Tag: downtown

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Business News Politics

Cincinnati may soon be powered by 100% renewable energy

Cincinnati is working on a new power aggregation deal right now that could lead to the entire city being powered from 100 percent renewable energy sources. The deal, city officials say, could be finalized within the coming months and be in place for consumers by summer 2012.

Such a move would make Cincinnati the largest city in the United States to have its energy supply come from 100 percent renewable sources, and it might be accomplished without any significant cost difference for ratepayers.

The way it would work, city officials tell UrbanCincy, is by requiring power providers to include quotes for both the cheapest electricity available and 100 percent renewable electricity. In Oak Park, IL, for example, the bids came back so competitive that city officials decided to go with the 100 percent renewable solution.


Cincinnati businesses and homeowners may be supplied by 100% renewable energy as soon as this summer.

“There is no guarantee that our bids will come in the same as Oak Park’s, but the question may be whether we are willing to pay an additional one percent to pay for renewable energy,” explained Office of Environment Quality (OEQ) director Larry Falkin.

The movement towards sustainability has evidently picked up steam in Cincinnati as of late. At the first of two required public hearings, approximately 70 people came out to speak in favor of using completely renewable energy sources, and the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace flew a hot air ship over Cincinnati last week advocating for such change.

“The biggest thing impacting our carbon footprint is how we get our electricity,” said Falkin who explained that Cincinnati currently gets approximately 85 percent of its energy from coal. “This is probably the biggest opportunity we’ll have over the next several years to dramatically reduce Cincinnati’s carbon footprint.”

After a positive first hearing at City Council’s Budget & Finance Committee, officials expect that the effort will move forward and receive approval from the full council on Wednesday. Should that take place, the request for proposals (RFP) would then go out within the next two to three weeks.

Even if the response to the city’s RFP does not come back as favorable as Oak Park’s, city officials may be able to structure the deal to offer consumers a choice between the cheapest electricity option and a 100 percent renewable electricity option.

“There are a lot of things Cincinnati is doing to position itself as a leader in sustainability and going green – both in the public and private sectors,” Falkin concluded. “This is a significant part of that total package in terms of branding Cincinnati as a progressive city, and cities across the country may start to look to adopt the Cincinnati solution for energy.”

The final Budget & Finance Committee meeting scheduled to discuss power aggregation will take place today at 1pm at City Hall (map).

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Business Development News

First phase of Smale Riverfront Park on schedule, future phases hinge on funding

The first phase of construction on the $120 million Smale Riverfront Park is nearly complete. A handful of small construction pieces continue, but most large items have been finished. Project officials will open the first phase of the 45-acre central riverfront park in the coming months, and will celebrate the grand opening of the Moerlein Lager House on February 27, 2012.

“This summer we will continue working our way east with our connection to Paddle Wheel Park, Public Landing and other waterfront parks,” project manager Dave Prather detailed. “We expect that piece to be completed spring 2013 which is when we plan to proceed with construction of the boat dock.”

In the latest video update on the project Prather also takes viewers inside the Moerlein Lager House for the first look at the second-floor Hudepohl Bar, and highlights the finishings inside the Beer Barons Hall of Fame.

Prather also highlighted the completion of the park’s geothermal system which will soon be operational and carrying one million gallons of 57-degree water through the system daily.

The bike runnels along the Walnut Street steps are now visible and will allow for bicyclists to easily transport their bikes down the staircase to the Bike & Mobility Center which is scheduled for an April 2012 opening. While much progress has been made on phase one, progress on future phases are still up in the air.

“We don’t think we will be able to proceed with construction further west for another couple of years,” explained Prather. “So it probably will be a 2014 or 2015 project, but it will depend on some federal authorizations and funding.”

Categories
News Politics Transportation

Cincinnati moves on from failed parking kiosk experiment

Court Street Parking Kiosk - Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

Approximately one decade ago, then City Manager John Shirey engaged in a real-world experiment with the way people use parking meters. The idea was that consolidated solar-powered parking kiosks could make the process more cost effective and beneficial for users and business owners. The reality, however, has been different.

The first kiosks made their way onto Third Street in downtown Cincinnati. Those two, $8,000-a-piece, kiosks were then followed by an additional ten kiosks on Court Street and Third Street. Early on it was touted that the maintenance costs would be less for these kiosks as opposed to the many individual parking meters they replaced. What seemed to spell the end of these kiosks, however, may have been the lack of maintenance they received.

Almost from the first year they were installed, users complained of problems with pay-and-display parking kiosks. Money would jam, credit card readers did not work, or the whole kiosk was for some reason malfunctioning.

These early and ongoing problems eliminated the possibility for users to see any potential benefit from the new form of paying for on-street parking. The early problems also eliminated virtually any and all possibility of the system growing into what was envisioned for it.

Originally, city leaders discussed the idea of allowing downtown visitors to purchase monthly parking passes for the pay-and-display kiosks. They also mentioned the idea of allowing a user on Court Street to take their extra time and use it somewhere else downtown without having to pay a second time. Both ideas were well intentioned, but both ideas never happened.

Maintenance issues aside, individuals around the country have complained about the lack of an individual parking meter at their space. The personal relationship between a person, their car, and their assigned meter is obviously stronger than what city officials thought.

The city appears to now have abandoned this experiment gone wrong. The pay-and-display parking kiosks on Court Street have been shut off and replaced by new individual electronic parking meters that are solar powered. Those meters are part of a larger $1.7 million effort to replace all 1,400 parking meters downtown with the new technology.

In cities where space on the sidewalk is a big concern, the initiative to reduce street furniture like parking meters should continue to remain a priority. In Cincinnati, however, most streets do not suffer from this severe lack of space, and therefore it is probably a better approach to use individual parking meters with these technological upgrades rather than completely overhauling the system.

While the parking kiosks originally envisioned by City Manager Shirey did not pan out, he should be commended for his leadership, because without that Cincinnati may not be where it is now in terms of upgraded the rest of its on-street parking payment technologies.

City officials should continue to explore creative options for its parking assets. In 2010 UrbanCincy estimated that a public-private parking partnership could result in an additional $3.06 million in revenues annually. The possibilities of leveraging these assets are intriguing, and nothing should be left off the discussion table during this time of limited resources.

Categories
Business Development News

Ruth’s Chris Steak House signs on at The Banks

Project officials have confirmed that a Ruth’s Chris Steak House will open at The Banks development in downtown Cincinnati. The addition of the exclusive chain restaurant has been predicted since May 2011, but project officials have refrained from commenting publicly until just now.

The addition of the 9,600-square-foot Ruth’s Chris restaurant will bring the total retail occupancy at The Banks to approximately 82 percent following the recent announcement that Mahogany’s Cafe & Grill will also open a location along the central riverfront.

The upscale restaurant, officials say, will open within the two-level retail space at the northeast corner of Walnut Street and Freedom Way. It will be Ruth’s Chris second Ohio location.


The future home of Ruth’s Chris Steak House Cincinnati. Photograph by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

While 2012 has already been a busy time for economic wins at The Banks, expect another major announcement within the coming weeks.

City and County officials are currently in negotiations to find a new location for dunnhumbyUSA’s North American headquarters. The growing consumer analytics firm appears to have narrowed its search down to the surface parking lot at Fifth Street and Race Street, and the office tower pad located at The Banks which is immediately north of the new Ruth’s Chris.

Hamilton County officials would like dunnhumbyUSA to locate at The Banks to help accelerate the pace of development there, while some city officials have stated a preference for the troubled Fifth & Race location. In the end, Hamilton County seems to have more leverage given their stock of underground parking at The Banks.

Chris Monzel (R) has stated a preference to get out of the parking business, but county officials have stated that controlling parking within the central business district is a strategic move in order to help spur economic development. To that end, it would seem logical that county officials will use artificially low parking rates to lure dunnhumbyUSA to the site at The Banks.

It is projected that dunnhumbyUSA will have at least 500 employees at whatever site they choose, with room for growth. Such size would make the construction of a new office tower at The Banks economically viable and potential immediately spark construction.

Categories
News Opinion

The Triumph of Downtown Cincinnati

The following editorial was published in the Cincinnati Business Courier on January 6, 2011. UrbanCincy shared this story with its followers, and received a slew of requests to share the story in its entirety.

Typically, premium content in the Cincinnati Business Courier is only available to paid subscribers, but thanks to our exclusive partnership with the weekly publication, UrbanCincy readers can read the story in its entirety below. Readers who would like to view all premium content from the Business Courier are encouraged to take advantage of a new subscription discount being offered to UrbanCincy readers.

Who would have figured, 10 or 20 years ago, that downtown Cincinnati would ever be described as “interesting” or “appealing”? A more oft-repeated characterization was that “they roll up the sidewalks at 6,” once the workday crowd headed off.

But local hotel and tourism officials are much more cheerful these days, according to our Insight focus on travel and hospitality this week. Senior Reporter Dan Monk writes that hotel occupancy in the central business district has jumped more than 20 percent since its low point in 2001, and convention business is booming.

And that’s because downtown Cincinnati isn’t what it used to be, in a good sort of way.

“There’s just more going on here,” says Wayne Bodington, general manager of the Westin Hotel, in Monk’s column.


Thousands crowd onto Fountain Square on December 31, 2011. Photograph by Thadd Fiala for UrbanCincy.

But while tourists seem to think that downtown Cincinnati is pretty lively, quite a few residents of Greater Cincinnati still cling to the notion that downtown is a dark and forbidding place, with empty streets, boarded-up buildings and flying bullets.

While the “empty streets” part once was true, at least in the evenings, downtown never was the desolate place some suburbanites envision; the number of Fortune 500 headquarters has always kept things humming, at least during the day.

And the business about high crime is illusionary – downtown has had exactly zero homicides in the past year, according to Cincinnati Police statistics. More likely people confuse downtown with the more crime-ridden neighborhoods of Over-the-Rhine and the West End, but even there, crime is decreasing.

In fact, according to the police department’s District One statistics, which include all three neighborhoods, violent crime is down 15 percent over the past two years, and property crimes have fallen 9 percent.

Cincinnati’s government is an ongoing magnet for insults, but the city deserves credit for what it’s done for downtown in the past 20 years. It kicked off the downtown living trend in the early 1990s, when it subsidized Towne Properties’ apartment projects on Garfield Place. And the formation of the public/private Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) speeded up the downtown living process, turned Fountain Square into an entertainment and restaurant venue, and began gentrifying large chunks of Over-the-Rhine.

Now, in the evenings, you can see people walking their dogs, crowding into bars and dancing to music on Fountain Square. That is, if you dare to come downtown.

It is the fate of Greater Cincinnati, and every sprawling American urban area, that some people live so far out in the suburbs that the city is nothing more to them than a mailing address.

And grumbling is part of Cincinnati’s culture, but why trash the city you call home, especially if you haven’t seen the center of it since the fountain was in the middle of Fifth Street and your mother took you Christmas shopping at Mabley & Carew and Pogue’s department stores?

Cincinnati will be hosting the World Choir Games this summer, bringing thousands of people into downtown and its environs. That would be a perfect time for entrenched suburbanites to make the day trip and see what Mr. Bodington is talking about, as well as participating in the festivities.

Or come down now, while you can ice skate on Fountain Square, and see what a difference a couple of decades can make.

The Business Courier offers a weekly print publication to its premium subscribers, and UrbanCincy readers have been offered an exclusive subscription discount. Those who do not wish to receive the weekly print edition can elect to become a premium digital member for just $49 through this exclusive offer being extended to UrbanCincy readers.