Tag: urban design

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Business Development News

VIDEO: Progress Continues at $120M Smale Riverfront Park

The progress at the $120 million Smale Riverfront Park continues on-schedule and on-budget, according to the latest update from project manager Dave Prather.

Once the ongoing work is completed, the 45-acre park will be roughly 50 percent complete by 2015. The progress is critical as local officials are scrambling to finish several large development projects prior to the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Star Game to be held at Great American Ball Park.

The two ongoing major phases of work at Smale Riverfront Park, Prather says, will be completed in time for the national spotlight in July 2015 when the MLB All-Star Game comes to Cincinnati.

Since the last project update the roundabout at the foot of the Roebling Suspension Bridge has been completed, allowing motorists to connect in all directions at the odd intersection. Foundation and sewer work has also progressed on the elements of the park now being built immediately west of the bridge.

“When we last left off we were just starting on the construction of our Vine Street carousel and fountain steps project,” Prather explained in the video. “Where before our project, phase one, related to Walnut Street, now we’re building the portion of the project that will complete the frame of the Roebling Suspension Bridge and connect with Vine Street.”

While Prather touts the continued success of the project, continued success may be difficult to achieve.

In March 2013 Prather told UrbanCincy that the ban on federal earmark spending has put future phases of work at the park in jeopardy. In order to make up for the lack of federal dollars, project officials have been relying heavily on state and local contributions. Private donations have also played an enormous role for the project as those dollar totals now exceed the projected totals for private contributions.

Further complicating the project is that it has proceeded along with development of The Banks. That mixed-use development is also running into schedule issues, due to the ban on federal earmarks, as funding has not yet been identified for garage and infrastructure work for future phases to be built adjacent to Paul Brown Stadium. Should that work be delayed past the intended schedule, it may also impact the construction schedule of the western portions of Smale Riverfront Park.

U.S. Congressman Bob Gibbs (R-OH), who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, will tour Smale Riverfront Park today at 4:30pm with Cincinnati Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (D) and park officials.

Local leaders are hopeful that the visit will help position the park to receive water infrastructure support from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers through the next Water Resources Development Act, which is expected to be introduced soon.

If all goes according to plan, however, officials believe that Smale Riverfront Park can be completed by mid-2017.

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Business Development News

Final Designs Revealed for $125M Dunnhumby Centre Tower

5th Street Exterior - Image Provided by ImageFiction.

In March of 2015, 700 employees will move into the long-awaited $125 million headquarters of dunnhumbyUSA at Fifth and Race street in downtown Cincinnati. The building is the culmination of a fifteen-year effort to reinvent the area just one block from Fountain Square.

In 1999 the city purchased and demolished a fourteen-story office building and parking garage at the site in anticipation of locating a Nordstrom’s department store downtown. When plans for the store failed to materialize, the site was paved over as surface parking for over a decade.

Last year, dunnhumbyUSA and the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) partnered with the city to develop the block as the new headquarters for the company. Earlier this year, the project received approval on the interior design of the building, which includes open floor plans, and two light wells that will provide natural light during the day through to the bottom floors of the office structure.

Today dunnhumbyUSA presented its exterior designs to the city’s Urban Design Review Board, which makes advisory decisions on approval for landmark structures.

The designs for the new structure were put together by architecture firm Gensler.

The presentation is the culmination of over nine months worth of work on the exterior presentation of the building.

“We designed the building from the inside out. There was a lot of attention paid to the habits and needs of our employees,” Dave Palm, Senior Vice President of Operations with dunnhumbyUSA, told UrbanCincy.

The exterior façades of the building are meant to accentuate the data driven nature of the company and avoid the repetitiveness of patterns, and are made up of an arrangement of white and charcoal grey panel frames. The entrances on each street façade, meanwhile, are accentuated by a cascade of white paneling up the side of the building. This pattern called, “zippers” help break up the massing of the structure.

Other features of the building exterior include outdoor inset areas located on the building’s eighth floor. Further outdoor opportunities are located on the top floor where a significant portion of the floor will be dedicated to outside events.

Although only nine stories in height the floors of the building will be 14 feet high with 20-foot high ceilings for the street-level retail. The building will be the equivalent height of a more traditional 12-story building. Additionally, the three parking levels above the retail level will be convertible to office when the company needs to add room for expansion.

The first level retail section comes in at just under 30,000 square feet and features an all glass street-oriented façade. 3CDC is charged with attracting retail tenants.

“We would prefer to find a local business,” Adam Gelter, 3CDC’s Executive Vice President of Development told UrbanCincy. Gelter went on to say that the retail space can go to one tenant or be broken up into three or four separate retail spaces.

The building is slated to be completed in January 2015 with move-in set for March of the same year.

This project, along with the construction of a 30-story apartment tower and grocer and the continuing plans to construct up to 225 apartments above Macy’s at Fountain Place, is set to transform the long neglected corridors along Sixth Street and Race Street and could spur additional investments in development opportunities in the western portion of the central business district.

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Up To Speed

Charlotte transforming city center through dynamic public investments

Charlotte transforming city center through dynamic public investments.

Cincinnatians have experienced first-hand what good public policy and investments can do to improve quality of life and economic value. New parks, improved infrastructure and expanded mobility options are sweeping through Cincinnati and it has been noticed nation-wide. Cincy’s not the only place taking this approach..Charlotte has also been investing in light rail lines, a streetcar, improved infrastructure and other public facilities like parks. More from the Charlotte Observer (including a video):

As soon as he was hired to lead Mecklenburg County’s parks seven years ago, Jim Garges heard the same criticism people had been saying about uptown Charlotte for decades. It had no life after 6 p.m. – it was nothing but a grand office park. Now on Labor Day weekend, Garges wants everyone to look at uptown again and explore its latest addition – the 5.2-acre, $11 million park to honor renowned artist and Charlotte native Romare Bearden.

“It’s a game changer,” said Garges, director of Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation. “People aren’t laughing anymore about uptown. It’s become the place to be.” It’ll take three days to grandly open the park that – with BB&T Ballpark next door and Bank of American Stadium blocks away – is sure to transform a piece of Third Ward that was once remnants of industrial buildings and gravel parking lots.

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Up To Speed

Will Janette Sadik-Khan and Amanda Burden form their own urban planning policy institute?

Will Janette Sadik-Khan and Amanda Burden form their own urban planning policy institute?.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg not only brought his huge stack of cash with him when he took control of the nation’s largest city in 2002, he also brought a high-powered administration with him. One of the most successful and popular of those has been Bloomberg’s transportation chief Janette Sadik-Khan and planning head Amanda Burden. Both are rumored to be looking for new gigs. More from Crain’s Business:

The city’s transportation chief, Janette Sadik-Khan, and planning czar, Amanda Burden, are close friends who share a passion for creating vibrant, sustainable cities. They have been travel companions—to India, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Copenhagen—and even sat next to each other at a recent benefit gala honoring Ms. Sadik-Khan.

And when the Bloomberg administration draws to a close this year, the powerful pair could go into business together, spreading their brand of urban planning across the globe. Several former Bloomberg administration sources confirmed that the two have been in discussions about forming their own urban-planning policy institute, either as an offshoot of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s foundation or as a stand-alone entity. Another source said they were angling to open a global consulting firm.

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Business Development News

PHOTOS: Mercer Commons Beginning to Reshape Central Over-the-Rhine

Mercer Commons has long been considered a critically important site in Over-the-Rhine due to its size and central location.

In 2005, Cincinnati Public Schools purchased the land and existing buildings on the 2.2-acre site with the plan to rebuild the shuttered Washington Park Elementary School there.

As plans changed over the years, the school district decided to abandon the school plans for the site and instead sell it to the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) to pursue a $63 million mixed-use development.

Consisting of a new 340-space parking garage, 28 condos and 96 market-rate apartments, 17,600 square feet of commercial space, and 30 affordable apartments, Mercer Commons is not only adding new structures along Vine Street and Fourteenth Street, but is also renovating 19 historic structures as part of the overall development.

With work on phase one nearing completion, and ground recently being broken on phase two, Mercer Commons is now transforming a large central portion of Cincinnati’s largest historic district.

UrbanCincy staff writer and photographer Jake Mecklenborg visited the site last week to document its progress. What he found is that the finished development will have the appearance of having been renovated and constructed at various times, instead of all at once as it actually is.

“They are building modern-looking row homes on Mercer right next to all the renovations, and I noticed that it looks like they’ve paid some attention to the back alleys, since this is how residents will reach the parking garage,” Mecklenborg explained.

He went on to say that the development team appears to be reusing bricks in the alley serving the site, and that this will end up being the primary access point for residents living at Mercer Commons.