Category: Politics

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Business News Politics Transportation

Zipcars don’t live here

As Cincinnati painstakingly works its way towards a more comprehensive transit network we must not forget that American cities are largely built around the automobile and sometimes having access to an automobile makes life easier. This does not mean that you must own and maintain a personal automobile though.

The option for those looking to live car-free or at least car-light is urban car sharing which has taken off in several American cities. In a nutshell urban car sharing compliments lifestyles that use public transit, walking and/or cycling as a primary means of transportation. In these cases the car sharing then acts as an option for trips otherwise not possible through the aforementioned means of transportation.

Out-of-town trips, special occasions (i.e. moving, joy ride, date), or trips to locations accessible only by automobiles are then made easily accessible for those not interesting in owning and maintaining a costly automobile. Users of car sharing programs like Zipcars have been found to reduce the number of automobiles per household and increase their usage of transit, bicycling and walking.

Programs such as these are often popular in high density urban locations well-served by public transit or near places with low car ownership rates like college campuses. In Midtown Atlanta alone there are 21 Zipcar locations that serve the high density urban community which is also home to the Georgia Institute of Technology and its 20,000 students. Comparatively, Uptown Cincinnati has zero Zipcar locations to serve its high density urban community and the University of Cincinnati’s roughly 40,000 students.

If you look further to downtown Atlanta you can add in another seven Zipcar locations with two more in the Inman Park/Little Five Points area just a stones throw away. In downtown Cincinnati and historic Over-the-Rhine the trend continues with zero Zipcar locations serving a higher density urban community than its Atlanta counterpart.

In the rest of Atlanta another 14 Zipcar locations can be found bringing the total to 44 Zipcar locations in Metro Atlanta with one to two cars per location while Cincinnati has none. Meanwhile in Cincinnati car-free individuals struggle to make things work in a limited-bus and car only city with many more looking to have the option of living car-free or car-light.

The number of American cities that boast public transit systems comprehensive enough to allow for mainstream car-free lifestyles can be counted on one hand. As a result car sharing programs like Zipcars play an instrumental role in the process of creating a lesser demand for personal automobiles. And it seems to me like Cincinnati is a perfect urban region for such a program, and regional leaders in Cincinnati should examine establishing a local carsharing program as has been done in cities like Philadelphia and Cleveland.

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Development News Politics Transportation

The Urban Parking Paradox and the Need for Regulation

As previously discussed, providing the necessary parking to meet local government regulations can be both costly in terms of finances and social impacts to the immediate neighborhood in which the parking is built. The question should be asked about whether parking should be regulated at all in terms of how much should be provided.

In the Central Business District and historic neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine there is roughly 92 acres of surface parking lots. To put this into real terms, the amount of surface parking lots present in our urban core is nearly equal to the entire size of Burnet Woods (89 acres).

The Gateway Quarter parking garage sits empty on a typical Saturday afternoon (left), while much of the on-street parking remains readily available (right) for those looking to shop in the rejuvenated district of Over-the-Rhine.

Many of the commonly used calculations for parking requirements have been seen as arbitrarily derived. One reason this is thought to be the case is because of the limitless variables presented in each particular situation. In an area with high transit ridership and lots of pedestrian activity there should be a lesser requirement for parking than an area that is solely dependent on the automobile. This is reflected in the zoning code to a certain extent, but what would happen if the regulation disappeared completely?

No Regulation:
Parking is an amenity, not infrastructure, and should be treated as such. Government should not be regulating how many square feet of closet space there should be in each dwelling unit, nor should it be regulating how many parking spaces need to be provided for retail and office development. This is something a private developer should know based on their client demands.

If a developer feels that they can successfully renovate a handful of historic rowhouses along Race Street in Over-the-Rhine and provide zero parking spaces, then that should be their risk (or reward). Similarly, if a developer feels that they need X number of parking spaces for their new office tower in the Central Business District, then that too should be up to them. The potential problem with this approach is not providing too little parking, but rather too much.

The areas in black indicate the 92 acres of surface parking located throughout Cincinnati’s Central Business District (left) and the historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood (right).

Parking Maximums:
Since some might say that no parking regulation whatsoever might allow the market to run wild and produce unsustainable results. In that case the lack of any regulation could be replaced by a parking maximum, or a cap. For Cincinnati this would make most sense in places already developed and built in a way not suitable for parking facilities. This would allow for developers to create the parking they feel is needed up to a certain extent deemed appropriate by the local government.

From there policy makers could decide whether it is in their best interests to allow flexibility with contingencies, or not. For example, a developer could exceed the parking cap if the overage was built with pervious paving, that the additional parking be shared, or if the developer paid into a fund that would then help offset the costs of other infrastructure improvements needed in the affected area.

In a nutshell though this would allow for developers, no matter how big or small, to make the decision of how much parking they actually need with regulation limiting their actions. This would prevent big box retailers from over-parking their sites and thus reduce the amount of impervious surfaces, loss of urban fabric, and other negative externalities.

Both scenarios presented above could be addressed by removing minimum parking requirements. This would enable small businesses and investors to succeed without the costly parking mandates while also not adding additional regulations through maximum parking specifications that would experience similar issues as minimum parking requirement regulations.

But in either case, the above scenarios seem to be better than the current urban parking policies currently used in Cincinnati and widespread across the United States. Both scenarios would empower small businesses and investors while also maintaining a free market system. Both situations would demand less staff time to oversee and thus reduce costs and/or improve service levels at the local government level.

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Development News Politics Transportation

Examining parking policy from an urban perspective

The City of Cincinnati requires one parking space per residential dwelling unit throughout all four sub-districts of the Downtown Development District. For office uses there is one parking space required for every 750 to 1,200 square feet of office space.

These parking facilities could range from initially cheap surface lots to costly structured parking garages. Both facilities have the potential to severely damage the urban fabric in spite of design guidelines in place to improve their appearance. In addition to this damaging effect, the cost of parking is extraordinarily high in urban locations as parking spaces can cost between $20,000 and $30,000 per space in a structured parking garage. While surface lots are cheaper to construct, they squander valuable land and thus shoulder the cost of wasted revenues for local government and private land owners.

Thousands of parking spaces are being constructed underneath The Banks development with tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

The high costs of parking are immediately passed on to the customer (tenant) which results in one of two things. 1) The price points go so high that many are priced out of the market; or 2) The costs become too much for the developer to be able to recoup based on market demands which stymie investment absent substantial public subsidies.

Neither scenario is ideal, but both are seen in Cincinnati’s urban core today. Within the Central Business District the demands are there for increased development, but the prices are higher than the market will bear. As a result affordable living spaces are often not built, and new office development is rare.

In Over-the-Rhine, demand historically was too low to warrant the high parking costs, one factor in under-investment in the neighborhood, did not exist. The demands now exist in several portions of Over-the-Rhine, but in order for the price points of units to be kept artificially low, and keep inventory moving, parking has come in the form of surface lots.

The purple building seen here will be demolished to make way for an above-ground parking garage to supply parking requirements for nearby developments.

These surface lots throughout Over-the-Rhine have lower initial capital costs, but cause negative externalities for the neighborhood – one of America’s largest and most significant historic districts – and put additional historic structures at risk of demolition for these parking requirements.

Cincinnati Beer Company owner, Bryon Martin, currently owns the former Christian Moerlein residence and office on Elm Street in the Brewery District. His plans are for a brewpub restaurant that would play on the history of the two buildings. Martin would also love to have a large outdoor biergarten area on the vacant adjacent lot, but says that parking may have to be the use for that space at least initially.

There are potential solutions out there to balance out this equation without extreme demands that drive price points of investment in the neighborhood to unaffordable levels, or massive public subsidies. Over the next several weeks UrbanCincy will be looking into these potential policy solutions and how they might impact investment in our urban neighborhoods, preservation of the city’s historic building stock, and help change the way in which we design our communities.

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Business Development News Politics

3CDC makes transformative impact over last decade

The first decade of the 21st Century has been an interesting one to say the least for Cincinnati. Two new professional sports stadiums rose from the riverfront, mega projects throughout Downtown have transformed the center city, civil unrest shook the city to its core, and a neighborhood on the brink of total failure has seen one of the most dramatic turnarounds in recent time. Billions and billions of dollars have invested into our city’s urban core, and our region is better off as a result.

If you had to pick one story line that defined Cincinnati over the past decade it would have to be the story of Over-the-Rhine. The long troubled neighborhood was brought to its knees following the civil unrest in 2001 just as the neighborhood was starting to pick itself back up in the form of a rejuvenated Main Street Entertainment District that included residences, businesses, and lots of nightlife.

Crime rates rose, abandonment became more problematic, and investors became wary. But in 2003 the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) was formed by then mayor Charlie Luken. Made up of some of Cincinnati’s most influential power brokers, 3CDC was tasked with turning around Cincinnati’s center city by making key investments that would make “tangible” improvements quickly.

A pedestrian walks north along Vine Street in the Gateway Quarter district of Over-the-Rhine [LEFT] as people gather outside the popular Lavomatic Cafe across the street [RIGHT].

Since its inception seven years ago, 3CDC has renovated Fountain Square and turned it into the region’s premier gathering spot which has sparked millions of dollars of investment in the surrounding area. Early on, 3CDC helped pushed the agenda on the $1 billion riverfront development known as The Banks until they stepped aside and moved their interests towards the historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood where they have arguably made the most profound impact that any one development corporation could have made anywhere.

It was just earlier in this same decade that Over-the-Rhine was quite possibly hit the lowest of lows, but now, the neighborhood is in the midst of an exciting revival that has grabbed national attention. Millions of dollars have been invests, hundreds of new residents and dozens of new businesses now occupy formerly vacant structures, one of the most dangerous intersections (12th & Vine) has been turned into one of the safest as crime has dropped significantly throughout the neighborhood, and perceptions are changing rapidly about the once downtrodden neighborhood.

Work nears completion on Model Group’s Trinity Flats infill and restoration project near 14th & Vine streets [TOP]. Senate, a new gastropub, is scheduled to open soon near 13th & Vine streets [LEFT], while work begins in earnest on the latest phase of the Gateway Quarter which will include new apartments and businesses [RIGHT].

3CDC has had a profound impact on our center city for the good over the past seven years, and they plan an even bigger future over the next decade. In 2010 alone the development corporation plans to expand and renovate Washington Park, continue their renovation work throughout Over-the-Rhine, begin renovation of the Metropole Apartment building on Walnut Street to turn it into a swanky new 21c Museum Hotel, further invest in the burgeoning Backstage Entertainment District with even more restaurants, bars/clubs, and new residences.

It may be easy to point to a singular event or item that has had the greatest impact on Cincinnati over the past decade, but when you look at what has been the most transformative there is no doubt that the arrow points to 3CDC. Cincinnati is a better place because of the work that 3CDC has done, and it will prove to be Charlie Luken’s greatest legacy.

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News Politics

Just another statistic…

It has been just over a month (11/27) since I became a statistic. After going to the Know Theatre for a review of Sideways Stories from Wayside School I was walking back towards Fountain Square when my friend and I were robbed at gunpoint at the intersection of Vine and Court streets (map).

No one was hurt, although material possessions were taken along with our nerves that night. It was not so much the fear, but the state of shock took over our minds. There were lots of people around – about a half dozen at the bus stop a half block away, another dozen or so hanging outside of Hamburger Mary’s, cars moving along on Central Parkway, and we were right on Vine Street. We could not believe what was happening until it was all over.

The encouraging part was that someone at the bus stop called the police who responded within a few short minutes. Another gentleman expressed his condolences as we continued to make our way back into the Central Business District, but in the end, we have been added to the spreadsheets as victims of crime.

Looking back on things it appeared as though the individual who approached us had no intention on using the Western-style handgun of his that he was holding palm up, and it also appeared that it was all made possible by a dark Court Street area where he, and an accomplice, were able to hide. Since that time Court Street has seen additional lighting added to it in a move that I find non-coincidental.

Both my friend and I are avid city supporters and are not scared away easily. The next day I walked around historic Over-the-Rhine taking photographs of new development projects and architectural features throughout the beautiful neighborhood. But with that said, the incident gave me a reminder that we must always be aware of our surroundings no matter how comfortable we might be.

Additionally, as urban-advocates we must realize that crime, and the perception of it, must be addressed in a prioritized way that is thought out and well managed. Would surveillance cameras prevented this incident from occurring, or would it have just happened somewhere else where it was dark and without a camera? Would additional lighting have changed the situation? More police? More jail beds?

These are all complex issues that are very worth discussion as we continue to move forward with the redevelopment of our urban communities. We need a smart city in order to thrive in the future, and overlooking how to effectively manage crime would be a major mistake.