The four new buildings will be built at Eden Avenue and E. Rochelle Street – one of two vacant pieces of land owned by developer Great Traditions Land & Development.

Village of Stetson Square phase two renderings provided by e3 design collective.

While the Village of Stetson Square has achieved great success with its existing 205 apartments, 53 townhomes, and 95,000 square feet of commercial space, the last two pieces of land have sat undeveloped since 2006.

At the time, the development team said the two sites would be developed at a later date based on market demand. With the housing market starting to settle, and the uptown housing market booming, it appears like it may finally be time to finish what was started almost a decade ago.

New renderings, provided exclusively to UrbanCincy, show that the new phase of construction about to being will take on a decidedly different urban form from the rest of the development which includes four- to five-story buildings alongside tightly built townhomes.

While apartments are at capacity throughout uptown, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports that the new residential offerings will be for-sale units priced in the $200,000s due to a desire by the Corryville community to boost home ownership rates in the historic neighborhood.

To preservationists the demolition of the school marks yet another dramatic loss to the historic fabric of Uptown, but to many urbanists the $20 million development to take its place marks a turning point for the long-troubled business district on the east side of the University of Cincinnati’s main campus.

“Greater residential density will support the existing and incoming merchants and add the kind of vitality that helps to enrich and secure a neighborhood,” says Kathleen Norris who is the vice president of Brandt Retail Group’s Urban Focus division. “Housing of this quality is likely to attract not only undergraduates but also grad students and even area professionals from the educational and medical communities.”

The historic Schiel School is prepared for demolition in Corryville.

Project officials say that the five-story, mixed-use development will include 102 apartments geared towards students, and several street-level retail spaces. Fifth Third Bank has already signed on as one of the retail tenants, and will serve as the retail anchor for the project.

The development is part of a larger wave of multi-story residential development sweeping through historic uptown neighborhoods like Clifton Heights, Corryville, Clifton, University Heights, Avondale and Mt. Auburn. The developer of this project, Uptown Rentals, now has three developments within the immediate vicinity of Short Vine that are bringing hundreds of new housing units to Corryville.

A new $20M mixed-use development will rise where one of Short Vine’s most prominent historic structures once stood.

Visitors to the area will also notice other residential developments nearby including one such project sits almost immediately across the street from the Schiel School site on Short Vine. There, older structures have already been cleared, and the new development is now rising from the ground.

Community leaders in Corryville do expect the redevelopment of the Schiel School site (map) to transform the Short Vine business district, and it also seems certain that the addition of hundreds of new residents to the neighborhood will change the area’s demographics and urban form.

“Business at Dive Bar is great and has been steadily growing,” said Joe Pedro, owner of the recently opened establishment. “We see the new residential units being constructed in the neighborhood as an excellent driver for the business district, and ultimately we are excited to see new tenants coming to the street and feel it will positively impact all of the businesses in the area.”

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect rendering for the $20 million redevelopment of the historic Schiel School site in Corryville.

Those familiar with the location may not recognize the space from the street as the building has undergone a significant renovation that has completely restored the historic structures exterior and interior spaces.

“It was a disaster inside,” said Dive Bar partner John Pedro. “We started working, on the space, in January and have used five big dumpsters to clean it out inside.” Pedro says that while he and his business partners have focused on the 1,800-square-foot interior, the Uptown Consortium assisted financially with exterior renovations including roof repair.

The bar will include lounge seating, free wifi with plentiful electrical outlets, simple street food prepared by Flop Johnsons, and a rotating menu of beer and wine. The beer, Pedro says, will include $1 Pabst Blue Ribbon cans all the time, but also a large selection of craft beers including Dogfish Head, Anchor Steam, Great Lakes, Mt. Carmel, Christian Moerlein and Hudepohl. In total he expects there to be between 30 to 40 different beers, and 15 to 20 different wines available at any given time.

To further the experience, Pedro says that patrons will be able to purchase a mug for a quarter. The purchased mug will then have the patron’s name etched on it and hang behind the bar for only their use, and will get them $3 drink specials. The whole idea is to create a neighborhood-oriented feel that caters to regulars.

“All of our places are neighborhood joints, and this place is no different,” said Pedro who is also involved with Hang Over Easy and Village Idiot in Columbus. “We think it’s great when you can walk into these neighborhood type dive bars and know the people working there.”

In order to accomplish that Pedro and his partners have hired all local individuals to operate the bar, and value their business model on being able to serve as an incubator, of sorts, for local talent. Additionally, Pedro says that the group is excited to enter the Cincinnati market and become a part of the evolving Corryville neighborhood, but that recent streetcar setbacks have been disappointing.

“We felt the connectivity to downtown, and the activity down there, would have been great, but at the same time the neighborhoods surrounding the university are great,” Pedro explained. “We’re hugely disappointed because that connectivity to downtown, and all the activity happening down there, would have been great. Slowly but surely things will connect, but in Columbus it’s taken 20 to 30 years for Short North to connect with the downtown there.”

Dive Bar (map) will be open Monday through Saturday from 11am to 2:30am, and will be closed on Sundays except during football season. Stay connected with Dive Bar for details on future specials and weekly events.

Dive Bar exterior photograph by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

Student housing conglomerate Uptown Properties has proposed a new 72-unit student housing project in the Corryville neighborhood, located on the east side of University of Cincinnati’s campus. This comes on the heels of the 120-unit 65 West student apartment complex being constructed on the former Friar’s Club location at the corner of Ohio and McMillan Streets in Clifton Heights. At first glance, the proposal seems feasible, but in order for the project to be completed, the block of 7 historic properties on Euclid Avenue would be razed to the ground.

Many community members and preservationists feel that removing the structures would be a short sighted move for a city that is so rapidly losing its historic urban fabric due to demolishing buildings instead of restoring them. The Corryville neighborhood has lost over half its housing stock to expansions from the local hospitals and the University of Cincinnati.

Danny Klingler, director of preservationist organization OTR A.D.O.P.T., sees no benefit to destroying the properties. “It’s one thing to do blight removal with properties that are condemned or ordered to be vacant, or have problems with lead,” Klingler said. “We have over 250 buildings in OTR that are like that. With these [buildings on Euclid,] though, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them – you could go live in them right now, they are beautiful on the inside. You wipe them out and you lose something that makes Cincinnati unique. Not only that, but you replace it with cookie-cutter Uptown Rental properties that are less affordable.”

The current buildings are single family homes all built around the same time during the late 19th century in a Victorian style. According to residents, the block is one of the most beautiful and well preserved examples of Victorian architecture in the community. Uptown Properties has a history of converting historic buildings into student housing, yet its more recent projects have a bland, “value-engineered” look to them.

Neil Clingerman, a recent University of Cincinnati grad and former Cincinnati resident, has helped to virtually lead the charge in bringing attention to the potential demolitions.

“I used to live in Cincinnati, but after so many demolitions of historic structures, I felt it had no future,” explained Clingerman. “As a young guy looking to enter the professional world I wanted to be in a place that was alive and was willing to support the urban lifestyle I was looking for. As a result, I left Cincinnati after graduation, and moved to Chicago where I live in a neighborhood that approximates Corryville in era and style, and on top of this is full of activity and is a part of the city that is growing. Corryville can do the same, but it has to realize just how wonderful the buildings it has are, and how this can be used as a catalyst to promote population growth beyond transient students.”

Experts have estimated the new construction could cost potential renters up to twice as much for rent costs, which will drive out low income and student renters who are already struggling with tuition costs. The PLAN Cincinnati Housing Market Study document that current Council members should be familiar with outlines the situation for renters in the area: “The city’s renters experienced a loss of purchasing power during the past decade, as the median rent rose while their incomes declined. In addition, the city lost 7,847 assisted units (vouchers and public housing properties) between 2000 and 2010, making very affordable rentals even more difficult to find.” This information makes tearing down good buildings in order to build more expensive ones with less character hard to justify.

“Corryville has seen a large destruction of its historic building stock for decades. No longer can we accept these demolitions in this distinct neighborhood,” said Charles Marxen, Sustainability Advocate and student at the University of Cincinnati. “This block of Euclid Avenue is one of the most intact streets in the neighborhood, and its loss would provide little hope for buildings enduring the same struggle in the future. Uptown is a very unique area that cannot be recreated. Replacing it with what Uptown Rental Properties is proposing would be a devastating loss to the city’s rich history.”

The Livable Communities committee of City Council will be meeting today in the council chambers of City Hall at 801 Plum Street in room 300. The meeting is from 2pm-5pm, but the item is second on the agenda and will more than likely be addressed around 2.30 pm.

Community members are encouraging those interested to show their support by attending the meeting or writing an email in support of saving the properties to City Council members.

Euclid Avenue photograph provided by Danny Klingler.

Today, however, the state of urbanism in Cincinnati is very much different. The civil unrest of 2001 has led to massive police reform and a focus from major corporations on those most struggling inner-city neighborhoods. Investment in urban neighborhoods has become a priority of recent political leaders and urban populations are increasing all over Cincinnati. Also during that time the Planning Department has been restored along with the creation of the Office of Environmental Quality, and the development of the City’s first comprehensive plan in decades.

In addition to the formal progress that has been made, there is a diverse group of urbanists that have organized around common beliefs and goals that are looking to improve Cincinnati’s urbanism.

“Urbanists believe that great historic cities are the highest achievement of the human spirit and once again ought to be the preferred places to live for America’s most talented and productive people,” explained University of Cincinnati adjunct planning professor, and co-founder of the Urbanists, Terry Grundy. “Urbanism, as the term is used in Cincinnati, is an intellectual, cultural and political movement which promotes this point of view.”

As Grundy puts it, the urbanism movement emerged in Cincinnati shortly after the civil unrest took place in 2001. He says that a group thinkers, civic leaders and philanthropists came together to reflect on what had happened in the city and decided that something needed to change.

“The trajectory, if allowed to continue, would have inevitably led to the ‘Detroit-izing’ of Cincinnati. This was a prospect those thinkers were not prepared to accept, and they have ever since been promoting a ‘place of choice’ ideology for the city.”

Most recently that thought movement has led to the Soapbox Speaker Series which is co-sponsored by Soapbox Cincinnati, the University of Cincinnati’s Niehoff Urban Studio and The Urbanists. The intent, Grundy explains, is to provide opportunities for people who share the urbanist perspective, or who are interested in learning more, to network and come together to learn and share ideas.

The first speaker series event held in uptown Cincinnati’s Corryville neighborhood focused on how the city’s food scene has supported urbanist outcomes through things like local food sourcing, food trucks, street vendors and more. The next speaker series event, to be held on January 5 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, will focus on philanthropists of urbanism in Cincinnati.

“These are people who moved into and did development work in historic neighborhoods that had declined and, by their example, encouraged others to take a chance on those neighborhoods,” Grundy said.

The event will feature a panel of Sean Parker, Beth Gottfried, H.C. Buck Niehoff and Dave Abbott.

“Urbanism, like all emergent movements, needs to be backed up by resources if it is to be successful in promoting its ideas and pursuing its concrete development strategies. The individuals, on this panel, have been willing to direct their foundation’s investments to activities that are urbanist in intent.”

Those interested in attending the third Soapbox Speaker Series event (map) – Patrons of Urbanism: New Ambitions for Public-Private Partnerships – are encouraged to register in advance for the free event. Organizers say that a happy hour reception and light food will be provided by Fresh Table, and that a $2,500 FUEL grant will be awarded to one lucky applicant.

This scenario is the topic of Soapbox’s next speaker series event to be held at the Niehoff Urban Studio in Corryville. Urban Pioneers – The Cult of Personality will gather four of Cincinnati’s most relevant urban pioneers who have helped to transform once downtrodden neighborhoods like Mt. Adams, Northside, and Over-the-Rhine.

Organizers say that guest panelists will include Neil Bortz, Matthew Wirtz, Maureen Wood, and Terry Chan who will discuss what it takes to succeed in bringing a vision to reality by revitalizing parts of a city one building at a time. The discussion will be moderated by the former director of UC’s School of Architecture & Interior Design Michaele Pride.

While organized by Soapbox Cincinnati, the speaker series is sponsored by the Niehoff Urban Studio and heavily attended by the those involved in the Urbanist movement in Cincinnati. Founder of the Cincinnati Urbanist movement and poltics teacher at UC’s School of Planning, Terry Grundy, further explained the intricacy of urban pioneers to UrbanCincy.

“Someone — though more generally a small group of people — has to take a chance on a fine old neighborhood with lots of potential that’s lost population and become poorer over many decades,” Grundy explained. “Call the people who do this urban pioneers if you will but, whatever you call them, they’re the people whom we look back on years after a neighborhood has been turned around and say, “They’re the ones who got it all started.”

Grundy says that these initial urban pioneers are often followed by a group of “semi-pioneers” who move in before the neighborhood has fully turned around, but only after the initial risk was taken away.

“This second wave of people who come into rebounding neighborhoods is almost always made up of the key demographic groups that are attracted to urban life and are remaking older American cities: young professionals, the group we call the Bohemian Cluster (gays and lesbians, artists, musicians, true bohemians), empty nesters, and New Americans (immigrants from other countries). Some resurgent neighborhoods have a strong showing of members of one of these groups while others have a mixture of two or more. We know, for instance, that young professionals often enjoy living in neighborhoods with a strong contingent of the Bohemian Cluster.”

Urban Pioneers – The Cult of Personality if free to attend, but organizers are requiring reservations be made online in advance. The event will take place on Wednesday, October 27 from 5pm to 7:30pm at the Niehoff Urban Studio (map).  Registration and happy hour will begin at 5pm.

The Eco-Art Walk is a brainchild of non-profit Future Blooms, a division of Keep Cincinnati Beautiful that focuses on painting abandoned and boarded up buildings in the center city in order to reduce crime and blight. Since October 2009, Future Blooms has painted over 150 buildings, and are now hosting the Eco-Art Walk tomorrow from 2pm to 7pm.

The Future Blooms team has been working hard, and on Saturday will reportedly unveil a series of artist-designed painted storefronts on Short Vine from Corry Street to Charlton Street (map). The group will also have a display of recycled art. During the event, Short Vine will be closed to automobiles, and visitors will be able wander the streetscape, listen to live music, purchase food and handmade crafts from vendors, and participate in a “freecycle” sale.

Following the completion of the City’s award-winning Neighborhood Enhancement Program in Corryville, city leaders are excited about the potential for this weekend’s event.

“City Council is of the opinion that the Short Vine Eco-Art Walk would focus attention upon the Short Vine Street beautification efforts, the City of Cincinnati’s recycling program, and promote regional tourism,” City Manager Milton Dohoney stated.

Meanwhile, the 2010 Ohio Solar Tour will take place all over Ohio, and will showcase businesses, non-profits and homes that have invested in green energy technology through a series of public open houses. The is expected to provide a unique opportunity for the public to visit and talk with owners living and working with clean energy technologies. The open houses will showcase everything from solar, wind, biomass, green design, and energy-saving technologies.

For Cincinnatians, there are 29 sites within a five-mile radius of the 45202 zip-code. Notable stops include the newly renovated offices of KZF Design and the Potterhill Homes Northwind Community in Northside. For those feeling the desire to traverse the state in search of clean energy buildings, there are both guided tours and the chance to make your own.

“Our direction from city council has always been to ‘connect the dots,’ but to do so in a way that was fiscally responsible,” stated Cincinnati City Manager Milton Dohoney in a prepared release. “The Vine Street route accomplishes that.”

The Vine Street route is estimated to cost $20 million less in capital costs, offer $250,000 in savings annually in operations, pose fewer engineering challenges, and also offer greater options for future expansions than the West Clifton Avenue alternative. According to City officials, Vine Street and West Clifton Avenue stakeholders have been meeting to discuss the alternatives for months, and that the group had been informed of the final decision yesterday.

One of the primary objectives of the study was to determine how to best navigate the steep hillside leading to and from the uptown area. In this case, Vine Street’s maximum 6.7 percent grade scored much better than West Clifton Avenue’s maximum 8.9 percent grade. The project team said that while United Streetcar/Oregon Iron Works, Siemens, Inekon, Kinkisharyo, and Bombardier all could build modern streetcars to handle such grades, the preference was for engineering simplicity.

In addition to the engineering aspects, many streetcar supporters believe the selected route to get uptown will present greater opportunities long-term.

“The Vine Street route will offer the fastest service between Cincinnati’s two largest employment centers,” said Brad Thomas, Founder, CincyStreetcar.com. “The route also presents the greatest opportunity for future expansions including extensions west to Clifton Heights, north to Avondale and Corryville, or east to Walnut Hills.”

To date, the city has secured $114.5 million out of the total $128 million to build the entire first phase running from Cincinnati’s central riverfront to its uptown neighborhoods. The modern streetcar system will be the first of its kind in the Midwest and one of only three like systems in the United States. The first construction is expected to begin fall 2010 with the first passengers riding in early 2013.

At the announcement Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory was joined by University of Cincinnati President Gregory Williams, City Manager Milton Dohoney, and the many organizations working together during the 90-day blitz.

The concentrated neighborhood improvement effort focuses on removing blight, thus reducing quality of life crimes, and improving the neighborhood. To date, the acclaimed program has been implemented in seven neighborhoods including Price Hill, Avondale, Westwood, Evanston, College Hill, Clifton Heights/University Heights/Fairview Heights (CUF), and Mt. Washington.

The impacts have been profound as the program has helped reduce blight by an average of 15 percent through thousands of building inspections. Officials attribute much of the program’s success to the group of program partners that work to identify and cool down crime hot spots; clean up streets, sidewalks, and vacant lots; beautify landscapes, streetscapes, and the public right-of-way; and engage residents in a way that keeps them motivated after the first 90 days.

The Corryville program was made possible in large part thanks to a $5,000 donation from U.S. Bank that leveraged an additional $8,000 in corporate and community investment. City officials state that the funds will be used for materials and supplies that will help to improve the cleanliness, beauty, safety, and quality of the Corryville neighborhood.

The first of the two meetings will take place on Wednesday, August 4 in Corryville. This forum will include a panel made up of Larry Falkin from the Office of Environmental Quality, Terry Grundy from the United Way, Eric Rademacher from the University of Cincinnati, and Sam Stephens from the Department of Community Development.

The panel will engage in a moderated discussion of local plans and policies currently in place. Forum organizers say that the discussion will specifically focus on plans like GO Cincinnati, the State of the Community Report & Indicators, and Green Cincinnati that are seen as important factors helping to shape the comprehensive planning process currently underway.

The second forum will focus on regional efforts like Agenda 360, the award-winning Community COMPASS, 2030 Transportation Plan, and Strategic Regional Policy Plan developed by the OKI Regional Council of Governments. This forum will also include a moderated panel discussion made up by Todd Kinskey from the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission, Robert Koehler and Emi Randall from OKI, and Mary Stagaman from Agenda 360. This forum on regional plans and policies is scheduled to take place on Thursday, August 26.

Cincinnati City Council is expected to vote on the completed comprehensive plan in 2011.  Cincinnati was the first major American city to adopt a comprehensive plan in 1925, but it has been 30 years since the last comprehensive plan was completed and updated in 1980.

Both forums are will be held from 7pm to 9pm in the auditorium of the CPS Education Center in Corryville (map). On-street automobile parking, free bicycle parking, and Metro bus service (plan your trip) is available for this location.