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Do Hamilton and Middletown possess a unique advantage when it comes to urban agriculture?

Do Hamilton and Middletown possess a unique advantage when it comes to urban agriculture?.

We have seen urban farming grow in popularity throughout Cincinnati – by far the largest urban center of the more than 3 million person mega-region – but is there an even brighter future for these community green spaces and food production zones in other smaller cities throughout the region? Might small, older cities like Hamilton and Middletown be well-suited to take the trend to the next stage? More from Urbanful:

Some two-thirds of the world’s urban land is located in small to medium urban clusters, defined as areas that are less than 10 square kilometers and up to 100 square kilometers, respectively, Shareable reports. Because more people live in small/medium urban centers, farm land in these areas can have a greater impact on the population than those of their bigger counterparts. Beyond that, less population density in smaller places means there’s a greater chance for larger land plots, which accordingly, can yields larger harvests.

A medium-sized “urban cluster” like Flint, Michigan, for instance, is just about the same size as Manhattan. According to the logic of the study, the smaller people-to-land ratio means more land would be available for urban farming in Flint. As a result, more food could be produced, and more people could reap the benefits of the production.

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Business Development News

Cincinnati Posts Population Gain for Second Consecutive Year

Cincinnati has added about 1,000 new people since the decennial census in 2010, according to new estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The modest increase comes from two consecutive years of population gains that followed an immediate downward revision after the 2010 Census. The increase also means that just Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton were the only big cities (more than 50,000 people) in Ohio to post gains.

Columbus and Cincinnati, meanwhile, were the only big cities to post population gains for the past two years.

The population estimates are derived using the 2010 Census as a baseline and then factoring in new permitted residential construction and mobile homes, and subtracting out the estimated number of homes lost each year. As a result, all of the annual estimates should come with a grain of salt.

Ohio Cities Comparison

With that said, Dayton’s population gains appear to be an anomaly, while the increases in Columbus and Cincinnati appear to be more rooted. In any case, the news for Ohio’s big cities is not good as the rest all lost population, especially those in the northeastern part of the state.

Columbus continues to stand out from the rest of Ohio’s big cities in terms of its population trends. In this latest estimate release, Columbus posted the fifteenth largest numeric population gain of any municipality in America; and it comes on the heels of equally impressive gains in prior years.

Some observers, however, would attribute some of the gains in Columbus to its unusually large municipal boundaries that include what would be far suburbs in other Ohio regions.

While Columbus has been growing by about 1.5% annually over the past several years, Cincinnati has been growing annually by about 0.25%.

When compared with other peer cities, Cincinnati’s gains look even more tepid.

Peer Cities Comparison

Of fifteen other cities competitive with Cincinnati, the city bested only five of them in terms of population growth, while being significantly outperformed by most all others. In this comparison, even Ohio’s best performer – Columbus –fares only reasonably well against the field.

For Cincinnati’s peer cities, national trends appear to hold true. Southern cities continue to grow at the fastest clip, but their growth rates are leveling off. In our comparison, Austin, Atlanta and Tampa have all experienced significant declines in annual population growth since the 2010 Census. Charlotte has also experienced a similar trend, but appears to be holding steady more so than its Sun Belt peers.

Meanwhile, while many Midwestern cities continue to lose population, they are doing so at a slower rate or have stopped the losses entirely.

As we previously examined on UrbanCincy, the Cincinnati region continues to grow by about 0.4% annually. The City of Cincinnati’s 2013 gain represents approximately 12.5% of the total regional population growth, and half of Hamilton County’s increase last year.

In a nutshell, Cincinnati is over performing regionally, but under performing amongst its peers. If Cincinnati were growing as fast as Charlotte or Austin, the city would be adding around 9,000 new people every year.

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Arts & Entertainment Business News

Join UrbanCincy in Showing Your Love for Mahogany’s This Week

The restaurant and bar industry is a tough one. The vast majority of them fail, and many come and go in Cincinnati’s center city every year. One of those businesses that has been struggling, as has been well publicized by the local media, is Mahogany’s.

Mahogany’s got its start in Hamilton in 2010, but relocated its southern-style cuisine restaurant to The Banks in 2012. One of the things that makes Mahogany’s unique is that it is one of the few locally owned and operated establishments in the massive riverfront development’s first phase. Mahogany’s is also the only African American-owned business at The Banks.

Mahogany's

After receiving financial aid from the City of Cincinnati to build out their space, owners have struggled to make payments on their rent and repayment of those loans. They have until Tuesday, April 1 to make a $25,000 payment or be evicted.

The owners have publicly discussed their struggles and, according to their landlord, have been making good faith efforts to repay their debts. Mahogany’s is a terrific establishment and it is worthy of our business, and worthy of rallying together to save.

As a result, we would like to encourage our readers to patronize Mahogany’s this week in order to help boost sales and support the owners in their effort to make the $25,000 payment. If you would like to meet with some of our team members, and others from Cincinnati’s urbanist community, then please join us on Thursday, March 27. We’ll be there for dinner and drinks.

But the most important thing is not us. It’s about supporting a great local business that many out-of-towners are exposed to during baseball and football season. So if you cannot join us on Thursday, please go another day or evening this week.

After a brutal winter that has been tough on everyone, and right before the start of the baseball season, it would be a real tragedy to see Mahogany’s evicted. So please show your #MahoganysLove this week.

We recommend trying the ribs or the chicken wing dinner. Or if you are vegetarian, they also have a very good vegetarian plate that you can build yourself. Mahogany’s also has a full bar and offers happy hour specials daily from 4pm to 7pm. So be sure to come both hungry and thirsty. See you Thursday!

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Business News Politics

UVA Demographer’s Map Illustrates Cincinnati’s Racial Segregation

Dustin Cable, a demographic researcher at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, recently published a map of the United States that shows an individual dot for each of the nation’s 308,745,538 people.

On their map each dot was assigned one of five colors based on the racial and ethnic affiliation. Whites are blue; African-Americans, green; Asians, red; Hispanics, orange; and all other racial categories are coded as brown. Cable used publicly available 2010 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

When viewed in its entirety from afar, the map makes cities look like integrated places with a merging of all the colors to create a purple shade. This, however, is not the most accurate portrait of the racial segregation found throughout American cities.

When viewing Cincinnati at a more detailed level, for example, one can see the clear separation of White, Black, Hispanic and Asian populations.

The dots are evenly distributed throughout their assigned Census Block, so some dots (or people) appear to be living in areas where they cannot (i.e. parks, water, streets).

The specific areas of interest inside Cincinnati city limits are several Uptown neighborhoods where a dense cluster of Asian individuals live, and the Lower Price Hill and East Price Hill area where a small concentration of Hispanic individuals call home.

When looking elsewhere around the region it is also interesting to observe the Hispanic population cluster in Butler County near in and around the City of Hamilton.

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Business Development News

Ohio awards nearly $9M in historic tax credits to seven Cincinnati-area projects

Seven Cincinnati-area developments have been awarded nearly $9 million in tax credits from the Ohio Development Services Agency (ODSA) through the state’s historic preservation program.

Six of the seven area projects are located within the City of Cincinnati, and one is located in downtown Hamilton. The Cincinnati-area projects took home nearly 25 percent of the total $35.9 million distributed in the program’s ninth round of funding, and will create more than 130 new housing units and tens of thousands of square feet of commercial space once completed.

“The Historic Preservation Tax Credit puts empty buildings back into the economic cycle, creating jobs through construction activities and reoccupation of the buildings,” Christiane Schmenk, director of the ODSA, stated in a prepared release. “This program saves some of the state’s most significant historic structures.”


Eden Park’s 118-year-old pump station may soon see new life as a micro-brewery thanks to a $1 million tax credit from the State of Ohio. Rendering provided.

According to state officials, projects receiving funding must complete the rehabilitation work in accordance with the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation before the credits are issued to the building owner or long-term tenant.

More than $3.3 million in funding will flow into Over-the-Rhine for Losantiville Apartments, Abington Flats, and Pendleton Apartments through the program, and the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) was awarded $1.8 million for its $9 million redevelopment of three historic buildings at Third Street and Main Street in the central business district.

“Without it [Ohio Historic Tax Credit] we would be unable to preserve the historic character of as many buildings as we have,” Anastasia Mileham, 3CDC’s vice president of communications, told UrbanCincy. “The cost to restore and develop them costs more than the what you can sell the condos for and lease the commercial space for. Historic tax credits help fill that gap and make the math work.”

In Mt. Adams, the Cincinnati Beer Company was awarded $1 million for its $5.2 million project that will transform Eden Park’s 118-year-old pump station into a brewery and tap room. Nearby, the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation and The Model Group were awarded $1.8 million to renovate three historic structures into 30 market-rate housing units and approximately 7,000 square feet of street-level commercial space.

Elsewhere, the City of Hamilton will see more than $800,000 go towards the renovation of the 126-year-old Hamilton Journal-News Building, which will become the home of Butler Tech’s School for the Arts and Hamilton City Schools’ Adult Basic & Literacy Education (ABLE) program.

According to ODSA, this round of funding will assist in the rehabilitation of 45 historic buildings throughout the state, and leverage more than $252 million in private investments.