Category: News

Original stories from the UrbanCincy team.

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Development News

Winners of ULI Competition Propose Bold Infill Development for Walnut Hills

ULI Hines Cincinnati Competition Winning TeamIn an effort to reach a younger audience and provide real life experiences to students and future professionals of the construction and development industry, the Urban Land Institute Cincinnati Chapter collaborated with the University of Cincinnati in a local competition that offered a $5,000 prize to a winning design for infill development proposals for the Walnut Hills neighborhood.

The competition was modeled after the ULI Hines National Competition, which calls for unique interdisciplinary work among student teams from throughout the country for feasible urban development concepts.

The Cincinnati competition, however, went one step further by including a mentoring program, in which local professionals worked directly with student teams over an eight-week period in September and October. The 17 participating students came from the University of Cincinnati’s schools of Architecture, Urban Planning and Real Estate.

The participants were divided into four teams, each with assigned ULI professional mentors well recognized for their achievements in their respective fields. Weekly lectures were also provided by professionals in local real estate, architecture and urban planning and design offices in order to expose the students to case studies and useful tools commonly used in professional practice.

In an effort to diversify academic participation, the Niehoff Urban Studio once again collaborated with the Lindner College of Business Real Estate Center and the University’s ProPel program to organize the course. Additional participation and assistance was provided by the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation acting as the chief client, while BHDP Architecture established the competition brief.

The work culminated on Monday, October 27 at the ULI Studio Competition Reception and Award Ceremony at the Niehoff Urban Studio’s Community Design Center in Corryville.

During this closing event, each team was given 40 minutes to make the case for their proposal and field questions from eight-member judging committee comprised of Brian Copfer (CORE Resources, Inc.); Traci Boeing (WesBanco Bank); Jeanne Schroer (Catalytic Development Funding Corporation of Northern Kentucky); Eric J. Gardner, MAI, CCIM (Pillar Valuation Group, Inc.); Graham Kalbli, AIA, AICP, LEED AP (New Republic); Kevin Wright (Walnut Hills Re-development Foundation); Jeff Raser, AIA, LEED-AP (Glaserworks); and Craig Gossman (Gossman Group).

The winning team, which included Kyle Zook (SAID-DAAP), Bahareh Rezaee (SOP-DAAP), Yue Yan (SOP-DAAP) and Rocky Grewal (Finance-College of Business), was awarded the competition’s $5,000 prize.

Although diverse in nature, the competing designs responded to existing form based code guidelines, the historic neighborhood context, and a mixed-use program brief which called for the incorporation of residential, live/work and retail uses. The winning team’s design set itself apart, however, by using the concept of continuity to aggregate the mixed-use program and buildings around a central public space.

Called Firehouse Row, the winning design addressed three blocks of McMillan Street near the center of Walnut Hills. The location is well-suited for infill since each lot is primarily vacant and surrounded by neighborhood residences.

“The design for a mixed use development on the site was comprised of a variety of methodologies intended to create a relationship with the surrounding public and implement a notion of connectivity not only within the building but also spanning across the different blocks,” the winning team explained.

“At a time of heightened interest for the neighborhood and the possibility of increasing densities, an approach of flexible spaces that cater to the present day inhabitants, and what shifting demographics may follow, was implemented in order to mitigate wasted and vacant spaces.”

While primarily an academic exercise focused on the experience of working in a professional setting, the competition aimed to better prepare students in urban development fields to respond to real world situations and work environments. It also provides leaders in the increasingly hot neighborhood with a vision for how the area could be developed.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Ana Gisele Ozaki, who has worked at the Niehoff Urban Studio’s Community Design Center as an adjunct professor following her graduation from DAAP’s Masters of Community Planning program in 2013, was the author of this story. Due to a system error, an earlier version incorrectly attributed it to Randy Simes.

Categories
News Opinion Transportation

Transit Users Will Need 7 Hours to Commute to ODOT Public Transit Meeting

Location of ODOT's Transit Meeting [Google Maps]

An event making the rounds on social media hosted by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) provides an opportunity for citizens to tell Governor John Kasich’s (R) administration about public transportation improvements they’d like to see in their city. The public meeting to discuss statewide transit needs is hosted on Friday, October 31 from 10am to 12pm at the Warren County OhioMeansJobs Center in Lebanon.

While the gathering has good intention, it fails to meet the basic criteria of planning a public involvement meeting:

  1. Never host a public meeting on a holiday.
  2. Never host a public meeting on a Friday or weekend.
  3. The location of a public meeting should be accessible to all members of the community and able to attract a diverse group of citizens.

By car, Lebanon is roughly a one hour drive north of Cincinnati, and a 30-minute drive south from Dayton. It’s also the city where the regional ODOT office is located; understandably why the administration would opt to hold a public involvement meeting here. What went unconsidered are the needs of people that the public meeting is focused on: citizens reliant on public transportation.

The closest Metro bus stop to Lebanon is 8.3 miles away, near Kings Island in Mason. Let’s say we’re feeling ambitious and attempt to take the bus, then bicycle the remaining journey to Lebanon. It would take 48 minutes to cycle to the meeting in addition to the 1 hour, 11 minute ride on the bus. Cincinnati Metro, the region’s bus system, only offers select service to the northern suburbs. In order to arrive on time for the 10am meeting, a person dependent on transit would have to catch the 71x at 7:45am, arrive in Mason at 8:52am, then continue to the meeting on bicycle.

Getting back home is another story. The public involvement meeting adjourns at 12pm, but the bus route that services Mason is a job connection bus, meaning it only runs traditional hours when people are going to and from work. After another 48 minutes of cycling back to the bus stop, the inbound 71x picks up shortly after 3pm and returns to Cincinnati at 4:40pm.

In summary, if a citizen dependent on bus transportation wishes to give ODOT their input, they would spend 7 hours commuting to the two hour meeting, and need to able-bodied to ride a bicycle for eight miles. What about senior citizens and people with disabilities? Who can afford to take an entire day off work to attend a meeting? As a transit rider who has a car, driving an hour each way to attend the meeting –in the middle of the work day– for me, is inconvenient and unfeasible.

The poor choice of trying to combine Cincinnati and Dayton into one meeting was an unfortunate oversight in event planning. Instead, meetings should be hosted in the downtown of each city, just like they have been in Columbus and Cleveland which are also participating in the ODOT series.

Since 2011, Governor Kasich has cut $4 million from the state’s public transit budget, leaving Ohio with one of the lowest funded transit systems in the country. If there’s a genuine interest in hearing how those cuts affect the people that rely on public transportation the most, the administration needs to schedule a second meeting in Cincinnati near Government Square where those people can actually get to.

Of course, this isn’t the first time area transit users have been ignored when it comes to public meeting locations. Earlier this year, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) upheld a decision to relocate Hamilton County’s Board of Elections office to a location that would take up to four hours to access by transit.

Categories
Development News Opinion

Redesigned Streetscapes Could Turn Fourth and Race Streets Into Vibrant Public Spaces

Public Seating in Songdo, South Korea [Randy Simes]

Fourth Street offers one of the more impressive urban street canyons in all of America. Its pre-war high-rises dominate the streetscape and offer a glimpse into the proud history of Cincinnati.

Once the very center of business activity, Fourth Street was historically known as the region’s financial district – a place where all the power players lingered and conducted business. Since its heyday in the early 20th century, that center of financial clout has shifted. Some say it has shifted to Third Street, while others say it has moved east along Fourth or even north to Fifth Street.

In any case, many of those power players are now in other nearby districts, while the impressive structures they built are left behind.

City leaders had believed, with good reason, that Fourth Street would become the region’s premier shopping destination. However, with the demise of downtown malls and department stores, that vision never fully came to be.

All has not been lost though. Virtually all of the impressive, historic urban fabric remains and has since been largely converted into residential space. There is also a movement afoot from some business and civic leaders to breathe new life into not only Fourth Street’s retail scene, but Race Street’s as well.

Part of the ongoing transformation includes Mabley Place, which converted the former Tower Place Mall into a parking garage with street-level retail, the proposed 30-story residential tower that would replace the aging Pogue’s Garage, and the nearby and soon-to-open dunnhumbyUSA headquarters tower.

There is even the possibility of Fourth Street being converted back to two-way traffic following the activation of the now unused ramp to I-75 from Third Street.

As all of these projects start to become reality, they offer a unique opportunity to redo the public space in the area. One particular area that has long needed a redo, and has been the subject of many studio projects at DAAP, is Fourth Street’s dated streetscaping. Not only does the design of the sidewalks, benches and street trees leave much to be desired, they also do not follow standard good design practices.

The renovation of Fountain Square realized this and implemented good urban design practices in its final product. Things like softscaping and movable furniture are powerful elements to a good public space. The same could be done along Fourth Street’s, and for that matter much of Race Street’s, wide sidewalk widths.

Being in the midst of the digital age, it would also make sense to make the area more welcoming to tech users by implementing Internet hot spots and including solar-powered charging stations at benches and tables set up along the street.

Specifically, the areas best suited for such a transformation would be the north side of Fourth Street between Vine and Elm, and the east side of Race Street between Fifth and Seventh.

With more and more hotels opening up downtown in general, and specifically on or very near Fourth Street, this public space could also serve as a convenient and desirable ‘third place’ for travelers that are looking to spend some time out in the city, without feeling obligated to purchase endless cups of coffee or beer, but not also be trapped inside their hotel room.

Such a design could also activate the largely lifeless corridor with people from all backgrounds, and provide more passing customers for existing and potential businesses looking to setup shop there.

With all the construction taking place and about to get started, it would make most sense to leverage these private investments to improve this public space at the same time. Heck, it might even be the perfect opportunity to connect the new Central Parkway Cycle Track with the Ohio River Trail.

Categories
Arts & Entertainment News Transportation

PHOTOS: Metro Partners With Richard Renaldi on ‘Touching Strangers’ Bus Shelter Exhibit

Touching Strangers: Cincinnati [Eric Anspach]

As part of the latest partnership of the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) and ArtWorks, 60 bus shelters throughout the city of Cincinnati now feature photographic portraits of local residents, part of a project by nationally renowned photographer Richard Renaldi.

Due to a 2013 decision by Cincinnati City Council to prohibit advertising in the city right-of-way, SORTA as been left with the question of how to fill sign panels in Metro bus shelters. Last year, the transit agency partnered with ArtWorks to present a series of graphic prints, inspired by works of literature, on 24 bus shelters.

This year the entities have again teamed up to present Touching Strangers: Cincinnati. This project is also part of the 2014 edition of Fotofocus, a biennial celebration of the art of photography.

Originally from Chicago, Renaldi now works out of New York, and his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.

Renaldi took the photos during a June visit to the city. Residents of Cincinnati area posed for the photos; most feature two people, but in several of the images three are included. The subjects were strangers to each other, having met only for the taking of the pictures, yet are positioned in poses in that suggest a level of intimacy.

Four ArtWorks youth apprentices and two local professional photographers worked with Renaldi and produced additional Touching Strangers portraits.

Renaldi and several of the apprentices dedicated the collection of photos at an event on October 16 at a shelter on Sycamore Street downtown. On hand was a Metro bus that has been wrapped with one of the images from the collection.

Many of the shelters featuring the portraits are centrally located downtown and in Over-the-Rhine, the West End, and Uptown, but others are scattered around the city in neighborhoods such as Westwood, Roselawn, and Oakley.

Categories
News Transportation

EXCLUSIVE: Donald Shoup Talks Parking Policy, OTR Permit Fees With UrbanCincy

Unused Parking at The Banks [Randy Simes]

Donald ShoupIn advance of his lecture Tuesday at the Mercantile Library, UrbanCincy was able to get an exclusive interview with Dr. Donald Shoup to discuss a variety of issues ranging from Cincinnati’s own parking management efforts, the controversial OTR Parking Permit proposal and how parking reform is changing with the emergence of ride sharing services.

The digital interview took place on Thursday, October 23 and included the following discussion.

John Yung: Last year the City of Cincinnati almost committed to leasing its parking meters and some garages to a private corporation (Xerox) for a lump sum payment and yearly revenue for 40 years. What are your thoughts on cities attempting to lease or sell their parking assets to generate revenue?

Donald Shoup: Like burning all the furniture to stay warm on a cold night, selling a city’s parking meters for an upfront payment to cover current operating expenses is a bad idea. Some cities are considering more farsighted parking contracts that share the annual revenue rather than maximize the upfront payment. A contract with a professional operator who meets performance pricing goals and shares the resulting revenue with the city can give the city two big advantages: a well-managed parking system and a perpetual stream of income.

For example, a city can require its private contractor to set meter rates that keep the curb occupancy rate between 75% and 95% on every block for at least a certain number of hours every day, with penalty payments for failure to meet the occupancy goal. If professional operators can manage parking more effectively and at lower cost than cities can, private contracts with performance goals can be a good deal for almost everyone.

Xerox already manages the prices for on-street parking in downtown Los Angeles, and the program is a great success. Charging the right prices for curb parking produced some surprising benefits. The Express Park program showed that many meters had been overpriced, especially in the morning. During the program’s first year, 59% of the meter prices decreased and only 29% increased. Average meter prices fell by 11% and average parking occupancy increased by 17%. Total meter revenue increased by 2.5%. Parking reform is working well in Los Angeles.

Yung: Cincinnati political leadership is currently looking at increasing meter rates, hours and implementing a residential parking plan for Over-the-Rhine, a neighborhood that is next to the central business district. The residential permits are proposed to be $300 a year, which will be the highest permit price for on-street parking permits in the country if implemented. The neighborhood is very walkable; however, many employment centers and retail destinations are not very accessible by transit therefore many residents of OTR still have to drive.

Do you think that this is a fair market price for a neighborhood in a city like Cincinnati where approximately 10% of the population utilize some form of alternative transportation?

Shoup: The proposed price of $300 a year for a residential parking permit seems chosen to generate revenue rather than to manage parking. It is less than $1 a day, but an on-street parking permit may not be worth even that low price to some residents. I would instead aim for the fair market price, which means the price at which demand equals the available supply.

Yung: The city is currently in the midst of a zoning code rewrite and the topic of parking requirements is up for debate. Last year the city eliminated parking requirements in the CBD and OTR; however, there is little appetite from city leaders and planners to expand the effort to other areas.

In discussions, some developers advocated for parking requirements as a way to protect on-street parking impacts around the University of Cincinnati and other high-traffic commuter areas. They argue that there are not enough parking options in the area and other developers, eager to cut costs by cutting out parking if the requirement is eliminated, would incidentally create more demand for scarce on-street spots for students and visitors.This is similar to a debate in Portland regarding high-density apartments. What would your response to this be? Are there instances where you think parking requirements would need to be preserved?

Shoup: If Cincinnati uses fair market prices to manage on-street parking – the lowest prices that will leave on 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.

Yung: Futurist seems to be talking about driverless cars as a way to streamline commutes for suburbanites however there is also some discussion on utilizing them as a automated taxi service in cities. What are your thoughts on driverless cars and what do you think their impacts will be on cities and parking reform?

Shoup: I don’t think driverless cars will have a big impact on cities during my lifetime. I do think that Uber, Lyft, Zipcar and the like are already having a big impact.

Yung: Can you elaborate on how car sharing services are impacting the parking demand market in cities?

Shoup: Uber, Lyft, and Zipcar reduce parking demand because they can substitute for a second car or even a first car for some families. Several studies of carsharing services like Zipcar have found that each shared car replaces between 9 and 13 privately owned cars because carshare members reduce the number of cars they own or avoid buying a car as a result of joining. Here is the link to a recent article about how carsharing reduces vehicle ownership and thus parking demand. And here is the link to another article about how dedicating an on-street parking space for a shared car reduces the demand for car ownership and thus parking demand.

Yung: SFpark has been widely discussed as a success in national urban blogs. Do you think this system is the ideal model for ensuring demand driven market pricing for parking in cities? Are there any suggestions that you would make to change or improve this system?

Shoup: SFpark, San Francisco’s new pricing program, aims to solve the problems created by charging too much or too little for curb parking. If the price is too high and many curb spaces remain open, nearby stores lose customers, employees lose jobs, and governments lose tax revenue. If the price is too low and no curb spaces are open, drivers who cruise to find an open space waste time and fuel, congest traffic, and pollute the air. SFpark bases the price adjustments purely on observed occupancy.

Planners cannot reliably predict the right price for parking on every block at every time of day, but they can use a simple trial-and-error process to adjust prices in response to occupancy rates. This process of adjusting prices based on occupancy is often called performance pricing. Beyond managing the on-street supply, SFpark helps to depoliticize parking by setting a clear pricing policy.

San Francisco charges the lowest prices possible without creating a parking shortage. Transparent, data-based pricing rules can bypass the usual politics of parking. Because demand dictates the prices, politicians cannot simply raise them to gain more revenue. Here is the link to a short article that explains SFpark.

Immediately after conducting this interview with Dr. Shoup, it was revealed that many recently constructed parking garages in Portland, as required by law, are now sitting mostly empty.

Dr. Donald Shoup’s lecture at the Mercantile Library will take place tomorrow at 6pm. The Mercantile Library is located less than a block south of Government Square and is accessible by a plethora of Metro Bus routes. It is also located near the Fountain Square Cincy Red Bike station.