Author: Randy A. Simes

Randy is an award-winning urban planner who founded UrbanCincy in May 2007. He grew up on Cincinnati’s west side in Covedale, and graduated from the University of Cincinnati’s nationally acclaimed School of Planning in June 2009. In addition to maintaining ownership and serving as the managing editor for UrbanCincy, Randy has worked professionally as a planning consultant throughout the United States, Korea and the Middle East. After brief stints in Atlanta and Chicago, he currently lives in the Daechi neighborhood of Seoul’s Gangnam district.

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News Transportation

Designs for Two-Way Street Conversion in East Walnut Hills Nearly Complete

Cincy Summer Streets in Walnut Hills [Jocelyn Gibson]

Over the past four months, city planners and engineers have been working away on concepts that would transform William Howard Taft Road and E. McMillan Street into streets with two-way travel. During that time public feedback has been gathered and designs have been revised.

The actual work began much earlier than that when the City of Cincinnati converted portions of those same two streets through the Walnut Hills neighborhood back in 2012. There was some trepidation at the time in East Walnut Hills, but those have seemingly faded away following the successful conversion of those streets to the west.

“This two-way conversion will make the two neighborhoods much more connected, and make the distance between DeSales Corner and Peeble’s Corner more walkable,” explained Kevin Wright, Executive Director of Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation. “Our goal is to make the two districts more connected, and this is one of many changes that will be put in place to make that area more walkable.”

Some of those other changes include the redevelopment of historic buildings throughout the business district, establishment of new public gathering spaces, and potential upgrades to the district’s bus service.

Since the last round of public meetings, staff from Cincinnati’s Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE) have prepared updated alternatives for traffic flow and streetscape enhancements. These alternatives were presented at a public meeting on February 25, 2015, which included many residents and business owners from the East Walnut Hills neighborhood.

The modifications include the addition of off-peak parking on the north side of William Howard Taft Road between Woodburn Avenue and Ashland Avenue, the addition of left turn lanes from E. McMillan Street to Victory Parkway, and the addition of a landscaped island on the east leg of the Woodburn Avenue and E. McMillan Street intersection.

Project officials say there will be another round of public feedback on these changes, and members of the public are encouraged to share their feedback with Greg Koehler [greg.koehler@cincinnati-oh.gov] or Curtis Hines [curtis.hines@cincinnati-oh.gov] by Wednesday, March 11.

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Development News

VIDEO: Workers Looking To Make Up Lost Time On $86M Nippert Stadium Project

The exterior structure is now largely complete for the $86 million Nippert Stadium renovation and expansion project.

According to project manager Bob Marton, the construction team will now largely be focused on interior work, but that the exterior façade will really take shape over the next few weeks.

Similar to other construction projects around the city, the brutally cold and snowy weather lately has slowed down progress. Marton says, however, that they were able to shift some workers to interior projects, and that they will work some extra shifts to make up the lost time.

“We were able to put a lot of workers indoors, but the weather really slowed us down on the outside,” Marton explained in the latest project update. “We need to keep that work rolling as much as we can, because we want to get enclosed by the end of the month.”

He went on to say that the weather caused three to four days of delay. While work will continue to blaze ahead over the coming months in preparation of the University of Cincinnati’s home season football opener on Saturday, September 5 against Alabama A&M.

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Development News

The Death of Newport’s 1,100′ Millennium Freedom Tower Proposal

The progress being made at the $80 million second phase of Newport on the Levee is encouraging, but just around the block another highly touted project from the late 1990s stands next to a parking lot that has lingered for far too long.

For nearly 16 years, the $2 million World Peace Bell has sat less than proudly at Fourth and York Streets. The monument itself is fine, but has had to deal with being, “wedged between a parking lot and a White Castle.”

This was not how it was suppose to go. Instead, the 66,000-pound World Peace Bell was meant to be joined by the ostentatious Millennium Freedom Tower. Of course, the approximately $100 million structure was never built, but many may forget the original development vision.

The super-tall structure would have served primarily as a monument, but would have also included a restaurant and bar approximately midway up the tower, and office space closer to the top. It would have also boasted the world’s largest carillon, gardens, event space and a several-hundred-foot free-fall ride. The proposal came amid a flurry of proposals to more or less turn Newport’s riverfront into a theme park type destination.

Much like Newport on the Levee’s second phase, something will eventually be built on this site, but it will assuredly be more modest than what was originally proposed. But unlike what is rising a couple of blocks away at the foot of the Purple People Bridge, whatever eventually rises at this site will almost certainly be better than what was originally proposed.

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Business News Opinion

EDITORIAL: Don’t Cancel Homearama, Relocate It

Homes in Clifton Heights [Travis Estell]

The past ten days have been interesting. A week ago I spoke with Keith Schneider from the New York Times about the booming residential property values in Cincinnati’s center city. Then, just one day later, the Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati announced that they would be cancelling this year’s Homearama event in Clermont County.

The annual suburban home show has been going since 1962, and was cancelled this year due to, “increased activity in other segments of the housing market.” One of the builders that has traditionally participated in those over-the-top suburban home shows is Great Traditions, which recently expressed a growing interest in developing urban properties.

Great Traditions is not the only one. Greiwe Development has also said that they would like to start building homes along the Cincinnati Streetcar starter line, John Hueber Homes made the same transition to Over-the-Rhine, and Ashley Builders appears to just be getting started on their work in the center city.

So while homebuilders are struggling in the region’s outlying suburbs, they seem to be thriving in a manner that is pulsating outward from Downtown and Over-the-Rhine.

It seems more than likely that Homearama will return in the not-so-distant future, but should it? With all the demographic and economic trends pointing in the opposite direction, perhaps the energy and money put into the 53-year-old suburban home show should be shifted elsewhere. I could think of some very nice places to do urban home shows in Pleasant Ridge, Walnut Hills, Avondale, West End, Price Hill, East End, and College Hill. And that is not even considering the possibilities in Northern Kentucky’s river cities.

Yes, there is CiTiRAMA, but that annual home show is often limited in its scale and tends to leave much to be desired.

The writing appears to be on the wall, which makes the outlandish Fischer Homes Expressway proposal look all the more desperate. Why keep up the fight? There are plenty of opportunities in our region’s first-ring suburbs, and the city governments overseeing those sites will assuredly be more than happy to cooperate.

Don’t believe me? Just ask those developers that had been defined by their suburban subdivisions for decades how they are liking life in neighborhoods like East Walnut Hills, O’Bryonville, Northside, Clifton and Over-the-Rhine where condos are virtually sold-out.

I hope the Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati decides to not cancel this year’s Homearama after all. I just hope they relocate it to the inner-city where the residential housing market is hot.

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Up To Speed

Should SORTA redraw its entire system? And if so, how?

Should SORTA redraw its entire system? And if so, how?.

On the latest episode of The UrbanCincy Podcast we discussed some ideas that Cincinnati would be smart to copy from other cities. One of the items discussed was a complete overhaul of the region’s bus network. Metropolitan Seoul did it in the early aughts, and Houston is in the process of doing it now. While there are numerous ways in which to go about doing this, one approach could be to crowd-source ideas from people using this bus routing tool. More from CityLab:

Not only does the tool give agencies a visually appealing way to present potential routes, but it enables them to respond to ideas—or, let’s face it, complaints—in real-time. If someone wants to move a bus route one street over, for instance, planners can just drag a line a few blocks and show that for an extra $250,000 the bus will now pick up just 10 more people a day.

“Transit for a lot of riders seems like just lines on the map,” he says. “This tool can really communicate to folks—much, much quicker than we’ve ever been able to— what changes to the system mean.”