Tag: public policy

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Cincinnati moves forward with city-wide ‘complete streets’ initiative

Some streets just do not feel safe to walk along. Perhaps it is the lack of space between the cars driving by or even the lack of a sidewalk in some instances. It’s even more precarious for bicyclists who sometimes have the benefit of designated bicycle lanes but most of the times compete with cars to share space on the roads.

It was not always like this. When the automobiles first came around at the dawn of the twentieth century, they had to compete with a lively street scene that included horse drawn buggies, pedestrians and bicyclists. Tensions came to a boiling point in Cincinnati and in 1923 when citizens attempted to pass a ballot initiative limiting the speed of automobiles to 25 miles per hour. The auto industry banded together to defeat the proposition and our streets were never quite the same.


Pedestrians, bicyclists and automobile drivers peacefully coexist on Diversey Street on Chicago’s north side. Photograph by Randy A. Simes for UrbanCincy.

Fast forward to today where Cincinnati City Council’s Livable Communities Committee will listen to an update on the city’s on-going Complete Streets initiative. The movement, which got its start through a motion sponsored by Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (C) in August 2009, is now an integral part of the on-going, five-day charrette for the city’s Plan Build Live initiative.

Complete Streets are regulations that allow streets to be redesigned to focus on shared use with bicycles and mass transit as well as better conditions for pedestrians. The problem in Cincinnati, and throughout much of the United States, is that people drive past what used to be viable places. The initiative, in theory, would improve conditions for many of the city’s struggling neighborhoods by reorienting them towards the users for which they were originally designed.

“We need to ensure that our neighborhood business districts are destinations and not just raceways through town for commuters,” Vice Mayor Qualls explained in a recent press release.

The standards aim to improve walkability and slow traffic in business districts. This can be done by adding on-street parking, converting one-way roads to two-way traffic, and providing connections through smaller block sizes.

Jocelyn Gibson, an Over-the-Rhine resident who attended yesterday’s brown bag lunch session on Complete Streets thinks it’s a great idea. “It’s not just about adding bike lanes; it’s about creating a more economically viable community by restoring walkable livable streets.”

Some of the focus areas mentioned by consultants Hall Planning & Engineering included the conversion of McMillan Street and William Howard Taft Road into two-way streets and making improvements to the Reading Road corridor. The standards, officials say, are part of the city’s form-based code efforts and planned to be finalized by this summer.

Anyone is welcome to attend the meeting today which will be held at 11am inside City Hall (map).

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Up To Speed

Cincinnati shifts to 100 percent clean energy

Cincinnati shifts to 100 percent clean energy

As UrbanCincy first projected in February, city officials have decided to buy 100 percent renewable energy credits. In the process, Cincinnati will be getting rid of its allegiance to Duke Energy. From the Huffington Post:

Today, Duke Energy found out that more than 50,000 commercial and residential electricity users in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio are dumping Duke and shifting to 100 percent clean energy. Cincinnati is a trendsetter: it is the first city in Ohio, and the first of its size in the nation, to go 100 percent green.

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Business News

After years of work, ambassadors in Over-the-Rhine are finally reality

Last June the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) expanded the clean and safe ambassador service from the Central Business District to historic Over-the-Rhine (OTR). The move came after neighborhood leaders, businesses and residents called for such expansion to help protect the progress made there over the past half-decade.

3CDC partnered with the Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce, Greater Cincinnati Foundation and The Carol Ann & Ralph V. Haile Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation in order to make the $100,000 endeavor a reality.

“This ambassador service will greatly compliment the ongoing development in Over-the-Rhine,” stated Chad Munitz, Executive Vice President of Development & Operations of 3CDC. “With more residents moving into the area and the extra activity in the community it is a great asset to have an extra pair of eyes on the street helping with safety and additional help with the cleanliness of the neighborhood.”

While the ambassadors appear to be a welcome addition to the neighborhood, their presence comes five years after the idea was originally pursued.


An Over-the-Rhine Ambassador cleans up trash along the sidewalk outside of the busy Taste of Belgium Cafe. Photograph by Randy A. Simes for UrbanCincy.

“The whole idea was about jump starting OTR,” explained Michael Redmond, owner of several neighborhood businesses including Neons Unplugged, and former director of the now defunct Vitality Over-the-Rhine that spearheaded initial conversations years ago. “We had ambassadors in the neighborhood about nine or ten years ago, and we thought it was the easiest thing to bring back. It was a way to make an impact through cleaning up the streets.”

The new service includes two teams of ambassadors that walk the streets of Over-the-Rhine. According to 3CDC officials, the clean team works seven days a week focusing on litter, graffiti removal, weed abatement, and pressure washing. The safety team is meant to compliment those services and patrols the neighborhood Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 3:30pm to midnight. Officials say that the safety team is responsible for panhandling interactions, bike patrols and safety patrols.

Initially the ambassador service was only funded through the end of 2011 with the seed funding. The service has since been extended through the end of 2012 thanks to an additional $113,500 in funding as part of the Over-the-Rhine District Management plan, and neighborhood leaders say they are committed to extending the effort indefinitely.

“It’s extremely important for the area, and we will continue to support this program as we seek new ways to fund it because it’s so crucial to the success of the neighborhood,” explained Anastasia Mileham, Vice President of Communications with 3CDC.

According to Redmond, one of the initial hurdles towards making the ambassador service a reality in 2007 was the determination that the property values in Over-the-Rhine would not support a special improvement district like the one that funds Downtown Cincinnati Inc., which is responsible for the Downtown Ambassadors.

Thanks to the new partnerships, that hurdle has been cleared for the time being, but long-term success may hinge upon a future expansion of the special improvement district used in the Central Business District.

“It is a lot cheaper to have the ambassadors out on the streets, than having a trashy neighborhood,” Redmond concluded. “There are more bars today, but the streets are cleaner than they were when everything was closed down. The ambassadors are a big reason for this, along with the new residents moving into the neighborhood.”

Redmond went on the say that the influx of new businesses also helps the neighborhood, and that many of the new businesses, including his own, would be willing to do and participate more in improving the area.

“I had not put much thought into the ambassadors, but noticed them not too long ago,” noted Taste of Belgium owner Jean-Francois Flechet. “I think that it’s a good idea to help keep the neighborhood clean, and it can also add to the perception of safety…it definitely cannot hurt.”

Note: Randy Simes worked with Vitality Over-the-Rhine from 2006 to 2007 on creating a volunteer ambassador program in the historic neighborhood, and studying the feasibility of a special improvement district there.

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Up To Speed

The ‘Robert Moses Effect’ on the entrepreneurial ecosystem

The ‘Robert Moses Effect’ on the entrepreneurial ecosystem

We all know about Robert Moses’ rule over New York City from the 1930’s to the 1960’s, but how has his approach to urban development impacted the way in which our entrepreneurial ecosystem? From the Business Insider:

Adding highways meant adding traffic–more than ever before. We’re seeing the same thing happen within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. As you build more infrastructure to support entrepreneurship, more people become entrepreneurs.

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Business Development News Opinion Transportation

Reimagined Brent Spence Bridge alignment could prove to be financial windfall for Cincinnati

On Tuesday April 24 and Wednesday April 25 residents will have a chance to voice their concerns about the preferred Brent Spence Bridge design alternative, currently known as Alternative I at Longworth Hall. The proposal would build a new bridge adjacent to the existing Brent Spence Bridge.

The process, which began in 2004, has a nebulous future ahead of it with uncertainty pertaining to future funding from a new federal transportation bill. Recently, state officials have said that parts of the overall rebuild of I-75 through Cincinnati may be delayed for up to fifteen years. The new funding paradigm has left local leaders on both sides of the river talking about public-private partnerships. Because of this uncertain future, it may be possible to reexamine one of the bridge options not pursued.


More than two dozen new city blocks would be able to generate in excess of $200 million annually in property tax revenue alone, should the new Brent Spence Bridge be shifted west. Rendering from Revive I-75 Study.

In 2010, the City of Cincinnati hired consultants to conduct several workgroups along the Interstate 75 corridor within the city limits. The study, named Revive I-75, addressed ways to mitigate the impact of the expanded highway on the surrounding urban neighborhoods. What also came out of the study was a visualization of the possible configuration of a new bridge for I-75 on the opposite side of Longworth Hall that would have allowed for the expansion of the Central Business District.

At the time there were several alignment configurations under study that would have moved the new bridge west of Longworth Hall, shrinking the amount of land the spaghetti-like on ramps use to connect I-71 to I-75 and the bridge. These alternatives were embodied in Alternatives A & B in the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor study. Yet both alternatives were removed from consideration citing environmental impacts and cost concerns. One of the arguments raised in opposition to the proposal was that that the city would lose valuable tax revenue from the affected industrial businesses in Queensgate.

However; according to urban economists such as Joe Minicozzi and Peter Katz, multi-story mixed use development actually brings in the most tax revenue for local jurisdictions when compared to single use facilities. In their study on Sarasota, Florida, it was found that a local mall generated only $22,000 in tax revenue per acre whereas a 17-story mixed use tower generated $1.01 million in tax revenue per acre. Since the 2010 study, Minicozzi has performed the same study in over fifteen different municipalities with similar results.

In a recent article written by Emily Badger, she summarizes several pertinent studies and surmises that, “We tend to think that broke cities have two options: raise taxes, or cut services. Minicozzi, though, is trying to point to the basic but long-buried math of our tax system that cities should be exploiting instead: Per-acre, our downtowns have the potential to generate so much more public wealth than low-density subdivisions or massive malls by the highway. And for all that revenue they bring in, downtowns cost considerably less to maintain in public services and infrastructure.”


Shifting the new Brent Spence Bridge to the west would allow downtown Cincinnati to be relieved from the existing and proposed entanglement of highway ramps. Rendering from Revive I-75 study.

A land use analysis performed by the UrbanCincy team found that the alternatives presented and illustrated in the Revive-75 documents would increase the amount of new land available in the Central Business District by roughly 33 percent. Approximately 25 new city blocks would be created under the proposal, freeing up land that is currently taken up by the expansive tangle of roadways that connect I-75, I-71 and the Brent Spence Bridge.

This would be accomplished by maintaining the ramps that connect I-71 to the Brent Spence Bridge and extending Fort Washington Way west, becoming the Third Street Expressway. This expressway will later align with the Sixth Street Expressway after connecting to the new bridge alignment west of Longworth Hall. The street grid would then be reestablished and developable real estate could be maximized on the newly reclaimed land. Based on the research provided from Minicozzi and Katz, UrbanCincy estimates that the taxable revenue capture could be more than $200 million from property taxes alone.

Such a move would not only allow for a sizable expansion of the Central Business District, but it would also create available land for a future expansion of the Duke Energy Convention Center. In a time when public agencies are trying to do more with less, this is a perfect opportunity to create more tax-productive property in the heart of the Cincinnati region. Moving the new bridge west is a solution that city, county and local business leaders should all support.