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.

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Development News

New High-End Townhomes Add to Pendleton’s Ongoing Revitalization

A relatively small development called Pendleton Street Townhomes will bring 10 new single-family residences to the center city in two phases over the next two years.

One of the interesting components about the project is that it is blending in mostly new infill on vacant lots with a renovation of an existing historic structure that dates back to the 1870s. The work also comes at the same time as a flurry of other investments nearby that are poised to transform the historic neighborhood.

Often considered a sub-neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine, Pendleton is actually one of the smallest of the city’s 52 official neighborhoods. Its building stock and urban form are essentially identical to that of its more well-known neighbor to the west.

The neighborhood has long had a slightly unique sub-culture of its own, perhaps driven by the Pendleton Arts Center, which boasts the world’s largest collection of artists under one roof. While this claim may be more hyperbole than reality, the Pendleton Arts Center is located in an impressively large warehouse building that has more than 500 studios and 200 resident artists.

Over the past two decades the Pendleton Arts Center has served as an anchor for the neighborhood, and the new townhomes being developed are fittingly located in its proud shadow.

Developers broke ground in late August on what will be four newly constructed townhomes, and one renovated property. Each home, developers say, is approximately 3,100 square feet and ranges in price from $390,000 to $449,000.

The second phase will include five more newly constructed townhomes and is anticipated to break ground next fall. While it is still preliminary, developers expect those homes to be slightly smaller and to go for around $400,000.

Evidence of the area’s hot real estate market is the fact that developers sold five of the units before even breaking ground just over a month ago.

One of the key marketing points, and a policy point of pride for those promoting sustainable development practices, is that each of the properties will be LEED certified and thus qualify for the City of Cincinnati’s tax abatement program for such properties.

The townhomes within the first phase of work under construction are expected to be complete in spring 2015.

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Up To Speed

What should happen with the buildings Hamilton County wants to sell?

What should happen with the buildings Hamilton County wants to sell?.

It sounds more and more like Hamilton County will sell off some of its underutilized properties in the central business district. Many of these building’s need to have upgrades made to them, but would make for excellent conversions into additional residential properties. More from The Enquirer:

Details of the plan are still under wraps, but county officials told The Enquirer several buildings could be sold and hundreds of workers could be moved to new digs in the next several years. Their goal is to use proceeds from the sale of their buildings to help pay for new offices, most likely at the old Mercy Hospital site in Mt. Airy.

The Times-Star Building is by far the most attractive of those properties and county officials say they’ve received several calls about it from potential developers, even though the building isn’t officially on the market yet.

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Development News

VIDEO: Breathing New Life Into the City’s Oldest Standing Firehouse

We have been writing more and more about Walnut Hills, East Walnut Hills and Evanston lately. That has largely been because a lot has been happening there over the past couple of years; and it seems like that trend is only just getting started.

It is, perhaps, no coincidence that these three neighborhoods also fall loosely into the focus area for the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation. While WHRF is a different organization in size and scope from 3CDC, it too is making an out-sized impact in this part of the city. One of the more current examples of this, in a bricks and mortar sense, is the redevelopment of the city’s oldest firehouse.

Located in Peeble’s Corner, the 134-year-old structure had sat vacant for the better part of four decades. The restoration created a new street-level restaurant space that is now occupied by Fireside Pizza, and an apartment on the upper-floor. It is also part of a larger redevelopment effort, being led by Kent Hardman, on a slew of surrounding buildings.

The restoration of this historic firehouse is particularly important to Kevin Wright, the executive director of WHRF, who says that it really is the first completed example that embodies the foundation’s goal of acquiring and restoring blighted properties.

In light of that, the WHRF worked with Andrew Stahlke, an occasional video contributor to UrbanCincy, to produce the following three-minute video on the history and process of bringing the building back to life.

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Up To Speed

With Central Parkway cycle track complete, are raised bike lanes next for Cincinnati?

With Central Parkway cycle track complete, are raised bike lanes next for Cincinnati?.

While Cincinnati is the first city in Ohio to build a protected bike lane, it has a ways to go in order to catch up with the amount of bike infrastructure cities all across the nation are building. This, perhaps, says more about how far behind Ohio’s big cities are than how progressive Cincinnati is, but that’s a topic of discussion for another day.

As the U.S. DOT moves forward with new standards for protected bike lanes, some North American cities are now looking at raised bike lanes as the next bit of evolution for the infrastructure. More from Urbanful:

Raised bike lanes, popular in Europe and present in a smattering of streets in several U.S. cities, provide extra protection for cyclists, drivers and pedestrians thanks to a slight change in perspective—or in this case, elevation.

But more U.S. cities are trying out the idea: San Francisco is getting its first raised bike lane–higher than vehicular traffic, but lower than the sidewalk–on one block of Valencia Street as part of the Mission Valencia Green Gateway project, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition reports. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2015.

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Up To Speed

Are area governments ready to embrace new technologies?

Are area governments ready to embrace new technologies?.

Many of us can appreciate that local governments are where real change happens. The decisions made by local politicians and government officials have an immediate and direct impact on residents and visitors in that community. To that end, local governments can and should be leading the charge when it comes to the utilization of new technology to save their constituents time, money and agony. What benefits for Cincinnati, where it seems P.G. Sittenfeld (D) is ready to lead that charge, might the use of new technologies provide? More from Urbanful:

Last week, Ron Bouganim launched the Gov Tech Fund, designed to spark innovation in government technology. So far, the fund has raised $23 million, he says, which it has invested in four companies: SeamlessDocs, a way for employees to sign and share documents securely; MindMixer, which develops platforms for local governments to engage online with their communities; Smart Procure, which connects local, state and federal buyers and sellers; and AmigoCloud, which allows localities to share GIS data and maps across tablets, laptops and smart phones.