Tag: Cincinnati

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Arts & Entertainment News

Red Door Project to Debut Pop-Up Art Exhibit at Final Friday

Art sometimes has the effect of bringing people together. Sometimes it opens avenues for new connections and experiencing new things. Ten years ago, local artists were challenged to create a piece of art centered on a red door. That event a decade ago led to the beginning of close friendships that endure today.

That is the story gallery founder, Barbara Hauser, tells regarding that original Final Friday event in 2004; and while she was not leading the gallery known as The Project back then she was inspired to launch an event of her own.

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“Everyone sees art differently – and everyone deserves to have their work featured and appreciated,”  Hauser stated in a prepared release. “I’ve never considered myself an artist, but when I had the chance to see my work on display at a similar type gallery and have it purchased I realized that I wanted to create a space that celebrates the artist in all of us.”

The Red Door Project is a pop-up art exhibit that breath new life into this decade-old endeavor at the upcoming Final Friday in Over-the-Rhine on February 28.  Inspired by the idea that art is the eye of the beholder, Hauser says the gallery features artwork by dozens of Cincinnatians from many different backgrounds and walks of life.

“I’m sure everyone will interpret the theme differently. It could be a painting of a moon cycle or a photograph of a bicycle,” noted Hauser. “And really, that’s the beauty of it. You won’t know what to expect when you walk through the door, but you may find yourself walking out with a new piece of art to enjoy.”

The Red Door Project debuts this Final Friday’s festivities  at 1232 Vine Street – the storefront previously occupied by Joesph-William Home. The gallery will be open from 6pm to 10pm.

There is still time for submissions, which are due by February 22, and can be dropped off at the event location between 11AM and 3PM. This month the theme is “cycle” which is defined as a series of events that are regularly repeated in the same order.

Photograph provided.

Categories
Business Development News

Uptown Leaders Aiming to Help Small Businesses with $500,000 Development Fund

Leaders in Uptown are looking for a way to further help and encourage small businesses to set up shop in region’s second largest employment center. The hope is that a new revolving loan fund will help make the business climate better for those small businesses who often have trouble with upfront capital.

Uptown Consortium President and CEO, Beth Robinson says that the decision to start such a fund came as a result of feedback received during its business retention and small business visits in 2012. Those involved expressed a frustration with being able to secure necessary upfront capital. So to help solve that, the Uptown Consortium funded a new Development Opportunity Fund with $500,000 of its own money last year.

“The whole purpose of these things is to create a supportive business environment,” Robinson explained. “We have coaching services, means of communicating and now this fund. We really want to support job creation. That’s what this is about.”

McMillan Street in Clifton Heights
Uptown neighborhoods have seen a surge of private investment in recent years, but some small businesses are struggling to get involved. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

Robinson says that the fund is intended to support capital costs of new or expanding small and mid-sized businesses in the Uptown area, but that since it is funded with their own money there is a great deal of flexibility with how the money can be used.

“We’re open to whatever grows jobs in Uptown, and whatever stabilizes and moves the business districts forward,” noted Robinson.

These types of funds are typically administered by government agencies, not development corporations like the Uptown Consortium. This, in and of itself, gives the fund the much greater flexibility leaders are touting and on loan requirements.

The first and only business to take advantage of the fund so far is Stag’s Barbershop, which used $10,000 to complete a 1,400-square-foot expansion in Avondale. As a result, the neighborhood institution now offers, for the first time since its opening in the 1950s, a full beauty salon with hair, nail and feet treatments.

What that means is that applicants can apply for loans of the $490,000 in remaining funds. Should the program demonstrate viability and demand, Robinson says that it could be extended and potentially expanded.

“Since we are looking at it as a revolving loan fund, if the demand is there and it is having our desired intention, then there might be the possibility of expanding it,” Robinson told UrbanCincy.

Officials say that there are several businesses in the pipeline for loans right now, but that they are taking things on a first-come, first-serve basis. Ideally, they say, the new or expanding businesses will be located within one of the five neighborhood business districts in the area: Clifton’s Ludlow Avenue, Avondale’s Burnett Avenue, Corryville’s Short Vine, Calhoun/McMillan Streets in CUF, and Auburn Avenue in Mt. Auburn.

Those interested in learning more about the Uptown Consortium’s small business outreach programs, including this Development Opportunity Fund, are encouraged to contact Janelle Lee at jlee@uptownconsortium.org.

Categories
News Transportation

INFOGRAPHIC: The Abandonment of Cincinnati’s 1914 Subway and Rapid Transit Loop

Cincinnati’s abandoned rapid transit project is a subject of continual interest. Although many are familiar with the unused two-mile tunnel beneath Central Parkway, little remains of the ten miles of surface-running right-of-way built in the mid-1920s between Camp Washington and Norwood.

This graphic by Andy Woodruff, from the UW-Madison Department of Geography, illustrates which sections of the so-called Rapid Transit Loop were built, which parts were replaced by expressways, and which parts were planned but not funded and built.

Cincinnati Subway System

So why was the Rapid Transit Loop started but not completed?

The project had several forces working against it, especially wealthy Downtown landowners who stood to lose money and influence if the city’s most valuable property shifted from Fountain Square north to Central Parkway. The likelihood of that happening was heightened by the Rapid Transit Commission’s decision to forego construction of the Walnut Street Subway as part of the project’s first phase.

Those who owned property lining Central Parkway knew that construction of a tunnel under Mt. Adams, linking the Loop’s never-built eastern half, would likely cost less than construction of the Walnut Street Subway and cause the loop’s traffic to bypass the city’s established epicenter entirely.

The second interest acting to scuttle the subway project was the consortium of seven steam railroads that commenced construction of Cincinnati’s spectacular Union Terminal in 1929.

An ancillary feature of the Rapid Transit Loop was its intention to serve the area’s electric interurban railroads at a multi-track terminal centered beneath the intersection of Race Street and Central Parkway. The interurban terminal’s more convenient location promised to erode the redundant services of the steam railroads.

Editorial Note: In addition to focusing on UrbanCincy’s transportation coverage, Jake authored a book about Cincinnati’s infamously abandoned subway and rapid transit project. First published in 2010, Cincinnati’s Incomplete Subway: The Complete History is considered to be the most comprehensive analysis of the events leading up to and after one of the city’s most notorious missteps.

Categories
Business News

Upstart Garment Manufacturer Looking to Find Its Place in Cincinnati’s Economy

Noble Denim Workshop

Noble Denim Co. started its garment operations in Cincinnati’s Camp Washington neighborhood in 2012. Since starting, the company has experienced growth and is taking a look at how their product manufacturing fits into the region’s economy.

The company operates out of the Anchor Building on Spring Grove Avenue, but much of its current manufacturing takes place in a small town in Tennessee. Noble Denim’s founder and creative director, Chris Sutton, and his colleagues made the decision to contract work out to a textiles company in Milledgeville, Tennessee that, despite employing 150 workers at its height, was on its last limb.

Those behind Noble Denim wanted to contribute to this struggling town in Tennessee and they were happy to bring jobs to this area. As Chris put it, “more jeans mean more jobs for the workers at that factory.” In addition to this, Sutton says that capacity and prior experience was more plentiful in the South.

Expanding beyond solely making jeans, Noble Denim has recently contracted out work to make sweaters in Toronto and work shirts through a mom-and-pop textile company in New York City’s once-bustling Garment District. While enthusiastic about the return of Made in America, Sutton refuses to manufacture in the U.S. out of pure sentiment. Instead, he says his focus is on his products being of the utmost quality.

Sutton says that their two-person operation made 200 pairs of jeans in their first year – almost all of which were sold in the Cincinnati area.

Cincinnati, he says, is important due to its support of new businesses and its budding design industry, which make it the natural fit to be the brains of the Noble Denim operation. The manufacturing, meanwhile, will continue to be pursued elsewhere where there is a stronger history of garment-making and readily available labor.

While Cincinnati’s manufacturing history does not seem well-positioned to take advantage of an American textile boom currently dominated by the South, Massachusetts, New York City and Los Angeles, Cincinnati does seem suited for heavier industries. And Sutton believes that Cincinnati’s manufacturing neighborhoods, and many of those around the nation, can be revived.

Many view the incredible amount of manufacturing space in the city as an untapped asset. But in order to make manufacturing in the U.S. more attractive, Sutton suggests looking across the pond.

In the United Kingdom, for example, the first six months of rent are paid for by the government and there are generally fewer risks when it comes to starting a new business. In the United States, the risks tend to be much higher and business owners are, more or less, left to their own devices in order to survive.

Going forward, Sutton says he hopes to continue to grow Noble Denim, but does not want to sacrifice quality or care along the way. “I would be willing to be the next Levi’s, as long as we could maintain the quality.”

While the reshoring narrative continues from big manufacturers like General Electric, Masterlock or Ford, it is important to remember that a new generation of small businesses and manufacturing entrepreneurs are also making their mark on the American economy. Companies like Noble Denim are helping to revive industrial towns all across the country and take advantage of the many assets that cities like Cincinnati have.

One pair of jeans at a time, Noble Denim is creating good jobs for the middle class.

Anchor Building photographs by Jacob Fessler for UrbanCincy; Noble Denim workshop photographs provided.

Categories
Business News Politics Transportation

CHART: The Best and Worst States in America for Transit Funding

According to data from the Federal Transit Authority (FTA), the State of Ohio provides some of the least amount of funding for its regional transit authorities of any state in America.

Texas, Georgia and Missouri also provide next to nothing to their various regional transit agencies, but in no other state are transit agencies as reliant on fares and local taxes as they are in the Buckeye State.

When broadening the search to examine transit agencies in the biggest cities across America, it also becomes clear that states like Pennsylvania, Utah and Maryland, Minnesota and Massachusetts invest large amounts of state dollars in transit. Some transit agencies with little state support, however, receive larger sums of money from regional transit taxes and federal aid.

Source of American Transit Funding

Ohio’s three largest metropolitan regions – all with more than two million people – are different in this regard and have the least diverse range of financial support of transit agencies nationwide. For both Columbus and Cleveland, it means that well over 90% of their total revenues come from fares and local tax dollars, while in Cincinnati it is slightly better at 84% thanks to a bit more federal aid.

“In the recession we saw transit service cut while gas prices drove transit demand to record levels,” stated Akshai Singh, an Ohio Sierra Club representative with the advocacy organization Ohio for Transportation Choice. “Roughly all of the state’s public transportation funding now goes to operating rural transit services.”

Honolulu is the only other region in the United States that has 90% or more of its funds coming from just fares and local tax dollars. Cities in other states providing next to nothing also approach this threshold, but do not exceed it as is the case in Ohio.

It recently reported that the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) is one of the best stewards of limited financial resources, when compared to 11 peer agencies across the country. One of the key findings from Agenda 360 report was how little state financial support SORTA receives.

Part of the problem in Ohio is due to state cuts that have reduced funding for public transportation by 83% since 2000. Those cuts have forced transit agencies in the nation’s seventh most populous state to reduce service and increase fares over the past decade.

According to All Aboard Ohio, the state only provides approximately 1% of its transportation budget to transit, while more than 9% of the state’s population lives without a car.

In addition to regional transit, Ohio continues to be one of the most hostile states in terms of inter-city passenger rail. The state remains almost untouched by Amtrak’s national network and boasts the nation’s most densely populated corridor – Cincinnati to Cleveland – without any inter-city passenger rail service.

“When Governor Kasich came to office, the first thing he did was send back $400 million in federal dollars, for the 3C Corridor, on the basis that operations and maintenance would have been too onerous on the state,” Singh concluded. “Today, ODOT is allocating $240 million to build a $331 million, 3.5-mile highway extension through a 40% carless neighborhood on Cleveland’s east side, a staggering $100 million per mile new capacity road, while openly acknowledging they are reducing access for local residents.”