Author: Jake Mecklenborg

Jake Mecklenborg joined UrbanCincy in 2009, contributing original articles, photographs, and videos. He grew up on Cincinnati’s west side and graduated from St. Xavier High School in 1996. Jake went on to study at the University of Tennessee and Ohio University. His book, Cincinnati’s Incomplete Subway: The Complete History, was published by The History Press in 2010. He currently lives on Mulberry Street overlooking Over-the-Rhine.

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Business Development News

PHOTOS: U Square at The Loop Almost Entirely Leased

On Thursday Towne Properties partner Arn Bortz led the media on a tour of U Square @ The Loop, the $80 million mixed-use project stretching several blocks adjacent to the University of Cincinnati campus.

The project broke ground in January 2012 and a move-in date of August 1 is scheduled for apartments.

According to Bortz, the project’s street-level retail and upper floor apartments are each 85% leased. The project’s office space has been leased to the University of Cincinnati and talks are ongoing to attract a hotel to remaining space along McMillan Street.

The planned hotel for the site will be competing against a flurry of new hotel developments throughout Cincinnati’s urban core that are adding hundreds of new rooms to the market, including a proposed rehabilitation of Old St. George into a 60-70 bed hotel just blocks away.

Once completed, Bortz anticipates that the hotel at U Square @ The Loop to be approximately as tall as the apartment building on the project’s western block.

The developers also announced that the project achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, which qualifies the project for a 15-year city tax abatement, due to its proximity to public transportation and a variety of design decisions including choice of windows and use of Energy Star appliances in apartment units.

Bortz also explained that the project’s two city-built parking garages will not be subject to any lease of the city’s parking facilities.

More than 20 retailers have been named as tenants of the 80,000 square feet of retail, including: Altar’d States, bd’s Mongolian Grill, Body Central, Chase Bank, Elephant Walk, Euro Wax, Firehouse Subs, Great Clips, Highway 55, Keystone Bar & Grill, Lime Fresh, Moksha Yoga, Mr. Sushi, Orange Leaf, Rally House, Rue 21, Starbucks, The Brass Tap and Waffle House.

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Arts & Entertainment News

PHOTOS: 2013 DAAP Fashion Show Dazzles Sold-Out Crowd

When the College of Design, Architecture, Art & Planning puts on their annual DAAP Fashion Show at the University of Cincinnati, it is the hottest ticket in town. The region’s best fashion designers show off their work to their families, friends, and potential employers as they make their fabulous exit from DAAP, and sometimes Cincinnati.

This year’s DAAP Fashion Show was the 62nd year of the event, and it was held last Friday inside the University of Cincinnati’s architecturally acclaimed Campus Recreation Center.

Hundreds packed the event, which was hosted by 1985 DAAP graduate David Meister. and featured the work of the School of Design’s Fashion Design and Product Development departments. All 52 of the following photographs were taken by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

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Business News Politics Transportation

Special Streetcar Meeting Called by Roxanne Qualls in Light of Funding Issues

On Tuesday, City Manager Milton Dohoney sent a memo to council members that said after a thorough review of the bid process, construction of the streetcar tracks, electrical equipment, and maintenance facility will cost $17 million more than the city had budgeted. This news raises the total cost of the project from $110 million to approximately $127 million.

As a result Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (C), Chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, has called a special meeting April 29 at 6pm. Dohoney will report on the costs of cancelling Cincinnati’s streetcar project, which broke ground in 2012.

Utility relocation work has been underway for more than a year, and fabrication of five streetcars began at CAF’s facility in Zaragoza, Spain in early 2013. The City of Cincinnati reports that $20.3 million has been spent on the streetcar project to date.

Ohio TRAC
Two failed ballot initiatives meant to kill the Cincinnati Streetcar, and the revocation of $51.8M from TRAC have delayed temporarily set back the project for years. Photograph by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

So far Cincinnati’s streetcar has been the recipient of three federal grants totaling $39.9 million dollars. If the project is cancelled, the city will likely have to reimburse the federal government for whatever grant funds have been spent. Additionally, it will either need to cancel its contract with CAF or sell the five streetcars to another city after they are completed in 2014.

Planning for the streetcar project began in late 2006. A study was completed in 2007 and funding was assembled in 2008. On the cusp of groundbreaking, COAST, the notorious local anti-tax group, mounted a petition drive that saw an anti-streetcar charter amendment placed on the November 2009 ballot. Issue 9 was defeated, but it succeeded in delaying the project by a year.

During that same election, John Kasich (R) was elected governor of Ohio. He immediately cancelled Ohio’s 3C Passenger Rail project, scuttled state funding for new express Metro routes funded under outgoing Governor Ted Strickland (D), and appointed Jerry Wray chair of the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT).

In April 2011, the Transit Review Advisory Committee (TRAC), also chaired by Wray, cancelled $51.8 million in state for Cincinnati’s streetcar project and directed the funds to railroad overpass projects in rural Ohio.

Without its largest grant, a connection to the University of Cincinnati was removed from the project’s first phase.

Sensing weakness, COAST mounted another petition drive and again succeeded in placing an anti-streetcar charter amendment on the ballot. Issue 48 was defeated but succeeded in delaying the project for another full year.

In that same election, all incumbent Republicans, with the exception of Charlie Winburn, were swept from council and replaced by a 6-3 pro-streetcar majority. The project broke ground in February 2012 but the track, electrical, and car barn contract was delayed by litigation between the City and Duke Energy.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) ruled in the city’s favor in late 2012 and the project was put out to bid in February 2013.

Bids came in significantly higher than the city budgeted, and on April 29 council will hear the cost of cancelling the project verses continuing with the project as planned, presumably after voting to sell $17 million more in bonds.

After this rise in the project’s cost from $110 million to $127 million, annual debt service paid from the city’s capital fund will be approximately $4 million. Operations costs, paid from the operations general fund, will be about $3 million.

The $7 million annual cost to operate the streetcar system will consume less than 2% of the city’s annual $400 million budget.

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Business Development News

PHOTOS: $80M Mixed-Use Development Nears Completion in Clifton Heights

W. McMillan Street

Since 2000, the University of Cincinnati’s surroundings have changed dramatically – many homes and a few landmark buildings were demolished for construction of Stetson Square, McMillan Manor, University Park Apartments, and 65 West. U Square at the Loop, a 161-unit, $80 million midrise situated between McMillan and Calhoun Streets, has been under construction for more than a year and is scheduled for occupancy on August 1.

The development includes over a dozen street-level commercial spaces, an office building that has been rented by the University of Cincinnati, and a site fronting McMillan Street where a hotel is planned. Apartment prices range between $695 for studios to $2,350 for penthouses with balconies.

U Square at The Loop

Reserved parking spaces in the development’s two garages will cost $95/month. Unlike other new apartment complexes in the area, units at U Square at the Loop can be rented by non-students.

In the early 2000s the site where U Square at the Loop is being built was partially cleared for a very different development – a 360-unit condo midrise dubbed McMillan Park that had been in planning since 1999. The two phases of the development were planned above two underground parking garages totaling 900 spaces, and planned units ranged from $160,000 for a one bedroom to $800,000 for a penthouse.

That project was to be financed by the University of Cincinnati, the site assembled by the City of Cincinnati through eminent domain, and the project managed by the Clifton Heights Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation (CHCURC). Demolition of properties began in 2003, but litigation involving the owners of Acropolis Chili, Inn the Wood, and two fast food restaurants was not resolved until 2007, a year after the university withdrew its funding.

In 2008 Towne Properties became the project’s developer, and the long-vacant Hardee’s and Arby’s that had been the subject of eminent domain litigation were demolished that summer.

Renderings depicting a development similar to what is nearing completion in 2013 were published that fall, and the project was dubbed Uptown Commons in 2009. The project’s name changed again to U Square at the Loop in 2010 and construction began in 2012.

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Business Development News

PHOTOS: Historic Glencoe-Auburn Place Row Houses are Being Demolished

After more than a decade of failed redevelopment plans demolition of the 129-year-old Glencoe-Auburn Place Row Houses began on March 19.

Known colloquially as “The Hole” for its dramatic hillside setting in historic Mt. Auburn, the multi-building complex abuts Christ Hospital and has long been eyed in its expansion plans. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in December 2003, at the request of architect Tom Hefley and developer Pauline Van der Haer.

Christ Hospital Expansion
This aerial photograph from September 2012 shows both the Christ Hospital Expansion [CENTER-LEFT] and the historic “Glencoe Hole” [MIDDLE RIGHT]. Image provided.

Van der Hear, through her development company named Dorian Development, planned to renovate the complex into 68 market-rate condominiums during the early 2000s housing bubble. The “Condos Available” sign, still visible after today’s demolition work, has been in place since at least 2004, when the project was featured prominently in Cincinnati Magazine.

The large-scale modification of the old buildings (the original apartment units all have three very small floors connected by unusually narrow staircases) and the need for a multi-deck parking garage made the creation of a viable project impossible without large subsidies from the City of Cincinnati. Since the early 2000s Van der Hear has been involved in several high profile attempts to win awards from the City.

COAST attacked the project in 2008 after it received a $300,000 grant from the city, but in 2009 Christ Hospital took advantage of the collapse of the condo market and moved to acquire the complex from Dorian Development. Van der Haer sued Christ Hospital in 2011, claiming “tortious, deliberate, intentional and malicious interference” in her development plans, but the Ohio Supreme Court and an appellate court ruled in the hospital’s favor, citing the lack of a written contract between the City and Dorian Development.

The arrival of bulldozers adds to a growing list of historic properties uptown that have faced similar fates in recent years as a surge of private investment has moved in to construct hundreds of new residences and hundreds of thousands of square feet of new commercial space.

The following 12 images were all taken by Jake Mecklenborg at the site on Tuesday, March 19 – just five days after a demolition permit had been granted.