Category: Opinion

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Business Development News Opinion

Land swap could provide Port Authority immediate economic development opportunity

Hamilton County Commissioner Chris Monzel (R) has repeatedly stated that the county should not be in the parking business. In doing so, Monzel has suggested that Hamilton County sell off its parking assets at The Banks and elsewhere in downtown Cincinnati.

An exclusive UrbanCincy analysis shows that Hamilton County currently has approximately $38.7 million worth of parking assets at The Banks sitting on land valued by the Hamilton County Auditor at $10.4 million.

At the same time, Hamilton County and leaders from the City of Cincinnati keep working to find ways to work together. One of those strategies has led to the increased investment, by both the city and county, in the Cincinnati Port Authority. The idea, officials say, is that the Port Authority could become a Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) equivalent at the county level.

As leaders work with the Port Authority’s new CEO, Laura Brunner, they should explore selling or trading these parking assets to parking management companies that control potentially developable land elsewhere. Five unique locations come to mind throughout downtown Cincinnati.

4th & Plum:
This lot has long sat vacant, and had been speculated for a mid-rise condominium tower within the past decade. Nothing has happened, but UrbanCincy has previously opined that this collection of two parcels would be ideal for a small dog park and residential mid-rise, or even a small park designed to accommodate public debate. The 1.71-acre piece of land is valued at $6.1 million.


View Hamilton County Land Bank Proposal in a larger map.

7th & Vine:
Two small parking lots occupy this eastern portion of Vine Street at the edge of Piatt Park, and just north of Fountain Square. The property sits within a stretch of several blocks that include restaurants, nightclubs, bars and local shops.

A residential high-rise with street-level retail would seem to be an ideal candidate for this .6-acre plot of land in the heart of the city center. Previously, UrbanCincy has suggested that this street-level space might be a perfect, and centrally located, spot for a small urban grocery store. In total, the land and its improvements are valued at approximately $2.8 million.

Central & Walnut:
This particular site is chopped up into eight different parcels with various owners, but it is also located adjacent to the Hamilton County Administrative Offices, Hamilton County Courthouse, and sits immediately on the phase one route of the Cincinnati Streetcar.

In total, the .8-acre piece of land is valued at $2.3 million and would make an ideal site for an 8-10 story structure housing either offices or residences.

Court & Walnut:
Located immediately south of the previous site, this .9-acre location is valued at $2.3 million and will also be a prime location along the new modern streetcar line connecting the central riverfront with the northern reaches of historic Over-the-Rhine.

Similar to the 9th & Walnut site, this location includes seven different parcels owned by more than one entity, and would be well-suited for the same type of development.

9th & Main:
This .28-acre site is the smallest of all those identified, but has a total value of $904,000. While the site is relatively small, it also sits right on phase one of the Cincinnati Streetcar route, and would serve as an attractive residential infill site.

In total all of the sites would account for just over one-third of the total appraised value of Hamilton County’s parking assets at The Banks. UrbanCincy proposes that the county either sell off those assets at The Banks, and use the proceeds to purchase these non-county-owned sites, or trade those assets to parking management companies for their property downtown.

This endeavor would rid the county of the parking facilities it does not wish to maintain, while also seeding the Cincinnati Port Authority with new capital and resources to use for economic development activities. The end result would also create more tax generating properties on the region’s most valuable real estate.

Categories
Development News Opinion Politics Transportation

Cincinnati wants cyclists to grade city on its bicycle infrastructure and policies

The City of Cincinnati is looking for bicyclists to share their thoughts about how the city is progressing with its bicycling infrastructure and policies. From now until December 31 bicyclists can give their feedback to the Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE) about what would make them feel safer and use their bicycle more often.

In 2010 bicyclists gave the city an overall grade of “C” for its progress, just as they did in 2009, and city officials are hoping the feedback can help guide policy decisions to improve the atmosphere for bicycling in Cincinnati.


An on-street bicycle corral was installed on Main Street in Over-the-Rhine earlier this year.

“We’re working to create a bicycle friendly city, so that Cincinnatians of all ages and abilities can use bicycles for everyday trips,” stated DOTE director Michael Moore. “The report card survey is a great tool for publicly measuring our progress.”

This is the third year in which the city has solicited such feedback to help guide its bicycle program. Over that time the city has also worked to implement new bicycle parking and lane infrastructure, along with new policies intended to improve bicycling culture in Cincinnati.

Over the course of the past year, city officials tout the creation of a pocket-sized guide to Cincinnati’s bike laws, new sharrows on Madison Road, bike lanes on Martin Luther King Drive and Beechmont Avenue, the installation of an on-street bicycle corral on Main Street in Over-the-Rhine, and the completion of a segment of the Mill Creek Trail.

The 2011 Report Card on Bicycling survey asks respondents to grade the city on its overall facilities and policies, while also asking what directions the city should take to improve its grade. Those interested can take the survey online now. It takes approximately five minutes to complete.

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Business Development News Opinion Transportation

Lagging air service at CVG may mean more trouble than just Chiquita’s departure

In 1987, the same year that Chiquita announced its move to Cincinnati from New York City, Delta Airlines began its first non-stop flights to Europe from what was then called the Greater Cincinnati Airport. 18 years later, the airport’s “Hub Era”, as the period is described on the airport’s own website, drew to a close just as a third north-south runway was completed. Since that $250 million runway opened in 2005, total annual passengers at CVG have fallen from 22.8 million to 7.9 million.

In 1998, at the height of the Delta hub’s growth, the Cincinnati Metropolitan Growth Alliance hired Michael Gallis, a Charlotte-based planning consultant, to deliver a report on the state of Cincinnati [Download the Gallis Report] and how it must position itself for the 21st century. Given this week’s news regarding Chiquita, this passage from the report is especially prophetic:

“The Airport cannot be taken for granted. There is strong competition for airline activity and hub status among metro regions. Therefore, it is essential to continue involvement with the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to assure its continuing status as a major global hub.”

Unlike in Europe, where government-owned airlines don’t shift their hub operations, American cities are at the mercy of the finances of those airlines that serve them. Chiquita is moving to Charlotte primarily because of the relative health of US Airways versus Delta — the City of Cincinnati has no say in the affairs of Delta Airlines or even the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport.


Charlotte will add Chiquita to its corporate roster in late 2012.

So is Cincinnati finished as a viable location for international business because of Delta’s 2006 bankruptcy? Since second-tier cities like Cincinnati and Charlotte are at the mercy of their airport’s hub operator, won’t Chiquita find itself in a similar situation when US Airways inevitably suffers similar financial problems?

The great frustration is that all of this could have been avoided if at the cusp of the jet age a major airport had been built in Butler County so as to draw from the combined 3-plus million population of Cincinnati and Dayton. Such an airport could have attracted all of the development that now occupies Boone County, Kentucky, and the larger combined population would have ensured multiple major carriers.

Is a continued reliance on CVG a strategy that dooms Cincinnati’s potential? There is a temptation, given the billions invested in that facility over the past 60 years, to dismiss any notion of constructing a new airport in Ohio. But with no futuristic transportation mode on the horizon, it appears that jet travel will continue in a form similar to what exists now for decades to come.

A new airport in Butler County, served by I-75 and a new rail transit line linking downtown Cincinnati and downtown Dayton, is the sort of investment that area business leaders and the State of Ohio should be pushing to ensure southwest Ohio’s competitiveness.

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Business Development News Opinion Politics Transportation

Vote in support of Cincinnati’s urban core today

Today Cincinnati voters will approve or defeat the most far-reaching public transportation ballot issue to confront any American city in recent times. The passage of Issue 48 would not just kill Cincinnati’s modern streetcar project, which has been in planning since 2007 and fully funded by 2010, but will ban all planning and construction of rail transit and passenger rail projects within the City of Cincinnati’s municipal boundaries until 2020.

Issue 48’s author, Anderson Township resident Chris Finney, has been abusing Cincinnati’s charter amendment process since the early 1990’s. He is the man who concocted 1993’s Article XII, the anti-LGBT charter amendment that attracted waves of bad publicity and cost Cincinnati an estimated $25 million in convention business until it was overturned in 2004.

In 2009 Finney’s political action committee, Citizens Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), partnered with the Cincinnati branch of the NAACP, then headed by ex-city councilman Chris Smitherman, to place an anti-transit charter amendment on the ballot. The broad language of Issue 9, as it became known, would have mandated a public vote on Cincinnati’s modern streetcar project as well as any other passenger rail investment, such as Ohio’s 3C Corridor proposal, within the City of Cincinnati.

Issue 9 was soundly defeated, all necessary capital funds were identified for the Cincinnati Streetcar in 2010, and groundbreaking was expected in 2011. Bolstered by the election of John Kasich (R) as Ohio’s governor in November 2010, and his controversial reallocation of $50 million in state funds this past spring, COAST regrouped with the NAACP to place another anti-transit issue on the November 2011 ballot.

The implications of Issue 48 are even more far-reaching, as the charter amendment will undo all of the planning work that has been completed for the Cincinnati Streetcar, force the city to forfeit the $25 million Urban Circulator Grant it was awarded in 2010, and cripple the city’s ability to improve its public transportation for the rest of the decade.

UrbanCincy would like to encourage you to go out and vote today. Issue 48 is one of many significant issues on this year’s ballot. You will not see our endorsements for any other issue other than public transportation this year, so please be sure to go out and vote your values. And please be sure to vote no on Issue 48.

Also, when you visit your polling place today, remember that these city council candidates support the Cincinnati’s modern streetcar project: Wendell Young (D), Kevin Flynn (C), Chris Seelbach (D), Yvette Simpson (D), Chris Bortz (R), Laure Quinlivan (D), Cecil Thomas (D), Roxanne Qualls (C), Nicholas Hollan (D), Jason Riveiro (D), Kathy Atkinson (I). A full list of individuals and organizations who oppose Issue 48 has been provided by Cincinnatians For Progress.

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News Opinion Politics Transportation

Visit from President Obama raises political stakes surrounding the Brent Spence Bridge project

The Brent Spence Replacement/Rehabilitation Project – the Cincinnati region’s largest public works project in a generation – has received more media attention in the past three months than in the nine years since project planning began in 2002. But unfortunately much of the recent conversation has been politicized, with dozens of leaders and media outlets errantly stating that the existing Brent Spence Bridge will be demolished after a new bridge is built.

At an April 20, 2009 press conference, OKI announced that the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the Ohio Department of Transportation had agreed on a plan that would see a new bridge built for I-75 immediately west of the Brent Spence Bridge and that the existing bridge would be rehabilitated and carry I-71. This plan was endorsed by politicians such as Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning, who remarked at the conference that “Conceptually, what they’ve pointed out to me is a very workable plan and it will be something that we all can be proud of.”

Although the local media did report on this “hybrid” plan, it was not covered repeatedly, and so failed to be absorbed by the public. When a great media wave did appear this past summer, outlets repeatedly reported that the Brent Spence Bridge would be “replaced”. Another media surge appeared in September, in anticipation of the September 22 visit by President Barack Obama. Again, it was repeatedly reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer and various television and radio stations that the Brent Spence Bridge will be replaced.

The incredible amount of confusion surrounding the project appears to have been caused by a mix of ghost writing by highway lobbyists, the unfamiliarity of the local media with how Interstate Highway projects are funded and the lingering power of postwar pro-highway propaganda.

On a half-dozen occasions this month, various Cincinnati Enquirer reporters wrote that the bridge would be replaced, in addition to letters to the editor that repeated this myth. On September 14, Enquirer reporter Amanda Van Benshoten reported that the Brent Spence Bridge would be replaced and that it “would remain open” – all in the same article.

Functionally Obsolete vs. Obsolete
The local media and politicians who have associated themselves with this project have made liberal use of the term Functionally Obsolete, engineering jargon that most often describes a bridge with no emergency shoulders, a low overhead clearance, narrow lanes, or ramps with tight curves. The power of this phrase was even invoked by President Obama in his September 22 speech:

“Behind us stands the Brent Spence Bridge. It’s located on one of the busiest trucking routes in North America. It sees about 150,000 vehicles every single day. And it’s in such poor condition that it’s been labeled “functionally obsolete.” Think about that — functionally obsolete. That doesn’t sound good, does it?”

No, it doesn’t sound good, which is why some bureaucrat (or more likely an auto industry public relations wizard) concocted it decades ago. It insinuates structural deficiency – an official term that does denote structural problems — but which does not describe the current condition of the Brent Spence Bridge.

When it is rehabilitated after a new bridge is built, the Brent Spence will have its decks restriped with three wide lanes on each deck instead of its current four narrow lanes, and emergency breakdown lanes will be restored. Its approaches will be reconfigured and it is possible that after 2020 or so the Brent Spence will no longer be classified as Functionally Obsolete.


The Delta Queen passes under the existing Brent Spence Bridge.

The Brent Spence Bridge as Boogeyman
The Brent Spence Bridge (or more accurately, the configuration of its approaches) is the worst traffic bottleneck in the Cincinnati area, but a source of delays and a panorama of rust that would hardly pass notice in New York City or Boston. It nevertheless has been pitted as an enemy by local politicians, and the failure of the local media to do basic public document research, has allowed the bridge project to become whatever any elected official says it is.

Most believe that the Brent Spence Bridge Replacement/Rehabilitation Project, even after last month’s visit by President Obama, will not receive enough funding in the upcoming Transportation Bill to break ground until the next bill is negotiated sometime around 2017 or 2018. Look for local politicians – especially those with Tea Party affiliations – to blame this delay on government.

The project could in fact break ground in the short-term if Ohio and Kentucky cooperated to toll all area Ohio River bridges. Modest tolls could generate over $1 million per week and enable the neighboring states to sell bonds sufficient to fund this project.

But the fact that this is not happening perhaps best illustrates why Congress has hesitated to allocate money – there are no major structural problems with the Brent Spence Bridge, there are three other interstate highway bridges nearby if any problem should arise, and the project’s huge scale promises a very low rate of return on the investment.