Author: John Yung

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.

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News Transportation

Roxanne Qualls and School Officials Call for Pedestrian Improvements Near Schools

Walking does not seem like a difficult task for city residents where sidewalks are plentiful and signals control traffic allowing people to walk safely across the street. However; this is not always the case in neighborhoods around the city.

Some intersections lack basic improvements such as crosswalks, signals, good sidewalks or no sidewalks at all. These problems are likely a minor nuisance for experienced walkers but from the viewpoint of children who walk to school it could mean the difference between a safe walk to school and imminent danger.

One such problem intersection is the Five Points Intersection in Evanston. The intersection of Montgomery, Woodburn and St. Leger is already seeing redevelopment, as mentioned previously on UrbanCincy, however crosswalk enhancements aimed at making intersections like this easier to cross for school children have yet to be implemented.

Safe Routes
City leaders and school officials call for improvements to pedestrian networks around schools on August 26. Image provided.

According to Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) Safe Routes to School Coordinator, Carmen Burks, about 85% of Evanston school children walk to school.

Last year the city received $1 million in grant funding from the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) through the Safe Routes to Schools Program, which is aimed at encouraging students to walk to school through the development of walking school bus programs and by installing pedestrian improvements to make walking routes to school safer. The improvements must be within a mile of a school.

At the beginning of this school year, Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (C) and CPS Superintendent Mary Ronan called for the city to finish implementing the pedestrian improvements listed from the grant.

The Five Points Intersection is among the 15 priority intersections on the list for improvement.

“If we had to give the implementation team a grade right now, it would be an ‘incomplete,’” Qualls said in a prepared statement.

Qualls says that she plans to introduce a motion directing the city administration to come back with a schedule for completing the remaining improvements before the beginning of the 2014 school year.

Ronan noted that the five-points intersection affects students from three schools – Evanston Academy, the Academy of World Languages, and Walnut Hills High School – with a combined enrollment of approximately 3,000 students.

“Many of these are relatively low-cost steps we can take to make big improvements in safety for our kids,” Qualls stated.

If all goes according to plan, work on the five-points intersection would likely begin next year and include new pedestrian signals. There is no time frame set for upgrades to the other 14 intersections identified for improvement.

Categories
Up To Speed

When will Cincinnati enter the ‘Anti-Mall’ Age?

When will Cincinnati enter the ‘Anti-Mall’ Age?

With the news today that Forest Fair Mall/Cincinnati Mills Mall/Cincinnati Mall or more recently Forest Fair Village is back on the selling block, we have to wonder if the Cincinnati region will begin to accept the idea of suburban mall retrofit. In metro Washington DC several malls have already been converted into walkable town centers with significantly beneficial results. Read more at the Atlantic Cities:

Bethesda, a once-sleepy if upscale inner suburb in nearby Maryland, was almost totally automobile-dependent in 1994 when the mixed-use, multi-block development was conceived for a decaying commercial/industrial strip; now, in no small part because of developments like Bethesda Row, Bethesda feels both urban and urbane, yet still human-scaled. It’s a great place to be.

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Up To Speed

The Fragility of the Sprawl Economy

The Fragility of the Sprawl Economy

Auto-dependent development surely helped create economic fragility argues guest blogger Sam Bunting at Strong Towns. This was seen in Detroit where suburban growth helped destroy the central city. While Cincinnati is in a far different position than the Motor City, this is a teachable moment to cities and suburbs who continue to rely on automobile oriented development as a measure of success.  Read more at Strong Towns:

One measure of Princeton’s fragility is our limited ability to react to changing economic demands. We know that there is growing demand for compact, walkable homes. But we struggle to add those homes, because people have got used to the idea that Princeton is a low-density ‘burb, instead of the compact, walkable town that it was throughout most of its history. Worse, residents in more suburban neighborhoods are so dependent on cars  that they tend to oppose walkable development based on the slightest possibility that it will reduce the availability of parking in the downtown.

Categories
Business Development News

Final Designs Revealed for $125M Dunnhumby Centre Tower

5th Street Exterior - Image Provided by ImageFiction.

In March of 2015, 700 employees will move into the long-awaited $125 million headquarters of dunnhumbyUSA at Fifth and Race street in downtown Cincinnati. The building is the culmination of a fifteen-year effort to reinvent the area just one block from Fountain Square.

In 1999 the city purchased and demolished a fourteen-story office building and parking garage at the site in anticipation of locating a Nordstrom’s department store downtown. When plans for the store failed to materialize, the site was paved over as surface parking for over a decade.

Last year, dunnhumbyUSA and the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) partnered with the city to develop the block as the new headquarters for the company. Earlier this year, the project received approval on the interior design of the building, which includes open floor plans, and two light wells that will provide natural light during the day through to the bottom floors of the office structure.

Today dunnhumbyUSA presented its exterior designs to the city’s Urban Design Review Board, which makes advisory decisions on approval for landmark structures.

The designs for the new structure were put together by architecture firm Gensler.

The presentation is the culmination of over nine months worth of work on the exterior presentation of the building.

“We designed the building from the inside out. There was a lot of attention paid to the habits and needs of our employees,” Dave Palm, Senior Vice President of Operations with dunnhumbyUSA, told UrbanCincy.

The exterior façades of the building are meant to accentuate the data driven nature of the company and avoid the repetitiveness of patterns, and are made up of an arrangement of white and charcoal grey panel frames. The entrances on each street façade, meanwhile, are accentuated by a cascade of white paneling up the side of the building. This pattern called, “zippers” help break up the massing of the structure.

Other features of the building exterior include outdoor inset areas located on the building’s eighth floor. Further outdoor opportunities are located on the top floor where a significant portion of the floor will be dedicated to outside events.

Although only nine stories in height the floors of the building will be 14 feet high with 20-foot high ceilings for the street-level retail. The building will be the equivalent height of a more traditional 12-story building. Additionally, the three parking levels above the retail level will be convertible to office when the company needs to add room for expansion.

The first level retail section comes in at just under 30,000 square feet and features an all glass street-oriented façade. 3CDC is charged with attracting retail tenants.

“We would prefer to find a local business,” Adam Gelter, 3CDC’s Executive Vice President of Development told UrbanCincy. Gelter went on to say that the retail space can go to one tenant or be broken up into three or four separate retail spaces.

The building is slated to be completed in January 2015 with move-in set for March of the same year.

This project, along with the construction of a 30-story apartment tower and grocer and the continuing plans to construct up to 225 apartments above Macy’s at Fountain Place, is set to transform the long neglected corridors along Sixth Street and Race Street and could spur additional investments in development opportunities in the western portion of the central business district.

Categories
Arts & Entertainment

URBANexchange Returns to the Moerlein Lager House Wednesday evening

Salerno coverThis month’s URBANexchange returns to the Moerlein Lager House biergarten where the beer flows freely and the pretzels are warm and plentiful. The event will be held on Wednesday August 14 from 5:30pm to 8:30pm.

Held monthly, URBANexchange has become the place where urban enthusiasts trade ideas, share a drink and get to know one another.

The event is a casual way to unwind from the day and an opportunity to meet similar like minded people. There is no formal presentation or formal anything, and there is no cover charge for attending.

For this month’s event we are hosting local photographer and fellow blogger Ronny Salerno, who has just released his new book, The Future is One of Mighty Ducks T-Shirts and Discmen. The book features many photographs from his long career of photographing abandoned buildings and theme parks.

Salerno’s photography won him local media attention for capturing the state of many forgotten places throughout the Midwest. His latest photo projects include Suburbia Lost and 224Cincy which can be found on his blog Queen City Discovery. The blog recently celebrated its five year anniversary.

At the event we will hold a drawing for two lucky attendees to win a  free copy of his new book. So come down to the Moerlein Lager House for drinks, fun and a chance to win a book filled with amazing photography!