Category: Development

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Business Development News

Residential development thriving in historic Over-the-Rhine

While Cincinnati deals with the news from the U.S. Census Bureau that the city lost 10 percent of its population over the past decade, there is positive news from the city’s urban core. The Central Business District had a gain of more than 20 percent, while Clifton Heights, University Heights, downtown Covington and Newport, and portions of Over-the-Rhine saws gains of 10-20 percent.

The news is particularly encouraging for Over-the-Rhine which has seen its population decrease from more than 50,000 people at its peak, to roughly 10,000 people today. The most growth in the historic neighborhood occurred in the areas where the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) has focused its energies over the past five years.

“The renaissance of Over-the-Rhine continues block by block and building by building,” says Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory. “It is clear that people want to live in our urban core and want to be a part of the rebirth that is happening. We are going to continue to restore this historic neighborhood back to a vibrant and active community.”

The next phases of redevelopment in Over-the-Rhine are just now coming to life along Race Street. On Tuesday, March 29 3CDC will gather with the NorthPointe Group and John Hueber Homes to celebrate the opening of Westfalen Lofts. The three previously vacant buildings have been transformed into nine residential units that include townhomes, flats and a single-family residence.

“This is the first development where we have partnered with John Huber Homes,” stated Chad Munitz, Executive Vice President of Development and Operations at 3CDC. “We feel they bring a new look to the historical residential units that we have not yet seen.”

Since 2005, 3CDC has spearheaded the creation of 234 new residential units. Of those 234 residential units, 74 percent of the 182 condominiums have been sold. Additionally, 100 percent of the 52 rental units, with the 32 units in Parvis Lofts being leased in just ten weeks.

Race Street redevelopment photograph by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

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Development News Politics

Bellevue completes form-based code adoption

The city of Bellevue, Kentucky has became the first in the Greater Cincinnati region to fully adopt a form-based zoning code. Unlike traditional zoning regulations, which focus mostly on land use type, the form-based code focuses on the overall built environment. Bellevue’s code ensures that new development will fit into the city’s existing pedestrian-friendly urban fabric.

The city formally began the process of adopting the form-based code in early 2010. In February 2010, citizens were invited to participate in a “visualization survey” gauging what types of built environments were preferred. In March, a week-long public input process, or charette, allowed the city and its citizens to collaborate on more of the code’s details.

“People want places that are memorable. Bellevue has that in its historic districts and that’s one of the things that have helped guide this code,” explained Jeff Raser of Glaserworks, an architectural and urban design firm involved in implementing Bellevue’s code.

The final step in implementing the code was the adoption of a map amendment, which occurred on Wednesday, March 16. The amendment applied the new code to two areas of the city that were identified as planning areas during the charette – the riverfront and the shopping plaza area on Donnermeyer Drive.

The form-based code, which was widely supported by residents and business owners in Bellevue, maybe put to good use rather quickly.

“The are projects in the pipeline that will make use of the new form-based code,” said John Yung, zoning administrator for the city.

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Business Development News Politics Transportation

Cincinnati region, transit projects take overwhelming brunt of recommended transportation cuts

Ohio’s Transportation Review Advisory Council (TRAC) met today in Columbus and was greeted by 32 Cincinnati Streetcar supporters, ranging from families to young professionals, small business owners, CEOs and VPs of corporations, and city staff. The council and Ohio Department of Transportation staff members, according to UrbanCincy writer Jenny Kessler who was one of those in attendance, appeared surprised at the turnout.

The TRAC held a working meeting at 10 am with the ODOT staff (as the director of ODOT, Jerry Wright is the chairman of the TRAC) to hear the staff’s drafted recommendations for which projects to cut and keep in the 2011-2015 Major Project List . The result was a recommendation of $98 million in cuts. UrbanCincy research reveals that the way in which those cuts were administered in particularly shocking.

  • 52% of all cuts came from the state’s highest-rated project – The Cincinnati Streetcar – which is positioned to now lose 100% of all funds originally recommended for the project.
  • The Cincinnati region got hit the hardest in Ohio. 82% of all cuts recommended by the TRAC are from the Cincinnati region and account for roughly $80 million.
  • $1 million was taken from upgrades to the Queensgate rail yard that would have relieved freight rail traffic.
  • Two highway projects, from Governor John Kasich‘s (R) district, totalling $7.7 million were added to the TRAC’s listed of recommended funding.
  • Non-highway investments now only make up 26% of the TRAC’s recommended transportation projects in terms of overall funding ($18.2M) and number of projects (4).

Kessler reported that Kasich’s staff advised the TRAC to reallocate $15 million from the Cincinnati Streetcar to a bus corridor project in Canton, and $35 million from the Cincinnati Streetcar to the $3 billion Brent Spence Bridge project. What many transportation experts now seemed to be concerned about is the process in which the TRAC is being advised to cut.

“There is no legitimate reason why the TRAC should cut from the top rather than the bottom,” said All Aboard Ohio executive director Ken Prendergast. “If the TRAC ignores its own scoring process, then I’m not sure why Director Wray urged the TRAC’s creation in 1997 as a useful way to limit political influence on selecting transportation projects for funding.”

Evidently several TRAC members feel the same way. As the meeting progressed, William Brennan verbally expressed concern over the state’s top-rated project shouldering the load.

“The number one rated project is recommended to take the brunt of the cuts…that’s a problem for me,” said the Toledo native. As Brennan made the statement, several other members nodded in agreement including Antoinette Maddox, Raymond DiRossi and Patrick Darrow.

Antoinette Maddox (D), the council’s only woman and African American member, spoke several times and expressed her concern for the extreme cuts made to the streetcar project.
Maddox suggested other options, such as sunsetting all new projects or making cuts to the lower ranked Tier-2 projects. These were shot down by the ODOT staff members.

It was evident to those in attendance that the real detractors to the streetcar project were not the TRAC members who had been working together in 2010, but the newly appointed “asphalt sheriff” Jerry Wray and his staff members, Jennifer Townley and Ed Kagel. Townley, who did most of the speaking during the meeting, cited the reasons for reallocating the streetcar funding to lower ranking projects “due to fiscal balancing.”

What Townley and her colleagues failed to mention was that the TRAC funding in question is federal money being reallocated through state governments. Pulling the money for the streetcar does not help to solve the budget crisis Governor Kasich is facing, it simply moves it around to much less worthy projects. The other members of the TRAC noticed this right away and voiced their concern.

When pressed for more reasons behind cutting streetcar funding for Cincinnati, Townley later replied, “because there is already a bus system in place in Cincinnati that services the same area, we don’t see why rail is really necessary.” If you would like to inform Ms. Townley as to why Cincinnati needs rail as well as a bus system, please drop her an email at Jennifer.Townley@dot.state.oh.us.

The numerous streetcar supporters in attendance were able to submit written statements, but as it was a working session where the TRAC did not make a vote, only listened to recommendations, no citizens were permitted to speak.

The council is scheduled to hold a private conference call that may or may not be legal on Friday, March 25 to discuss the recommendations further before they develop a final list on April 10 and hold a final vote and public hearing on Tuesday, April 12 in Columbus.

The underlying question still exists – if greater emphasis is going to be placed on political patronage and gubernatorial intimidation, then why does the TRAC even exist?

Operations Manager Jenny Kessler contributed to this article.

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Business Development News Politics Transportation

New provision to Ohio transportation budget represents “unprecedented attack” on Cincinnati Streetcar

In an unprecedented action, Ohio Senate Transportation Committee Chair Tom Patton allowed a provision to be introduced to the latest amendment of the state’s biennial transportation budget that would “prohibit state or federal funds appropriated by the state from being used for the Cincinnati streetcar project.”

The action comes on the heels of recent news that newly elected Governor John Kasich (R) plans to strip the project of approximately $52 million in state appropriated funds. Such an action would go directly against the state’s laws and proceedings for appropriating state and federal transportation dollars, and could be subject to legal action from the City of Cincinnati.

“So if you suddenly don’t like the process established by law that has worked well for 14 years under Democrats and Republicans, you change the process,” said Ken Prendergast, executive director of All Aboard Ohio. “This is like saying we didn’t like who won the Super Bowl, so we’re going to re-write the record books.”

Provision SC-0257-1 was approved out of committee Tuesday evening as part of an omnibus amendment, and will then go to the full Senate and House. The omnibus amendment, according to Prendergast, could then either be accepted as is, or be assigned to a conference committee if the House finds the bill substantially different from the version it passed last week that did not include the anti-streetcar provision.

The unprecedented attack against the Cincinnati Streetcar, the Ohio Department of Transportation’s (ODOT) highest-ranking transportation project pending anywhere in the state, further exemplifies the cavalier attitude of the newly elected governor and Ohio General Assembly.

Prendergast notes that the Cincinnati Streetcar was ranked as the state’s top transportation project based on economic development, cost-effectiveness and environmental impact criteria by the Transportation Review Advisory Council (TRAC), a non-political review board established by state law in 1997. The TRAC, he says, was created, urged in part by then and current ODOT Director Jerry Wray, to remove politics from the state’s transportation project selection process.

Previous actions by the TRAC include unanimous votes in support of the funding appropriations for the $128 million Cincinnati Streetcar project.

“These are not state funds, but state-administered transportation funds. If they don’t go to the streetcar, they will go to a lower-ranking road project,” Prendergast emphasized. “If state officials really want to save taxpayers’ money, they should cut from the bottom-ranked projects, not from the top.”

Prendergast went on to say that in his nearly 30 years of transportation advocacy that he has never seen such a blatant attempt to discriminate against rail projects in such a manner. And he points to a November 2009 vote in Cincinnati that defeated a measure that would have singled out rail projects for public votes by 55 to 45 percent.

“As young Ohioans flee to vibrant cities that offer transportation choices, as Baby Boomers face a future of house arrest without options to cars, and as all Ohioans face immobility from worsening global petroleum constraints, this amendment by the Ohio General Assembly to punish a very specific transportation project is worse than counter-intuitive. It’s downright mean.”

Categories
Development News Transportation

Major projects to transform MLK Drive through Uptown over next 20 years

Three projects planned for MLK promise a dramatic reconfiguration of the three-mile cross-town roadway by 2020. The Ohio Department of Transportation’s (ODOT) Millcreek Expressway (I-75) reconstruction and the City of Cincinnati’s West MLK Drive Access Improvement have been funded and will commence construction in 2013. A third project – construction of an interchange at Interstate 71 – is still in preliminary planning stages and is scheduled to be built sometime after 2015.

Eminent domain proceedings are already underway which will see 30 homes and apartment buildings between McMicken Street and Good Samaritan Hospital demolished in 2012 or 2013. A wider and straighter West Martin Luther King Drive is planned to take their place, along with a bike path along the road’s northern edge.

The much larger I-71 interchange project at East Martin Luther King Drive will see many more residential properties taken – possibly more than 100 – in order to build the project’s ramps. Drawings shown at the February 15, 2011 meeting of Cincinnati City Council’s Sub Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure showed the entire shallow valley between Reading Road and Gilbert Avenue north of East Martin Luther King Drive redeveloped by automobile-oriented commercial buildings.

History of Martin Luther King Drive
What is now known as Martin Luther King Drive was created by connecting three existing streets: Dixmyth Ave, St. Clair and Melish Avenue. The St. Clair extension, a six-lane stretch of Martin Luther King Drive between Clifton Avenue and Jefferson Avenue, was built in the early 1960’s. The Melish Avenue Extension between Reading Road and Victory Parkway was built in two phases: a bridge over I-71 built in 1970 and a half-mile stretch between Gilbert Avenue and Victory Parkway mid-decade. The final link – the climb between Dixmyth Avenue near Good Samaritan Hospital – opened in the early 1980’s.

In 1987, Cincinnati city councilman Tyrone Yates led an effort to rename Reading Road after Martin Luther King, Jr. This proposal was rejected on technical grounds and attention was shifted to a 16-mile cross-town path that would have seen the entirety of Westwood Northern Boulevard, Hopple Street, the Hopple Street Viaduct, Dixmyth, St. Clair, Melish, and Madison Rd. to Madisonville renamed for the Civil Rights leader.

This grandiose proposal was scuttled by the great-great grandson of either Casper or James Hopple (reports do not specify), the brothers who came to Cincinnati in 1802 for whom Hopple Street and the viaduct are named.

Plans for a Martin Luther King street were downscaled to the present three-mile stretch between Central Parkway and Victory Parkway, but met more resistance from those who objected to the renaming of St. Clair. An offer was made to rename Central Parkway after General Arthur St. Clair, but no substitute St. Clair designation was made after Martin Luther King Drive came into existence that summer.

The Future of Martin Luther King Drive
The two projects in planning at either end of Martin Luther King Drive do not address the horrendous appearance of the road’s central segment between Jefferson Avenue and Reading Road. Here, no design guidelines were ever put in place, and the quaint residential character of Corryville has been replaced by a confusion of fast food restaurants, gas stations, parking lots, parking garages, telephone poles, and faux-urban apartment complexes.

The burying of utilities is the obvious starting point for any improvement of the area. But a comprehensive plan is needed for properties bordering MLK between Jefferson and Reading in order to assure that the increased traffic introduced by the I-71 interchange motivates higher quality construction.

The if-Houston-had-hills character of Martin Luther King Drive has no doubt negatively affected the ability of the University of Cincinnati to recruit top students and faculty. It is a prime reason why many suburban Cincinnatians prefer trips to new suburban hospitals over the old ones. This situation is the legacy of the WWII and Baby Boomer generations. It might be too late to wish for Martin Luther King Drive to become a showpiece, but young people who profess to care for this city’s future must be vigilant in demanding something better than what we have had handed to them.

Photographs by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.