Tag: economic

Categories
Up To Speed

MOTR ownership team to renovate Woodward Theater into 600-person music venue

MOTR ownership team to renovate Woodward Theater into 600-person music venue.

MOTR Pub has become an Over-the-Rhine destination with seven days a week of live music. The success at the small music venue has encouraged the owners to embark on a new venture, and they will acquire the vacant Woodward Theater building across the street and open a second venue. More from the Cincinnati Business Courier:

The new renovations will be extensive. McCabe plans to eliminate a staircase in the center, add a new staircase to one side, install bathrooms and bars, and build a stage that juts out into the crowd.

For bands, the Woodward would provide the bridge between smaller bars like MOTR and larger area venues such as the Taft Theatre and Bogart’s. It would also give Cincinnati a leg up in attracting musicians, McCabe said. When a band is making its way from Chicago to Nashville, it doesn’t make stops at Indianapolis, Columbus and then Cincinnati; it just picks one.

Categories
Business News Transportation

STUDY: Suburban Residents Have Longest Commutes in Cincinnati Region

The Cincinnati region scores better in several metrics that most American cities with regards to commuting patterns.

That is according to new study released by the U.S. Census Bureau, Out-of-State & Long Commutes, which shows that Cincinnatians spend three fewer minutes commuting each way when compared to the average American. The study also finds that only 2.9% of Cincinnatians spend more than 60 minutes one-way during their commute, as compared to the 8.1% national average.

The central concentration of jobs and economic power in the Cincinnati region also impacts the distribution of these travel times, with close-in neighborhoods boasting lower commute times and far-flung neighborhoods with the highest.

Cincinnati Commutes

“It is well known that Hamilton County draws a lot of commuters to work,” said Brian McKenzie, a Census Bureau statistician who studies commuting.

The draw of Hamilton County is strong. According to the Bureau, more than 188,000 people commute to and from Hamilton County each day, placing it at the top end of the spectrum in the U.S. Within Hamilton County, however, the East Side has it better off with lower average commute times, by about five minutes, as compared to the West Side.

The study also found that a mere 3.9% of Hamilton County commuters used public transportation in 2011. The rate of public transportation use is slightly lower than the national 5% average, and also does not take into account recent ridership increases that have outpaced national gains.

“The average travel time for workers who commute by public transportation is higher than that of workers who use other modes,” McKenzie continued. “For some workers, using transit is a necessity, but others simply choose a longer travel time over sitting in traffic.”

Due to the lack of a comprehensive regional transit system, approximately 79.3% of Cincinnatians are stuck behind the wheel of a car by themselves, and another 9.2% are carpooling to work each day.

The data for the study came from the American Community Survey (ACS), which collects information on education, occupation, language, ancestry, housing costs and transportation. The ACS has been ongoing in some form since 1850, approximately 60 years after the nation’s first decennial census, and is currently in jeopardy of losing its funding.

“This information shapes our understanding of the boundaries of local and regional economies, as people and goods move across the nation’s transportation networks,” McKenzie concluded.

Categories
Business Development News

Cincinnati Aims to Use P3 to Upgrade Parking Assets, Leverage Economic Development

Last week, Cincinnati City Manager Milton Dohoney unveiled the city’s plans for modernizing its parking assets through what he called a public-public partnership.

The plan calls for a 30-year lease on thousands of on-street parking meters, and a 50-year lease on 2,363 spaces in five city-owned garages and four city-owned lots. The deal includes an initial $92 million upfront payment, and an estimated $3 million annual installment payment.

The other public partner in the deal is the Port Authority of Greater Cincinnati, who would oversee the operation of the parking assets. Xerox would work with the Port Authority to manage on-street spaces, while Denison Parking would help manage the garages and lots. The financing muscle behind the deal would be AEW Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners.

City officials note that the collection of private partners will be known as the ParkCincy Team.

Organizational Structure
The organizational structure under the proposed parking asset deal would keep the City of Cincinnati in charge. Provided.

In addition to the complex financial structure of the deal, the City of Cincinnati will see its parking assets dramatically modernized in the coming years. All on-street parking meters will be replaced by electronic meters that accept credit cards, and will be monitored to allow for those searching for a parking space to get real-time information on parking availability.

Several parking structures throughout the center city will also be overhauled. The crumbling Pogue’s Garage at Fourth and Race Streets will be torn down and replaced by a 30-story residential tower with a 1,000-space parking garage that will reserve more than half of the spaces for public use. Across the street, the 500-space Tower Place Garage will be renovated and expanded into the existing and vacant Tower Place Mall by another 500 spaces.

The improvements to be made to the Pogue’s Garage site and Tower Place Garage are being assisted by $12 million in city financing made available through the lease’s upfront payment.

Current-vs-Proposed
The proposed deal would significantly simplify the City’s accounting responsibilities with regards to its parking assets, but it would shift the bulk of annual revenues to the ParkCincy Team. Provided.

As part of that $12 million deal, the Port Authority will work with the developer to construct the planned $14.2 million 725-space parking garage, near the Horseshoe Casino at Seventh and Sycamore Streets, in place of the deteriorating parking garage at that site. The new garage’s development, meanwhile, is expected to jump-start the adjacent development of the proposed 115-room Holiday Inn & Suites.

In order to make the deal worthwhile for the Port Authority and the ParkCincy Team, parking meters will be in effect from 8am to 9pm downtown, and 7am to 9pm in other neighborhoods. Parking rates will remain the same downtown, but rates will increase to $.75 an hour once meter upgrades have been made.

Mayor Mallory’s Administration reviewed the bids and decided to take a lesser upfront payment in order to avoid some of the pitfalls experienced in Chicago, as pointed out by critics of Cincinnati’s deal. The City of Cincinnati sacrificed roughly $50 million in order to maintain control over certain aspects of the parking inventory including first ten minutes free at downtown meters, free parking on Sundays and holidays, and oversight on rate increases and enforcement.

One very crucial aspect is that the city will retain control over the price of parking, which will be determined by a board made up of City and Port Authority representatives, and rate increases will be capped at 3% annually.

In addition to the $12 million for the development at Fourth and Race Streets, the remaining $80 million from the upfront lease payment will go towards the following items:

  • $20 million to jump-start the Martin Luther King Drive Interchange at I-71;
  • $4 million to accelerate the next phase of Smale Riverfront Park in order to be complete in time for the 2015 All-Star Game;
  • $3 million to acquire the Wasson Corridor right-of-way;
  • $6.3 million to bring the City’s reserve savings account to its goal of 8%;
  • $25.8 million to balance the City’s 2014 budget; and
  • $20.9 million to balance the City’s 2015 budget.

City officials hope the $20 million for the MLK Interchange will accelerate its construction, but is contingent upon the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). The project, officials say, will have a $750 million economic impact and create between 5,900 and 7,300 permanent jobs.

Should ODOT officials turn down the deal, City officials have said that they are prepared to redirect the funds to a 2,500-job “mega deal.”

The administration’s parking modernization and lease agreement requires approval from the Planning Commission and City Council before being finalized. The Planning Commission will vote on the matter this Friday at 9am, with a full City Council vote expected shortly thereafter.

Randy A. Simes contributed to this story.

Categories
Up To Speed

People love parks, so why do politicians balk at funding them?

People love parks, so why do politicians balk at funding them?.

Cincinnatians are fortunate to have one of the nation’s best park systems. But as we are finding out more and more in the era of tightening budgets, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find funding for public pools, dog parks, maintenance and other general services. So, just why is it that people so often balk at public park spending? More from Next City:

Last November, the Philadelphia City Council approved a $2.67 million increase to funding for the Department of Parks and Recreation. The decision was roundly cheered by residents and the advocacy groups that had long pushed for the cash infusion…And that was just to secure, as Bornfriend mentioned, “a start.” The funding increase is still far less than the additional $17 million a year that Mayor Michael Nutter said, while campaigning for his current office in 2007, was required for basic maintenance of the city’s park system alone.

And that, in a nutshell is the problem: Everyone loves the idea of parks and rec centers, but no one likes actually paying for them. Parks and Recreation services have long been whipping boys of city councils and municipal budget-makers across the country, with funding cuts being less politically charged than those to emergency services and less immediately noticeable than, say, libraries. With long-standing national and global economic uncertainty eating into municipal revenues, cuts to park budgets have become more frequent and pronounced.

Categories
Business Development News

Pogue’s Garage to Make Way for 30-Story Residential Tower, Grocery Store

Former Design Concept [Provided]

Cincinnati City Manager Milton Dohoney briefed City Council’s Budget & Finance Committee of the specifics of a plan to modernize and lease some of the city’s parking assets. Part of the immediate $92 million infusion, as part of the plan, would be used to spark the redevelopment of Tower Place Mall and Pogue’s Garage.

Dohoney stated that the vacant Tower Place Mall would be converted into a 500-space parking garage, with 20,000 square feet of street-level commercial spaces fronting onto Race and Fourth Streets.

“Residential is a huge factor in the ability to attract and retain retail, but what retail really wants is customers,” explained David Ginsburg, President/CEO of Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated (DCI), with regards to the state of the center city’s retail scene.

285333_10151760214824698_747240426_n Pogue's Tower
The City of Cincinnati has struck a deal that would tear down the crumbling Pogue’s Garage and replace it with a mixed-use residential high-rise. Renderings provided.

To that end, the adjacent Pogue’s Garage, as part of the project, would be torn down and the site rebuilt with a 30-story mixed-use tower with 300 luxury apartments, 1,000 parking spaces, and a 15,000-square-foot grocery store.

The reconstruction of Tower Place Mall, city officials say, would be overseen by JDL Warm, and would begin as early as fall 2013. The redevelopment of the Pogue’s Garage site would be overseen by Flaherty & Collins, which would be funded with $82 million in private investment and $12 million from the City through its new parking lease.

Project officials say that all of the financing is in place, and a new-to-market grocery store has been secured for the new mixed-use tower.

The new tower’s contemporary architecture would contrast the historic high-rises flanking it along Fourth Street, and would dramatically change the street’s landscape.

One other component of the project requires the developer to also build the planned 725-space parking garage on Sycamore Street, which is adjacent to the proposed 200-room Holiday Inn & Suites.

A timetable has not yet been set for the $94 million project, but work would seemingly be able to begin as soon as the proposed parking lease is approved by City Council. The City of Cincinnati and DCI are currently working with Paragon Salon regarding its space in the Pogue’s Garage. No details have been shared, but Paragon’s lease runs through 2017.

“We need to make sure that everything is working all the time on all cylinders,” Ginsburg told UrbanCincy with respect to the hierarchy of needs for downtown investment. “If I were to get a bumper sticker for my bicycle or my car it would just be one word – more. Downtown needs more residents, it needs more businesses, it needs more workers, it needs more diversity.”