As part of its monthly happy hour series, the AIGA Cincinnati chapter, a collaborative network for creatives in the design, marketing and advertising industry, is hosting Liquid Courage: the Love Edition on Friday, February 11 at YES Studio in Over-the-Rhine.
From 6-11pm, the gallery will be open with craft cocktails by Molly Wellmann, a DJ spinning tunes, and some Do It Yourself valentine screen-printing. Attendees will be encouraged to make Valentines for the places they love downtown and in OTR, which will be hand delivered to the owners on February 14th.
Many AIGA members may be familiar with downtown, but organizer LeAnne Wagner was interested in stretching her fellow members’ boundaries. “Part of the intention behind the event is get our members (who may not often come to OTR) up to Main Street and create some love and awareness for all the awesome things going on downtown,” she explained.”Main Street is home to a lot of new galleries and we want to help support that community and maybe change some perceptions about the neighborhood. ”
Choosing the YES Gallery as a venue was a no brainer for Wagner. “We knew YES Gallery was a great venue and they do a lot of fun events like Pinata Parties and “giant” game night, so we figured they’d be game for hosting our AIGA Valentine’s Party.” She hopes that attendees will tap into their creative spirit and show OTR some love, as well as have fun with learning to screen print. T-shirts and canvas bags will be available to purchase for aspiring screenprinters.
The first hour of the party, from 6-7, will be the 2011 mentoring kick-off with a speed matching session for mentors and mentees.
$10 ($5 for student members) at the door covers screenprinting, Valentine’s supplies, and all the booty shaking you can throw down. Cocktails and beer are open bar. If you’re still looking for love after the party, good times and live music will continue at MOTR Pub just down the street. Buy your tickets online.
The AIGA Liquid Courage: Love party is Friday, February 11 from 6-11 pm at the YES Gallery, located at 1417 Main Street in historic Over-the-Rhine.
Many of UrbanCincy’s readers have asked what it is you can do to help support the Cincinnati Streetcar and defeat the special interests that are once again trying to keep rail transit from Cincinnatians. Well, the time has come for you to get involved and get active.
The first thing you can do is write an email to the State of Ohio encouraging them to continue their support of the state’s highest scoring transportation project. The special interests working to keep rail transit away from Cincinnati have made an aggressive push with the anti-transit Governor Kasich (R) to pull upwards of $50 million in state support from the project. The funding would largely help build the modern streetcar system from the riverfront to Uptown near the University of Cincinnati. Some of the money would also fund preliminary engineering work for phase two of the project which would send the streetcar further into Uptown.
You can contact the appropriate state officials by emailing TRAC@dot.state.oh.us (must email by Friday, February 11). Tell them why you support the Cincinnati Streetcar and be sure to remind them that this is the state’s highest scoring transportation project, by far, and that they should approve the $35 million in construction funding for “Cincinnati Streetcar Phase 1” and $1.8 million in preliminary engineering funding for the “Cincinnati Uptown Streetcar.”
As COAST has returned to keep rail transit from Cincinnatians who voted their support for the project in November 2009, Cincinnatians for Progress has also returned to the scene to once again defeat those special interests. In 2009, CFP led a massive grassroots campaign that gathered approximately 10,000 Cincinnatians to make phone calls, canvass door-to-door throughout the city, organize fundraising efforts and run a get out the vote campaign.
The group is getting fired up for what may be a vote this May or November (Yes, in November when the city will be well underway building the streetcar system – approximately $50M worth of construction). If you would like to get involved, show up at their kickoff event to be held at Grammer’s (map) on Wednesday, February 16 from 6pm to 8pm.
The Cincinnati Streetcar is projected to create 1,800 new construction jobs, generate thousands of new housing units, put people back to work, broaden the city’s tax base and continue the renaissance taking place in Cincinnati’s urban core.
I ran into a handful of people after the holidays who I guess had watched our struggles as we tried to deal with our budget in December, and they said uniformly, ‘Milton you look tired. Did you get any time off?’
Well, you can lay down if you’re tired, and you can lay down if you give up. But I work for the City of Cincinnati, Ohio and I’m not giving up. Our city is going places. We might be going kicking and screaming, but we’re going places.
We are still feeling the recession, but in spite of that, we’re developing our waterfront, we’re breaking ground soon on a casino, we just did a project announcement for the Anna Louise Inn that will make a difference in people’s lives. LULAC is coming this year, the World Choir Games are coming next year, and yes we are still committed to buidlng a streetcar system. Music Hall is going to be redone, Washington Park is being redone and new people are coming to call Cincinnati home. We’re going to build some new houses in Bond Hill and we’re going to try to make a difference around Findlay Market in that area of Over-the-Rhine. We don’t have time to lay down.
We are not perfect, but you gotta love your city, and you gotta be willing to fight for it and advance it, and that’s what we’re about.
Like City Manager Dohoney expressed, stay passionate about what Cincinnati is, what it used to be, and what it can become. Support the Cincinnati Streetcar. Support Cincinnati.
Cincinnati has selected the next two neighborhoods for its 2011 Neighborhood Enhancement Program (NEP). This year’s 90-day blitz will take place in Over-the-Rhine and Bond Hill.
First started in 2006, the NEP has moved through 10 of the city’s 52 neighborhoods including Mt. Washington and Corryville which were targeted last year. City officials say that the collaborative effort is designed to jumpstart community revitalization and reinvestment, and focus on developing neighborhood assets and improving quality of life.
Some in Over-the-Rhine feel like the focused effort could not come at a better time given the recent progress there.
“While Over-the-Rhine is a strong neighborhood, we could use more tools to address some real barriers, such as buildings with code violations, that prevent us from getting more things done,” says Over-the-Rhine resident and owner of Park+Vine Dan Korman.
The NEP employs the broken windows theory that changes the norms of an urban area in order to influence social behavior in such a way that prevents an escalation into more serious crime. Cincinnati’s NEP has won numerous local, state and national awards, and puts significant focus on building code enforcement, litter removal, vacant lot maintenance, beautifying landscapes and public right-of-way, and “cooling down” crime hot spots.
The Betts House, one of Cincinnati’s best kept secrets, has a new exhibit opening this weekend featuring over twenty drawings by the husband and wife team of Barbra and David Day. Vanishing Cincinnati includes drawings that depict Cincinnati’s urban landscape from the mid 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. They feature both very familiar landmarks such as Findlay Market and the Roebling Suspension Bridge as well as landmarks that have been lost as time moved on including the Albee Theater and the Bus Depot.
The Days are design consultants that work in Pendelton, and are fourth and fifth generation Cincinnatians that have taken many projects on around the city. Some of their work around the city has included the architectural restoration of the historic Enquirer building on Vine Street, the Over-the-Rhine Gateway Monument at Liberty Street and Reading Road, and the mosaic in the market house at Findlay Market which was installed to celebrate its 150th year of operation.
In interviews, David Day has said that through the multiple generations of his family there has been a David Day shopping at Findlay Market since the end of the Civil War. Clearly he and his wife have a passion and deep understanding of Cincinnati which should come through loud and clear in their drawings.
The partnership with The Betts House is really a match made in heaven as The Betts House has deep historical connections as well. Not only is it the oldest residential building in the Cincinnati basin, it is also the oldest brick house in the state of Ohio.
Built in 1804 as a part of the Betts Family Farm (a 111 acre piece of land that makes up today’s West End neighborhood), the Betts House is currently used as a gallery hosting various art projects through the year, there were five generations of the Betts family that called the house on Clark Street home and it basically sits unchanged today, after some restoration of course. The house and the exhibits are privatley funded through grants and sponsorships with donations and memberships available for individuals as well.
Vanishing Cincinnati, made possible by a grant from ArtsWave, will open this Friday, February 11 with a reception starting at 5pm and run through April 23. The Betts House is otherwise open Tuesday through Thursday from 11am to 2pm, and on the second and fourth Saturday each month from 12pm to 5pm. Admission for Vanishing Cincinnati is just $2.
One-by-one, and with little fanfare, nearly every major American city which scrapped its streetcar and other rail transit lines mid-century has since 1970 built a new rail system of some kind. Between 1970 and 1990, new-start systems began operations in Washington, DC, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Atlanta, Buffalo, San Diego and Miami. Between 1990 and 2010, new-start systems were built in Denver, St. Louis, Seattle, Sacramento, Dallas, Houston, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Phoenix.
As of 2011, Cincinnati is now the largest metropolitan area, with the exception of Detroit, with no rail transit whatsoever. Attempts to fund a regional rail transit system were defeated by Hamilton County voters in 1971, 1979, 1980, and 2002. Cincinnati’s modern streetcar plan, after winning at the polls in 2009, was fully funded in 2010 but faces yet another challenge from special interest groups in 2011.
Is there some physical reason why rail transit is poorly suited for Cincinnati, as its opponents have always contended? No – and the purpose of this article is to illustrate that Cincinnati is in fact much better suited than several cities that have recently built rail transit systems. In short, dating from Mayor Murray Seasongood’s assertion in the late 1920’s that Cincinnati was too small for a rapid transit system, a long line of Cincinnati politicians, usually self-proclaimed reformers or financial watchdogs have succeeded in diverting federal funds away from Cincinnati to less deserving cities.
How Atlanta received the Federal award to build MARTA Thirteen years after passage of Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Federal Government began funding construction of rapid transit systems. First was the Washington Metro, which received funding in 1969 and began construction shortly thereafter. The Urban Mass Transit Act of 1970 allocated $10 billion for the expansion and upkeep of existing systems in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and elsewhere, and funded approximately 80 percent of the cost of new rapid transit systems in Baltimore, Miami and Atlanta.
The award of nearly $1 billion, to Atlanta in the early 1970’s, stands as one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of public transportation in the United States. This enormous sum (equivalent to approximately $3 billion in 2011 dollars) was originally allocated to Seattle but was diverted after King County voters failed to approve a local tax to operate the planned system. Meanwhile, Atlanta-area voters did approve a transit sales tax, and due to a shortage of cities with such a tax, received the federal award and broke ground on MARTA in 1975.
The configuration of MARTA’s two lines, which radiate from downtown Atlanta in four directions, has been the subject of much criticism. Approximately four miles of subway construction in the Downtown and Midtown areas consumed enough of the project’s budget as to force cut backs in suburban areas. Outside of the Downtown tunnels, the lines typically follow freight rail lines, with inconveniently positioned stations. These poorly located stations have limited the system’s overall ridership by discouraging the construction of transit-oriented developments. Nevertheless, large transit-oriented developments (TODs) have been built at some MARTA stations, and system ridership is presently reported to be 260,000 each weekday.
So why did Cincinnati not apply for the award Atlanta received?
In 1970, Atlanta and Cincinnati were at the center of metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) identical in population. But Cincinnati was still much more densely built than Atlanta, and therefore much better suited for construction of a rapid transit system. Not only were Downtown and Over-the-Rhine much more active than they are now, but Cincinnati had numerous old neighborhood business districts that could have been saved from extinction with a subway station beneath their primary intersections.
A drawing for such a system was in fact made by the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI). In anticipation of a UMTA application in 1971, OKI developed a 57-mile regional rapid transit plan that would have included at least 10 miles of subway construction in Cincinnati, a tunnel under the Ohio River, and more subway construction in Covington and Newport. Under UMTA guidelines, Cincinnati-area residents would only pay $100 million of its estimated $500 million capital cost.
But Cincinnati could not apply because UMTA awards were available only for those cities with publicly operated bus companies. In 1970 public transportation in Cincinnati was still provided by Cincinnati Transit, the bus-only descendant of the Cincinnati Street Railway, a situation that persisted after a countywide property tax that would have funded a public bus company failed in 1971. Cincinnati Transit was not put out of its misery until city voters approved an earnings tax in 1973 that enabled formation of Queen City Metro.
The .03 percent earnings tax was insufficient to cover the 20 percent local match required for UMTA awards, therefore, even after having established a public bus company, Cincinnati could still not apply for large capital awards without either a supplement or replacement of the city earnings tax. A pair of countywide transit taxes failed in 1979 and 1980, and therefore Cincinnatians paid in but received nothing from the Urban Mass Transit Assistance Act.
What is so frustrating about these events is that of the three cities that received new-start awards, only the traditional urban character of Baltimore in any way resembles that of Cincinnati. Miami and Atlanta, which by 1970 had just surpassed Cincinnati in size, experienced most of their growth in the automobile era and so could not possibly benefit similarly from construction of rapid transit systems. In short, federal awards weren’t made on the basis of suitability or cost-benefit, but rather who fought hardest for the money.
What if…? Federal funding of rail transit declined after the exhaustion of UMTA funds in the late 1970’s. As such, the FTA has not funded any new-start rapid transit subway systems, with the exception of the Los Angeles Red and Purple Lines in the late 1980’s, and has shifted its funding to the less expensive light rail mode. In Cincinnati, regional transit system plans downsized from OKI’s 1971 Regional Rapid Transit plan to less ambitious light rail plans.
These light rail plans typically called for little or no tunnel construction. Unfortunately, this is not the best solution for Cincinnati, as many of its walkable neighborhood business districts can only be reached by the type of bored tunnels called for in OKI’s 1971 Regional Rapid Transit Plan. Since the FTA no longer funds extensive tunnel construction in mid-sized cities, Cincinnati has no hope of constructing such tunnels without a return of Federal funding for such projects to 1970’s levels.
Next time you are in Hyde Park Square, at Skyline Chili in Clifton, near St. Lawrence Church in Price Hill, or walking Covington’s MainStrasse Village, imagine being able to walk down a staircase to a subway train that could take you Downtown or to any of those other points in just a few minutes. The money was there for the taking back in the early 1970’s, and we could have gotten it just as easily as Atlanta did, but your parents and grandparents were tricked into voting against it.
Jake Mecklenborg is a transit historian and published author. His new book Cincinnati’s Incomplete Subway: The Complete History explores the strange and largely untold history of rail transit in the Queen City.
As part of its monthly happy hour series, the AIGA Cincinnati chapter, a collaborative network for creatives in the design, marketing and advertising industry, is hosting Liquid Courage: the Love Edition on Friday, February 11 at YES Studio in Over-the-Rhine. 
