Tag: urban design

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Development News Transportation

PHOTOS: $55M Waldvogel Viaduct reconstruction nearing completion

The reconstruction of the Waldvogel Viaduct was spared from the massive spending cuts at the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) last January, and has been able to continue on its scheduled path.

According to City of Cincinnati officials, the project will replace the existing, half-mile structure that connects the Sixth Street Expressway to Elberon Avenue, Warsaw Avenue and River Road in Lower Price Hill and Queensgate. The existing structure had been deteriorating at a rapid pace, and had been rated in “Poor” condition for several years leading up to the project.

The $55 million Waldvogel Viaduct reconstruction project is also preserving space for a future bicycle / pedestrian path planned for Cincinnati’s western riverfront.

As of this month, very little remains of the 73-year-old elevated roadway. UrbanCincy contributor, Jake Mecklenborg, visited the construction site last week to capture the visual progress being made in Lower Price Hill.

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News Transportation

City officials working to get Central Parkway back on [cycle] track

There had been hopes to build the region’s first cycle track, a fully separated bicycle facility, on Central Parkway in 2012. Internal disputes and the lack of funding, however, have delayed the project’s implementation.

The Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE) gave City Council’s Major Transportation and Infrastructure Projects Subcommittee an update on the project, in addition to the other bicycle investments being advanced, last week.

At that meeting, Mel McVay, Senior City Planner with the DOTE, stated that the Central Parkway cycle track efforts were in the preliminary investigation stage, but that there could be some challenges regarding the facility’s relationship to vehicular capacity and on-street parking along the 3.4-mile stretch of roadway.

The full length of the cycle track would extend from Ludlow Avenue, where the City installed the region’s first green bike lanes in November 2012, to Liberty Street in Over-the-Rhine, and would cost approximately $750,000.

Plans for the Central Parkway cycle track first came to light during episode eight of The UrbanCincy Podcast.

The hope now, McVay says, is to finish the preliminary analysis within the next month. Should that analysis show it feasible to finance and construct the Central Parkway cycle track, then design work would begin immediately.

The City’s Bicycle Transportation Program has installed nearly 40 miles of bicycle facilities to-date, with an additional 289.9 miles planned in a citywide bicycle network.

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Up To Speed

How Capital Bikeshare got started, and what Cincinnati can learn

How Capital Bikeshare got started, and what Cincinnati can learn from it.

What Washington D.C. has done with Capital Bikeshare is considered the nation’s best. It is the biggest, has the most riders, and is the most financially solvent as compared to the rest of the bike sharing systems in the United States. As Cincinnati prepares to launch its own bike sharing system, what can local leaders learn from the nation’s best system? More from Slate:

If you had been handed, a decade ago, a map of the U.S. and asked to predict where the novel idea of bike sharing—then limited to a few small-scale projects in a handful of European cities, might first find its firmest footing, you probably would have laid your money on a progressive hub like Portland or Seattle or the regional poles of walkable urbanism, New York or San Francisco—all of which were scoring higher, those days, in surveys like Bicycling magazine’s list of most bikeable cities.

Launching a sponsorless bike-share system intended to break even, or even make money, was unprecedented. And having no sponsor made raising capital a challenge, but D.C.-area governments scavenged for the money.

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Up To Speed

NYC’s Queens neighborhood aiming to transform stretch of railway into park

NYC’s Queens neighborhood aiming to transform stretch of railway into park.

The dramatic transformation of the High Line in Manhattan has been so successful that it has influenced other urban communities to re-examine what they’re doing with their unused railroads. Just across the East River, however, Queens is aiming to transform a stretch of train track, that has been abandoned for 50 years, into what advocates are calling the QueensWay. More from the New York Times:

Now, the three-and-a-half-mile stretch of rusty train track in central Queens is being reconceived as the “QueensWay,” a would-be linear park for walkers and bicyclists in an area desperate for more parkland and, with the potential for art installations, performances and adjacent restaurants, a draw for tourists interested in sampling the famously diverse borough.

Unlike the High Line, the QueensWay would welcome bicycles. While the trestles are relatively narrow, long stretches are wide enough — up to 25 feet — to accommodate walkers and bicyclists. New bike paths could connect the park to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to the north, as well as an existing bikeway in Jamaica Bay to the south. About 250,000 residents live within a mile of the proposed park, and its backers see all kinds of ancillary benefits, from health to traffic.

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Business Development News

Great Traditions breaks ground on phase two of Stetson Square

Nearly seven years after phase one of the $84 million Village at Stetson Square development opened, developers stood with city and neighborhood leaders in Corryville this morning to celebrate the groundbreaking of the project’s next phase.

Once fully complete, phase two will include a total of 18 condominiums in four different buildings, with prices ranging from $200,000 to $275,000.

In order to help compliment the development, the City of Cincinnati will be contributing $340,000 towards infrastructure improvements in the immediate area. The development team expects the first residents to begin moving in by August 2013.

The Stetson Square development got off to a fast start with its large first phase. Until phase two designs were revealed in May 2012, the second and third remaining phases of work had been left undeveloped and up in the air with regards to when they would get started.


The second phase of work at Stetson Square kicked off today – nearly 13 years after the original plan was developed for the project in 2000. Image provided.

“We are very proud of Stetson Square and what it has contributed to the Corryville neighborhood and Uptown area,” explained Jamie Humes, Vice President, Great Traditions Land & Development. “It is an exciting, transformative time for people to live within the City of Cincinnati.”

In addition to adding new owner-occupied housing units to the Corryville neighborhood near the booming medical research block, the developers are also pursuing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

In December 2012, Cincinnati City Council passed new measures overseeing the tax incentives distributed for LEED-certified project.

But while phase two is finally getting started, the prominently located phase three has yet to have its future defined. When asked about the future of phase three, Humes stated that there is no definitive plan or use for it yet.

“Our perspective is that the marketplace will ultimately determine what the best land use and timing for development will be,” Humes clarified. “Corryville Community Development Corporation (CCDC) will then make the decision on how to proceed.”


Phase two of Stetson Square is considerably smaller than phase one, and will welcome its first residents by fall 2013. Rendering provided.

In 2006, Great Traditions informed UrbanCincy that phase three would eventually result in either apartments or condominiums, with a preference for additional owner-occupied units if the market would allow. The undeveloped lot sits at the corner of Martin Luther King Drive and Eden Avenue, and the CCDC currently retains ownership of the property.

Great Traditions touts that Stetson Square has 100% of its 79,000 square feet of office space and 92% of its 15,000 square feet of retail space occupied, more than 400 people living within the first phase’s 53 condominiums and 205 apartments.

The extended period it has taken to build out the development may be attributable to a sluggish economy, or even the fact that Stetson Square was Great Tradition’s first major foray into the urban real estate market.

“When Stetson Square was originally conceived, it was designed not only to be a great project, but also to serve as a catalyst for the revitalization of Corryville,” Humes told UrbanCincy. “To have the opportunity to translate this concept into an urban context with Stetson Square has been a natural and exciting progression for our company.”