We are hosting the November URBANexchange tonight at the Moerlein Lager House. This will be a special event as it comes on the heels of Tuesday’s election and our Urbanist Candidates Forum last week.
As a result, please join us in the biergarten at the Moerlein Lager House this evening anytime between 5:30pm and 8:30pm, and share with us the policies and issues you would like this new city council and mayor pursue. You can simply jot down your ideas on the back of a business card, sheet of paper, or email it to our area manager and editor at john.yung@urbancincy.com.
As always, the event will be a casual setting where you can meet others interested in what is happening in the city. We will gather in the biergarten so that each person can choose how much or little they buy in terms of food or drink. Although we do encourage our attendees to generously support our kind hosts at the Moerlein Lager House.
Going forward we will continue to gather ideas, from those who attend our URBANexchange events, and occasionally submit them to City Council. We are thinking of it as a sort of as an urbanist wish list.
Our team of researchers and writers will also occasionally dive further into the topics and publish the information and ideas on the website.
URBANexchange is free and open to the public.
We will be situated in the northwest corner of the biergarten (near the Moer To Go window), but you can also ask the host where the UrbanCincy group is located and they will be happy to assist.
The Moerlein Lager House is located on Cincinnati’s central riverfront and is located just one block from a future streetcar stop. Free and ample bike parking is available near our location in the biergarten outside by the Schmidlapp Event Lawn.
The Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation (WHRF) hosted the second annual Cincinnati Street Food Festival three weekends ago along E. McMillan Street.
The event built on the success from the previous year and added more vendors with 15 total this year. There were also more activities, which helped to attract a diverse crowd from the neighborhood and the rest of the city.
As we reported prior to the event, a lot of interesting things are taking place in Walnut Hills. The WHRF has spearheaded a number of unique placemaking activities meant to engage the community, including the Five Points Biergarten and Buy 25 events.
In case you were not able to attend the 2013 Cincinnati Street Food Festival, WHRF staffer Andrew Stahlke put together another one of his tremendous videos. It is nearly four minutes in length and worth every second of viewing. The music included with the video is ‘Who We Are (Live United Mix)’ by Tracy Walker.
Yesterday we highlighted the important planning efforts that will be affected by this year’s mayoral race. However the real legislative efforts will be carried out by the nine city council members elected on November 5th. Even though the newly elected mayor may have his or her own agenda starting December 1, often times council members are eager to begin working on their own priorities.
With a field of 21 candidates this year, we feel it is important for urban-minded people to hear what city council candidates have to say on some of the issues important to you, which is why tomorrow we are co-hosting the Urbanist Candidates Forum with the Niehoff Urban Design Studio.
Earlier this year we worked with the studio to host the successful Metropolis & Mobility event and are continuing that partnership this fall with the council candidates forum.
In addition to the eight confirmed candidates listed on the banner, we have also received confirmations from Kevin Johnson, Shawn Butler and P.G. Sittenfeld.
This forum is an excellent opportunity voters interested in transportation, land use, sustainability and architecture to learn more about the Cincinnati city council candidates. We also hope this will help encourage your involvement in the public process going forward.
The forum will focus on issues important to urbanists. Some of those issues will include topics we typically cover on this site including transportation, economic development, sustainability and other planning topics.
The event is free and will run from 6:30pm to 8pm. Food and drink will be provided by neighborhood establishments.
The Niehoff Studio can be reached via the #24 and #78 Metro bus lines.
Cincinnati is in the midst of revitalization. There have been several significant accomplishments achieved since 2007 when the city’s Planning Department was reconstituted. Initiatives such as Plan Cincinnati and the development of Form-based code have united regional leaders and communities to help build a shared vision of the city’s future.
These efforts could be affected drastically with the election of a new mayor on November 5th.
Qualls: Focus on vision and and consensus building: In her time as Mayor in the 1990’s and when she returned to City Council in 2007 Roxanne Qualls (C) has been the leader in implementing a bold vision for Cincinnati through planning policies. In the 1990’s, Qualls lead the effort to narrow Fort Washington Way which allowed for the expansion of downtown and the conversion of the riverfront into a showcase for the city.
The award winningBanks Master Plan owes its existence and implementation to Qualls’s dedicated leadership in establishing the Riverfront Steering Committee which developed the plan. By the time Qualls returned to council the plan had advanced through Mayor Mark Mallory (D) who formed The Banks Working Group and began implementing the plan in 2008.
Since 2007 she has led several groups on tours to Nashville, TN and Columbus, OH to learn more about form-based codes and how they benefit cities. Last month, that vision became reality when Madisonville became the first city neighborhood to adopt the form-based code regulating plan.
The Cincinnati form-based code is a comprehensive land use regulation that was developed by the city through years of community participation. It is a code that emphasizes that new development be constructed in a form that integrates into the traditional character of the neighborhood.
The original Banks plan as envisioned by the Riverfront Steering Committee which was established Qualls.
Incline Village in East Price Hill. Cranley was development partner in this project. Photo by Kevin LeMaster.
Cranley: Focus on removing barriers for developers: Running against Qualls is former council-member John Cranley (D) who served on council from 2001 to 2009. He resigned from council in 2009 to pursue building a private development in East Price Hill.
The Incline Square project, located next to the Queens Tower apartment building, was envisioned to have a 22,500 square-foot office building be constructed along with a 58-unit four-story apartment building and restaurant space. Only the residential and restaurant portions of that development were built.
A review of Cranley’s track record on council had shown that early in his council career, he had been an advocate for making the city more “developer friendly.” In 2002, he was instrumental as chairman on the Budget & Finance Committee in dissolving the city’s long standing Planning Department, the oldest continuously running planning division in the country at the time.
In 2002 Cranley told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “”The Planning Department was almost given the mission of causing problems, because it was completely divorced from economic incentives and any kind of market reality.”
However; Cranley did not oppose Mallory’s effort in 2007 to reestablish the department. He also signed a motion with Qualls on advancing form-based codes in 2008, but at a recent mayoral debate sponsored by the Urban Land Institute, Cranley strongly opposed them. He has also stated his opposition to planning and zoning, stating that the solution to neighborhood problems is money.
The outcome of this election will determine the future vision and progress of Cincinnati. That vision of progress is either one forged on grand visions and community outreach or one that favors minimizing regulations and oversight to increase development in the city.
Hopefully you are ready to learn all about support structures and geothermal, because the latest video update for the $120 million Smale Riverfront Park goes into great detail about both topics. It also reveals some new information about upcoming features at the park.
The first half of the 13:30 video focuses on the intricate details involved with some of the most mundane work taking place at the site. Project manager Dave Prather does a good job, however, at illustrating just how important that work is.
The more intriguing pieces of information are saved for the second half of the video. During that portion, Prather reveals details about the fog feature at the Heekin/PNC Grow Up Great Adventure Playground, which is scheduled to open to the public in spring 2014.
Prather also discusses that the Cincinnati Park Board has control of the anchorage under the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge. Dating back to the Civil War, the inner structure, he says, will be opened to the public in some way. Details have not yet been finalized for how they will utilize the area, which is in the flood plane, but Prather expects to be able to make an announcement in time for the next video update.
City and park officials aim to complete the 45-acre central riverfront park by mid-2017, assuming all remaining financing falls into place.
