The building has sat empty since 2009 when the struggling Dayton-based retailer shuttered its operations in Hamilton.
Former Downtown Hamilton Elder-Beerman [David Emery]
It is envisioned that Jackon’s Market & Deli will supply the city’s increasing downtown population with access to fresh meats and produce for the first time in decades. Hamilton Urban Garden Systems, a recently incorporated 501(c)3 non-profit that has been the primary catalyst behind urban community gardens taking root throughout the city, will provide some of the store’s locally grown produce.
Comparable stores like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Jungle Jim’s currently require most of Hamilton’s 62,000 residents to make a 15- to 30-minute drive.
Despite having a small footprint, the planned grocery is seen as an anchor to the $6.5 million redevelopment of one of Hamilton’s largest vacant buildings. Spearheaded by the CORE Fund, the project has already landed at least two other major private tenants.
The largest tenant will be a 40,000-square-foot call center for Denver-based StarTek, which will bring with it nearly 700 customer service jobs. Kettering Health Network will join them when they expand the reach of Fort Hamilton Hospital’s Joslin Diabetes Center, marking the return of healthcare services to downtown just blocks away from the former Mercy Hospital site. It will also include facilities for InsideOut Studio, an innovative art program administered by Butler County’s Board of Developmental Disabilities.
The multi-million-dollar project calls for a complete overhaul of the structure’s exterior facades, and a complete interior reconfiguration. Project officials say that it will be completed in several phases, with the majority of work expected to be completed by the end of 2015.
Designed for NAAAP chapter leaders from more than 20 cities in the United States and Canada, this marked the first time the non-profit organization hosted their annual leadership development training in Cincinnati.
With innovative breakout sessions and expert panels that helped individuals develop their personal and organizational leadership skills, attendees said they felt motivated after having the opportunity to meet and build connections with leaders from across the nation with a variety of professional and ethnic backgrounds.
Santa Ono at NAAAP 2015 NLA [Lam Dang]
NAAAP 2015 National Leadership Academy [Lam Dang]
NAAAP 2015 National Leadership Academy [Lam Dang]
NAAAP 2015 National Leadership Academy [Lam Dang]
“Our vision is to build a strong, influential community of Asian American professionals in Southwest Ohio through professional development, community service and networking opportunities.” Tessa Xuan, Academy Director of NAAAP Cincinnati, told UrbanCincy. “We will become stronger and more efficient being together.”
NAAAP invited corporate employees and leaders to participate in a leadership symposium on Friday that focused on how to effectively run Asian American employee resource groups, which Xuan says attracted more than 70 group leaders from dozens of companies around the country.
The two-day conference was opened by Dennis Hirotsu, Vice President of Corporate Research & Development at P&G, and University of Cincinnati President Santa Ono. Hirotsu gave brief opening remarks about the role companies have played in improving the diversity of Cincinnati, while President Ono gave a riveting speech about the progress and importance of embracing diversity and different leadership styles.
Both speakers discussed the issues from a distinctively Cincinnati perspective. At approximately 2% of the total population, Asians make up less of Cincinnati’s regional makeup than the 5.6% national average. With Asians now making up 36% of all new immigrants to America, the largest of any group, NAAAP Cincinnati leadership sees a bright future, especially when considering their growing membership and increasingly active and visible local community.
Xuan says she is also hopeful that the opportunities made available through NAAAP Cincinnati will help make the community even stronger.
“NAAAP offers a diverse range of professional development programs on the local and national level, engages its membership in community service, and organizes professional networking events,” she explained. “While we have a lot of contacts in big companies, we certainly do not want to miss anyone in our community.”
EDITORIAL NOTE: NAAAP Cincinnati hosted an open forum, called The Urban Asia, this past December. The event was moderated by UrbanCincy‘s John Yung, and focused how the Asian community can play a greater role in the many physical changes happening throughout the city.
Those interested in getting involved with NAAAP Cincinnati can do so by contacting staff@naaapcincy.org.
A group of four young men are quickly transforming what was a vacant, historic church into a brewery and event space called Urban Artifact. The group says they are dedicated to saving historic buildings and adding new life to the community.
While some elements of the former St. Pius X Church will be familiar, other parts of the interior will be less recognizable. The group has big plans for the space and intend to open up operations later this year.
You can click on any image to enlarge it.
EDITORIAL NOTE: All 8 photographs were taken by Travis Estell on February 25, 2015.
Nearly four months into his new job, Cincinnati Department of Trade & Development Director Oscar Bedolla says that his department is already working to streamline its services to continue to grow confidence that Cincinnati is “open for business.”
His remarks came yesterday afternoon at Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati during a luncheon held by CREW Greater Cincinnati, a professional organization dedicated to providing growth and networking opportunities for people in the commercial real estate industry.
Oscar Bedolla at CREW Luncheon [Kevin LeMaster]
Bedolla came to Cincinnati from New York City, where he served as a vice president in KPMG’s Advisory Practice. In that role, he specialized in project finance and public-private partnerships. He now leads a department with an annual budget of $50 million and approximately 100 employees, who are charged with managing everything from large-scale development projects and housing to human services and the City’s parking assets.
So far his biggest challenge has been rallying the troops and getting everybody on the same page, saying, “People get stuck in a rut and don’t realize that we have to continue to build confidence in the [Cincinnati] market.”
To build that confidence and share it with potential investors, Bedolla said he is building a highly professional staff that understands both the public and private sectors, with a foundation built upon collaboration and innovation sharing.
“The cities I have worked with that have done well are the ones who have implemented things like CitiStat,” Bedolla said, referring to the real-time, data-driven city department performance program developed 15 years ago in Baltimore and soon to be brought here through the City’s new Office of Performance & Data Analytics.
Once that has been accomplished, he says that the real work can begin on the two major areas where he sees opportunity for Cincinnati: capturing and leveraging foreign direct investment, and increasing manufacturing productivity by taking advantage of the City’s legacy infrastructure.
“Cincinnati, with its location, is uniquely placed to be a much larger economy than it is right now,” Bedolla told the group of approximately 75 people who attended the luncheon. “We could see an influx of capital into mature markets [like Cincinnati] if Cincinnati brands itself.”
The next CREW Greater Cincinnati luncheon will once again be held at Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati, and will take place on Tuesday, April 14. Registration is not yet open.
After years of few options for those seeking food or product delivery in Cincinnati, several companies have started to spring up over the past year. One of those includes 53T, which is not only offering delivery services, but doing so in an effort to bring back the city’s once vibrant bike courier industry.
Although limited to Over-the-Rhine, Downtown and the West End, 53T offers delivery from seven different restaurants, and parcel delivery that utilizes their cargo bikes and trailers.
Local eateries served by 53T include Happy Belly on Vine, Pho Lang Thang, Cheapside Café, Quan Hapa, Park+Vine and Brezel. Pi Pizzeria was most recently added in February.
53T Courier [Provided]
53T Courier [Provided]
53T Courier [Provided]
Dave Adams and Ian Bulling partnered to start 53T early last year. The two started working on the concept independently, but were introduced to each other in January 2014, and decided to team up.
Each has their own reason for wanting to start the business. Bulling was working as a bicycle messenger and wanted to keep making a living at it, while also bringing back the bike messenger community that existed in the city a decade ago.
“Like the advertising industry, legal work involved a continual flow of documents circulating throughout the city,” Jeffrey Kidder wrote in his 2011 book entitled Urban Flow: Bike Messengers and the City. “While the advertising industry is an example of why bike couriers are still useful, it should be apparent that much of what messengers were delivering in the early 1980s can now be digitized…In fact, messengers today are delivering little more than the table scraps remaining from the grand conversion to virtual data.”
In understanding that changing landscape, Adams says it was the lack of restaurant delivery options prompted him to enter the business. After identifying that need, he worked with Bulling to develop a business plan, and then go through the CO.STARTERS business planning course for creative entrepreneurs.
“It really helped in synthesizing getting our ideas together, realizing what we had to do on a daily basis, on a yearly basis, as far as stuff as basic as tax filings,” said Bulling. “There were a lot of things we overlooked initially, and it helped to get some dialogue started between us that may not have otherwise happened.”
Bulling explained that their business is named for a 53 tooth, which is typically the largest chain ring on a road bike, and equates to the quickest gear on a bike.
Adams and Bulling are 53T’s principal couriers, but they say that they employ other riders as contractors and demand dictates. That demand, Bulling says, has been picking up since their launch last June.
“We have gotten an explosion in volume since the new year” Bulling explained. “We got a spike in October when it started getting cold and then in January we got hit hard.”
In mid-February they extended evening delivery hours to 9pm, with service from Pi Pizzeria, Quan Hapa and Brezel during those expanded times. Currently 53T only offers service on weekdays, but Bulling noted that they have contemplated the idea of adding weekend service as well. The problem, he says, is that their clients are so busy on weekends that they are concerned about adding to their kitchen volume with deliveries.
In the future, the pair also is looking to add service to areas outside of the center city.
“Since our model is so simple, when we get to that point it’s just as easy as transplanting to Northside or Mt. Adams or Walnut Hills,” Adams explained.
From there he says that they would most likely create different zones throughout the city that would operate separately from one another, but under the same organizational structure.
In many cities, including Cincinnati, courier services like this have taken a hit due to the increasing use and reliability of electronic communications. Since the courier industry had typically focused on the delivery of documents, Adams and Bulling said they needed to find a new niche delivering food and parcels.
“I think the model in the industry has been expanding to be as flexible as possible, diversifying the kind of work you’re doing,” stated Bulling. “I think there’s a lot of potential for same-day retail delivery.”
Same-day delivery is something a number of businesses in the center city are already doing on their own, but the potential seems even greater to Adams and Bulling. They have added delivery options for Park+Vine, for example, but so far just focus on their lunch counter.
“We wanted them [Park+Vine] as a client so when we do expand into doing grocery delivery or ancillary items, we will already have them as a client and it will be easy to get started.”
They are not alone in their positive outlook on the industry, as Cincybite launched similar offerings at the end of 2013. One key difference between the two, however, is that Cincybite utilizes cars for their operations instead of bikes.
“I think the thing that distinguishes us from those companies is that we love what we do and we take what we do very seriously,” Bullings responded. “We believe that what we do takes a certain unique set of skills and physical ability, and I think that dedication and passion comes through in our work. Plus, we’re faster than cars.”
