Jake Mecklenborg joined UrbanCincy in 2009, contributing original articles, photographs, and videos. He grew up in Cincinnati’s west side and graduated from St. Xavier High School in 1996. His book, "Cincinnati’s Incomplete Subway: The Complete History", was published by The History Press in 2010. He currently lives on Mulberry St. overlooking Over-the-Rhine.
On Monday the public was invited to tour the long-delayed American Can Lofts as part of Northside’s Fourth of July festivities. The $22 million redevelopment of the 180,000 square-foot 1920s-era American Can Factory resumed in 2010 with the help of a $1.6 million federal grant. The prominent Northside structure (map) is now poised to welcome its first residents in September.
Monday’s visitors toured six units on the building’s second floor, all of which featured high ceilings, loft designs, and the factory’s huge windows. The odd layout of the building required creative adaptations and so units of all shapes and sizes will be available to the project’s first renters.
Most of the factory’s features that survived its 30-year vacancy were retained, including pillars, original staircase railings, and a spectacular covered assembly area that will be used for indoor parking.
Organizers promise that the grand opening of the American Can Lofts in September will be marked by another public event, and future tours of the building are not to be missed. What has long stood as one of Cincinnati’s most notorious eyesores has been remade into one of its greatest assets, and portends the future redevelopment of the region’s other abandoned industrial properties.
The Cincinnati-based developers of this project are familiar with working with large warehouse structures. In 2003, Bloomfield/Schon + Partners completed the transformation of the former Ford Model T Factory in Walnut Hills into 115,000 square feet of office space.
Once complete, American Can Lofts will include 110 apartments ranging from $600 to $1,300 per month, 75 parking spaces, and 12,000 square feet of office and retail space. Developers state that future retailers may include a brew pub, restaurant and health center. Other amenities will include a bocce ball court, conference rooms, music rehearsal room, artist space and an exercise room.
The project was also assisted financially by an $8.7 million loan from the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), and additional grants from local and state sources. Those interested in leasing information can email Info@AmericanCanLofts.com or call (513) 827-5638.
When official planning for a new Brent Spence Bridgebegan in 2002, we were told that the existing bridge would be demolished and replaced by a new landmark structure. Total project cost was projected at $750 million to $1 billion and construction was expected to begin in 2008.
Fast-forward to 2011, and the existing bridge – which we were told ten years ago was in imminent danger of collapse – is now planned to be rehabilitated and presumably will remain in place for at least another generation. Meanwhile, the cost of the design and construction of a new parallel bridge and its approaches has soared to $3 billion.
This tripling of the bridge project’s cost in an era of gloomy peak oil predictions has been met with zero scrutiny by the local media. Instead, calls to improve the region’s public transportation, especially the City of Cincinnati’s streetcar project, have been relentlessly harassed.
What incentives could be introduced that would avoid the necessity of a new bridge? The argument for the bridge project rests on the assumption that daily vehicular crossings will increase from approximately 160,000 to 240,000 vehicles by 2030. Most of these 80,000 new vehicles will be single-occupancy vehicles.
Instead of spending $3 billion to build a new ten-lane bridge next to our existing eight-lane bridge, what if we instead paid commuters tens of millions annually to car pool?
Recent history has told us that carpooling will never be popular under current economic conditions. If people are annoyed by strangers on the bus or train, they are annoyed much more by their carpool companions. Disputes over smoking, radio stations, and stops for coffee have killed off countless carpooling arrangements. The cost savings afforded by carpooling have not to date offset those interpersonal problems, nor have the added incentives of HOV lanes or toll waivers in those areas where they exist.
So at what price would people in the Cincinnati area start tolerating the annoyances that come with carpooling? Honestly, I do not know, so why don’t we allow the market decide?
If we assume that the new Brent Spence Bridge will stand for 100 years – perhaps from 2020 to 2120 — that its initial capital cost will be $3 billion, and maintenance of the new bridge over those 100 years will be another $3 billion, then we can hypothetically budget $60 million per year toward carpooling for 100 years.
How would that $60 million be divided?
I propose that this sum be divided equally by the total number of carpoolers. So if just one vehicle were to carpool over the Brent Spence Bridge for the entire year, those two commuters would split between themselves the entire $60 million. But if the 200,000+ single-occupancy vehicles predicted by OKI by 2035 were replaced by 100,000 high-occupancy vehicles, then each car would receive $600 annually, or approximately $2.50 per vehicle, per work day.
The real number would be anywhere between 1 and 100,000, meaning the opportunity to earn more than $10 per vehicle per day seems likely. The carpooling payouts could be made much greater if tolls were implemented only to single-occupancy vehicles and that collection directed entirely toward high-occupancy vehicles.
How could such a plan be implemented?
The recent popularization of smart phones make implementation of such a plan much more feasible. Coordinated with something resembling an EZ-Pass transmitter, carpoolers could tap their phones to the transmitter when they begin their commutes and a credit would be transmitted instantly to their phone as they cross the bridge. The value of this credit would be determined at midnight by the total number of carpoolers who utilized the service each day. In addition to automobiles, the incentive program could be extended to those who own vans, and could motivate the establishment of unofficial bus services for those who commute between Northern Kentucky and Butler or Warren Counties.
Why will the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and ODOT never pay people to carpool?
State and local governments will never pay their citizens to carpool in the way I have proposed because the highway lobby will never allow them to. It should be obvious to anyone who has followed the development of the Brent Spence Bridge replacement project that the proposal, as it exists currently, is well out of proportion for what is necessary. This project is not so much an effort to reduce traffic congestion and encourage economic development as it is a payout to those who are being paid to design and build it.
Some predict gasoline to approach $10 per gallon by 2020, and such a price in 2011 dollars seems to be a certainty by 2035. High gasoline prices might by themselves be enough to motivate people to carpool in large numbers independent of what I have proposed here. But if that is proven to be true, then by 2035 relatively few vehicles will cross our pair of Brent Spence Bridges, and the whole project will be proven to be – get ready for it – an expensive boondoggle.
SORTA, the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (also known as Metro), has proposed three service changes as part of a “rebalancing” effort that will see existing resources shifted to different routes that promise higher ridership. This week the organization is holding a public forum for citizens to comment on the changes.
A new express service from Western Hills to Uptown will be funded by cutting non-rush hour service on the #1 Museum Center – Mt. Adams – Zoo. Although the Zoo can also be reached by the #78, the #1 bus provides Metro’s only access to Union Terminal and Mt. Adams. [see route]
SORTA has also proposed the elimination of the #62 Job Connection and #62X, which link Government Square with industrial parks in Butler County. These routes will be replaced by an extension of the #23X Tri-County Express north to Fairfield. [see route]
The route reorganization was recommended by the Butler County Regional Transit Authority, which funds the lightly patronized routes. BCRTA funding will be shifted to the proposed extension of the #23X Tri-County Express, which currently operates entirely within Hamilton County.
This situation highlights why Cincinnati Metro is unable to expand suburban express service: those routes which serve exurban Butler, Warren and Clermont Counties must be funded by their respective transit agencies.
Cincinnati Metro is itself funded primarily by a .3% income tax paid by those who work within Cincinnati city limits. This tax was approved by Cincinnati voters in 1973, and was intended to temporarily fund the bus system until funding for a countywide system was secured. Hamilton County property or sales taxes that would have funded a countywide bus system and rail transit networks failed at the polls in 1971, 1979, 1980, and 2002.
These three proposals have not been finalized, and Metro has invited the public to discuss service changes with officials between 11am and 4pm on Friday, June 10 at Metro’s offices on the 12th floor of the Gwynne Building, 602 Main St. All comments received by 4 p.m. on June 10, 2011 will become part of the official public meeting record and will be considered by SORTA. Comments may be submitted in the following ways:
* Online comment form
* E-mail to routecomments@go-metro.com
* Comment forms on buses, at the Government Square information booth, and at the sales office in the Mercantile Building arcade
* Mail to SORTA, Public Meeting Comments, 602 Main Street, Suite 1100, Cincinnati, OH 45202. You can print and send this comment form (PDF).
* Fax to 513-632-9202
The proposed changes will be reflected in Metro’s Google Transit program which is now an up and running feature, connecting riders with an easy way to access trip information.
Before the appearance of movies, television, and zoos, the circus was all of those things bundled into a single great traveling show. Advertisement of that product took the form of large lithograph prints, many of them produced here in Cincinnati by the Strobridge Lithographing Company. The Amazing American Circus Poster exhibit, on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) now through July 10, features 80 posters taken from the collection the company gave the museum upon its dissolution in 1971.
Produced between 1878 and 1939, the posters reflect a progression of artistic styles, advances in printing techniques, and the evolution of the circuses themselves. The character of the posters and the acts they advertised were not random – they are the product of the earliest marketing studies, creating the blueprint for mass marketing by 20th-century corporations. Conspicuous is the rise of star women performers: female acrobats, lion tamers, weight lifters, etc., captured the public’s interest, and therefore its disposable income, more than men performing the same acts.
This presents several dilemmas: should the circus operators be applauded for empowering women (and also foreigners, Siamese twins, and other outsiders on their payrolls), or should they be admonished for giving the appearance of empowerment while simply exploiting these individuals? And to what extent did the circus posters themselves shape exoticism?
The cultural complexities created and reflected by the circuses and how they were advertised will be the subject of the Circus Poster Symposium this Sunday, May 1, at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Admission to the symposium is $10 general public; $5 students, seniors, Enjoy the Arts members; free Art Museum members. Reservations recommended.
The Amazing American Circus Poster exhibit is on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum through July 10. The Cincinnati Art Museum, at 953 Eden Park Drive, is open 11am to 5pm Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free to the public; parking is $4 for non-members. The Terrace Café, located in the museum, is open 11am to 3pm Tuesday through Sunday.
In 2010 there was no reason to believe that Cincinnati’s streetcar project was in jeopardy, as all capital funds had been identified and future casino revenues were expected to cover annual operations costs. Late in the year I expressed my optimism to a seasoned local preservationist, whose terse response took me by surprise: “You guys haven’t been burned yet”.
On Tuesday April 12, Cincinnati finally got burned. ODOT’s nine-member Transportation Review Advisory Council (TRAC) approved a budget that reallocated $52 million of federal funds from the Cincinnati Streetcar project to a variety of minor upstate projects. This decision came just five months after TRAC identified Cincinnati’s streetcar as the state’s highest-ranking project.
The “burning” actually started in March, when state representative Shannon Jones (R-Springboro) introduced an amendment to Ohio’s biennial transportation bill that read, “No state or federal funds may be encumbered, transferred, or spent pursuant to this or any other appropriations act for the Cincinnati Streetcar Project.” This two-pronged attack on the state’s allocation of federal funds to Cincinnati’s streetcar project was the thinly veiled directive of John Kasich, Ohio’s newly elected Republican governor.
For those who attended the April 12, 2011 TRAC meeting at ODOT headquarters in Columbus, Kasich’s fingerprints were obvious not just by the actions of TRAC appointees, but by the language and tone of ODOT staffers. The two-hour meeting could best be described as a kangaroo court – its outcome was never in doubt, with five or more ODOT staffers and TRAC members reciting coached lines throughout.
The existence of Jones’ streetcar-killing state legislation provided cover for the day’s proceedings, but ODOT director and TRAC chair Jerry Wray and the staffers who work beneath him nevertheless concocted justification independent of what he duplicitously called “bad legislation”.
Funding for the Cincinnati Streetcar should be dropped, Wray and ODOT staffers argued, in favor of projects that promise to improve safety, especially two upstate railroad grade separation projects.
The grand orchestration of the meeting was not limited to Kasich-era appointees and ODOT staff; during public comments a fire chief remarked that five individuals had been killed at his area’s grade crossing since his service began some twenty years previous. His message was calculated: railroads are inherently unsafe, and modern streetcars, because they run on rails at-grade mixed with vehicular traffic, are dangerous to motorists and pedestrians.
A side show to this circus was the statement made by Jack Marchbanks, who was appointed to TRAC after the March 22, 2011 meeting. Other TRAC members didn’t even know his name, but he nevertheless arrived at the April 12th meeting prepared with props — a stack of CD’s and paperwork from a 2007 Columbus light rail study — to justify his vote against the Cincinnati Streetcar. Smiling, he insinuated that the legacy of the four-year Cincinnati Streetcar effort would ultimately be a similarly forgotten stack of CD’s and spiral bound reports.
Watching the morning’s proceedings like a hawk was Cincinnati mayor Mark Mallory, who has been the face of the streetcar project since 2008. As a state senator in the late 1990’s, he was involved in the legislation that established TRAC in 1997. Its formation coincided with a 6-cent increase in Ohio’s gasoline tax that added hundreds of millions to ODOT’s annual budget. TRAC intended to keep state representatives from directing pork projects to their districts, but last Tuesday Mallory was witness to its critical flaw: that TRAC’s chair is also ODOT’s director. Because Ohio’s governors appoint ODOT’s director, a sleazy appointee of Wray’s ilk is able to intimidate ODOT staff as well as shape the agenda of TRAC.
Much credit is due to Antoinette Selvey-Maddox, TRAC’s sole southwest Ohio representative. She was the only TRAC member to challenge the day’s prevailing winds – first questioning if there was any precedent for the state legislation that blocks state allocations of federal funds to the Cincinnati Streetcar, then introducing a motion that would have seen a separate vote introduced to the process regarding the streetcar project.
The appearance of the motion clearly disturbed chairman Wray – he was not certain that votes were sufficient to defeat it. In short order it was defeated 4-3, but we must wonder, if the entire nine-member TRAC had been attendance, would the outcome have been different (two of TRAC’s nine members were absent from the year’s most important meeting)? A minute after the failure of her motion, Selvey-Maddox cast the only vote in opposition to TRAC’s 2011 recommendations.
The configuration of the meeting bears some description: it was held in the same small basement room where TRAC usually meets, with room for few people other than ODOT staffers, speakers, and media. The roughly 75 Cincinnatians who traveled to Columbus were seated in a nearby room, out of sight of both TRAC members and the media.
They watched the meeting on closed-circuit television, with poor audio. Apparently the microphone of Selvey-Maddox was not turned on, or was not working well, and so those in the overflow room did not come to appreciate her actions. The absurdity of this situation could not have been better scripted – an auditorium which could have accommodated everyone sat unused directly across the hallway from TRAC’s meeting room.
Approximately 75 Cincinnatians made the trip to Columbus in support of the streetcar. Speaking on behalf of the project were Mayor Mark Mallory, councilwoman Roxanne Qualls, councilwoman Laure Quinlivan, Cincinnatians for Progress officer Rob Richardson, and representatives from Christ Hospital, Sibcy Cline Realtors, Bromwell’s, and the University of Cincinnati. Opponents filled just four of ten allotted speaking slots, and no other opponents appeared to have made the trip.
Although Tuesday’s actions are a setback, Cincinnati is expected to announce a revised streetcar plan this week. With zero funding available from Hamilton County, and presumably zero available from Ohio until Kasich leaves office in 2014 or 2018, the attraction of additional public funds will be limited to direct federal grants (such as the Urban Circulators grant) and new or expanded local sources.
Videos produced by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy. More exclusive videos from UrbanCincy can be viewed on YouTube.
First proposed in the late 1990’s, the multi-modal Eastern Corridor plan concluded its Tier 1 planning in 2006. After four years of inaction, planning for commuter rail on the Oasis line resumed in May 2010. Tier 2 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis and preliminary engineering is currently underway and preferred alternatives will be determined in 2012.
As the plan moves forward, project leaders are holding three community open houses this week to provide an opportunity for the public to learn more about the project and offer feedback at the midpoint of this planning phase. But because there will not be any official decisions concerning track alignment, vehicle type, etc., until 2012, those who attended the April 5 open house at the Leblond Recreation Center on Riverside Drive were frustrated by the inability of planners to answer specific questions.
The primary concern of open house attendees was the proposed use of diesel locomotives. Area residents are familiar with the sound of the line’s periodic freight trains and the Cincinnati Dinner Train, and fear that frequent high-speed diesel commuter train service will significantly impact their neighborhoods. Most expressed that they would be more welcoming to the proposed commuter service if it took the form of electric light rail or modern streetcar technology similar to that of the proposed Cincinnati Streetcar.
Several concerned citizens, including Arn Bortz, Managing Partner of Towne Properties, observed that the Oasis Commuter Rail is designed to serve far eastern Hamilton County and Clermont County to the detriment of those who live in Cincinnati. Thayne Maynard, President of the Cincinnati Zoo, said that he moved to Newtown to be close to the Loveland Bike Trail, and is worried that the Oasis commuter rail might scuttle plans for the Ohio River Trail between Downtown and Lunken Airport.
Planners assured those in attendance that “No Build” is a possible outcome of the Tier 2 work, in which case all of these concerns can be forgotten. But the completion of Tier 2 work will not determine how capital funds are acquired or which local entity will operate the line. The Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) is the most likely operator. With the vast majority of SORTA’s funding coming from a .3% Cincinnati earnings tax, it appears that a special source of revenue will be needed for the Oasis Line as it is expected to terminate near I-275 in Clermont County.
Further complicating the issue, UrbanCincyinvestigated the Eastern Corridor plan in August 2010 and discovered several significant flaws that have yet to be addressed by project planners.
Two more open houses are scheduled to be held. The first will take place on Wednesday, April 6 at the R.G. Cribbet Recreation Center (map), and the second on Thursday, April 7 inside the Milford High School cafeteria (map). Both open houses will take place from 5pm to 8pm, and will include an open comment/Q&A session beginning at 7pm.
Eastern Corridor Open House photograph by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.
An effort to digitize the 70,000-item collection of the Cincinnati Railroad Club’s library is currently underway. Known as the Cincinnati Rail History Preservation Project, the three-year undertaking will for the first time organize the materials acquired by the library since the club’s founding in 1938.
Ari Buchwald, who is directing the project through Edgecliff Press, is assisting the club in its intent for most non-copyrighted materials to be made available online, including geomapping of the library’s thousands of original photographs. He believes that the digitized library will be of interest to the general public, not just railroad enthusiasts, due to the overlap of many of its materials with other interests. For those doing genealogical research, Buchwald says that digitization will enable quick searches of employee records and that facial recognition software will locate photographs of deceased relatives.
According to club member Roy Hord, the collection grew substantially in size and eclecticism after dumpster-diving efforts recovered items from the 1972 demolition of Union Terminal’s passenger concourse. A second salvage project – the recovery of materials from the old B&O warehouse (now Longworth Hall) – fills an entire room of the library’s off-site storage space.
Much storage space is also dedicated to hundreds of blueprints dating from the construction of Union Terminal and other area rail projects. Digitization of blueprints and other large items is being handled by Robin Imaging, one of the Rail Preservation Project’s in-kind partners.
Buchwald expects that the digitization will permit the club to earn royalties from the licensing of specific items and that it will greatly facilitate the task of publishing new books (the club has published three books to date, including Cincinnati Union Terminal: Design and Construction of an Art Deco Masterpiece). These future returns are not sufficient to finance the digitization, and so Buchwald is leading a $1 million fundraising campaign that will determine the project’s eventual completion, and enable him to hire a full-time staff.
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