Categories
Arts & Entertainment Business Development News

Dueling Bartender Event to Raise Money for St. Lawrence Square Improvements

City officials gathered in Olden View Park on Tuesday to kick-off the Price Hill Neighborhood Enhancement Program. Over the next several weeks city departments will provide a targeted clean-up effort in the neighborhood aimed at reducing blight and improving public safety.

Neighborhood leaders at Price Hill Will are also hoping to leverage the extra attention and investment for some other neighborhood priorities of theirs.

The first project they are hoping to advance is a collection of improvements to St. Lawrence Square that will include a stage, fountain, walkway, benches and other aesthetic upgrades. The second project, officials say, will look to improve the aesthetics surrounding a Duke Energy substation and neighboring lot.

In order to do this, Price Hill Will is looking to raise money for both projects through an event they will host on Tuesday, March 11 at The Crow’s Nest. The event will feature dueling guest bartenders competing for tips that will support the two projects.

“Dueling Bartenders is a series of fun fundraisers we started last fall with a showdown between Father Umberg and Sister Sally Duffy,” explained Pamela Taylor, Community Outreach Coordinator with Price Hill Will. “In this second round we are having two local authors – Dan Andriacco who writes Sherlockian mysteries and Greg Hoard who is a sportswriter and has authored several biographies.”

The fundraiser will take place from 5:30pm to 8pm on March 11, and all money raised will go toward making the improvements to St. Lawrence Square a reality. The Crow’s Nest (map) is easily accessible via Metro’s #32 and #33 bus routes from both Government Square and the Glenway Crossing Transit Center.

Categories
Arts & Entertainment News

URBANexchange Hosts Vice Mayor at Short Vine Taste of Beligum

Snow may still be on the ground but we will have warm waffles at this month’s URBANexchange event! That’s right, we are pleased to announce that for this month’s event we have moved to Taste of Begium’s Short Vine location. Come down for some waffles and chicken or some Belgian beers this Thursday from 5:30pm to 8:00pm. This is a great opportunity to check out the new development that has opened in Uptown.

As always, the event will be a casual setting where you can meet others interested in what is happening in the city. We will gather in a space near the bar so that each person can choose how much or little they buy in terms of food or drink. Although we do encourage our attendees to generously support our kind hosts at Taste of Belgium.

We are pleased to announce that Vice-Mayor David Mann (D) has indicated he will be attending the event. Mr. Mann has a distinguished career in the city as a former Mayor and Councilman. He returned to City Council last November.

Short Vine Taste of Belgium

As always URBANexchange is free and open to the public. This month we are giving away two $25 gift cards  to Taste of Belgium as door prizes so be sure to drop your name into the raffle.

We will be situated near the bar in the center of the restaurant but you can also ask the host where the UrbanCincy group is located and they will be happy to assist.

Taste of Belgium is located on Vine Street in Correville between the University of Cincinnati’s east and west campuses and is located just two blocks from a future uptown streetcar stop. If you choose to bike there is free and ample bike parking is available outside the building. The venue is also served by Metro’s Metro+ bus , as well as routes  #19, #78 and #46 buses.

Photo by Jake Mecklenborg

Categories
Month in Review

Month in Review – February 2014

Last month, four of UrbanCincy’s five top stories focused on transportation — from bikes to cars to subways. We also gave an update on the demolition of one the University of Cincinnati’s most iconic historic structures and explained why it had been neglected for the past decade. In case you missed any of them, here’s a look back at our five most popular stories from February 2014:

    1. Cincinnati Aims to Open Initial Phase of Bike Share System This Summer
      Contributor Eric Anspach provides an update on the Cincy B-Cycle bike share program which is expected to open this summer.
    2. The Abandonment of Cincinnati’s 1914 Subway and Rapid Transit Loop
      A new infographic illustrates which sections of Cincinnati’s Rapid Transit Loop were built, which parts were replaced by expressways, and which parts were planned but not built.
    3. The Best and Worst States in America for Transit Funding
      Data from the FTA’s National Transit Database shows that Ohio is one of the worst states in America for investing in public transportation, despite being one of the most densely populated.
    4. Eight-Point Plan for Fixing Cincinnati’s Broken Parking System
      Since 2010, UrbanCincy has been calling for reforms to fix Cincinnati’s parking system finances. In this latest editorial, we lay out an 8 point plan to upgrade the system and stabilize its finances.
    5. Decision from Board of Trustees More Than a Decade Ago Doomed Wilson Auditorium
      Our November 2013 post about two demolitions on UC’s campus generated a lot of interest. In this update, we explain how a decision made by the University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees more than ten years ago led to the demolition of Wilson Auditorium late last year.

 

Categories
News Transportation

Snow Accumulation Highlights Cincinnati’s Over-Engineered Streets through ‘Sneckdowns’

Landscaped islands at Liberty Street and McMicken Avenue?

Our streets sometimes seem to be over-engineered. Their capacities are designed for peak usage, turning radii for the largest trucks, and speeds for the fastest movement. For the easy movement of cars and trucks this may be good, but for everyone else it is dangerous and less livable.

To combat such situations, many communities across the United States have begun building curb extension to help slow down traffic and make the public right-of-way more hospitable for everyone who is not in either a car or truck. Some people call these curb extensions, and similar improvements, neckdowns.

While most of our streets have not been improved in such a way, it becomes easy to see how and where neckdowns could be placed when it snows. This is because only the areas of the road that are used become cleared. The rest stay covered in snow and are a very obvious display of the aforementioned over-engineering.

During the city’s last snow event, the UrbanCincy team took to social media and asked Cincinnatians to submit photos of area sneckdowns – snowmade neckdowns. If you see any around your neighborhood make sure you take a shot of it and send it to editors@urbancincy.com, tweet us @UrbanCincy, or upload your photos in the comment section of this story.

Categories
Development News Transportation

VIDEO: Are ‘Protected Intersections’ the Next Bicycle Infrastructure Innovation?

The City of Cincinnati and other area municipalities have been working to improve the region’s bicycle infrastructure in order to both make cycling more attractive and safer. Those improvements have included new bike lanes, sharrows, cycle tracks, trails and dedicated parking for bikes.

City officials say that protected bike lanes, like the cycle tracks to be installed along Central Parkway, offer the larger population an incentive to get out on their bicycles. Those officials point to results from public polling that show large percentages of people that would be open to riding bikes if they felt safer on the roads, and that protected bike lanes would do wonders to accomplishing that.

But Nick Falbo, an urban planner and designer at Alta Planning+Design, thinks protected bike lanes aren’t enough.

“Protected bike lanes lose their benefits when they reach intersections,” Falbo states in his six-minute-long video proposal. “The buffer falls away and you’re faced with an ambiguous collection of green paint, dashed lines and bicycle markings.”

In his submission to the George Mason University 2014 Cameron Rian Hays Outside the Box Competition, Falbo proposes what he calls the Protected Intersection – a design overhaul for intersections that he says will not only improve the value and safety of protected bike lanes, but also make the intersection more usable for all modes of traffic.

“It doesn’t matter how safe and protected your bike lane is, if intersections are risky, stressful experiences. We need to make intersections just as safe and secure as the lanes that lead into them. What the protected bike lane needs is a protected intersection.”