Month: March 2013

Categories
Business Development News

PHOTOS: Historic Glencoe-Auburn Place Row Houses are Being Demolished

After more than a decade of failed redevelopment plans demolition of the 129-year-old Glencoe-Auburn Place Row Houses began on March 19.

Known colloquially as “The Hole” for its dramatic hillside setting in historic Mt. Auburn, the multi-building complex abuts Christ Hospital and has long been eyed in its expansion plans. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in December 2003, at the request of architect Tom Hefley and developer Pauline Van der Haer.

Christ Hospital Expansion
This aerial photograph from September 2012 shows both the Christ Hospital Expansion [CENTER-LEFT] and the historic “Glencoe Hole” [MIDDLE RIGHT]. Image provided.

Van der Hear, through her development company named Dorian Development, planned to renovate the complex into 68 market-rate condominiums during the early 2000s housing bubble. The “Condos Available” sign, still visible after today’s demolition work, has been in place since at least 2004, when the project was featured prominently in Cincinnati Magazine.

The large-scale modification of the old buildings (the original apartment units all have three very small floors connected by unusually narrow staircases) and the need for a multi-deck parking garage made the creation of a viable project impossible without large subsidies from the City of Cincinnati. Since the early 2000s Van der Hear has been involved in several high profile attempts to win awards from the City.

COAST attacked the project in 2008 after it received a $300,000 grant from the city, but in 2009 Christ Hospital took advantage of the collapse of the condo market and moved to acquire the complex from Dorian Development. Van der Haer sued Christ Hospital in 2011, claiming “tortious, deliberate, intentional and malicious interference” in her development plans, but the Ohio Supreme Court and an appellate court ruled in the hospital’s favor, citing the lack of a written contract between the City and Dorian Development.

The arrival of bulldozers adds to a growing list of historic properties uptown that have faced similar fates in recent years as a surge of private investment has moved in to construct hundreds of new residences and hundreds of thousands of square feet of new commercial space.

The following 12 images were all taken by Jake Mecklenborg at the site on Tuesday, March 19 – just five days after a demolition permit had been granted.

Categories
Business Development News

Private Investment Continues to Flow Uptown to Corryville and Short Vine

The Short Vine Business District is starting to show signs of a revitalization that has been a long time coming.

Uptown generally is seeing a wave of real estate investment and concurrent transportation investment. City and State officials are working to put the final pieces of  funding together for a new $70 million MLK Interchange that may also include upgrades to the Taft/McMillan interchange. Current estimates foresee project completion sometime around 2016.

Further helping accellerate the reinvestment uptown is the growing number of high-wage jobs in the area. Corryville’s neighborhood business district, for example, is surrounded by the University of Cincinnati, six major hospitals, and is within one mile of two interstates.

Short Vine Master Plan_2007 Update
Short Vine’s master plan was updated in 2007 through a partnership between the City of Cincinnati and Uptown Consortium. While much of the plan has not been adhered to, significant change is taking place along Short Vine and its surrounding streets.

The last few years saw the introduction of a handful new businesses, such as Island Fridays, Dive Bar, and Zipscene, a startup company. Recent openings include Mio’s Pizza, a third Beelistic Tattoo location, Caribe Carryout and new eateries Hang Over Easy, Smoke, and Taste of Belgium will open in the near future.

The rehabilitation of these structures capitalized on the historic charms found therein; Smoke and Hang Over Easy used reclaimed doors, chalkboards and windows from the recently demolished Schiel School. The edgy interior designs employed by all of these businesses show a remarkable congruence to the unique character that has always been represented on Short Vine.

Bogart’s, the 36-year old concert venue and an anchor establishment in the business district, just underwent renovations upwards of $100,000 as it seeks to attract more national performers.

The Old Schiel School, which closed in 2010, was torn down and is being redeveloped into a $20 million structure that will include 106 apartments and street-level commercial space. The previous owner of the site, Fifth Third Bank, has already signed on as a tenant for one of the street-level retail spaces. As noted, Taste of Belgium will also grow their footprint and open their first uptown location at the site.

The project with the most potential to be truly transformative, however, might be the redevelopment of University Plaza.

Vine Street Flats
One of Short Vine’s newest buildings, Vine Street Flats, sits immediately next to one of the business district’s long-time structures. Photograph by Luca Acito for UrbanCincy.

Although there were original hopes of reconnecting Vine Street with Short Vine, the plaza site will not change but the current structure will be demolished. Kroger and Walgreens are the only current tenants expected to remain.

The Uptown Consortium thus far has served as an effective catalyst for business attraction, retention and investment in the area.

The community development corporation was awarded $40 million in tax credits in 2012, with 90% of the funds going towards the redevelopment of University Plaza and the former Schiel School site.

Additionally, last month Cincinnati City Council approved the Uptown Consortium’s application for a Community Entertainment District (CED) to cover 77 acres and 150 properties on Short Vine, thus allowing the distribution of 15 new liquor licenses within the CED.

New streetscaping will include buried utilities, wider café-style sidewalks, street narrowing, new street trees and reconfigured parallel parking are all part of the improvements approved by City Council in 2011.

“Within a few years, this area will have been transformed,” asserted John Pedro, co-owner of Dive Bar, Smoke and Hang Over Easy.

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Business Development News

Work on Smale Riverfront Park Progresses Despite Lack of State, Federal Funds

The $120 million Smale Riverfront Park will celebrate its next wave of progress two months from now when the Women’s Committee Garden and Duke Energy Garden are opened to the public – more than doubling the central riverfront park’s completed acreage.

According to officials from the Cincinnati Park Board, the project is still on-time and on-budget thanks to an influx of private contributions.

Originally, park officials had planned on approximately half of the project’s cost being covered by state and federal funds. While those funds flowed early in the project’s life, they have all but dried up over the past two years.

Cincinnati Central Riverfront Plan

“We got into this pretty aware of what the challenges were, but the biggest challenges thus far have probably been the state and federal funding,” stated Smale Riverfront Park’s project manager, Dave Prather. “It’s been a pretty big adjustment when half of the funding you were counting on hasn’t come, but thanks to the private funding we’ve been able to stay pretty much on schedule.”

Prather says that the city leadership understands the realities facing both their state and federal partners, but that without the private and local support the project would most likely be behind schedule.

He is, however, optimistic that things will turn around and says that the park board is working on other ways to get state and federal dollars. One such element that could be the beneficiary of such efforts is the planned 1,000-foot transient boat dock which may be eligible for up to $3 million in grants from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Watercraft.

Should such funding fall into place, Prather says that the boat dock could be operational as early as May or July 2015.

“We received $3 million in the State capital fund three years ago, and that’s what we thought we would get as we worked through the phasing plan,” Prather explained. “Hopefully the state will get back in the business of being able to help with significant capital projects.”

Not all of the funding news has been grim, as Prather noted strong support from Hamilton County, private sources, and the City of Cincinnati which includes a recent $4 million allocation from the proceeds of its recently approved Parking Modernization & Lease agreement.

That $4 million will go towards accelerating the construction timeline of phase four of construction work which will now include the PNC Grow Up Great Adventure Playground and carousel. According to Prather, both of these projects will now be completed by May 2015 – in time for the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

One of the features that will be open in two months is the new riverwalk, of sorts, that will run from the Walnut Street Overlook approximately to Sycamore Street immediately south of Great American Ball Park. One of the key features of this riverwalk, Prather notes, is that the guardrails will be 48 inches in height instead of 42 inches so that both pedestrians and bicyclists can enjoy the pathway.

“Our observation has been that you can’t tell cyclists where to go,” said Prather who noted that he is an avid cyclist himself. “So we’re going to construct the closest to the river pathway to accommodate both pedestrians and cyclists – right where they both want to be.”

While much work is left to do, both in terms of construction and securing funds to continue construction, the project team maintains excitement for the transformation they are overseeing.

“I’ve been an architect and a planner for the city for years, and a lot of the time you spend a lot of time and energy on plans that don’t get built,” Prather concluded. “This one [project] is different…we’re just on a roll and it’s awesome to have ideas that everyone embraces, you feel right about what you’re building, and you get the resources to actually build it. We’ve gotten a lot of cooperation from the city and county, and I feel like we’re all rowing in the same direction.”

Officials hope to complete the 45-acre park in its entirety by July 2017, excluding improvements to the river’s edge that will need to be coordinated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

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Up To Speed

Could Cincinnati host the 2014 Big East Basketball Tournament?

Could Cincinnati host the 2014 Big East Basketball Tournament?.

The 2014 Big East Basketball Tournament will be its last before the ‘Catholic 7’ take over and make the conference their own. This year’s tournament, which starts tonight at Madison Square Garden, will be its last in Midtown Manhattan. After that, league sources say that they will look to host the tournament in a new location with Cincinnati being one of the finalists for 2014. Could this be Cincinnati’s next major event following the World Choir Games and preceding the 2015 All-Star Game? More from ESPN:

The current Big East, which must have a new conference name by July 1, will be left with a 10-member league in 2013: Cincinnati, UConn, UCF, Houston, Louisville, Memphis, Rutgers, SMU, Temple and USF.

Louisville and Rutgers will remain in the league one more season before moving to the ACC and Big Ten, respectively, in 2014. The remaining Big East schools are considering new sites for next year’s tournament, including Hartford, Conn.; Memphis, Tenn.; Cincinnati and Dallas.

 

Categories
News Transportation

City of Cincinnati to Implement Safety Improvements for Pedestrians

The City of Cincinnati will be working to improve its pedestrian crossings over the coming years in order to align with recently updated state and federal standards.

The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) was updated in late 2009 and includes new best practices for pedestrian crosswalk designs.

The old standard accepted the typical parallel lines seen throughout most of the city today, but the new MUTCD calls for what traffic engineers call “continental” crosswalk markings, which feature two-foot-wide yellow or white stripes. The new MUTCD also calls for the implementation of countdown pedestrian signals where the pedestrian change interval is greater than seven seconds.

Traditional Intersection Design at Seventh & Walnut
The intersection of Seventh and Walnut Streets downtown represents both the old standard for crosswalk markings and signals. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

According to Cincinnati’s Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE), continental crosswalk markings have not yet been phased in throughout the city, but that as intersections are improved the City is working to upgrade both the pedestrian signals and crosswalk.

“The parallel markings were, at one time, considered “the standard” for crosswalk markings,” Michael Moore, Director of Cincinnati’s DOTE, told UrbanCincy. “However, with the update of the MUTCD in late 2009, best practices established the continental makings as a preferred design.”

The new continental markings are seen as a safety improvement for both pedestrians and drivers as they make crosswalks more visible, thus reducing collisions between automobile drivers and pedestrians.

The new markings, however, do pose some installation and maintenance issues for local governments.

Continental Crossing at Smale Riverfront Park
The mid-block crossing, connecting Smale Riverfront Park with The Banks, on Mehring Way features a continental crossing design. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

“We place most of our markings with thermoplastic because of its durability and reflectivity; however when wet, it can be slippery,” Moore explained. “And because the continental markings require more paint or thermoplastic, they cost more to install, and more to maintain since more of the stripe is in-line with the traffic flow.”

In order to help save taxpayer dollars, Moore says that the City studies where exactly to place the markings so that they avoid the most common path of wheel travel.

Crosswalk signals with countdown timers, meanwhile, have become more popular throughout the United States since cities like Washington D.C. began testing them years ago. Locally, both Covington, KY and Newport, KY have had these timers in use in their downtowns for years.

In addition to these new countdown timers at crosswalks, the time signals allow for pedestrians to cross the street may also soon be changing. Cincinnati officials say they will be adjusting pedestrian signals to accommodate the region’s aging population.

“Where the previous timing assumed pedestrians travel approximately 4 feet per second, the new manual reduces that to 3.5 feet per second,” noted Moore. “It doesn’t sound like a lot, think about the number of large intersections we have.”

There is no set timing on these upgrades, but Cincinnati officials say that more and more crossing signals will be changed out over the coming years, and that crosswalk markings will change as intersection upgrades are performed. Cincinnatians can already see the new continental markings in place a non-signalized, mid-block crossings.