Tag: urban design

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Business Development News

$27.3M investment to transform historic Enquirer Building into 238-room hotel

The historic Enquirer Building in downtown Cincinnati is finally set to get its long anticipated makeover. However, this time it will be as a hotel instead of the residences originally envisioned for the 86-year-old tower.

Plans call for a 238-room hotel with 12,000 square feet of street-level retail space. The renovation work would be completed over the next two years, with the first guests arriving at the end of 2014.

SREE Hotels, which typically operates Marriott hotel brands, will be the eventual operator of the new hotel one block from Fountain Square. This will also be SREE Hotels first project in the Midwest.

The planned hotel would become downtown’s fifth largest and would bring its total to more than 3,000 rooms.

“It is always great when we can preserve and restore one of our historic buildings,” Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory stated in a prepared release. “The deal also illustrates the increasing demand for more hotel rooms in Cincinnati. We have been focused on creating providing a great visitor experience for all of our guests, and that is paying off with increased tourism and convention business.”

The $27.3 million hotel project follows a failed effort by Middle Earth Developers to renovate the historic building into 152 apartments, 53,400 square feet of office space, and 170 parking spaces.

The new hotel would be the third recent hotel to join the greater downtown area over the past three years. According to the Cincinnati USA Convention & Visitors Bureau, downtown hotels had a 63 percent occupancy rate in 2011, and are experiencing record numbers thus far in 2012.

Developers of The Banks have also been in negotiations with hotel operators for a planned hotel at Freedom Way at Main Street directly across the street from Great American Ball Park.

“This deal, coupled with the renovations at the Hyatt, help to build our capacity for bigger and bigger convention and meeting business that in turn help our economy,” Cincinnati City Manager Milton Dohoney noted.

According to City officials, the project is contingent upon a 75 percent exemption on the increased tax value of the $27.3 million investment, which would equate to approximately $7.3 million over the course of 12 years. The deal was passed out of Cincinnati’s Budget & Finance Committee yesterday in their first day back from summer recess, and will go before the full City Council on Wednesday, August 1 at 2pm.

Enquirer Building exterior photograph by Thadd Fiala for UrbanCincy.

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Business Development News

Excess parking at Mercer Commons adding millions to project costs

Project officials broke ground on the long-anticipated Mercer Commons project nearly one month ago. Once complete, the $56 million development will include 154 housing units, 26,000 square feet of commercial space, and a staggering 359 parking spaces.

Leading up to the project’s ceremonious groundbreaking, local preservationists had been concerned about Mercer Commons’ impact on the neighborhood’s historic fabric. But while much attention was paid to material treatment and exterior facades, not much was critiqued of the amount of parking.

According to the city’s zoning code, the development is mandated to provide one parking spot per residential unit, and one parking spot per 400 square feet of commercial space. Had the project merely followed what is prescribed in the city’s zoning code, then it would have had 161 fewer parking spaces.

The financial impact Mercer Commons’ parking is significant. 140 fewer spaces inside the new Mercer Commons Garage would have resulted in approximately $3.5 million in savings.

What’s more is that the portions of the Mercer Commons development along Vine Street qualify for a 50 percent parking reduction for being within 600 feet of a streetcar stop, thanks to a new regulation approved by the City of Cincinnati in June 2010.

Of the development’s 154 housing units, 30 of them will be affordable apartments which are likely to have occupants that cannot afford a personal automobile. Should you factor those two elements into the parking equation, then you would see the cost savings increase by approximately $750,000, bringing the total project cost down approximately $4.25 million.

The City has also recently considered eliminating minimum parking requirements in neighborhoods like Over-the-Rhine entirely.

“Although Over-the-Rhine is a walkable community, and the streetcar is coming, parking still needs to be addressed for residents, tenants and visitors,” explained Anastasia Mileham, Vice President of Communications with the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) explained.


The $56M Mercer Commons development will include 154 residential units, 26,000SF of commercial space and 359 parking spaces once finished. Rendering provided.

According to 3CDC officials, some of the additional parking is there to support existing commercial retail in nearby developments that lacked enough parking when they were originally built, and that the parking lot at Twelfth and Vine, Valet Parking, Washington Park Garage, Mercer Commons Garage and future small lots and parking spaces are all considered in future planning efforts.

Mileham also says that their development corporation is also working with city officials to designate specific parking meters as residential only.

“We have gotten some complaints about parking, but when we gathered community input about Mercer Commons, parking was expressed as a need,” Mileham clarified.

The new above-ground parking garage is part of the first of three phases of development at Mercer Commons, and is expected to open in March 2013.

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Up To Speed

Washington Park at the forefront of Cincinnati’s revitalization

Washington Park at the forefront of Cincinnati’s revitalization.

Thousands of Cincinnatians have already experienced the newly reopened Washington Park for themselves, but some have not. For those that have not, it is past time to go check out the changes taking place in Over-the-Rhine, and see how the renovation and expansion of Washington Park will serve as a new center. More from The Atlantic:

The neighborhood [Over-the-Rhine] does seem to be on its way…The new Washington Park should help tremendously. The green space has been expanded from six to eight acres, and the amenities include a dog park, interactive water fountains, refreshed public restrooms, a concession building, a “civic lawn” that will host concerts and events, shade from the summer sun, and a kids’ section, according to friends at the Over-the-Rhine blog, which is also the source of the new photos accompanying this post.

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Business Development News

City leaders partner with Walnut Hills to advance two-way street conversions

Peebles Corner was once the scene of Cincinnati’s original uptown; however, the Walnut Hills neighborhood began to decline as people moved further away from the center city. The quality of the neighborhood’s historic fabric still echoes that grandeur.

Neighborhood leaders have now become accustomed to people driving past many of these buildings along McMillian Avenue, past Interstate 71 (I-71), at a speed much faster than the posted speed limit of 30mph. The one-way street allows drivers to move through Walnut Hills at a speed that threatens pedestrians and makes the business district an unpleasant place for someone to linger.

The negative impacts of one-way streets through urban neighborhoods have been long documented, and cities across the country are beginning to convert these stretches of roadway back to two-way traffic. Thus far there have been encouraging results.


Two-way street cross section for Walnut Hills. Rendering provided.

“The street design should help make the Walnut Hills business district a destination again, instead of serving as a raceway through the neighborhood,” said Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (C) in 2010 after introducing a motion to move forward with additional study work.

Qualls also believes that while streets should serve local traffic, they also need to create an atmosphere where people can live, work, shop, walk and bike safely.

In June 2012, Cincinnati City Council’s Livable Communities Committee met to discuss the proposed conversion of McMillian Avenue and William H. Taft in Walnut Hills. The conversion, which has been approved and will start this fall, will be in place on both streets east of I-71. Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE) officials and consultants from URS Corporation briefed the committee on the reconfiguration of both streets.

Kevin Wright, Executive Director of the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation sees the change as part of a broader strategy to revitalize the Peeble’s Corner Business District.

“We think the two-way conversion is going to be a huge help in terms of both physical and economic development, but it’s important that we don’t view it as a panacea,” Wright told UrbanCincy. “Transportation improvements like this are essential to redevelopment efforts like ours, but in order to create real change we will also need to focus on safety, cleanliness, design, business development, and physical development; all of which we are working on now.”

The recommendation to transform the two streets in Walnut Hills came from the Uptown Access Study which examined the idea. Since that time, the City of Cincinnati has conducted eight public meetings on the issue, and looked at possible alternatives, like adding bicycle lanes to both streets.

The final choice made by the City was focused around maintaining traffic flow from the western portions of both streets across I-71, and eliminates parking on one side of the street.

“The design isn’t perfect, but is still a big step in the right direction,” explained Wright. “It is our hope that the corridor will look completely different two to three years from now, and that the city will look to make some modifications to the design of the street at that time.”

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Up To Speed

What happened to Cincinnati’s once proud Sixth Street Market?

What happened to Cincinnati’s once proud Sixth Street Market?.

Everyone in Cincinnati knows about Findlay Market, Ohio’s oldest farmers market, but the Queen City once boasted six such markets throughout the urban core. The last to go was the Sixth Street Market which was torn down in 1960. More from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Two market houses stood in the middle of Sixth Street. One sold meat, eggs and dairy; the other was a popular flower market. Along the curbs, the city leased 111 stands to sell fruits and vegetables of every kind. Young girls sold baskets and pretzels…Their end could be seen coming for a while. Downtown was undergoing urban renewal. Traffic needed an entrance to the Mill Creek Expressway, now known as Interstate 75.