Tag: architecture

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Business Development News

Cincinnati Breaks Ground on $16M Net Zero Energy, LEED Platinum Police HQ

City officials and neighborhood leaders celebrated the ground breaking for Cincinnati’s new $16 million Police District 3 Headquarters on Monday.

Located in Westwood, the 39,000 square-foot facility will replace what city and police officials consider an antiquated 105-year-old facility in East Price Hill.

While the City of Cincinnati has built or begun construction on several new fire stations, including one nearby in Westwood, this is the first new police station built in the city since in more than four decades.

“It used to be that when cities built civic buildings like this, they were places the community could come together,” Mayor Mark Mallory (D) said. “With District 3, we’re doing that again. We want people to come here and feel comfortable coming here with their neighbors.”

According to city officials, the new police headquarters will serve 14 neighborhoods from a central location on the west side. A site that was specifically chosen due to the input provided during Plan Cincinnati.

To help further strengthen the concept of the police headquarters also serving as a community gathering place, city officials have ensured that the new facility will include community gathering space and public art. It is an approach to community building similar to what was done, with rave reviews, by Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) when rebuilding its entire building portfolio.

The location is just a block away from Dater High School and Western Hills High School and sits in what was a vacant outlot of a suburban-style strip mall. Site plans show that the new facility will be built at the street and oriented toward the sidewalk.

While Cincinnati has been seen as a leader in green building when it comes to the rebuilding of CPS, its tax abatements for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rehabilitation and new construction, and public building in general, this will be one of the Queen City’s greenest buildings.

The development team of Messer Construction, Triversity Construction and Emersion Design are aiming to achieve a LEED Platinum certification – the highest possible rating under the LEED system.

The development team also says that it has designed the structure to achieve Net Zero Energy Consumption through its geothermal mechanical systems, high performance building envelope and solar panels. The new Police District 3 Headquarters will also reduce potable water consumption by 30% thanks to on-site bio-retention cells and strategic use of site design materials.

City leadership also expects the project will reach 36.2% Small Business Enterprise (SBE) inclusion. If such a number is achieved, it would make it the highest percentage of SBE participation on any city project to-date.

According to project officials, construction is expected to take about a year-and-a-half and could start welcoming members of the community as early as July 2015.

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Business Development News Politics

Vishaan Chakrabarti: ‘Hyper Dense’ Cities Should Be America’s Future

The great American story is one of free wills and free markets. We believe that the physical world we live in is the result of individual choices made by free people.

In the case of cities this has led many to believe, perhaps falsely, that what Americans really want is dispersed communities where people use cars to get to virtually all of their destinations. Transit, if an option at all, is left for the poor or those choosing to use it solely to get to and from work.

A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America from Architectural League of New York on Vimeo.

What makes this narrative odd, however, is that America is quite unique in this position. Virtually every other country on Earth, both developed and not, organizes its communities differently. In fact, even the America we know did things quite differently up until the mid-19th century.

Vishaan Chakrabarti (@VishaanNYC), a professional architect and Columbia University professor, believes that dense cities with lots of transit options are the recipe for success.

Chakrabarti has written extensively about this subject matter, and recently published a book on the topic entitled A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America. In it, he also outlines how infrastructure is approached too narrowly and should instead look at opportunities that include public health, safety, education and amenities. He calls this “infrastructure of opportunity.”

He discusses how government policy has specifically influenced the low-density, sprawl that often defines contemporary Americana. Chakrabarti goes on to detail how these policies have been a failure and outlines which strategies should be pursued in order to right the proverbial ship.

“The suburbs are largely a creation of “big government,” an explicitly, policy-driven, subsidized scheme that has guided how we live, work, and play,” Chakrabarti explains. “One of the fundamental premises of the book is not whether people should live in the suburbs or not; I believe in free choice. The question is whether they should be paid to do it.”

The self-proclaimed urbanist gave a lecture, hosted by the Architectural League of New York, on this matter back in June. The 15-minute video of this lecture provides a high-level synopsis of what is discussed in his book and other works.

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Arts & Entertainment News

‘Place from Space’ Launches Placemaking Design Competition

Placemaking is a word that is often tossed around by designers, planners, architects and others in the industry of building and construction. From monolithic towers in the park, to the traditional neighborhood business corridors, people react to the nature and condition of the buildings and other elements in their surroundings. But the question remains, what are great places and how are they made?

Elizabeth Schmidt and Brad Cooper saw opportunity in converting vacant and underutilized spaces throughout the Cincinnati region into places.

“There are places all over the city waiting to be activated and there are many successful ways to activate a space,” organizer Schmidt told UrbanCincy.

So they decided to work together and create Place from Space, a design competition that seeks to construct a winning design that converts an underutilized space into a great place next year. Place from Space is part of  this year’s ArchiNati Festival which runs from October 4th to 13th.

IMG_1104-1024x768The former Church of the Assumption will host the event. Image provided.

“The competition gives individuals the chance to propose and implement positive physical changes to their community that should be fun, imaginative, and vibrant.” Cooper told UrbanCincy. 

Seven neighborhoods are participating in the contest including East Walnut Hills, Walnut Hills; East, West and Lower Price Hill, Covington and Over-the-Rhine. The first round of submissions for applications to be accepted into the contest will end on November 4. From there applicants go on to a second round of judging where one project will be selected for construction.

The first opportunity to see the group’s efforts will be on display tomorrow where they will be showcasing the submissions they have received so far. The event will be held at the former Church of the Assumption along Gilbert Avenue in Walnut Hills. The church, built in 1884 has been vacant for years until artist Justin Poole began using the space as his art studio. His art will also be on display Friday evening. There will also be a special performance by the band the Kentucky Struts.

Admission to the event is free. Parking is on-street and the venue is easily accessible from the #4 and #11 Metro bus routes.

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Business Development News

$1.6 Million Home For Cats Opens in Madisonville

The Ohio Alleycat Resource & Spay/Neuter Clinic (OAR) expanded into its new adoption center in Madisonville last month thanks to a generous $1.6 million donation from the Joanie Bernard Foundation.

The facility, the Joanie Bernard Home for Cats, was named in honor of the life-long cat lover. OAR’s adoption center is located adjacent to the current spay/neuter clinic which still houses 75 of the rescue’s cats. The new building offers 4,800 square feet of feline housing, which is double the amount of the original spay/neuter clinic.

Joanie Bernard Home for Cats
The new $1.6M OAR Home for Cats in Madisonville opened last month. Photograph by Paige Malott for UrbanCincy.

Inviting glass windows, wood framed doors, and custom play equipment makes life comfortable for OAR’s cats that are in between homes. In addition, there are special rooms for kittens, elderly cats, and those with a medical condition. Each room features a screened porch, which allows cats to access a protected outdoor area on their own through the use of a pet-sized door.

Over 400 people stopped by the Joanie Bernard Home for Cats for its grand opening, with many families taking home a new feline friend. To help guests learn more about their cats, OAR includes the animal’s back story on each room. Experiences tug at the heartstrings from tales of lost kittens to an 11-year-old cat that was displaced when his elderly owner passed away.

Other details include the cat’s age, breed, name, and picture so that visitors may identify a cat that shares a communal room.

With a modern, clean atmosphere, the Joanie Bernard Home for Cats hopes to appeal to those considering pet adoption and make the meet-and-greet experience more interactive for both human and feline.

Currently, OAR finds homes for 300 cats annually. Charlotte E. White-Hull, Director of Development and Outreach for OAR, estimates that the updated facility will increase the number of cat adoptions by 25%. By expanding into the new facility, OAR’s spay/neuter clinic also looks to double its service to treat over 16,000 cats a year.

Categories
Development News Transportation

Public Meetings Set for $200M Western Hills Viaduct Replacement

Over 55,000 vehicles traverse the storied Western Hills Viaduct. The iconic art deco era viaduct, constructed as part of the Cincinnati Union Terminal project in 1932 replaced the older Harrison Avenue Viaduct.

The viaduct last saw renovation in 1977, almost twenty years after the eastern section was demolished to make way for Interstate 75, but over the last few years a team of city, county and consultant engineers have been studying ways to repair or replace the aging bridge.

The city’s Department of Transportation and Engineering (DOTE), Hamilton County Engineer’s Office and URS are working together to determine the future replacement of the aging viaduct. The team will be hosting two public meetings on Thursday to engage adjacent property owners and frequent users of the bridge on the process of replacing the viaduct.

westernhillsviaduct-1-5The Western Hills Viaduct is one of a few crucial road connections to the west side of the city.
Photo by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

Because of the amount of repairs needed to maintain the existing viaduct, the team is not considering continuing the use of the existing viaduct. Instead the team is looking to build a new viaduct just south of the Western Hills Viaduct.

Richard Szekeresh, Principal Structural Engineer with DOTE told UrbanCincy that there are a number of other projects and factors that constrain the teams ability to determine a suitable relocation alignment; such as the rail yard operations below the bridge, the Metropolitan Sewer District’s (MSD’s) Lick Run Valley Conveyance System project, and Ohio Department of Transportation’s (ODOT’s) proposed new connection bridge from I-75 to the viaduct which is part of the Brent Spence Bridge project must be factored into the new location.

Additionally because of hillside grade issues at the McMillan and Central Parkway intersection a new alignment north of the existing viaduct would be extremely challenging and more expensive.

The team is studying whether to pursue another double-decker bridge or a single level span as the replacement alternative. Some private property will be affected along Harrison Avenue and Central Parkway along with the existing rail yard below the viaduct. Additionally, the team is looking for input on bicycle lanes and other transportation alternative improvements.

The design team hopes to have the engineering completed and a preferred alignment selected by 2014. The cost of the viaduct replacement would be an estimated $200 million. No funding has been identified and the project is not part of the Brent Spence Bridge project, even though it is in the northern edge of that section of the I-75 reconstruction project area.

Both of Thursday’s sessions will be at Cincinnati City Hall. One will be from 4pm to 5:30pm and the other from 6pm to 7:30pm. City Hall is accessible by the #1, #6 and #49 Metro buses.

Szekeresh concluded,“Typically, due to the size, complexity, and cost associated with a project of this nature it is not unusual for it to take ten or more years to bring them to construction. We are still at the beginning of a long process.”