46 minutes ago, Cincy_Travels said:

Cincinnati seems to be losing its public companies at a rapid pace and it's disheartening. I'm worried that a lot of jobs are going to be moved to Toronto or another city that the buyer has operations in. It doesn't seem to be very often that jobs get moved here. I obviously hope that I'm wrong.

 

On a positive note though the preliminary job numbers from the bls has been very encouraging for you guys. You have been outperforming the national average and every other Ohio metro for months now (again this is all preliminary).

 

https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/oh_cincinnati_msa.htm

Sartre in Rhinegeist will be closing at the end of the year. I never got the chance to eat there but from the people that I know that have eaten there, it was ok but overpriced. 

27 minutes ago, Ucgrad2015 said:

Sartre in Rhinegeist will be closing at the end of the year. I never got the chance to eat there but from the people that I know that have eaten there, it was ok but overpriced. 

 

A new concept will be announced early 2020. 

 

If I understand this is in the Rheingeist building, and I imagine that Rhinegeist owns the property by now. 

 

So I'm guessing they have the freedom and flexibility to be able to turn over new concepts when they feel one concept isn't being profitable enough. 

Kaze in OTR will be closing so a new concept can open in its place. Very surprised by this as it seemed like a pretty profitable restaurant. 

15 minutes ago, Ucgrad2015 said:

Kaze in OTR will be closing so a new concept can open in its place. Very surprised by this as it seemed like a pretty profitable restaurant. 

 

Kaze owner was gonna close until thunderdome approached them wanting to purchase the resturaunt. 

 

Kaze did solid on the weekends but was very dead during the week. Their menu was solid, but nothing extraordinary. If anything it was a bit over priced. Sad to see it go, but looking forward to a new original Thunderdome resturaunt.

 

Their latest Italian joint Pepp and Delores on 15th and vine is very, very good. 

Edited December 27, 20195 yr by troeros

15 minutes ago, troeros said:

 

Kaze owner was gonna close until thunderdome approached them wanting to purchase the resturaunt. 

 

Kaze did solid on the weekends but was very dead during the week. Their menu was solid, but nothing extraordinary. If anything it was a bit over priced. Sad to see it go, but looking forward to a new original Thunderdome resturaunt.

 

Their latest Italian joint Pepp and Delores on 15th and vine is very, very good. 

Awesome. That is one thing I think downtown/OTR was lacking, was some good Italian food. 

I'm just curious why Thunderdome decided to hold on to the Kaze brand for so long, especially when they stated they wanted to do something new with the space since they aquired the brand last year. 

 

Is it a lease thing? 

Hmm, landlords don't usually care if you change concepts as long as they get their money and they get to OK major changes to the space.

17 hours ago, troeros said:

I'm just curious why Thunderdome decided to hold on to the Kaze brand for so long, especially when they stated they wanted to do something new with the space since they aquired the brand last year. 

 

Is it a lease thing? 

They were already building out Pepp and Delores when they took over Kaze. Probably wanted to concentrate on getting that opened before figuring out their next concept. 

Pressure to shrink: Will Macy's downsizing mean the loss of its Cincinnati headquarters?

 

CINCINNATI — After seven quarters of growth, Macy’s Inc. is in downsizing mode again. Does that mean Cincinnati’s third-largest company might pull the plug on its downtown Cincinnati headquarters?

 

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/pressure-to-shrink-will-macys-downsizing-mean-the-loss-of-its-cincinnati-headquarters

Quote

Macy’s CEO has been based in New York since 2003, along with most of its fashion, merchandising and marketing talent. Cincinnati retained legal and accounting functions, along with real estate and human resources executives.

 

A lot of companies are doing this now. Keep the back office functions in the smaller/cheaper market and move the executives and creatives to the big city where it's easier to attract that talent. Aaron Renn has been making this point for the last few years. One example he has mentioned is Anheuser-Busch, which is technically still based in St. Louis, but has now opened a Chicago office for their craft beer division (also partially due to their acquisition of Goose Island) and a New York office for sales, advertising, and marketing.

36 minutes ago, taestell said:

 

A lot of companies are doing this now. Keep the back office functions in the smaller/cheaper market and move the executives and creatives to the big city where it's easier to attract that talent. Aaron Renn has been making this point for the last few years. One example he has mentioned is Anheuser-Busch, which is technically still based in St. Louis, but has now opened a Chicago office for their craft beer division (also partially due to their acquisition of Goose Island) and a New York office for sales, advertising, and marketing.

 

Something I was thinking about recently was how a central location (St. Louis or Kansas City or Chicago) really isn't much of an advantage to a company that has its staff flying all the time since a coast-to-coast flight isn't really much longer, time-wise, than St. Louis to NYC because of all of the hassle on the ground at each end of the flight.  

20 hours ago, taestell said:

 

A lot of companies are doing this now. Keep the back office functions in the smaller/cheaper market and move the executives and creatives to the big city where it's easier to attract that talent. Aaron Renn has been making this point for the last few years. One example he has mentioned is Anheuser-Busch, which is technically still based in St. Louis, but has now opened a Chicago office for their craft beer division (also partially due to their acquisition of Goose Island) and a New York office for sales, advertising, and marketing.

 

But if you read the full article, it states that not a single senior-level executive works out of Cincinnati--which is different than the past. So it's really hard to state that Cincinnati their HQ; it's more of an administrative/operations center. 

Right, but they still list Cincinnati as their "official" HQ. The article is asking whether they will change their "official" HQ to NYC now that none of the executives are based in Cincinnati. I think that if they do make the change, it will coincide with them selling their downtown HQ building and relocating most of the remaining employees to their other "back office" facilities in Greater Cincinnati.

5 hours ago, taestell said:

Right, but they still list Cincinnati as their "official" HQ. The article is asking whether they will change their "official" HQ to NYC now that none of the executives are based in Cincinnati. I think that if they do make the change, it will coincide with them selling their downtown HQ building and relocating most of the remaining employees to their other "back office" facilities in Greater Cincinnati.

Do they have other back office facilities in Greater Cincinnati?  I know at one time they had credit cards in Mason, but they sold that line of business.  

 

I'd hate to see them abandon Cincinnati.  

Yes, they purchased the former Avon office building in Springdale 2 or 3 years ago, and moved some jobs from downtown to that facility. They still operate a call center in Mason which is actually expanding due to the closure their Tempe call center.

On 12/23/2019 at 8:56 AM, thebillshark said:

Whoa https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2019/12/23/cincinnati-bell-to-be-acquired-for-2-6.html?iana=hpmvp_cinci_news_headline

 

Not so fast:

 

Quote

 

Analyst: Competing offer likely to push Cincinnati Bell stock up – to a point

 

Two competing offers to acquire Cincinnati Bell will likely push the Queen City technology company's stock higher, but a research analyst doesn't expect it to prompt a bidding war.

 

Cincinnati Bell (NYSE: CBB) in December announced it had agreed to be acquired by Brookfield Infrastructure, which would pay $10.50 in cash for each outstanding share of Bell's stock. On Jan. 24 the Cincinnati firm announced it had received another bid from an anonymous infrastructure fund offering to pay $12 per share.

 

 

And now we have an answer:

 

Quote

Macy's downtown headquarters will close

 

Macy's Inc. is closing its downtown headquarters, which has 500 employees, the Business Courier has learned.

 

The company's headquarters will be in New York City. Some of the employees will be relocated within the region and elsewhere, while other jobs are being lost.

 

How many floors of the downtown building did they occupy? All of it? 

There are 20 floors in the building 8 or so are parking garages. Macy's has about 6-8 of the additional floors, plus they own the building. They had their real estate division based here which included accountants, attorney's etc. The building also houses a few law firms and other businesses.  

I’m assuming the call center will stay? 

I'm assuming they will close down their downtown office and relocate the remaining local employees to the Springdale and Mason facilities.

If Roxanne Qualls had been elected, this would have been her fault.  

The downtown building was split into three condo's last year in anticipation for this.

 

Psychologically it hurts when a Fortune 500 leaves, but the reality is that they mostly left years ago.

19 minutes ago, JYP said:

The downtown building was split into three condo's last year in anticipation for this.

 

Psychologically it hurts when a Fortune 500 leaves, but the reality is that they mostly left years ago.

That They did. On paper it said Headquarters in Cincinnati but in reality it’s been in New York for awhile. It was bound to happen sooner or later, I’d much rather it happen now so  we are not left wondering year after year when they will close. 

Who will sponsor the tree lighting now?

4 hours ago, taestell said:

I'm assuming they will close down their downtown office and relocate the remaining local employees to the Springdale and Mason facilities.

Mason and Springdale have been mentioned for expansion.

 

 

As this was done at the same time that the San Francisco tech center, Lorain operation, and 125 stores were announced for closure, it makes the loss easier. 

The Cincinnati HQ was a reminder that Lazarus bought them rather than the other way around. Lazarus was so bad ass.

34 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

The Cincinnati HQ was a reminder that Lazarus bought them rather than the other way around. Lazarus was so bad ass.

 

Cincinnati's earnings tax is roughly half what New York City's is.  Must be a bunch of libtard execs who love paying taxes to Mini Mike Bloomberg. 

34 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Cincinnati's earnings tax is roughly half what New York City's is.  Must be a bunch of libtard execs who love paying taxes to Mini Mike Bloomberg. 

When you let your CEO live outside the HQ city, this is what happens. Eventually the entire C Suite moves with it. Look at Hill-Rom and NCR. The CEO was not local and did not live in town the the HQ was moved a few years later to the city of the CEO's choice. Macy's was the same. When Zimmerman retired around 2006, Lundgren wanted to remain in NY and justified it by being closer to the fashion people and power brokers in NY. SLowly but surely, as other Cincinnati execs retired they were replaced with NY people closer to the CEO.

 

If you want to see a large company relocate, just watch to see if a new CEO lives in the HQ city. 

That's the exact thing that happened with Sbarro moving to Columbus. The Sbarro CEO is a Columbus guy who worked for Wendy's. Or when Anchor-Hocking sold and the new people were like "I'm not living in Lancaster" so the HQ moved to Columbus despite operations being located in Lancaster. Perhaps if the Uncool Crescent of Columbus wasn't so uncool the execs would have moved to Groveport, Pickerington, Canal Winchester or the SE Side and drove into Lancaster every day but no.

Edited February 5, 20205 yr by GCrites80s

3 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

That's the exact thing that happened with Sbarro moving to Columbus. The Sbarro CEO is a Columbus guy who worked for Wendy's.

It is really not that difficult to establish a small office where a few corp execs and accounting support personnel reside and then farm out the work across the country to various satellite sites. 

from cle.com

 

 

Macy’s to close 125 more stores, shut down corporate office in Lorain

 

In addition, Macy’s will consolidate its company headquarters in New York City and close its satellite offices in Lorain, Cincinnati and San Francisco. As a result, 2,000 corporate positions are being eliminated. During this transition period, the company said there will be staff reductions at some stores, but increases in others.

 

https://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/2020/02/macys-to-close-125-more-stores-shut-down-corporate-office-in-lorain.html

Edited February 5, 20205 yr by Clefan98

It's a bummer for sure! Where Macy's gets hurt, Amazon thrives. I have no idea for certain on all of this but it sounds like they didn't put in the time and money to compete ahead of time with online shopping and maybe it's completely killing them now.

Also, really dumb still it seems to close all those back office jobs if they move them to NYC or something, I doubt that is the case, it wasn't a ton of jobs, 500. It still hurts, but could be way worse things. The Macy's tower may now be "Kroger Card" tower

14 minutes ago, IAGuy39 said:

It's a bummer for sure! Where Macy's gets hurt, Amazon thrives. I have no idea for certain on all of this but it sounds like they didn't put in the time and money to compete ahead of time with online shopping and maybe it's completely killing them now.

Also, really dumb still it seems to close all those back office jobs if they move them to NYC or something, I doubt that is the case, it wasn't a ton of jobs, 500. It still hurts, but could be way worse things. The Macy's tower may now be "Kroger Card" tower

Per the report a lot of the jobs will be moving up to the Springdale location. I’m assuming not many will be moving to NYC. On the bright side there’s going to be some new jobs at the springdale location as well as the Mason location. I think the biggest thing we will be loosing is the 500 people downtown, the loss of money that Macy’s puts towards Cincinnati charities and other local ventures, as well as Cincinnati being labeled as a headquarters even though it really hasn’t been for awhile. 

27 minutes ago, Ucgrad2015 said:

Per the report a lot of the jobs will be moving up to the Springdale location. I’m assuming not many will be moving to NYC. On the bright side there’s going to be some new jobs at the springdale location as well as the Mason location. I think the biggest thing we will be loosing is the 500 people downtown, the loss of money that Macy’s puts towards Cincinnati charities and other local ventures, as well as Cincinnati being labeled as a headquarters even though it really hasn’t been for awhile. 

 

The report says "some" not "a lot". Some usually means not many.

 

The company's headquarters will be in New York City. Some of the employees will be relocated within the region and elsewhere, while other jobs are being lost.

Edited February 5, 20205 yr by Clefan98

Most of the downtown jobs are headed too Sprindale like 470 out of 500.Mason is getting 600 new jobs with Macy's closing a Arizona call center.Sucks for downtown for sure though.Guessing Macy's wants too sell the downtown building and get the property tax bill off thier expense sheet.

 

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/macys-to-close-corporate-headquarters-in-downtown-cincinnati

Hoping this leads to an aesthetic upgrade for the Fountain Square Christmas tree star.

How many apartments could a developer get in this building? It's already got parking on the first 8 floors.Macys had about 11 floors of space at about 230k square feet.

 

https://www.commercialcafe.com/commercial-property/us/oh/cincinnati/the-macy-s-building/

They’re opening standalone Macy’s Backstage stores, could downtown get one of those as a consolation prize? Perhaps at in the new 4th and Race building? 

16 minutes ago, Robuu said:

Hoping this leads to an aesthetic upgrade for the Fountain Square Christmas tree star.

 

I still can't believe they had the nerve to lob their star on our tree.  

22 minutes ago, thebillshark said:

They’re opening standalone Macy’s Backstage stores, could downtown get one of those as a consolation prize? Perhaps at in the new 4th and Race building? 

TJMaxx didn't make it and Backstage is basically the same format. I can't imagine it'd do well, and the ones that I've been to are all pretty sad.

Quote

 

Closure of Macy’s facilities means more jobs for Warren County

 

Closing its Cincinnati headquarters is a move that will result in dozens of layoffs but will relocate the vast majority of 500 jobs from downtown Cincinnati to a northern Hamilton County community Springdale.

 

A call center there will see employment grow by 470 jobs, giving it 950 in all.

 

Another 600 new jobs will be added to a Macy’s call center in at 9111 Duke Blvd. in Warren County’s Deerfield Twp. as a result of Macy’s closing its Tempe, Arizona customer contact center.

 

 

4 hours ago, taestell said:

 

As it sucks to loose those employees downtown to the suburbs, it could have been a lot worse. 

So job wise it is a net positive. HQ job losses are only looking like a couple dozen as most of those will go to the burbs and not out of town. 

So each time a company gets a new CEO now everyone that works there has to worry if they are going to lose their job if they don't want to move to whatever random city the CEO is from. Liked working Downtown? Too bad. Live in Kentucky? Sucks to be you.

 

One reason Columbus split up into Cool and Uncool Crescents is that so many jobs moved from DT up to Dublin/Worthington/Westerville/Polaris that half the city got hollowed out from being too far from them.

3 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

So each time a company gets a new CEO now everyone that works there has to worry if they are going to lose their job if they don't want to move to whatever random city the CEO is from. Liked working Downtown? Too bad. Live in Kentucky? Sucks to be you.

 

One reason Columbus split up into Cool and Uncool Crescents is that so many jobs moved from DT up to Dublin/Worthington/Westerville/Polaris that half the city got hollowed out from being too far from them.

I think that pretty much applies to every city though. Each town has their job centers in the city and burbs. 

3 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

So each time a company gets a new CEO now everyone that works there has to worry if they are going to lose their job if they don't want to move to whatever random city the CEO is from. 

 

This article explains a lot:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-mckinsey-destroyed-middle-class/605878/

 

I have a friend whose company office is in the owner's house.  They have 10~ people working in the basement while the kids run around upstairs.  

 

 

5 hours ago, Ucgrad2015 said:

As it sucks to loose those employees downtown to the suburbs, it could have been a lot worse. 

 

True. That and with the way growth is going in downtown Cincinnati I don't think filling the vacant Macy's tower space will be all that much of an issue.

 

Hopefully the owners give it a refresh inside and out to make sure it is a solid Class A property.

Latest on the Cincinnati Bell acquisition:

 

Quote

 

Bell (NYSE: CBB) announced Friday that it has amended its merger agreement with Brookfield Infrastructure to increase its sale price.

Toronto-based Brookfield will now pay holders of outstanding Cincinnati Bell stock $12.50 per share in cash rather than the $10.50 per share to which the companies had originally agreed. That makes the deal, which is expected to close by the end of 2020, worth $2.745 billion including debt.

 

 

It's now official: Cincinnati Bell acquired

 

Cincinnati Bell has officially agreed to be acquired for $2.9 billion by a New York company.

 

Cincinnati Bell (NYSE: CBB) announced Friday that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA) to be acquired for $2.9 billion, which would pay out $15.50 for every outstanding share of Bell.

 

Cincinnati Bell had originally agreed to be acquired by Brookfield Infrastructure, a Toronto firm that first offered to pay $10.50 per share of Bell, but then upped that to $12.50 after the Cincinnati technology firm got a competing offer. Brookfield upped its offer eventually to $14.50 after MIRA made a bid for the company, but decided to walk away rather than match MIRA's $15.50-per-share offer.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/03/13/its-nowofficial-cincinnati-bell-acquired.html