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.
The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development distributes federal funding to communities throughout the United States each year. The allocation of those funds is based, in part, on need and population, but also on the input provided by the residents of each respective community receiving funds.
To that end, Covington is currently gathering public feedback for how it should use the federal funds it receives from HUD. In most cases communities spend the money on things like homebuyer programs, infrastructure improvements, recreation programs, crime prevention efforts, park maintenance or playground equipment.
According to Jeremy Wallace, Grants Administrator and Real Estate Specialist with the City of Covington, public input is solicited as part of Covington’s annual action plan process for Community Development Block Grant funds from HUD.
“We typically hold public hearings and have stakeholder meetings, but this year we decided to add an online survey,” Wallace explained to UrbanCincy. “We collect all the public comments from the various forms of public outreach and incorporate that into our strategies and programming of these funds to address the needs identified in the pubic comments.”
This year’s online survey will remain open until Monday, April 4, so people are encouraged to leave their feedback as soon as possible so that it can be incorporated into the public record. Once it is all compiled, Wallace says that the City of Covington will put together an action plan and submit it to HUD for their consideration and review.
The survey takes just a few minutes to complete and can be filled out online here: http://conta.cc/1SCUwZb.
Uber and Cincinnati Metro Partnership [Paige Malott]
Business leaders from Uber and transit officials with the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority gathered yesterday to announce a new partnership between the region’s largest transit provider and the increasingly omnipresent ridesharing service.
As part of the partnership, Metro will place interior transit cards on buses advertising a unique code that will offer a free ride to first-time Uber users. While the deal is similar to Uber’s many other marketing relationships, it may be the first step toward greater collaboration between the two organizations.
Uber and Metro Partnership [Paige Malott]
“Many of our customers have expressed their interest in using rideshare services like Uber in conjunction with their Metro trip to bridge the gap between service hours and locations,” Metro CEO & General Manager Dwight A. Ferrell said in a prepared release.
In other cities, like Dallas and Atlanta, Uber has partnered with regional transit agencies to integrate their mobile app with the route planning offered within the transit agency’s app. However, these relationships have been critiqued for what being a lopsided arrangement favoring the fast-growing tech company.
Other partnerships looking to address the first mile, last mile challenge have so far struggled to amount to much, but this has not stopped transit officials in Minneapolis and Los Angeles from inking deals to cover trip costs on Uber as part of their respective guaranteed ride home programs.
Such issues, however, are not deterring Metro officials from looking at the potential upsides that might come out of the partnership.
“We’ve seen the significant success Uber has had with other major public transit providers,” Ferrell stated. “We believe Uber is an ideal partner to help us meet the needs of our customers, ultimately making their experience as convenient and enjoyable as possible.”
If the partnership is successful, it could create significant value for Metro riders and help tackle one of the most difficult challenges facing transit agencies throughout North America – how to get riders to and from transit stations without the use of a personal automobile. Eliminating such a problem would allow many people to significantly reduce their reliance on a personal automobile, or eliminate it altogether.
“Cincinnatians are already combining Uber and Metro to reach their destinations and we are excited to partner to spread the word further that Uber is an option to take Metro riders that ‘Last Mile,’” said Casey Verkamp, general manager of Uber Cincinnati.
Verkamp and Ferrell are right in being optimistic about the potential. An analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that people the combined cost of public transit and Uber becomes more cost effective than owning a personal automobile when the person uses public transit for approximately 85% of their trips and Uber for the rest.
With the average household making 2,000 trips annually, that equates to roughly 300 Uber trips per year. Of course, the average Cincinnatian takes far fewer than 1,700 trips per year on public transit, so a fully functioning arrangement of this kind would be hugely beneficial for both Uber and Metro. The main problem in Cincinnati is that the vast majority of people living in the region are not well-served by transit, and are essentially unable to take 85% of their annual trips by public transit.
Nevertheless, this is the first partnership of its kind in Ohio. While its limited scope leaves much unanswered about how it will benefit area transit riders over the long-term, it does illustrate that Metro officials are thinking about the future of how to move people effectively and efficiently throughout the region.
“This partnership exemplifies how cities like Cincinnati are embracing innovation and creative solutions to meet the needs of their residents,” Verkamp concluded.
Last July the City of Cincinnati opened its first new police station in more than 20 years. Aside from updating and expanding the previous offerings inside a 107-year-old building, the new facility also aimed to create a new community gathering place for the city’s most populous neighborhood, while also achieving net-zero energy consumption.
The 36,000-square-foot facility was built for Cincinnati Police Department’s District 3, which serves 14 west side neighborhoods and some 95,000 residents. The $16 million landmark includes 40 geothermal wells, a 330-kilowatt solar panel system, and high-tech energy zones inside the building for system optimization.
Such investments have resulted in a LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, the organization’s highest rating, and an energy usage coming in 20% lower than what was originally estimated for the environmentally sound building.
While the District 3 Headquarters is one of America’s most sustainable police stations, it is part of a growing trend where environmentally and economically conscience cities are looking to both reducing their carbon footprint, while also aiding their budgets through lower utility costs.
Main Entryway
Cincinnati Police District 3 HQ
Main Entryway
Cincinnati Police District 3 HQ
Bicycle Parking Outside Main Entryway
Main Entryway
Neighborhood Landmark Poles
Glass Artwork
Stormwater Management System
Stormwater Management System
Cincinnati Police District 3 HQ
Cincinnati Police District 3 HQ
Cincinnati Police District 3 HQ
EDITORIAL NOTE: All 13 photographs were taken by Eric Anspach on March 17, 2016.
Information obtained by UrbanCincy through a public records request shows that Columbia REI, LLC has enlisted the legal assistance of Francis Barrett and Timothy Burke to get Historic Conservation Board approval for the demolition of the historic Dennison Hotel.
Built in 1890, the Dennison Hotel is located within the Main Street Historic District and has sat vacant for several years. In the past, the eight-story brick structure had served as a single-occupancy room hotel in what was at that time a seedy part of the central business district.
Over the past several months historic preservationists have been organizing themselves in an effort to track the status of this historic structure as rumors have swirled that the owners were interested in demolition.
Dennison Hotel [Travis Estell]
The timing becomes all the more urgent with, according to documents filed with City Hall, the owners losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on the property each year, and with the Cincinnati Streetcar, which runs right in front of the property, poised to begin operation in the coming months.
In its application to City Hall, Columbia REI, LLC, which purchased the land from Columbia Oldsmobile Company in January, says that the real estate transaction is part of a larger effort to assemble and “protect” adjoining real estate that is being prepared for a “major redevelopment” that would be in line with the numerous other large-scale development projects taking place nearby.
As part of the demolition request, the owners were required to provide renovation cost estimates, along with the potential economic feasibility of legally permissible or likely uses. The report, completed by Beck Consulting in late February, provides evidence as to why a residential, office or hotel conversion would be challenging, but does not account or consider the possibility of any historic tax credits from the State of Ohio, or other incentives from the City of Cincinnati.
According to Beck Consulting’s report, supplemented by renovation cost estimates from HGC Construction, it would cost approximately $10.5 million to renovate the historic structure into a 60-room hotel with a street-level lobby and restaurant space, $7.9 million to turn it into a 52-unit apartment building, $8.7 million for a 35-unit condominium building, or $5 million to turn it into a 39,000-square-foot office building.
Over recent years, the State of Ohio has awarded tens of millions of dollars in tax credits to historic preservation projects such as this. Given the large-scale and potential economic impact of renovating the Dennison Hotel, it would seem likely that it would be well-positioned for such financial benefits.
According to the meeting schedule for Cincinnati’s Historic Conservation Board, the application should come up for a hearing on Monday, April 18. All meetings take place at 3pm in the Public Hearing Room on the fifth floor of Two Centennial Plaza at 805 Central Avenue.
EDITORIAL NOTE: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the Historic Conservation Board would hear this item at their April 4 meeting. Due to the application being submitted on February 23, this item will actually be on the Historic Conservation Board’s April 18 meeting agenda.
The Contemporary Arts Center undertook a $1.1 million lobby renovation last year. Since reopening, the dramatic lobby space, originally designed by internationally acclaimed Zaha Hadid, has added the wonderful Collective Espresso as a cafe operator, and now also includes a kinetic light display along its famed seven-story “Urban Carpet” wall.
The installation, entitled Cincinnati Swing, was designed by Erwin Redl and includes 160 pendulums distributed in a diamond grid pattern following the 4×4′ grid of the concrete panels. The installation is complemented nicely by Matt Kotlarczyk’s cloud-like chandeliers. In combination with one another, they provide a truly unique lighting scheme for the lobby space, which also features the CAC’s museum shop.
Open from 7am to 6pm during the week, and 9am to 3pm on Saturday and Sunday, the lobby of the CAC is free and open to the public. Of course, it does cost money to purchase food and drink from Collective Espresso, along with items from the museum store.
The CAC is easily accessible from virtually every Metro bus via the Government Square Transit Center a block away, and is also within several blocks of numerous Red Bike stations.
The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development distributes federal funding to communities throughout the United States each year. The allocation of those funds is based, in part, on need and population, but also on the input provided by the residents of each respective community receiving funds.
![Uber and Public Transit Pairing [FiveThirtyEight]](http://www.urbancincy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Uber-and-Public-Transit-Pairing.png)
