news/blog/20999654/meet-cincinnatis-newest-historic-district-in-otr

 

Here are the guidelines, as they will not be official for a 30 day period: http://www.otrbrewerydistrict.org/files/Sohn_MohawkHDGuidelines020218forPCapproval.pdf

The non-profit Brewery District CURC has helped write and get approved the newest local historic district in the Mohawk neighborhood of OTR. The Sohn-Mohawk Local Historic District will complement the national historic district we nominated and got approved in 2015. The most exciting thing about the district, in addition to protecting another key historic neighborhood, is the new guidelines that were written from the ground up, using lots of graphics and photos, to make it easier for developers to meet preservation standards. There are two key tracks laid out, those alterations/renovations that can be approved at staff level to allow a developer the easiest path to approval (based on Sec of the Interior Standards) or the second track which gives more flexibility but has to be approved by the HCB and clearly explains what is never allowed.

 

https://www.citybeat.com/news/blog/20999654/meet-cincinnatis-newest-historic-district-in-otr

 

Here are the guidelines, as they will not be official for a 30 day period: http://www.otrbrewerydistrict.org/files/Sohn_MohawkHDGuidelines020218forPCapproval.pdf

 

Great job on this. This set of guidelines is much better articulated (with images and examples) than what's been in place in the past for HCB. Thanks!

The non-profit Brewery District CURC has helped write and get approved the newest local historic district in the Mohawk neighborhood of OTR. The Sohn-Mohawk Local Historic District will complement the national historic district we nominated and got approved in 2015. The most exciting thing about the district, in addition to protecting another key historic neighborhood, is the new guidelines that were written from the ground up, using lots of graphics and photos, to make it easier for developers to meet preservation standards. There are two key tracks laid out, those alterations/renovations that can be approved at staff level to allow a developer the easiest path to approval (based on Sec of the Interior Standards) or the second track which gives more flexibility but has to be approved by the HCB and clearly explains what is never allowed.

 

https://www.citybeat.com/news/blog/20999654/meet-cincinnatis-newest-historic-district-in-otr

 

Here are the guidelines, as they will not be official for a 30 day period: http://www.otrbrewerydistrict.org/files/Sohn_MohawkHDGuidelines020218forPCapproval.pdf

 

Great job on this. This set of guidelines is much better articulated (with images and examples) than what's been in place in the past for HCB. Thanks!

 

Thanks. The city is planning on using this as a model for other districts, and we are hopeful it can be a model nationally.

Yesterday evening, the Over-the-Rhine Community Council reviewed (and potentially approved) the OTR Infill Guidelines. They would move on to the Historic Conservation Board and the City's Planning Commission, then to City Council for formal adoption.

 

Link to them below:

 

http://otrcommunitycouncil.org/otr-infill-guidelines/

 

While there is a lot of good in the document concerning massing, form and granularity of streetscape, there are a few issues. My biggest concern is a new restriction on height. Currently, new infill can be one full story in difference to adjoining buildings in the district. This will change significantly in the new guidelines if they are adopted as is.

 

In Part 1 of the guidelines package on the website it specifies that no new buildings can exceed the height of the tallest contributing building on the block face (that side of the block.) It also says that new buildings must vary in height a minimum of 10% of the average block face height average. 

 

This would de facto limit all new infill to 5 stories or less in this part of the urban core which will have huge impact on density, housing affordability, supply, transit, and economic vibrancy of this neighborhood.

 

 

 

 

An important thing to note is that the height requirement is labeled as "should" be within 10% of the average height of the block. That word explicitly allows the city to override on a case-by-case basis.

In my mind some people - apparently the OTR Infill Committee - overly romanticize the role of OTR architecture in defining the community. I get the idea these people would be dismayed to be standing on a street corner on Vine street in 1900, because of all the people passing by disturbing their views.

 

You have enough people on the street, they become the city, not the buildings. The infill committee wants an architecture museum, not a real urban community built for people.

 

The strangest thing to me is that these same folks are the ones complaining the loudest about the lack of affordable housing in new infill developments. Hypocrisy...

What construction in OTR wouldn't be "infill"?  

Another Shell gas station?

If something was a straight-up teardown with something roughly the same size replacing it, it wouldn't be infill.

On 7/23/2019 at 10:55 AM, ryanlammi said:

An important thing to note is that the height requirement is labeled as "should" be within 10% of the average height of the block. That word explicitly allows the city to override on a case-by-case basis.

Yes, the 10% variance is a should. The "no taller than the tallest non-institutional building on the block" clause is a "must."

 

That is the real poison pill here. This requirement is often the line that determines if a developer pro-forma's will have enough units to pencil out or not. This goes for LIHTC and other affordable projects too. Instead of getting good urban density, we are more likely to get expensive single-family townhomes if this document is adopted as it currently is.

That's a really bad rule. That must should definitely be switched to "should". I'm fine with requiring additional restrictions on buildings that are the tallest or shortest on the block. But not an outright ban.

Greater Cincinnati museum receives $750,000 grant for infrastructure improvements

 

 

A Greater Cincinnati museum will receive a $750,000 infrastructure grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

The Taft Museum of Art was awarded the competitive Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant, the NEH announced Tuesday. The funds will help to preserve and reconstruct the museum’s historic house, which turns 200 years old this year.

 

“As the Taft Museum of Art embarks on our bicentennial infrastructure project, we are thankful to our partners in this endeavor and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for supporting our historic house’s much-needed rehabilitation efforts,” Deborah Emont Scott, president and CEO of the museum, said in a news release. “This will ensure that the TMA, its historic architecture and culturally enriching offerings remain in excellent condition for future generations.”

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/01/16/greater-cincinnati-museum-receives-750-000-grant.html

The Cincinnati Preservation Collective is hosting a meetup at Northern Row Brewery & Distillery.

 

Northern Row isn't regularly open yet, and is only hosting private events. Come check it out and learn a bit about the business and historic Moerlein Ice House it's in!

 

The event is open to anyone interested in the business or in our organization.

 

A bit late, but the Cincinnati Preservation Association and Cincinnati Preservation Collective are doing meetings to help craft an action plan for historic preservation in our city going forward. 

First couple already happened, but tonight is the session in Mt. Aurburn with future dates below:

 

Public Input Session Schedule

Session 1: Westwood* - July 12, 6 pm - Map Cap Puppet Center, 3064 Harrison Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45211

Session 2: Madisonville* - July 14, 6 pm - New Life Temple Bible College, 4837 Ward St, Cincinnati, OH 45227

Session 3: Mount Auburn* - July 15, 6 pm - Mount Auburn Preparatory Academy, 244 Southern Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45219

Session 4: College Hill* - August 15, 3 pm - Grace Episcopal Church, 5501 Hamilton Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45224

Session 5: West End* - August 17, 6 pm - Hauck House, 812 Dayton Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Session 6: Virtual session - August 21, 10am - Zoom link will be emailed

^I would give most of the credit to https://www.actiontankusa.org/. They're the primary organizer for this program. Hopefully it identifies some of the weaknesses in our current systems, and can work to make preservation more successful going forward.

Duke Energy awards $250,000 to 8 Greater Cincinnati development projects

 

Duke Energy has awarded a quarter of a million dollars to eight organizations in Greater Cincinnati to promote urban redevelopment.

 

On Friday, Duke Energy announced recipients of its annual Urban Revitalization grants totaling $250,000. Since launching the annual program in 2011, the energy company has awarded more than $3.2 million to 100 grantees across Greater Cincinnati.

 

Duke's grant are designed to help with pre-development costs and help catalyze further economic development within the urban core, according to a news release. In a statement, Amy Spiller, Duke's president for Ohio and Kentucky, said the grants "are enabling long-term solutions and supporting the overall vitality of our neighborhoods."

 

This year's recipients include...

 

below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2022/08/26/duke-energy-urban-revitalization-grants.html

2 hours ago, küshner said:

A lot of European cities like Paris and Amsterdam are doing historic revival architecture very very well... it is possible, but in Cinci we're only exposed to Towne Properties design on a dime HisRev like the polished turd on 15/Elm. High quality historic revival in OTR and CUF/Corryville would be incredible, but we have too many developers that would rather line their pockets than enrich the city.

 

I think if developers used higher quality building materials and finishes, the prices for those units is also going to be higher and maybe they feel they couldn't sell their townhomes/condos at those higher prices. So I think it is less about developers "lining their pockets" and more about them value-engineering their projects so that they can sell them at a lower price.

 

2 hours ago, Guy23 said:

I love historic architecture as much as anyone but outside of the rare true historic neighborhood like OTR,  I don’t think it makes sense to say if any building is built before a certain year, it can’t be torn down. I think we need to accept that cities grow and change over time and occasionally that means buildings built a long time ago will be replaced with newer buildings, and we should focus more on putting guidelines in place to ensure the new buildings don’t look like crap.

 

Even in OTR, I would say that the "pre-Civil War" buildings along Central Parkway are a perfect example of buildings that shouldn't be saved just because they're old. Very few people would know these buildings are historic and the majority of the historic details have already been lost, and the proposed replacement is a higher density and something that will add a lot of value to the neighborhood.

I see John Yung was appointed to serve on the Historic Conservation Board. Anybody know who he is replacing on the Board? My understanding is that the board is supposed to consist of 7 members, and currently there are only 6. But I'm not sure who was the most recent member to step down.

 

Current members:

• Tim Voss, Chair
• Thomas Sundermann, Vice-Chair
• Allison McKenzie
• Pamela Smith-Dobbins
• Herb Weiss
• Robert Zielasko

 

Edited September 9, 20222 yr by jwulsin

On 9/9/2022 at 9:56 AM, jwulsin said:

I see John Yung was appointed to serve on the Historic Conservation Board. Anybody know who he is replacing on the Board? My understanding is that the board is supposed to consist of 7 members, and currently there are only 6. But I'm not sure who was the most recent member to step down.

 

Current members:

• Tim Voss, Chair
• Thomas Sundermann, Vice-Chair
• Allison McKenzie
• Pamela Smith-Dobbins
• Herb Weiss
• Robert Zielasko

 

It may be Ean Siemer according to the city’s database. 
 

https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/noncms/digs/commission/index.cfm?action=main.detail&id=180185

 

Does anybody know if there are any websites or blogs that track demolitions in Cincy? I am considering making something like this if it doesn't already exist. As a preservationist, I don't really want to focus on the bad, but I think it would be a good way to highlight the importance of protecting our amazing building stock.

My current idea is to categorize demos by neighborhood and offer information as to why & when demolition occurred. I'm also thinking of adding a feature to let people submit or request that a specific building be added to this visual database.  If anyone has any thoughts or recommendations I'd appreciate it. 

I'm not aware of any.  Please let us know how it goes and link it!

3 hours ago, jc22 said:

Does anybody know if there are any websites or blogs that track demolitions in Cincy? I am considering making something like this if it doesn't already exist. As a preservationist, I don't really want to focus on the bad, but I think it would be a good way to highlight the importance of protecting our amazing building stock.

My current idea is to categorize demos by neighborhood and offer information as to why & when demolition occurred. I'm also thinking of adding a feature to let people submit or request that a specific building be added to this visual database.  If anyone has any thoughts or recommendations I'd appreciate it. 

 

There used to be a blog called "Wrecking Cincinnati", but it hasn't been active since about 2015 since the rate of demolitions slowed to a trickle. 

 

 

I am at my wits end trying to find someone that does this type of work.  Does anyone know of a carpenter or locksmith in Cincinnati that specializes in mortise locks like the type found on interior and exterior doors on older homes?

Cincinnati first among largest U.S. cities in office conversions per capita: RentCafe

 

Greater Cincinnati leads the nation in office conversions per capita, but it still has a staggering amount of office space suitable for transformation to residential use, according to a new report from RentCafe.

 

The report, citing data from commercial real estate firm Yardi Matrix, claimed the Cincinnati region has 11.9 million square feet of office space that could be converted to multifamily housing. [...]

 

Greater Cincinnati has built a reputation as a hub for conversions going back more than two decades. A slew of conversion projects were complete even before the Covid-19 pandemic, including the AT580 building, Newberry Lofts, City Club Apartments, the Baldwin, Crane Factory Flats, the Provident and more.

 

All those projects, taken together with all the projects in the pipeline or recently debuted – Sky Central, the Carew Tower, Macy’s former headquarters, Atrium One, 19 Garfield Place, the Hooper Building, the former URS building, Mercantile Apartments, Altura and more – total around 3.2 million square feet, according to a CBRE report.

 

Read more at the Cincinnati Business Courier...