This month’s meeting will take place at Pi Pizzeria at 199 E. Sixth Street. The recently opened restaurant has become known for selecting their restaurant location due to its location on the starter line for the Cincinnati Streetcar system, and for paying a base $10.10/hour minimum wage.
Pi Pizzeria [Thadd Fiala]
“We want to thank Pi Pizzeria owner Chris Sommers and his staff for hosting us,” said Ken Prendergast, Executive Director of All Aboard Ohio. “If you haven’t had the opportunity to try it yet you are in for a treat.”
Cincinnati City Councilman Wendell Young (D) will serve as the special guest speaker at the quarterly local chapter meeting.
Prendergast says that the group will discuss updates related to the ‘Extend The Hoosier‘ campaign that is aiming to establish daily intercity rail service between Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Chicago; the Cincinnati Streetcar; and provide updates on what is happening with the Wasson Light Rail Line project.
While All Aboard Ohio has been around for years, the organization is experiencing a resurgent base of supporters as of late, particularly in the Cincinnati region where several rail projects are currently under development.
Prendergast says that those who want to can do so for just a $35 annual membership fee, and that those dues to toward supporting these projects and are tax deductible.
Nearly eight years ago UrbanCincy came to life. The original purpose was to shine a more positive light on the things happening in our city. Over time that vision has been refined as conditions have changed locally.
Instead of focusing squarely on Downtown and Over-the-Rhine, UrbanCincy now covers urbanist news city-wide and has branched out into surrounding urban communities like Hamilton and Middletown.
Over these years many blogs have come and gone, and the local media landscape has continued to evolve. What I believe has made UrbanCincy successful over the years is our great team of contributors that have incredible knowledge about the topics on which they report.
As commented by CityBeat staff in the 2014 Best of Cincinnati awards, “UrbanCincy proved a great resource for local news in the past year, with storytelling charts and in-depth reporting shining light on issues that otherwise go ignored in local media. Its transit and infrastructure experts write with depth on issues difficult for non-beat writers to regularly cover. The best part is UrbanCincy provides all its content for free on its slick website, showing once again that good reporting doesn’t need paywalls.”
This focus and expertise has firmly aligned UrbanCincy with the mission of Streetsblog. Naturally, we have been a member of the Streetsblog Network for many years and has championed the organization and worked toward its growth. That is why we are so proud to celebrate the launch of Streetsblog Ohio.
This has been something we at UrbanCincy have been coordinating with Streetsblog Network over the past several years. In addition to the new Ohio site, Streetsblog also launched regional sites in Texas, St. Louis and the Southeast last Friday.
“These sites run on a different model than our other city-based Streetsblogs with full-time staff,” explained Ben Fried, Editor-in-Chief at Streetsblog. “Each Streetsblog affiliate syndicates material from several blogs in its region and runs a daily dose of headlines to satisfy the universal craving for morning news.”
Of course, we at UrbanCincy are not doing this alone. While we are producing the daily news roundup for Ohio, we are joined by five other sites – GreenCityBlueLake, Rustwire, Columbus Underground, Transit Columbus and Notes from the Underground – in sourcing content for Streetsblog Ohio.
This is an innovative new approach to news production in the 21st century and we are proud to say that Cincinnati is not just passively involved, but is an active leader in the movement.
“For readers, we hope these sites will unearth stories that might have been overlooked before,” Fried noted. “So much good stuff comes over the wire of the Streetsblog Network, which now collects feeds from more than 400 member blogs, we just can’t highlight all of it. The new format should bring more of this reporting and commentary to the surface for our audience.”
We are excited about the future as our eighth anniversary this approaches this May. UrbanCincy continues to develop new partnerships and will be unveiling several more exciting changes in the months to come. Thanks for reading.
Cincinnati Parks announced that they will install a first-of-its-kind public toilet facility at Smale Riverfront Park. The facility, often referred to as a ‘Portland Loo’ due to where it was first popularized, is an effort by city officials to come up with a more functional and affordable public restroom option.
The idea of installing such facilities throughout Cincinnati first came up in June 2011 when then political activist Jason Happ proposed them as a form of social equity. The issue came up again following the renovation of Fountain Square, and the subsequent frequent closures of the public restrooms built near the elevator head house next to Via Vite.
“Though some of us have more means than others, that doesn’t mean we are always prepared or capable to go buy something just for the privilege of using a toilet at a private business. That’s why, for years, I have been talking about the Portland Loo,” Happ wrote for StreetVibes in November 2012. “In short, the Portland Loo is an elegant solution for the problem of easy access to clean and safe public facilities.”
Bicyclist at a Portland Loo [Provided]
The issue resurfaced recently when community leaders, including City Councilman Chris Seelbach (D), called for the installation of a Portland Loo facility at Findlay Market.
“With more people, there’s more need for public restroom facilities that we just don’t have,” Seelbach said in January 2013. “A lot of research and thought has gone in to making sure that behavior that we don’t want to happen, doesn’t.”
While project officials have designed permanent restroom facilities into Smale Riverfront Park, the new Portland Loo will give Cincinnati Parks the opportunity to see how such a facility works for their operations. The idea is that such a system would allow for more public access with fewer operational costs and risks.
“This is an opportunity for the Park Board to test how well this facility works as a ready and free comfort solution for our community,” Willie F. Carden, Director of Cincinnati Parks, explained to UrbanCincy. “What we believe, however, first and foremost, is that the Portland Loo will become an essential park enhancement that demonstrates utmost respect for the human dignity each and every citizen deserves.”
As of now, public restroom facilities in city parks are often closed or not fully operational. They also often are considered a public health and safety concern due to their design. Some of the biggest benefits of the Portland Loo system is that they are designed in manner that allows for 24-hour use and are easily monitored, cleaned and maintained.
According to park officials, the improved safety is due to the angled lower louvers at the top and bottom of the facility, which allows for external monitoring of what is happening inside without disturbing the occupant’s privacy. They also say that the facility will be covered in graffiti-proof coating.
The new facility at Smale Riverfront Park will come online June 19 and will feature an outside hand-washing station, rooftop solar panels to power the station’s lights, and will be handicap accessible and include room for a bike or stroller.
Using just 1.28 gallons of water per flush, the toilets are also comparable to sustainable low-flush toilets that use anywhere between 1.1 to 1.6 gallons of water per flush.
Should the results of this first installation come back positive, it would seem likely that the City of Cincinnati would revisit the idea of installing one at Findlay Market where its bathroom facilities are also considered to be problematic. Beyond that, several other parks and neighborhood business districts might be ideal candidates for further expansion.
On the 47th episode of The UrbanCincy Podcast, Northside neighborhood leader James Heller-Jackson discussed the hopes the community has for improving Jacob Hoffner Park in the heart of the neighborhood’s resurgent business district.
“The neighborhood has said that they want somewhere they can hold events, and have it [Hoffner Park] be the center of the community,” Heller-Jackson said on the podcast. “There are also some amenities that we would like – like bathrooms for instance. Those would be awesome there and would make it a lot easier to have events there.”
For now, however, the first Portland Loo will be put to the test along the central riverfront. Carden says that Cincinnati Parks will then assess if and when additional Portland Loos will be added to other parks in the system.
The seven-story Middletown Building & Deposit Association tower in Butler County was one of 12 projects in southwest Ohio to receive historic tax credits last month from the State of Ohio. As part of the deal, the $3.1 million project will receive $600,000.
The redevelopment of the 85-year-old structure will result in expanded and renovated street-level retail space, with 24 market-rate apartments on the six floors above that.
Goetz Tower [Google Street View]
The hope is that other similar, but smaller-scale, projects come online, as is expected, after the next round of historic tax credits are awarded this spring.
As earlier reported by UrbanCincy, this award was part of a larger $42 million distribution of historic tax credits state-wide by the Ohio Development Services Agency. The goal of the tax credits, public officials say, is to spark economic development while also preserving historic structures. It is anticipated that this round of awards will spur an estimated $600 million in private investment.
This award comes after nearly $150,000 in grants for assessments and site preparation awarded by the Duke Energy Foundation, US Environmental Protection Agency, and Cincinnati Development Fund. The moment that really gave the project its initial boost, however, came in 2012 when the building was donated to Grassroots Ohio by Fifth Third Bank.
In conjunction with the $10 million rehabilitation of the Sorg Opera House, city officials and private developers are expecting to leverage this initial project to spur additional development nearby. They are also hoping to leverage its location across from Cincinnati State’s Middletown campus as a walkable alternative to students who are primarily commuting from outside the city.
Built in 1930, the seven-story, Art Deco building has survived decades of changes in the heart of Middletown. Upon completion of renovations, project officials say that the building will be renamed Goetz Tower in honor of its original architect.
Construction is anticipated to start in March and last approximately 18 months.
One of the great aspects of urban life is the ability to meet new people and be exposed to diverse ideas you have not encountered before. Many of us, however, seem to take this fact for granted, and do not often engage in conversations with neighbors or other people we encounter throughout the city.
The creators of Cincy Stories, a new event series, hope to change exactly that. The quarterly event aims to bring people together to share stories personal from their lives.
“Cincy Stories is about intimately connecting to our neighbors and just sharing stories like people do in their living rooms or around their dining room tables,” event co-founder Shawn Braley told UrbanCincy.
The first Cincy Stories will feature three speakers: Cincinnati City Council Member Chris Seelbach, OTR Community Council President Ryan Messer, and mixologist-entrepreneur Molly Wellmann. It will be held on Tuesday, February 3 at 7pm in the Sword Room at MOTR Pub. The event is free and open to anyone who would like to come and listen.
One of the great aspects of urban life is the ability to meet new people and be exposed to diverse ideas you have not encountered before. Many of us, however, seem to take this fact for granted, and do not often engage in conversations with neighbors or other people we encounter throughout the city.