Category: Development

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Arts & Entertainment Development News Transportation

Memorial Day – 2012*

So, I’m sitting here at the Christian Moerlein Lager House enjoying a Helles and thinking about what lies ahead this summer… it’s going to be a busy one! Living in Cincinnati has never been better with all of the new things we have going on; I’m so glad I decided to stay after we turned down Issue Nine back in 2009. Back then, the downtown area was just starting to turn around compared to where we are today. I mean, Fountain Square had again taken its rightful place as the center of our community and things up in the Gateway Quarter were really starting to tick. There was some real promise, but many people had their doubts as well. Now though, there are very few doubters left, and almost all the concerns from back then have been alleviated.

I mean, the things that are going on these days in and around the center city are just amazing compared to where we have been for at least the past twenty years. I would call it a renaissance or even a rebirth, but it’s more like a brand Cincinnati is developing right before our very eyes. The Banks project is coming along nicely, even if we all know that it seems like it was talked about forever. We all knew that even when the project started it was going to take a while, but it’s so good to see people living and working there even now! Alongside it Riverfront Park has added a wonderful green space at the base of the freshly painted Roebling Suspension Bridge. I have to say it is so much nicer to sit here and watch people in the park than it would be to see another parking lot along the riverfront. Hard to believe we had to live through that for all those years!

Central Riverfront Park, Great American Tower at Queen City Square, Phase 1 of The Banks – Renderings Provided.

The city’s tallest building, The Tiara Tower, has been open for a little over a year and not only does it look great but it has a nice occupancy rate as well. It has brought a lot of jobs and driven interest in additional ambitious building projects around town. For example, over in Newport more development has taken hold as Ovation opened up recently. Really, when you stop and think about it, this area along the Ohio River is booming and both sides of the river have taken great pride in it all.

Speaking of pride, the Cincinnati Streetcar opened up early this year and the response has been amazing! People park down at The Banks, jump on the streetcar and find their way around town very easily. They are able to ride up to Findlay Market among other places, and next year they will be able to get all the way up to the University. New businesses and residences abound along the line and have really added a substantial amount of tax revenue to the city coffers that were not looking good even three years ago.

The Cincinnati Streetcar travels on Walnut Street past the Aronoff Center and the Backstage Entertainment District south towards The Banks.

What else is going on? Well, the World Choir Games will be here before we know it and we are expecting quite a crowd. It is the first time the games will be in the United States and estimates are that 250,000 people will be here in town in less than six weeks to take them in. It’s going to be quite an event and the hotels have been booked up for the last year. There is also a huge Pomegranates show this coming weekend. They haven’t been in town for a while because of their touring schedule, and we all miss them dearly. They really started cooking in 2009 back when we were all concerned with Issue 9. Additionally, the Major League All-Star Game will be here in 2015 and we are all looking forward to that gigantic event! People around the area are so glad that we have a city to show off and one that we can be proud of!

Cincinnati… we’ve had a lot of hurdles and obstacles to overcome, but things have been moving in the right direction for a while now and I don’t see how the momentum could be stopped!

*Denotes that this is a vision of where we are headed, and not truly a post from the future. As you can see, almost all of these projects are underway in 2009 and this post was meant to tie them all together & draw a picture of what it all will look like. As of now, the All-Star game & streetcar are the the biggest dreams, but hopefully that all begins to change tomorrow. NO ON NINE!

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Development News

The Banks & Queen City Square

Cincinnati’s new tallest building, the Great American Tower at Queen City Square, continues to climb upward as it now appears to be over the half-way mark in terms of total height. Meanwhile, The Banks is climbing above street level, the new street grid continues to develop, and the underground parking garages that will lift the development out of the flood plain are pretty much completed for phase 1 of the billion dollar mixed-use development. The first of the multi-floor residential buildings with street level commercial space should be rising within the coming weeks.

Here are a series of pictures taken over the last week or so of some of the progress being made on both developments happening Downtown. Aside from the few taken from the upper deck at Paul Brown Stadium, they are mainly a street view of where things stand these days.

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Development News Politics Transportation

The "Other" Portland

On a recent vacation, I had the opportunity to visit Portland. No not the west coast Portland that everyone is talking about in regards to Cincinnati’s Issue 9, but rather the east coast Portland. During a week spent mostly in mid-coast Maine, I took some time to drop in on Portland to see what that city had to offer. With a metro population of 230,000 it is rather small compared to what we are used to here in Cincinnati, but it is home to one quarter of all residents in Maine. I honestly was not expecting too much, but was rather surprised by what I found.

Being a coastal town, I did think that this would be a city center full of shops and dinners that catered to Maine tourists and took advantage of their geographic location. I had pictured lobster flavored beer and lighthouses on doormats. But, much to my surprise what I found instead was a city block after city block of eclectic shops and independent restaurants. As I spent my evening wandering around shops and stopping off for dinner and drinks, I thought “this is exactly what OTR could be given a chance” and an UrbanCincy post was born.

The biggest thing that jumped out was that Portland seemed to have was a unified vision of what they wanted in this area. It could have been tacky t-shirt shops and chain restaurants. They could have promoted tear-downs and rebuilds to bring a more modern feel to the town. Instead funky shops, boutiques, and art galleries lined the street and used old buildings that had clearly been in downtown Portland for quite a while. While I was there on a Wednesday night in what is the start of the off-season, there was a good amount of people out and about enjoying themselves.

If nothing else Portland, Maine has an identity, and that is something that our area desperately seems to be searching for. It is my opinion that with a streetcar, a successful Banks project, and continued development on the river in Northern Kentucky we will have one that is appealing to long time residents, local college students, and outsiders that may consider Cincinnati as a place to live. The photos above are a small sampling of the establishments around downtown Portland.

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Development News

New renderings of UC’s Jefferson Ave. Sports Complex

New renderings of the University of Cincinnati’s “Jefferson Avenue Sports Complex” have been released. This complex will feature a full-sized 100-yard field which the lacrosse team will use for home games, and a smaller 50-yard practice field. During the winter months, the large field will be covered by a “bubble”, providing an indoor practice space for football, lacrosse, track and field, and soccer. The indoor facility will maintain a temperature of 50-60 degrees, even in the harshest of Cincinnati’s winters.

In constructing the new complex, the University will be removing a maintenance facility and a parking lot, one of only two large lots remaining on campus. The new facility will be adjacent to the University’s existing Varsity Village complex, which includes Nippert Stadium, Fifth Third Arena at the Shoemaker Center, Gettler Stadium, Marge Schott Stadium, and Sheakley Lawn.

See more renderings at GoBearcats.com.

Additional reading:

Categories
Development News Politics Transportation

The 3C Corridor and its impacts on Cincinnati

Representatives from the Ohio’s Department of Transportation traveled to City Hall last week to host an open forum discussing and explaining the 3C passenger rail project to Cincinnatians. This proposal will connect Cincinnati to Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland via passenger rail, and a group of about 30 people gathered at City Hall to get more information on the upcoming project and voice their opinions on the project and how it will affect Cincinnati.

The 3C representatives went through a detailed presentation outlining the plan that will be submitted to the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act for funding. If funding is approved for this project, there will be a preliminary “Quick Start” phase to get the rail up and running as quickly as possible. In this first phase it will take approximately 6.5 hours to ride the train from Cincinnati to Cleveland, with the trains reaching speeds of up to 79 miles per hour.

The eventual goal is to develop high-speed rail in Ohio, with trains traveling up to 110 miles per hour, and eventually connecting into the larger Midwest regional rail plan often referred to as the Chicago Hub. At these speeds the travel time from Cincinnati to Cleveland will be reduced to approximately 3.5 hours. Future hubs will create more stops than the six that are currently proposed. The current recommended route that will be submitted with the proposal includes hubs in Cleveland proper, south Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, north Cincinnati, and Cincinnati proper.

So how does this affect Cincinnati? Having reliable passenger rail connecting the public throughout the state of Ohio is fantastic. Of course, high-speed rail is the preferable (and eventual) goal, but one has to wonder how effective taking “baby steps” towards rail will be as opposed to tackling high-speed rail in one fell swoop.

The biggest concern at the meeting was the location of the train station that would service the greater Cincinnati area. The research group initially picked three locations to focus on: the Queensgate area, an area near Riverside Drive/the Boathouse/Sawyer Point, or a station located farther east, near Lunken Airport. All three of these options naturally have their drawbacks. The Queensgate area already deals with large amounts of freight traffic, and the concern was that there would be too much congestion in the area to make that stop feasible.

The proposed “Option one” (Riverside Drive) area was the station that caused the most concern and alarm among residents who were in attendance at the meeting. Denise Driehaus, a state representative who hails from the West Side, voiced her concern that locating the station on the far southeast side of the City would set up obstacles for citizens traveling from the west side. It is also less advantageous from a retail and tourism perspective, as newcomers to the Cincinnati will be dropped off on the east side rather than more towards the city center.

There were several East End citizen groups who were concerned about the Option One site for different reasons. Over the course of several years, citizen groups and people from the area have worked hard to create a “Riverfront Renaissance” consisting of the network of parks and housing in that particular area. These citizens are concerned that a new diesel train station would disturb the views and tear down the aforementioned parks. All of these proposed stations are, as of now, only temporary locations. As the Riverfront Renaissance spokesman stated, “temporary’ is measured in decades in Cincinnati.”

As of the meeting, the ODOT representatives stated that they had not come to a conclusion on which Cincinnati site they would choose to include in the October 2nd proposal. However, Jason from Somewhere Over-the-Rhine cites an article from the Enquirer stating that the backlash from this open forum meeting prompted officials to choose the Lunken Airport site as opposed to the eastern riverfront area.

There are obvious drawbacks to this site as well, the most obvious being its distance from the Cincinnati’s center city and its attractions and accommodations for business and leisure travelers alike. There is also the issue of being so far away from the existing Amtrak service that connects Cincinnati with Indianapolis and Chicago to the west, and Washington D.C. to the east – both of which run out of Cincinnati’s Union Terminal in Queensgate.

What are your thoughts?