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.

Categories
News Politics Transportation

Let’s talk tax structure and streetcars

There is no doubt that residents and businesses, in Downtown/OTR/Uptown, see the value in the proposed streetcar system. It is also quite understandable that community leaders in neighborhoods like Westwood, Price Hill, and Mt. Washington may not exactly see the benefits to their respective communities.

Every community would like to have more amenities and improved services. These are the things that help make neighborhoods successful and great places to live. At the same time they understandably don’t want to see their taxes rise. So lets break down the tax structure and how the streetcar will play into this whole situation…

Residential properties are accepted losers when it comes to taxes. They simply demand far more services than they pay for in taxes. Those services (i.e. trash, police, fire, schools, etc) are made possible by those that pay exceedingly more than they demand (i.e. office, industrial).

Therefore the commercial and industrial bases are the most important tax bases to preserve and grow in order to maintain service levels for your residential base. Of the Top Ten taxpayers, in 2006, 9 were based out of Downtown* (for what I could find).

With that said, residential properties can get close to offsetting their service demands. The best opportunity for this to occur is in the most densely populated (or built) areas where economies of scale factor in big time. In Cincinnati’s case there is no other residential neighborhood that has a potentially better return on taxes than Over-the-Rhine.

Chart illustrating the functionality of Economies of Scale

These most densely built areas need to be focused on first and foremost, and need to be populated with as many people as possible. This allows you to grow your residential base without significantly growing the demand for services (in OTR’s case you may actually decrease demand for services like police and fire by repopulating the neighborhood).

So while a streetcar line only serving Downtown, OTR, and Uptown seems to only benefit those 3 neighborhoods…it is really affecting the financial stability of the entire city, and allows for a growth in tax base without a significantly higher demand for services. This means extra tax revenues can then be used for increased services and funding for the other 49 great Cincinnati neighborhoods.

*Tax data from City of Cincinnati’s 2006 Annual Financial Report (pdf 5mb)

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Keep the heart strong

Categories
Arts & Entertainment Business News

GoOTR 5k Run/Walk

The second GoOTR 5k Run/Walk is coming up next Saturday, May 31st. This is a great way to see the new stuff going on in OTR, get some exercise, enjoy the outdoors, and raise some money for the Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce.

This year’s 5k will start at 10am at 12th & Vine (GoogleMap). There will be food, beer and plenty of fun. This year’s race and events will pay tribute to the 1-year anniversary of the Gateway Quarter. Registration is a mere $10, with the money going to the OTR Chamber (this gets you into the race and a t-shirt).

I am signed up and ready to go…and I’ll surely be sporting my new Over-the-Rhine Volunteer Ambassador t-shirt (orange with OTR Ambassador across the back).

You can register online without any processing fees (select OTR 5k run/walk for the payment reason). You can also get more information from the OTR Chamber of Commerce at 513.241.2690 or by email at otrchamber@zoomtown.com.

Categories
Business Development News Politics

The retail over-saturation problem

When can you tell enough is enough? Is there any hope for our nation if there isn’t constant growth? These are the questions I find myself asking when I read stories like this.

Cincinnati Mills, one of the largest retail centers in the region, has seen store after store shutter. This comes after millions of dollars of reinvestment into a massive mall sandwiched in between two others along a mall interstate of sorts.

It really makes you wonder (at least me), do we really need all of this retail space. The same can even be said for urban environments where seemingly every new renovation project, in a mixed-use built area, seems to call for street-level retail with residential or office space above. I suggest that we return the area, where Cincinnati Mills sits, to a natural state. That is obviously an extreme proposal, but at the very least tear down that mall (said in my best Ronald Reagan voice) for some other/better use.

This region is growing much slower than our retail space is expanding…and it seems obvious that the retail locally (and nationally) can not sustain itself by the free market alone. It seems to me that the best alternative would be to let struggling retail space ride off into the sunset. This would allow for values to rise at other retail locations, and we could begin the process of ridding ourselves of our excessive retail space…and who knows, maybe even our over-consumerism.

Categories
Arts & Entertainment News

Check out Bob Moses at the Wisp tonight

The Blue Wisp plays host to internationally acclaimed drummer Bob Moses with his Chicago Quartet tonight (5/15). The music begins at 7:30pm with a $20 cover charge for this premium act. This is however, an UrbanCincy Night and mentioning the site (at the door) will get you $3 off your cover.

If you haven’t yet heard of Bob Moses, go check out some of his stuff (YouTube video)…you’ll be in the groove before you know it. You can make reservations at fasteddief@aol.com or by calling 513.241.WISP (9477).

Blue Wisp (GoogleMap)

Categories
News

Find UrbanCincy in more places

You can now find UrbanCincy in more places and stay connected in more ways. In addition to the Technorati and Facebook pages for UrbanCincy…you can now find us on Twitter and VerveEarth. And as always you can subscribe to UrbanCincy’s RSS feeds by clicking the link in the left-hand column or by simply clicking HERE.

The Twitter page is pretty basic right now, but will grow in the future. The Facebook page is probably the most developed and offers the best outlet to follow the various events, news, and images created by UrbanCincy.

As always, you can find links to these pages and much more over in the left column on the site. If you have accounts become followers of UrbanCincy and show your support for your Cincinnati blogspot.