Tag: urban design

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Business Development News

Work on Smale Riverfront Park Progresses Despite Lack of State, Federal Funds

The $120 million Smale Riverfront Park will celebrate its next wave of progress two months from now when the Women’s Committee Garden and Duke Energy Garden are opened to the public – more than doubling the central riverfront park’s completed acreage.

According to officials from the Cincinnati Park Board, the project is still on-time and on-budget thanks to an influx of private contributions.

Originally, park officials had planned on approximately half of the project’s cost being covered by state and federal funds. While those funds flowed early in the project’s life, they have all but dried up over the past two years.

Cincinnati Central Riverfront Plan

“We got into this pretty aware of what the challenges were, but the biggest challenges thus far have probably been the state and federal funding,” stated Smale Riverfront Park’s project manager, Dave Prather. “It’s been a pretty big adjustment when half of the funding you were counting on hasn’t come, but thanks to the private funding we’ve been able to stay pretty much on schedule.”

Prather says that the city leadership understands the realities facing both their state and federal partners, but that without the private and local support the project would most likely be behind schedule.

He is, however, optimistic that things will turn around and says that the park board is working on other ways to get state and federal dollars. One such element that could be the beneficiary of such efforts is the planned 1,000-foot transient boat dock which may be eligible for up to $3 million in grants from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Watercraft.

Should such funding fall into place, Prather says that the boat dock could be operational as early as May or July 2015.

“We received $3 million in the State capital fund three years ago, and that’s what we thought we would get as we worked through the phasing plan,” Prather explained. “Hopefully the state will get back in the business of being able to help with significant capital projects.”

Not all of the funding news has been grim, as Prather noted strong support from Hamilton County, private sources, and the City of Cincinnati which includes a recent $4 million allocation from the proceeds of its recently approved Parking Modernization & Lease agreement.

That $4 million will go towards accelerating the construction timeline of phase four of construction work which will now include the PNC Grow Up Great Adventure Playground and carousel. According to Prather, both of these projects will now be completed by May 2015 – in time for the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

One of the features that will be open in two months is the new riverwalk, of sorts, that will run from the Walnut Street Overlook approximately to Sycamore Street immediately south of Great American Ball Park. One of the key features of this riverwalk, Prather notes, is that the guardrails will be 48 inches in height instead of 42 inches so that both pedestrians and bicyclists can enjoy the pathway.

“Our observation has been that you can’t tell cyclists where to go,” said Prather who noted that he is an avid cyclist himself. “So we’re going to construct the closest to the river pathway to accommodate both pedestrians and cyclists – right where they both want to be.”

While much work is left to do, both in terms of construction and securing funds to continue construction, the project team maintains excitement for the transformation they are overseeing.

“I’ve been an architect and a planner for the city for years, and a lot of the time you spend a lot of time and energy on plans that don’t get built,” Prather concluded. “This one [project] is different…we’re just on a roll and it’s awesome to have ideas that everyone embraces, you feel right about what you’re building, and you get the resources to actually build it. We’ve gotten a lot of cooperation from the city and county, and I feel like we’re all rowing in the same direction.”

Officials hope to complete the 45-acre park in its entirety by July 2017, excluding improvements to the river’s edge that will need to be coordinated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

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Up To Speed

Will $25M cash payout from Big East fast-track Nippert Stadium renovation?

Will $25M cash payout from Big East fast-track Nippert Stadium renovation?.

The University of Cincinnati has been trying mightily to get out of the collapsing Big East Conference, but its lack of options to-date might result in a big-time payout for its athletic program. With as much as $25 million in cash heading to Clifton, might this fast-track the $75 million renovation and expansion of Nippert Stadium? More from CBS Sports:

Big East leaders met Friday afternoon in Atlanta to discuss, among other things, the withdrawal of the Catholic 7. No deals regarding the new basketball-centric league or reported sale of the “Big East” name were finalized, but Blaudschun reports that the current “football faction” will have a cash fund of “close to $100 million for distribution.”

The $100 million total is a combination of nearly 70 million dollars the Big East has and will collect in exit fee money from schools that have left or have announced they are leaving and another total of approximately $30 million which will come to the Big East offices from the NCAA as “unit” shares for conference teams participation in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

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Development News Opinion

GUEST EDITORIAL: Horseshoe Casino Fails to Deliver on Urban Design

The completed Rock Gaming/Caesars joint venture boasts a list of features one would expect of a casino: 354,000 square feet, $400 million price tag, restaurants, bars, a 2,500-space parking garage, and space for business meetings and conventions. None of these features should come as a shock to anyone that’s ever been in a casino.

The touted difference between Horseshoes Cincinnati and Cleveland and casinos elsewhere, is that these have been deemed “truly urban” casinos. Well, if locating in a downtown is all that’s needed to make something urban, then mission accomplished. But since a downtown is a living collection of buildings and spaces, whether something is truly urban has more to do with how it contributes or detracts from its location. And since casinos are not known to be particularly friendly urban creatures, the most recent example being CityCenter, it’s worth looking at some of the concerns expressed to the unnamed Las Vegas starchitect Dan Gilbert imposed.

Cincinnati Casino
The only actual limestone you will find on the site is the wall coping around the lawn- note the whiteness of the caps compared to the synthetic stucco below.

The first thing I think of when I look at the new casino from any angle is tan. Why in the world is it so tan? Color wasn’t something that was a key talking point for the casino, though the Urban Design Review Board has now made that a priority at The Banks, but the tan-ness of the building really dominates all other exterior features. This domination lies with the use of synthetic stucco to emulate limestone. The issue here is not with modern building technology, but that it was misused in both color and implementation.

The implementation failure lies in the lack of any ornament within the stucco. One of the main reasons for using limestone is that it is one of the best stones for showing carved detailed, as can be seen just blocks away at 30 E. Central Parkway. Why try to emulate a limestone building if the only way you do that is by using fake alternate panels and stopping there?

These two issues with the exterior of the building can be summed up in one way: the Messer Pendleton Bid Package required $5,033,623 for exterior metal framing/stucco, and $6,967,980 for interior wall framing and drywall and $2,268,821 for painting and wall coverings. The casino allocated an amount for the interior walls almost twice that of the exterior walls.

30 E. Central Parkway

The second oddity that stands out is the number of offsets, particularly on Reading Road. Offsets are a common feature of large single-story buildings, like Wal-Mart and Kroger, to break up the mass of these behemoths. But what’s the goal here? To confuse the pedestrian or neighbor across Reading into thinking that these are multiple windowless buildings? Admit you’re a grand building like Music Hall or Union Terminal. Walking west down Reading is like passing by massive stone boulders. There’s no beauty or nuance to the walls save for two large brick panel insets and foundation plantings.

“With the strong support of this very active, urban-focused community, our team has been working for more than a year to ensure that our project does not prosper alone but also benefits the surrounding neighborhoods and region. The outward facing design and pedestrian accessibility will rejuvenate this part of town, while putting thousands of people into good-paying jobs.”- Dan Gilbert- Chairman, Rock Gaming.

“Outward facing design” is a catchphrase that was repeated throughout the design process. What does that mean? To this project it means having one main entrance and restaurants with windows and a patio, quite the accomplishment for typically fortress-like buildings. But to say the design of the project is outward facing because of the openness of only 360 feet of the entire building’s facade and at only one of the intersections surround the site is like saying a restaurant near the entrance of a mall is outward facing because it’s on the exterior of the building.

Reading Road Quarry
Richard Rosenthal was right about his concern over a “gully-like” feeling down Reading. In fact, it’s a quarry.

Urban design was really were there was the most input from local groups on how the casino will most likely affect the everyday life in the public realm around the casino.

Terminated vistas – views that focus on a deliberately chosen object or scene – is a historical design concept used to draw people towards a building and create the appearance that destinations are closer than they appear, encouraging pedestrians to walk.

In the case of the casino, the site’s prow-shaped western end at the corner of Central Parkway, Reading and Eggleston creates the opportunity to terminate the view looking east down Central at the casino entrance and the developer has taken that opportunity. Again, as with the offsets, there is a lack of grandness to the view as the casino is dwarfed by the height of the buildings leading to it down Central, rendering it almost insignificant.

Central Parkway Vista

The view down Pendleton towards the casino would sad if it wasn’t so tan. No pedestrian connectivity, no windows, not even roof treatment. Nothing.

While the focus of activity for the casino will be at its entrance and new lawn for the county jail, the opportunity for Pendleton lies in what happens north of and down Reading.

From the site’s layout, you can see that building coverage isn’t great on either side of Reading Road for certain spans. And oddly enough, the casino chose to build near the street for the span west of Pendleton where there are no buildings on the north side of Reading, and then chose to back away from the street for its loading docks for the span east of Pendleton where there are buildings on the north side of Reading. And since Rock Gaming owns the stretch on the south side of Reading, it’s extremely doubtful that organic infill development ever occurs in this area.

To end where the casino does, urban casinos are not uses that fail for any reason other than over taxation. When the casino opens and rightfully provides a local opportunity to keep the poor man’s tax from leaving for Indiana or Las Vegas, let’s be careful not to confuse its popularity with quality.

This guest editorial was authored by Eric Douglas, a native of Grand Rapids, MI who currently lives in Covington’s Roebling Point neighborhood. Eric is a member of the Congress for New Urbanism and earned a Bachelors of Science from Michigan State University. Since that time he has worked for Planning, Community Development and Public Works departments in Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Detroit. If you would like to have your thoughts published on UrbanCincy you can do so by submitting your guest editorial to urbancincy@gmail.com.

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Arts & Entertainment News Opinion

PHOTOS: Kansas City’s Surprisingly Gritty Urban Core

I visited Kansas City February 6-10 for the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, where the people behind Streetsblog were kind enough to invite a number of urbanist bloggers out to the event.

The intent was to conduct a training session about how advocacy journalists and bloggers can better reach and influence policymakers, and how those websites can better reach non-white and lower income individuals – two demographics bloggers traditionally struggle to reach. To that end, I was asked to present on the things that UrbanCincy has been doing in Cincinnati, and how younger bloggers might be able to learn from our experiences in the Queen City.

Kansas City

It was a great opportunity, and we’ll be doing more of these gatherings in the future…hopefully hosting one in Cincinnati in the not-so-distant future.

When not collaborating with these writers and new media types, or attending the conference, I spent my time wandering about Kansas City’s urban core. I stayed in the central business district, but also checked out the Crossroads Arts District, Westside North, Central Industrial District, West Bottoms, River District, Crown Center, Hospital Hill, Westwood, Paseo West, and the 18th & Vine Jazz District.

Perhaps the largest takeaway for me was the surprising amount of industrial architecture and infrastructure in the city. I guess I should have known better since Kansas City was always a prominent industrial center and transfer point for much of the Midwest, but it was an impressive surprise nevertheless.

I think I walked 11 miles on Sunday alone, in overpowering wind at that. But the discomfort was worth it for all I was able to see, but I hope to return to check out Midtown and Country Club Plaza at the very least, and to get some more of that amazing barbecue at Oklahoma Joe’s.

If Photobucket wasn’t so lousy, you could have just viewed them in slideshow form within this post. Instead, please view all 82 of my photographs from Kansas City here.

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Business News Transportation

Metro to Break Ground on $6.9M Uptown Transit District this April

Regional transit planners are looking to take advantage of growing ridership around Cincinnati’s second largest employment center by developing what will become the bus system’s secondary nexus.

Officials from the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) say that construction will begin on the Uptown Transit District, a collection of four new transit hubs throughout Uptown, in the coming months.

The new hub is intended to serve Cincinnati’s uptown neighborhoods which create the region’s second largest employment center with more than 50,000 jobs. Many of these jobs are associated with the region’s largest medical institutions and the University of Cincinnati, and even though the area is served by a variety of Metro buses, it has been difficult for transit riders to find or coordinate transfers between buses.

Jefferson Avenue Transit Hub
One of the four new transit hubs will be built along Jefferson Avenue at the University of Cincinnati. Rendering provided.

“Ridership with Uptown origins or destinations is one of the highest in the region, second only to downtown Cincinnati,” explained Jill Dunne, Metro’s public affairs manager. “On an average weekday all Uptown stops serve about 3,300 people.”

Since the failure of the 2002 MetroMoves campaign, which included a plan to construct several regional bus hubs, the region’s largest transit provider has been able to utilize other funding sources to move forward with a more limited approach.

The Glenway Crossing Transit Hub was the first of these to become reality when it opened in December 2011.

With ridership increasing 4.2% over the past year, due in part to an increase of use by students at the University of Cincinnati, the transit agency wants to move forward with the next component of the regional bus hubs originally envisioned as part of MetroMoves.

The four separate hubs that will make up the Uptown Transit District, officials say, will include shelters and real-time arrival boards modeled after those installed at Government Square last June.

Uptown Transit District

Dunne says that the hub locations were designated after transit planners reviewed the combination of the existing route network, existing passenger travel patterns, geography and street pattern of the Uptown area, and dispersed land use and trip attractions.

“The four enhanced bus stops will provide an adequately sized and more comfortable place to accommodate existing passenger volumes,” said Dunne. “It will also address future growth needs in such key Uptown markets as UC students/faculty/staff, medical industry employees, medical patients and visitors, and neighborhood residents.”

In an effort to focus attention on existing routes, Metro recently conducted several public sessions on modifying bus routes to increase utilization of the Uptown Transit District.

In addition to existing service modifications to enhance usage of the Uptown Transit District, officials say that the four new hubs will benefit from the planned phase two expansion of the Cincinnati Streetcar and new Metro*Plus limited stop service that will begin operating between Downtown, Uptown and Kenwood.

The $6.9 million project was funded through a mixture of funding, approximately 72% of which came from Federal sources, and will begin construction in April.

Plans call for additional bus hubs, like the Glenway Crossing Transit Hub and Uptown Transit District, to be developed in other large employment centers around the city as money becomes available.