Category: Up To Speed

Links to keep you up to speed on what’s happening in Cincinnati and what we can learn from other cities.

Categories
Up To Speed

More Developers Building “Convertible” Parking Garages

More Developers Building “Convertible” Parking Garages

UrbanCincy readers may know that the 84.51° Center (formerly Dunnhumby Centre) in Downtown Cincinnati includes an above-ground parking garage that can be converted into office space at a later date. The building was designed this way because of anticipated future growth of the building’s namesake tenant.

An increasing number of parking garages across the country are now being designed in this way. That’s partially because developers are starting to understand that our urban real estate is better used for office space, residential, and retail as opposed to car storage. Developers also predict that the demand for urban parking garages will decline as self-driving cars start to appear in the coming decades — why park your car in an expensive garage downtown when you can send it back home after it drops you off at work?

From the Denver Post:

“It’s smart use of resources and space is a resource,” Cohen said. “If you’re designing a building and there’s space that potentially could become obsolete over time, that’s just a wasted opportunity.”

Building parking that has future life as something else requires particular thought to the garage’s floor-to-ceiling heights and slope of the floors, Fisher said.

“The typical sloped-ramp parking garage has about a 5 percent slope,” Fisher said. “You can’t work in that space.”

Instead, the floor plates need to be flat, with discrete ramps between the levels, Petersen said. At WTC Denver, the ramps are being designed so they can be removed someday, leaving a light-filled courtyard.

“It doesn’t take much more initial investment or cost,” he said. “It’s more just thinking creatively.”

Categories
Up To Speed

Maplewood Kitchen and Bar adds breakfast option to center city’s offerings

Maplewood Kitchen and Bar adds breakfast option to center city’s offerings

The owners of Thunderdome Restaurant Group first became popular with their Bakersfield restaurant in Over-the-Rhine. Since then the ownership group has opened several other concepts, including the newly opened Maplewood Kitchen and Bar.

Described as being California-inspired, Maplewood specializes in their brunch offerings, and is located in the 84.51º Building on Race Street downtown. While many of the new restaurant offerings in the center city are opened late into the night, Maplewood Kitchen and Bar adds another option for those looking for breakfast options. They’re open from 7am to 3pm Monday through Saturday.

More from the Business Courier: Maplewood Kitchen and Bar adds breakfast option to center city’s offerings

Categories
Up To Speed

Nine Giant Brewing finally opens up shop in Pleasant Ridge

Nine Giant Brewing finally opens up shop in Pleasant Ridge

Pleasant Ridge seems to be part of the next batch of neighborhoods poised for a surge of private investment. In fact, some of that investment is already flowing into Pleasant Ridge in the form of several new business openings over recent months – the latest of those being Nine Giant Brewing, which opened to the public on Saturday.

UrbanCincy was the first to report that Nine Giant Brewing would open up their brewery and restaurant in the heart of the neighborhood’s business district back in 2015. Now that the renovations and permitting is finally complete, Cincinnatians buzzing about the news from last year, can now go and check it out. They’re open on Wednesdays from 4pm to 10pm, Thursdays from 4pm to 11pm, Fridays from 4pm to 12am, Saturdays from 12pm to 12am, and Sundays from 12pm to 8pm.

More from the Enquirer: Nine Giant Brewing opens in Pleasant Ridge

Categories
Up To Speed

Cincinnati’s business community supports idea of putting Liberty Street on ‘road diet’

Liberty Street [Travis Estell]

The discussions continue about whether or not to reduce the massive width of Liberty Street through Over-the-Rhine. If it is decided to reduce its size, the question then becomes by how much.

So far, neighborhood residents have been quite consistent in their support for reducing Liberty Street’s width. As of now, residents appear to be supportive of a plan to reduce it by 20 feet, while other neighborhood groups want it to be reduced by even more to allow for dedicated bike facilities and more developable land along the street’s southern side.

In an informal poll, the Business Courier recently asked their readers if they supported the idea of reducing the width of Liberty Street. The response from the city’s business community was overwhelming, with 78% of respondents saying that they support the idea.

More from the Business Courier: Do you the support plan to shrink OTR’s Liberty Street?

Categories
Up To Speed

Region’s Demographics More Closely Resemble 1950s America Than Today’s

Cincinnati [Randy A. Simes]

You often hear American politicians speak about “Normal America” in a reference to the country’s historical small town narrative – one that is also defined by a largely white, European-derived population. FiveThirtyEight actually dug into the data and found that Normal America is most often found in racially diverse metropolitan regions between 1-2 million people in size.

One of the outliers in their assessment, however, was Cincinnati, which ranked as one of the top ten places in America that are most similar with 1950s America. Indianapolis joined Cincinnati as one of two large regions in this status. What’s more is that Kentucky (#1), Indiana (#3) and Ohio (#7) all ranked within the top ten states that most resemble 1950s America, not the one of today. More from FiveThirtyEight:

We all, of course, have our own notions of what real America looks like. Those notions might be based on our own nostalgia or our hopes for the future. If your image of the real America is a small town, you might be thinking of an America that no longer exists. I used the same method to measure which places in America today are most similar demographically to America in 1950, when the country was much whiter, younger and less-educated than today.