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.

Categories
Arts & Entertainment News

Film showcase to kick off this year’s MidPoint Music Festival

A pair of locally produced documentaries will be showcased tomorrow during the first ever MidPoint Film Festival, which is being used to help kick-off the three-day MidPoint Music Festival.

The first will is a film about the rebirth of Cincinnati’s historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and the second is a new film highlighting the history of Newport’s seedy past. The festival is being hosted by Midland Film Institute and will make its debut at the School for Creative & Performing Arts’ (SCPA) Mayerson Theater.


Part of the film crew works on Rebirth of Over-the-Rhine along Elm Street. Photograph provided.

Rebirth of Over-the-Rhine, which was highlighted by UrbanCincy in 2010, covers the nascent redevelopment of the historically struggling neighborhood and how the interplay of social and economic forces is being brought out in the rapidly changing neighborhood. It is directed by award winning director Melissa Godoy.

“We started looking around and we found we were right at the beginning of this push. The history of the neighborhood, combined with its present-day components, really helped to make the story,” co-producer Joe Brinker told UrbanCincy.

The film has been shot in Over-the-Rhine between 2009 and 2012, and highlights some of the social struggles surrounding Washington Park.

Newport Gangster, meanwhile, showcases the gambling legacy of Newport, Kentucky, the original Sin City. The film highlights the scale of Newport’s gambling scene and how it gave birth to the modern gambling industry.

The event is free to the public although a $10 donation is encouraged. Both films will also host a question and answer session with their directors and producers. The film festival will begin at SCPA (map) Thursday, September 27 at 6pm. Those interested in attending are encouraged to RSVP online.

Categories
Development News Transportation

City to move forward with utility relocation for streetcar project

Cincinnati leaders announced a major step today in moving forward the construction schedule of the Cincinnati Streetcar, after a recent memo from City Manager Milton Dohoney conceded that the project had been delayed to summer 2015.

According to the August 28 memo, city officials had not been able to resolve negotiations with Duke Energy over utility replacement costs. A new legislative package, which is set to go before the Budget & Finance Committee on September 24, seeks to sidestep the negotiations and start the next phase of utility relocation work on the streetcar.

“It is not feasible to sit idle awaiting an outcome,” City Manager Dohoney explained in a prepared statement.

The first piece of legislation establishes a $15 million account from which the City will advance the work for the Duke Energy utilities until the City and the energy company can fully address who must pay for the relocation of electrical and gas lines under city streets. This figure is what was disclosed to the City by Duke Energy as the cost of utility relocation and design work.

While both parties reached an agreement to the three feet separation from the tracks, as is used in other cities, the ongoing issue is over who is responsible to pay the cost of utility relocation. The City has maintained that the streetcar is a transportation improvement project and that Duke Energy is responsible for utility relocation costs.

City officials broke ground on the streetcar project earlier this year. Photograph by 5chw4r7z.

Funding for the account will come from part of the recent $37 million sale of land adjacent to the former Blue Ash Airport. As recently reported by UrbanCincy, the City of Cincinnati sold most of the former airport land to the City of Blue Ash for a new park but retained approximately 100 acres.

Once an agreement is reached in the dispute, the City expects that the $15 million will be recovered and become available for other investments throughout the city. According to City officials, by fronting the cost of utility relocation work, it will be able to avoid potential legal disputes and any further delay or cost increases.

The second piece of legislation changes the funding source for repayment of $14 million of the $25 million in notes issued as part of the original streetcar project proposal. According to the City’s finance department, the funding shift does not add cost to the project but instead shifts the funding temporarily from the Downtown South TIF District to a fund created in 1995 that collects service payments from Westin/Star, Hyatt and Saks. Half of these funds are reserved for housing projects throughout the city and the other half is currently unallocated. Once the City revises the districts revenue funding it will be able to assess how much debt it can borrow against the revised Downtown South TIF District.

The final item for consideration is a right-of-way ordinance confirming and clarifying the City’s existing historic rights for utility relocation. This legislation, also enacted in other large Ohio cities, unequivocally asserts a municipality’s authority to require a utility in the public right-of-way to relocate its facilities – at the utility’s sole cost – when required in order to accommodate construction of a public improvement.

City officials have disclosed to UrbanCincy that they are confident an agreement with Duke Energy will be reached. In the meantime, this procedure will allow crucial construction of the streetcar to advance, including track construction work and ordering of the streetcar vehicles.

“Cincinnati is still growing and the streetcar project is still a part of that,” City Spokesperson Meg Oldberding told UrbanCincy. “This should be a good signal that the streetcar is moving forward.”

The Budget & Finance Committee meeting will be held on Monday September 24 at 10:30am in Room 300, in City Council Chambers at City Hall.

UPDATE: The two items passed through City Council’s Budget & Finance Committee 6-3 with P.G. Sittenfeld (D), Charlie Winburn (R), and Christopher Smitherman (I) voting in opposition. The Budget & Finance Committee is made up of the full nine-member City Council which is expected to pass the measures by the same margin at their regular meeting this Wednesday.

Categories
Up To Speed

Clifton Gaslight Market may open as soon as early 2013

Clifton Grocery Store To Reopen Early 2013

Clifton residents are close to being able to shop at a newly remodeled grocery store that has taken the place of Keller’s IGA after its closure in 2011. Although work on reopening the neighborhood grocery store had been delayed, Steve Goessling, who purchased the struggling store after it closed, is close to winning approval of a crucial development loan package that will relaunch the store with an expanded food selection more tuned to the neighborhoods needs. More from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

If all goes as planned, Goessling will accomplish a feat far more amazing than simply opening a new neighborhood market. He’ll prove that big things can happen when a business, a city and its people give their time, energy and money to a common cause, even in the worst economy. In this case, Goessling will bring back the fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, wines and beers that neighborhood shoppers sorely miss. He’ll return a business district anchor, recreate the neighborhood’s chief gathering place and likely make a nice living for himself, too.

Categories
Up To Speed

Remembering 9/11 through Baldwin Lee’s early photographs

Remembering 9/11 through Baldwin Lee’s early photographs.

It was eleven years ago today that two glass, steel and concrete towers that once dominated the skyline of Manhattan fell in the worst terrorist attack in the history of this country and thousands of lives were lost. But these photographs from the 1970’s by Brooklyn native Baldwin S. Lee and Professor of Art at the University of Tennessee look back on a time when the then recently completed World Trade Center stood above the struggling old city below it.

At the time of its completion in 1971 the World Trade Center complex boasted 16 million square feet of office space in three low rise buildings and two 110-story towers designed by Minoru Yamasaki. The World Trade Center held the record for the world’s tallest buildings from 1971 to 1973 after being surpassed in height by the Willis Tower in Chicago. More World Trade Center photographs from Professor Lee:
Photograph by Baldwin Lee
Categories
Business Development News

Group Health moves into new $27 million tower in Clifton

Group Health Associates is celebrating the opening of their new $27 million medical office building in Clifton today. The eight-story tower is connected to Good Samaritan Hospital at Clifton Avenue and Dixmyth Avenue. The existing building, located approximately a half-mile down the street at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Clifton Avenue, is scheduled to be imploded this September.

Both Group Health Associates and Good Samaritan Hospital are divisions of TriHealth, and TriHealth President and CEO, John Prout, reiterated the company’s’ commitment to servicing the urban core and contributing to Uptown’s vibrancy.

“This investment is part of TriHealth’s ongoing commitment to Uptown as a vibrant community, business center, education center, and medical hub for the region,” Prout told UrbanCincy. “And I add my thanks to all the private and public partners who helped make this a reality.”


Group Health’s new Clifton facility sits next to Good Samaritan Hospital along Dixmyth Avenue. Photograph by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

The 67,000-square-foot facility had been under construction since early 2011, and is considered to be state of the art. Individuals passing on the street will notice that the medical tower sits atop a five-story parking garage, but individuals using the facility will reportedly experience better access to physician specialists, a full service pharmacy and more integrated services as a result of being located on the Good Samaritan campus.

According to Group Health officials, the medical group will also begin offering neurology as a specialty and plans to add ten more physicians to round out the facilities services in September.

Construction of the new medical facility was made possible by low-cost financing from the Uptown Consortium through its Uptown Partners’ Loan Pool.

The land, however, was not readily available until the $4 million realignment of Dixmyth Avenue in 2006. Previously, the street had been located further south, with homes along its northern side. The street’s realignment made Good Samaritan Hospital’s recent expansion possible, along with the construction of the new Group Health facility.

The controversial road realignment eventually took 28 residential properties through the use of eminent domain, and was upheld in court against one hold out, Emma Dimasi. The project was seen as controversial at the time because while city officials claimed the realignment was for safety purposes, others speculated that it was to free up additional land next to the then constrained Good Samaritan Hospital site.

Just one year after the realignment of Dixmyth Avenue, in 2007, Good Samaritan commenced construction on a ten-story patient care tower.

Health care professionals say that the rapid expansion of health facilities is a response to the growing demand placed on the region’s health care system by an aging population. The issue of aging and expanding health care has been the subject of numerous studies highlighting this trend on the national and global scale. Regionally, it has justified the expansion of the hospitals in Uptown’s “Pill Hill”, including expansions at Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center and University Hospital in Corryville, and Christ Hospital in Mount Auburn.

The expanding local hospital system is offering improvements in health care services for the region’s aging population, and creating thousands of new high-paying jobs. At the same time, however, it is coming at the expense of historic neighborhoods and entire blocks of residential housing.

Such a tradeoff might be good for city coffers, but it will certainly do nothing to directly help Cincinnati’s ongoing struggle with population loss.