Tag: planning

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Parking Lease Deal to Move Forward Following Appeals Court Ruling

Vandalized Parking Meter in OTR

photo (5)This morning the Hamilton County Court of Appeals released its decision on the court case (Lisa McQueen, et al. vs. Milton R. Dohoney, Jr., et al.) concerning whether the City of Cincinnati had the right to enact emergency ordinance provisions in leasing its parking assets to a third party. The decision from the court struck down a lower court’s ruling and in turn upheld the city’s parking lease ordinance and the right for City Council to enact emergency ordinances.

The decision means that the City of Cincinnati can enact its Parking Modernization & Lease Plan, which was passed by City Council 5-4 in March. The ruling also states that citizens do not have the right to file a referendum on items passed with an emergency clause, thus eliminating the possibility of a public vote on the parking lease deal this November.

Immediately following City Council’s March vote, opponents of the plan filed a taxpayer lawsuit against the plan and Judge Robert Winkler issued a restraining order preventing the city from using the emergency ordinance clause for this issue or any issue before the City of Cincinnati. In this particular case, Judge Winkler’s restraining order was issued within minutes of its vote.

Judge Winkler then heard arguments the following week and made a ruling in early-April that allowed a referendum on the emergency ordinance to move forward by questioning the clarity of the city’s charter provisions on the matter.

In May the Court of Appeals heard arguments from both sides. Today the long-awaited decision was announced. In making its decision the Court of Appeals considered several things.

  1. Whether the Plantiff in the case followed the proper legal procedure in filing for the taxpayer lawsuit. The decision documents state in three separate paragraphs that the plaintiffs failed to make the necessary $325 deposit. “The plaintiffs-relators intimate that they cured the deficiency by paying the $325 deposit after the common pleas court had entered its judgment. But the record certified on appeal does not demonstrate that any deposit was made.” Paragraph 23.
  2. Emergency Ordinances are subject to referendum if provisions are provided within the city’s charter: The city’s charter has language outlining the way the city can pass ordinances and emergency ordinances. It also outlines the provisions for referendums. The charter also defaults to state law provisions for what the charter does not cover. Since there were no provisions in the charter for referendum of emergency ordinances, they cannot be challenged to referendums.
  3. The court found that the Emergency Powers provision was backed up by 90 years of case law. In the 90+ years since the enacting of the city’s charter government, Hamilton County and State level courts have ruled in defense of the city’s emergency powers provisions.
  4. The court found that the city properly outlined the nature of the emergency in enacting the emergency ordinance.
  5. The City’s Charter was not ambiguous. The court took the path of interpreting the charter as a whole instead of the sum of its parts.

The ruling is being considered a major victory for the City of Cincinnati as it is now able to move forward with its Parking Modernization & Lease Plan, which will provide an upfront payment of $92 million and annual installments of $3 million from the Port of Greater Cincinnati Authority.

It also defends a wide array of city actions, that are passed with the emergency ordinance clause, from being subject to public referendums. Over the past several years, a host of decisions made by a plurality of City Council had been subject to what some believe is an inefficient way of running a government.

“While Cincinnatians for Progress did not take a position on the parking lease, we believe that good governance is critical to the city of Cincinnati, and we believe that our representative democracy as outlined in the city’s charter is good governance,” Derek Bauman, Co-Chair for Cincinnatians for Progress, told UrbanCincy. “In addition, it is vital for the city to have the ability to pass ordinances as an emergency when necessary. We welcome the appeals court ruling.”

What has yet to be decided is what will happen with the $92 million upfront payment, which was originally planned to cover the city’s budget gap and provide funding for a host of economic development deals.

Since that time, the City of Cincinnati has passed a budget, which originally was to get $25.8M from the parking lease deal, and found alternative funding sources for a number of the projects ($20M for MLK Interchange, $12M for 4th/Race Apartment Tower) involved in the original list.

The result is a $57.8 million question now put before Mayor Mallory’s Administration and City Council.

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Up To Speed

DIY Plazas and Parklets Draw the Crowds

DIY Plazas and Parklets Draw the Crowds

An increasing number of cities including New York City have been seeing the success of impromptu and Do It Yourself created public spaces. In Cincinnati, which celebrates National PARK(ing) Day with the temporary creation of parklets, other cities such as Montreal, New York City and San Francisco are working to make these tactical urbanism projects allowable on more permanent basis. Read more at the New York Times:

Nationwide, people moving downtown want to be in on the mix, too; they want pedestrian-friendly streets, parks and plazas. And smart cities are responding, like Dallas, whose Klyde Warren Park opened downtown last year atop the Woodall Rodgers Freeway, where it burrows for a few merciful blocks below ground. The place was buzzing when I passed by one recent weekend. In Phoenix, where nearly half of all city lots are vacant, the mayor, Greg Stanton, lately chose an empty 15-acre parcel — an eyesore in the heart of town — for an urban park and garden where nearby residents, mostly immigrants, can grow vegetables, for their own tables or to sell at local farmers’ markets.

And in San Francisco, the city government has been renting out curbside parking spaces, long term, on the condition they be turned into parklets. Most involve little more than benches and shrubs. But the best have become elaborate interventions, with landscaping, platforms, even mini-mini-golf. I spent a morning watching kids play and adults sunbathe in a parklet outside Fourbarrel Coffee on Valencia Street. Los Angeles and Philadelphia, among others, have recently started parklet programs. New York is trying it out, too.

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Development News Politics

Smart Growth May Offer Cincinnati a Way Out of Its Structurally Imbalanced Budget

Land Use Budget ImpactsThe City of Cincinnati passed yet another structurally imbalanced budget late last week. At the meeting Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (C) and other council members admitted that the approved budget once again relied on a one-time fix to get the city through another budget cycle without significant layoffs and major funding cuts.

Despite having its hands tied in coming up with creative ways to find revenues, Cincinnati is not alone in dealing with this dilemma. Hundreds of cities across the nation are struggling with budget deficits with some much larger than ours.

Smart Growth America recently completed a national report, titled Building Better Budgets, with findings that could help many municipalities find long-term solutions to their budget crisis. The report makes three main arguments that smart growth development, described as compact, walkable and mixed-use overall save municipalities on upfront infrastructure costs, service costs and serve to increase the city’s tax base better than suburban style developments.

After reviewing a diverse collection of cities across America, such as Raleigh, NC,  Nashville, TN and Champagne, IL, the study found that smart growth development costs an average of 38% less for upfront infrastructure, saves municipalities an average of 10% on ongoing delivery of services, and generates approximately 10 times more tax revenue per acre when compared to conventional suburban development.

“These figures are conservative, and many communities could save even more,” authors of the report stated. “Smart growth development’s potential for lower costs and higher revenues means that many municipalities can operate smart growth development at a surplus rather than a deficit.”

How local projects stack up
Several projects on the horizon are poised to add to the tax base in Cincinnati’s urban core. Phase two of The Banks, dunhumbyUSA Centre, the 580 Building apartment conversion, hotels at the Bartlett Building and Enquirer Building, and proposed apartment buildings above Fountain Place and the parking garage at Seventh and Sycamore all offer the upfront infrastructure cost savings and long-term revenue advantages discussed in Smart Growth America’s report.

The redevelopment of the Pogue’s Garage into a 30-story apartment tower with a grocery store, and an 11-store Holiday Inn at Broadway and Eighth Street are two other projects that offer similar benefits, but are currently on hold due to the ongoing legal dispute surrounding the City of Cincinnati’s Parking Modernization & Lease Plan. Additionally, a slew of projects in Over-the-Rhine, Walnut Hills and Northside also appear poised to help stabilize the city’s finances thanks to their smart growth advantages.

Property Tax Yield

Not all is well, however, as many recent real estate investments throughout the city have taken the conventional suburban development approach. The Incline District in East Price Hill, Villages of Day Break in Bond Hill, Oakley Station in Oakley, MetroWest in Lower Price Hill, and developments along Red Bank Road in Madisonville all seem to be missing the bigger picture about the financial advantages of smart growth.

In addition to the actual footprint of the development, the report discusses the importance of a project’s site location.

“The per-acre measurement of tax revenue is extremely important because land is a precious commodity for every jurisdiction,” the report concluded. “It is true that in some cases the total dollar amount of tax revenue in conventional suburban settings can be very large, but those conventional suburban developments consume large amounts of land. Many cities in the United States have a constrained land supply and must husband their land resources carefully in order to protect their solvency.”

While many of the real estate investments throughout Cincinnati are being done in a smart manner, others seem to be squandering valuable urban land with suburban-style developments. The City of Cincinnati, and other cities around the region, might be able to make a long and sustained positive impact on their budgets by refusing to go forward with projects that offer an easy, short-term score, and instead demanding more sustainable development practices in their community.

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Business Development News Transportation

VIDEO: Cincinnati Officials Celebrate Groundbreaking for $6.9M Uptown Transit District

Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) officials were joined by community members and political leaders from the City of Cincinnati this morning in Clifton Heights to celebrate the groundbreaking for the $6.9 million Uptown Transit District.

The Uptown Transit District, once complete by the end of 2013, will create a secondary hub for Metro bus service, and will allow the bus agency to continue to move away from its long-used ‘Spoke and Hub’ system that fed all routes to the Government Square Transit Center in the Central Business District.

Metro officials say that new routes, including the agency’s new Metro*Plus service, will utilize the new uptown transit hubs. Additionally, direct service from Metro’s Glenway Crossing Transit Center will be able to take advantage of the new facilities.

Transit officials believe the Uptown Transit District will be a critical improvement for the regional bus network, allowing more direct and better access to the region’s second largest employment center.

“It is a wonderful concept and I’m so pleased that Metro is undertaking this because we really need it,” explained Cincinnati City Councilmember Wendell Young (D). “Uptown is a very important economic engine in this city, with 50,000-plus jobs up here.”

The Uptown Transit District will include four distinct bus hubs throughout the area including the Clifton Heights Business District at Calhoun Street and Corbett Drive, Vine Street between Calhoun and McMillan Streets, Jefferson Street at University Avenue, and the Medical Center Area.

The stations will include enhanced shelters and will also include real-time arrival information.

“We’ll have informational kiosks that will provide real-time information…so therefore you know exactly when you can embark upon your destination,” Terry Garcia Crews, CEO of Metro, told the crowd at the ceremony. “We want to make sure that we’re designing a system that meets the needs of our consumers.”

Construction was originally anticipated to begin in April 2013. Approximately 72% of the funding was provided by the Federal Government with the remainder coming from the City of Cincinnati, Metro and the OKI Regional Council of Governments.

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Up To Speed

Free Sunday Parking viewed as somewhat problematic with renegotiated Chicago parking deal

Free Sunday Parking viewed as somewhat problematic with renegotiated Chicago parking deal

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel today announced that he and the city’s finance and legal has settled a legal dispute with Chicago Parking Meters (CPM) that will provide for free parking in Chicago neighborhoods on Sundays and the introduction of a pay-by-cell option. The legal dispute originated over closed, added parking spaces or changes to periods of stay, hours of operation or parking rates and an estimated $1 billion in future charges over the life of the contract that would no longer be owed. Free Sunday parking is an issue many downtown Cincinnati businesses outside of The Banks have been arguing against, especially during Sundays with sporting events as they claim they can’t open their doors due to the lack of available metered parking. More from Streetsblog:

The proposed changes seem to be a good thing for the city overall, but the introduction of free Sunday parking is somewhat problematic. While I don’t have a problem with churchgoing seniors getting a break at the expense of people out on the town at night, free daytime parking in neighborhood retail districts could have unintended negative consequences.

On-street parking works best when its cost reflects the demand for spaces. When meter prices are steep in high-demand areas, it discourages people from parking in the same spot for long periods, which increases the chance that there will be open spots for short-term parking. When parking is free, it encourages visitors to park for longer periods, and it tempts employees to drive instead of walking, biking or taking transit to work. Their cars might occupy spaces all day, eliminating spots for potential customers.