Author: Randy A. Simes

Randy is an award-winning urban planner who founded UrbanCincy in May 2007. He grew up on Cincinnati’s west side in Covedale, and graduated from the University of Cincinnati’s nationally acclaimed School of Planning in June 2009. In addition to maintaining ownership and serving as the managing editor for UrbanCincy, Randy has worked professionally as a planning consultant throughout the United States, Korea and the Middle East. After brief stints in Atlanta and Chicago, he currently lives in the Daechi neighborhood of Seoul’s Gangnam district.

Categories
News

Cincy Fringe Festival ’09

The Cincinnati Fringe Festival starts today with the Fringe CityBeat Kick-Off Party and will continue through June 6th with 33 productions, nearly 170 performances, more than 150 artists and some new venues. The art opening will take place tonight from 6pm to 8pm and be immediately followed by the Kick-Off Party ($5 suggested donation).

The festival offers an opportunity for a variety of artists to get exposure by submitting their work to be considered for inclusion. During the festival local, regional, national and international artists come to Cincinnati and for 12 days show off their work in traditional and non-traditional art spaces throughout Cincinnati’s center city. The artists represent a variety of media including theatre, dance, music, poetry, visual art, film and much more.

’09 Overview:
In its sixth year, the Cincinnati Fringe Festival saw a record number of submissions from artists outside of Greater Cincinnati and accounted for roughly 52% of all submissions. The diversity and reach, of the growing festival, is something Eric Vosmeier (managing director) is pleased with.

At this year’s festival some 69% of the applicants newcomers and will provide some new faces for those Fringe Festival stalwarts. This growth in newcomers and outsiders is symbolic of the Festival’s explosive growth and popularity over its six years in existence says Vosmeier.

The 2009 Cincinnati Fringe Festival will have a variety of venues throughout Cincinnati’s center city including Media Bridges, Art Academy of Cincinnati, Know Theatre, Jackson St. Underground, Below Zero Lounge, Coffee Emporium, New Stage Collective, Mixx Ultra Lounge and more.

Throughout Cincinnati’s center city there will be a slew of 200+ dedicated Fringe Festival volunteers. What is interesting about the volunteers this year is that many will be scooting around on Segways to help people find their way, answer question or whatever else.

Single tickets for the festival productions are just $12, but passes are also available for $200 (all access) and $60 (six shows). Single tickets and passes are available now and can be purchased online.

An official 2009 Cincinnati Fringe Festival map can be downloaded here (pdf). For full schedules and lineups see bottom of article.

Visual Fringe:
For the second year in a row a part of the Visual Fringe work will be the creation of a mural over the course of the Festival. This year local artists will create a mural on the north wall of the Know Theatre to compliment the south wall mural done last year.

Woven Wall by John Benvenuto (sculpture) & Horizontal by Kelly Jo Asbury (painting)

“Life on the Fringe”:
New this year will be an experiment in very short social cinema as part of the Film Fringe component. “Life on the Fringe” challenges filmmakers to make a short film that in some way completes the statement, “Life on the fringe is…”

Each filmmaker will decide how the statement ends, and in what context “fringe” is defined. Documentaries, dramas, comedies and experimental films are all fair game. The films should be between three and ten minutes in length and be produced specifically for the “Life on the Fringe” event.

Filmmakers will then be a part of the special Cincinnati Fringe Festival screening, and have their films shown on Northern Kentucky University’s NorseMedia television station.

History:
The Cincinnati Fringe Festival traces its roots to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that started in Edinburgh, Scotland some 51 years ago when eight groups staged their own “fringe” performances at the Edinburgh Festival of the Arts. They set up and created makeshift theatres on the outskirts of the established festival and eventually gained a large following that then outstripped the mainstream festival.

This “fringe” festival concept then jumped the pond to Canada in the 1980s. Canada currently boasts many of these festivals throughout the country and has the largest festival of this type in North America at the Edmonton Festival which regularly draws more than a half a million people annually.

Over time these festivals grew throughout the United States and came to Cincinnati in 2003. There are presently 20 active “fringe” festivals in North America including cities like Philadelphia, Orlando, San Francisco, Minneapolis and New York.

Full Schedules/Lineups
Performance Fringe | Visual Fringe | Film Fringe
Categories
News

A Journey In Every Bottle

In case you haven’t seen Christian Moerlein’s new television commercial here it is for you. The 31 second TV spot will be shown throughout the Cincinnati market over the summer. It is yet another sign of the rebirth of the beer brewing industry here in Cincinnati. Thanks Greg for investing in Cincinnati and bringing back some of our proud German history.

Categories
News Transportation

Bicycle parking love

We could use some bicycle parking love like this in Cincinnati at least in one or two locations. The new Central Riverfront Park might be a great opportunity and is something the park officials have hinted at given the inclusion of the Ohio River Trail into the park design that will potentially bring lots of bicycle commuters into the center city from the eastern neighborhoods.

Categories
News

Two Wheelin’ in Cincy + Update

Norwood might be an unlikely place to sell Vespas and other scooters, but I encourage you to check out Metro Scooter. They sell scooters, gear, and safety equipment. Many of the scooters they sell get upwards of 75 miles per gallon, and some even get 100mpg or better.

Like cars, scooter prices vary depending on the size, style and features, but unlike cars, scooters are far less expensive. They range in price from in the $1,000’s to around $3,000 and up. These vehicles are great for traveling in an urban environment while being light on the wallet, but there are other positive benefits as well.

Parking and maneuvering a scooter downtown is easier than a car. They take up less space than cars, so more people switching to scooters will reduce the need for parking spaces, increasing the room available for economic development. Taking more cars off the road also reduces congestion and emissions. Be sure to check out this great article for more on the scooter scene in Cincinnati.

Two-Wheeler Parking Program Update:
The City’s Department of Transportation and Engineering (DOTE) has been studying the current two-wheeler parking locations throughout downtown over the past couple of months. In addition to the study they have continued to receive lots of community input about where future locations might be best suited.

From early results, one of the most popular parking locations is the 6th & Walnut spot which also happens to be the closest location to Fountain Square. As a result the City is really trying to find another location with close proximity to Fountain Square to offer the 6th & Walnut parking spots some relief.

So far the City has identified three additional two-wheeler parking locations in the downtown area. Mel Thomas, from the DOTE, is really encouraging people to continue to send ideas for more spots as their next round of studies will start to look at additional neighborhoods outside of the downtown area.

Another item that will eventually be studied is whether to keep the parking spots free for two-wheeler users, or whether the city should start charging some kind of rate for the spots. All of this will be worked out as this is still a “pilot program” and is assumed to have kinks that need to be worked out.

Thomas encourages people to share their thoughts on all this and more by June 5th by sending emails to twowheeler@cincinnati-oh.gov.

Proposed additional two-wheeler parking locations (GoogleMap) Downtown:
  1. 100 Central Parkway (Adjacent to Coffee Emporium, close to the Gateway Garage and Kroger Bldg.)
  2. 639 Main Street (Adjacent to the Aronoff Center – Fifth Third Bank Theatre, close to Fountain Square.)
  3. McFarland Street at Elm Street (Close to the Enquirer Bldg at 312 Elm.)
Photo from Scott Beseler
Categories
News

Cutting our way to prosperity

You may very well have heard of the phrase before, but it is something that I often come back to when discussing budget issues especially during an economically troubling time.

There is no doubt about it that we as a community are facing hard times just like the rest of the nation. Luckily for Cincinnati we have fared better than most, but it is almost guaranteed that during times like these that some people will suggest that the best thing to do is tighten our proverbial belts and hunker down until times get better.

Not only is this contrary to Cincinnati’s past where we have built some of our most prominent structures and accomplished some of our most significant feats during tough economic times, but it is a bad move for our communities.

When all the private sector industries are cutting back, and putting people out of work, the last thing we need is government doing the same. What we need to be doing is stabilizing our community investments and looking for opportunities to grow our community and its assets.

Unfortunately the news out today is that Leslie Ghiz (R), who once was a part of the bipartisan coalition of politicians that support the modern streetcar proposal for Cincinnati, is now rescinding her support because of budgetary concerns.

Instead Ghiz would rather “rechannel” $800,000 approved to study Uptown route alternatives , for the proposed streetcar system, to hire two new city prosecutors to “combat blight and nuisance issues” and purchase electronic-monitoring units for Hamilton County so that the county can monitor inmates turned away from county jails who are placed on house arrest.

Not only are the alternatives misguided on a variety of levels, they present the same old tired position in Cincinnati that we stray away from something new, something bold and something that could truly transform the city.

Time and time again we tend to go with safe option and stray away from anything different. While this conservative approach has served us well through many economic downturns by not hurting us too bad, it has also stymied us from becoming the truly great city we could become.

We are no longer considered the “Paris of the west.” Nor are we representative of America’s first boomtown. Instead we seem to fit right in with many of the beleaguered Midwestern cities who also employ a similar conservative approach when it comes to taking bold and decisive actions on new things.

Public safety certainly is important and it is the core function of what government is charged with doing, but at the same time we can not allow public safety to consume all of our resources especially when they are measures meant to react to crime rather than solving the root issues at play that create the criminal behavior to begin with.

The streetcar in this issue just happens to be the most prominent political ploy at this given time and acts as the scapegoat for politicians like Ghiz. In reality the proposed modern streetcar system will revitalize Cincinnati’s center city which will in turn bolster city coffers and allow the entire city and region to be more prosperous.

This prosperity could then in turn be used to fund additional public safety programs or might even act as a means to lifting some people out of poverty and they cycle of crime by providing additional job and economic opportunities. To quote former President Bill Clinton, “it’s the economy stupid.”