John joined UrbanCincy in 2011 and immediately established himself as a key member of the UrbanCincy team. A native of Chicago, transplanted to Lebanon, Ohio in his teenage years, John currently resides in Cincinnati’s historic Mt Auburn neighborhood. John earned a Masters of Community Planning degree from the University of Cincinnati in 2013.
Well hello there! It’s been a year, what did we miss?
All kidding aside much has happened over the past year. While our team was alive and well, doing what we do, the site crashed. We can discuss how much effort we had to put into restoring the site from the archive but the long and short of it is that the back end server and hosting needed to be rebuilt almost entirely.
Thank you, Travis, for all your hard work!
In lieu of a broader update, we have decided to focus on catching up on some of the major developments in Cincinnati over the past year. Here’s a brief review of news from 2019 and early 2020:
Of course, we would be remiss to not mention the current COVID-19 crisis. We will continue to track its impacts on urbanism in Cincinnati and beyond. This Friday, the city will close 15 street sections in downtown and Over-the-Rhine to allow for expanded outdoor dining. Other areas may follow.
With the site back, we hope to become a public platform for urban thought in Cincinnati. With most of us now working full-time, we have less time to devote to the site. With that in mind, if you, our reader have an article you would like to submit or an opinion piece, please feel free to contact us at editors@urbancincy.com.
For decades these peculiar historic buildings sat hidden in plain sight. Maybe it was a house with two front entrances or a church. Maybe a building had a lot of hard concrete floors. In Over-the-Rhine, these could have been breweries, factories, or….a bath house?
Highlighting the history of one of the neighborhoods more hidden quirks, the Over-the-Rhine Foundation will host an event later this month in a former bath house.
A Sanborn Map showing the Pendleton Bath House
“In the early 20th century, the high cost of in-home plumbing and water heaters meant that Cincinnatians bathed at commercially operated bathhouses,” Foundation Trustee Tom Hadley told UrbanCincy, “Social reformers advocated for publicly funded baths as a way to check the spread of disease, improve living conditions and educate about the benefits of cleanliness.” He hopes the event can showcase this particular aspect of OTR history.
Foundation organizers hope the event will encourage attendees to explore the history of OTR in an informal and interactive experience.
The event called, “Taking the Plunge: History of Public Bath Houses” will be held on Thursday, Nov. 1 at 5:30 PM at the location of the former St. Mary’s Baptist Church in Pendleton. It is ticketed and tickets can be purchased here for $25. The Foundation will host a social hour at the Urban 3 Points Brewery following the program.
The event will be located within two blocks of a Cincy RedBike station on 12th and Broadway and is served by the #24 and #19 Metro bus routes via Sycamore Street.
Editor’s Note: Mr. Yung is a member of the Over-the-Rhine Foundation Board of Trustees.
With parking requirements poised to be lifted in the urban core, the City of Cincinnati is moving forward with implementing a Residential Parking Program for Over-the-Rhine. The program is being finalized and could appear in City Council chambers in the near future.
In 2015, the city studied and proposed an on-street residential parking permit program for the historic neighborhood only to have Mayor John Cranley (D) veto the measure after a contentious 5-4 vote in favor of the program from City Council. At the time the Mayor favored charging residents up to $500 per permit for the program, a measure UrbanCincysupported at the time. The prior program would have cost $108 for an annual permit and would have had a cap of 450 total permits for the southern part of the neighborhood.
A map of the proposed Residential Parking Permit Program for Over-the-Rhine
Following the veto, City Councilman David Man (D) directed the administration to study the parking conditions of Over-the-Rhine and develop a set of recommendations to help guide the city in its decision making on the policy. The City hired Walker Consultants to conduct a study, which extended over several years and engaged various Over-the-Rhine community stakeholders.
The results of that study have been released and the city is moving quickly to act. Under the plan developed by the city, residential parking permits will cost $150 per year with a cap of 500 total permits. Of those permits, half of them would go to qualifying low-income residents who will pay a reduced annual rate of $25 a year.
Permits will allow residents to park in non-metered residential streets as well as “flex” areas on main commercial streets in the neighborhood. In a memo to City Council, Director of Community and Economic Development Phillip Denning recommended that permit numbers and cost should be regulated by the City Manager so costs and numbers for the program can change over time as the city gets feedback and measurable data from the program.
The initial costs are estimated at $180,000 to install signage and start the program. Annual operations costs are pegged at $73,500 and are expected to be covered by the permit fee income generated from the program.
If approved by City Council the program could be implemented by the end of the year.
The cost and number of permits have been a point of contention from residents in the neighborhood who voiced their concerns at a City Planning public staff conference for the removal of parking requirements in the urban core.
In his report to City Planning Commission for the Urban Parking Overlay Senior Planner Alex Peppers wrote that “the primary concerns voiced by residents were for the permit cost, the total number of permits issued and the lottery system in which they are issued, lack of community engagement, and how the City would conduct enforcement.”
No official council hearings have been set regarding the program however the first step of Walker Consultants recommendations which will remove off-street parking requirements in the urban core will be discussed tomorrow at City Planning Commission and again at the Economic Growth & Zoning Council Committee Meeting next Tuesday at 9 AM in City Council Chambers at City Hall.
Recently, the Cincinnati City Planning Department sent out a notice to property owners in downtown and Over-the-Rhine regarding the implementation of an Urban Parking Overlay District. The city will hold several meetings with the next one being at the City Planning Commission meeting this Friday, July 27th at 9 a.m. If approved, the district would remove the requirement for uses in downtown to provide off-street dedicated parking.
Since 2012 when I first wrote about parking in downtown and Over-the-Rhine the number of off-street parking supplied has increased well over 3,000 parking spaces (38,760 in downtown alone according to DCI). The Banks parking garage alone with over 6,000 spaces is the third largest parking garage in the United States.
We have an abundance of parking in the urban core.
At its core function, the removal of required parking minimums has proven to allow for more creative parking solutions to blossom. As Donald Shoup, parking guru and professor at UCLA found in his book The High Cost of Free Parking, most parking minimums were established as arbitrary standards by planners in the middle of the last century. Many of these requirements are intended to account for the busiest times of the day or year. UrbanCincyinterviewed Dr. Shoup in 2014 regarding a variety of local parking issues.
In Nashville for example, the removal of parking minimums helped remove barriers for small-scale developers who could not afford to acquire additional land for a few parking spaces. Instead, agreements with nearby garages helped facilitate automobile storage demands.
Back in 2012 Nashville Planner, Joni Priest told UrbanCincy, “Removing the parking requirements from downtown zoning allows flexibility for site-specific and program-specific solutions. Flexibility is key in urban environments,” said Priest. “As downtown becomes more comfortable for pedestrians, cyclists and transit users, new development will have the flexibility to build less parking.”
Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, the city continues to struggle with developers looking to build new infill or rehabilitate and reactivate the many historic buildings in the urban core.
The Banks Garage is one of the largest parking structures in the United States [Photo by Travis Estell]
A plethora of parking dots the northwest quadrant of downtown. [Photo by Travis Estell]
Cincinnati Public Radio’s Current Building [Photo by Travis Estell]
Encore Apartments across from massive Joseph Auto Parking Lot in downtown [Photo by Eric Anspach]
Even when parking requirements are reduced or eliminated most banks and investors still require parking to be provided or identified for developments to move forward. Removing zoning requirements for parking often allows the developer to build the parking that is really needed and not what is arbitrarily demanded by local zoning controls. This reduces the cost of development and in turn, allows more affordable housing to be provided.
Removing parking minimums also preserves historic structures from being demolished for parking lots and garages. Over-the-Rhine is the largest collection of German Italianate buildings in the country yet it currently has lost over half of its historic structures. If parking minimums are retained, the demolition of our communities historic assets will continue to be encouraged to meet the city’s parking requirements.
There is an abundance of alternative options to traverse to, from and around the urban core. These modes include walking, biking, CincyRedBike, buses, streetcar, uber, lyft, Gest, and Zipcar. In the near future, we’ll likely see Bird scooters and Lime bikes introduced. In the long-term, improved transit and autonomous vehicles will reduce the need to own and store a vehicle. Every one of these trips is one less parking space needed per resident, worker or visitor.
It would be wise for the City to anticipate criticisms from residents of the urban core. Some of whom recently voiced concerns regarding the increasing struggle to find on-street parking spaces. This is a struggle that is common in many dense, historic urban neighborhoods across the country where the expectation is that it is very rare to snag a parking space directly in front of a persons residence or business. However, it is important to consider this in light of a broader parking strategy, one that would balance resident, business and development demands.
There are a few additional strategies for city policymakers can consider in conjunction with approving the Parking Overlay District to remove parking requirements. Most of these are adapted from Dr. Shoup’s recommendations:
1.) Continue to pursue the implementation of the on-street residential parking permit program.
2.) Add on-street 10-30 minute convenience parking at some spaces around Findlay Market.
3.) Consider opportunities for future public underground parking facilities to serve Findlay Market and the rest of Over-the-Rhine north of Liberty Street.
4.) Enable the demand-responsive capabilities for on-street parking meters. This strategy will encourage more meter usage and could be a potential revenue add for the city’s parking meter program.
As part of a broader plan, it makes sense to remove the parking space requirements in the urban core. To quote Shoup, “If Cincinnati uses fair market prices to manage on-street parking – the lowest prices that will leave one or two open spaces on every block at every time of the day – it won’t have to require off-street parking spaces for every land use. If the government regulated any other aspect of our lives as precisely as it regulates the number of off-street parking spaces everywhere, everyone would join the Tea Party.”
Removing parking minimums is a productive first step in the city’s comprehensive strategy to balance the demands of residents, workers, visitors who help make our urban core a vibrant and attractive place. Supporting this policy is a step in support of enhancing housing affordability, historic preservation, environmental sustainability and livability in our urban core.
The Over-the-Rhine Foundation is hosting a design competition to test a proposed set of new infill guidelines for the Over-the-Rhine community. The OTR Design Competition Awards Ceremony and Celebration will take place on Friday, March 23rd from 5-8 PM. The event will announce the winner of a competition designed to evaluate proposed guidelines for new development in the revitalizing neighborhood.
Since 2014, the Over-the-Rhine Foundation’s Infill Committee has focused on advocating for contextually appropriate infill design to complement the neighborhood’s rich historic fabric. As part of this effort, the committee has worked to revise the outdated new construction guidelines for the Over-the-Rhine Historic District. The Foundation is currently hosting the OTR Design Competition to challenge the design community to elevate new construction in the district while testing the proposed guidelines. Twelve local and national architects and designers work to design a hypothetical new construction project in the Northern Liberties portion of OTR at 1716-18 Vine Street, north of Liberty Street.
The Design Competition will showcase ideas for this site on Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine. (Photo by Travis Estell)
The intent of the competition is to present designs that will elevate the standard for new construction in the neighborhood and city. Foundation members hope that the design guidelines would inspire other cities to look to Cincinnati when it comes to inspiring contemporary architecture in a historic setting.
Board President Kevin Pape stated in a media release that, “We are thrilled to see the final design submissions for the competition. This is an exciting opportunity for us to showcase the influence of excellent urban design on new construction in our historic neighborhood.”
Partners in the development of the revised guidelines include the Over-the-Rhine Foundation, City of Cincinnati Office of the Urban Conservator, The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation, and Ohio History Connection.
Sponsors of the competition include the Over-the-Rhine Foundation, Cincinnati Preservation Association, 3CDC and the Niehoff Urban Studio.
The competition awards ceremony will take place at Union Hall’s 200-seat Beer Hall at 1311 Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine on Friday, March 23rd from 5:00PM-8: 00 PM. The presentation will begin at 6:00 pm. The ceremony is open to the public but RSVP‘s via Eventbrite is appreciated by Monday, March 19th. Complimentary beer and light snacks will be served with a suggested donation of $5.00. Donations can be made by paying to the order of ‘@OTRFoundation’ on Venmo or by cash or card at the event.
The event is conveniently located along the Metro bus routes #46 and #78. It is a block away from the Northbound 12th and Vine and Southbound Race and Washington Park Cincinnati Bell Connector Streetcar stops. It is also located within a block from two Cincy RedBike bike share stations.
Editor’s Note: Mr. Yung is a member of the Over-the-Rhine Foundation Board of Trustees.
