Julie Carpenter of Soapbox Cincinnati has a great article outlining all the ways increased density helps cities build and maintain themselves sustainably.
You can read this as a both a complement to the city’s proposed Connected Communities plan — and a way to help address some of the issues identified by the Futures Commission.
Deliberating the D Word (Density)
Ovation, the 25-acre mixed-use development planned by Corporex to transform the northwestern corner of Newport, has completed its first phase of construction with the addition of PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation—a music venue that promises big things for the river’s edge. The $40 million concert venue aims to attract hundreds of thousands of fans every year with over 180 acts, both big and small.
PromoWest Productions, which operates six music venues as well as the Bunbury Music Festival, considers the Newport venue to be their third crown jewel, alongside Express Live! in Columbus and Stage AE in Pittsburgh. All three feature a reversible stage allowing for smaller indoor or larger outdoor configurations, but as the newest, Newport’s venue features additional amenities designed to provide the best possible experience for fans, artists, and the production crew.
The multi-level indoor pavilion can accommodate 1500 to 2700 general admission fans plus an additional 428 seated. Outside, the amphitheater can accommodate 7000 general admission plus 1040 seated. The whole venue sits atop a parking garage that boasts upwards of 500 spaces.
Both indoor and outdoor areas feature giant sunken pits in front of the stage with raised levels surrounding them, providing excellent vantage points from every viewing angle. And no matter where you are in the venue, whether it be at the bar getting another round or on your way to the bathroom to get rid of the previous one, TV screens scattered strategically throughout the pavilion will keep you tethered to what’s happening on stage.
Murals of well-known musicians enliven the walls of the facility. Inside the VIP lounge on the second level, a mural featuring a TV is animated BLINK-style with a ceiling-mounted projector, adding yet another dimension to an already stunning work of art.
Backstage, six dressing rooms, each equipped with TVs and bathrooms with showers, are poised to make the performing artists’ lives as comfortable as possible. A full kitchen will serve as the base for on-site caterers, and multiple production rooms, each with its own private bathroom, are equipped to house show technicians comfortably.
The Green Room on the second level lives up to its namesake by committing to the color in every way possible and can be rearranged to accommodate artists’ varying needs. Adjacent to the Green Room is the King Records Room—a versatile, private space embellished with a colorful mural that pays homage to Cincinnati’s legendary artists and the historic recording studio in Evanston.
Click the photo below to launch our full photo gallery:
The venue’s first wave of acts was announced earlier this morning:
Another wave of artists will be announced on June 15th.
PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation is located at 101 W. 4th Street in Newport, KY, right behind the Campbell County Courthouse. Visit OvationPavilion.com for additional information.
Check, one, two. Hey is this thing on?
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.
Since its inception, the revitalization of city-owned Ziegler Park has helped to foster not only a stronger sense of community but also an increase in investment and development in the Over-the-Rhine and Pendleton neighborhoods. The park straddles Sycamore Street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets and for many years was a poorly maintained, crime-ridden hub for drug activity.
However, in 2012 Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) approached the City of Cincinnati with the idea of redeveloping the park in an effort to combat the disinvestment the area had been experiencing. Soon after, a team was put together through the Cincinnati Park Board and the Cincinnati Recreation Commission (CRC) to gather community input on a new vision for the public space.
The project broke ground in January 2016 and was completed during the summer of 2017. The massive $32 million transformation allowed Ziegler Park to expand from 1.5 acres to 4.5 acres and also included a game grove, pool, sprayground, basketball courts, children’s playground and a 400-space underground parking garage.
One of the most significant additions to the park–and to the neighborhoods of Pendleton and Over-the-Rhine in general–has been the brand new 400-space parking garage. The garage helps to alleviate some of the parking challenges experienced by residents, business owners, and visitors and even displays the amount of open spaces left in real time at the entrance to the garage as well as on the Ziegler Park website.
Since November 2015, when the Cincinnati City Planning Commission recommended approval of the park revitalization, the properties surrounding the park have experienced a wave of momentum. Over 30 building permits that have been issued to date for repairs or alterations within a quarter mile radius of the park.
Some of the more notable projects completed include the addition of new businesses adjacent to or near to the park. The Takeaway Deli & Grocery, Pendleton Parlor Ice Cream & Cookie Dough, Boomtown Biscuits & Whiskey, The Pony, Allez Bakery, Brown Bear Bakery have opened or are slated to open later this year. Rosedale, Revel, The Hub, Treehouse Bar, Longfellow, 3 Points Urban Brewery round out the list.
The additional parking capacity has also allowed office projects like the new Empower MediaMarketing’s new office location on 14th street to be constructed.
The enhancements alone have provided the community with a space to gather, play, relax, and enjoy the outdoors. In addition to these improvements, the Everybody In program helps maintain Ziegler’s commitment to inclusivity by making pool memberships affordable regardless of income.
The program also provides free programming for youth including swim lessons, summer camp, and basketball games. The Everybody In program receives its funding from Procter & Gamble (P&G) and the Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing (OCCH).
The revitalization of the park coupled with its accessibility has increased the amount of foot traffic in the area, which in turn, has bolstered the economic development of the community overall. Now considered a neighborhood asset as opposed to a challenge, Ziegler has become a destination for families and individuals coming from a variety of backgrounds and incomes.
For example, the creation of the Rhino’s Swim Team is one of the many opportunities that arose from the revitalization of the park. The team, focused on community youth, has no registration feel and is supported through donations.
Although Ziegler Park’s dramatic transformation is probably not exclusively responsible for the boost in economic development in Over-the-Rhine and Pendleton, it is fairly safe to assume that this revitalization has been catalytic. What was once a hub for crime and drug trafficking is now a safe community space that is accessible to all incomes and provides the neighborhood with assets that are essential for a higher quality of life. The redevelopment of this public space has proven that its value extends beyond the boundary of the park itself.
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. UrbanCincy interviewed 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.
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.
