Cincinnati: State of Downtown

[SleepyLeroy]

^^ That rendering confused the crap out of me because of the way they oriented the Carew Tower.

 

My guess is that they only put the immediate buildings and that is the Omni Netherland (Hilton) hotel part and the person who drew that didnt realize that the Carew tower is an integral part. Or perhaps they did and from that specific view it is hidden? Still weird though

 

[troeros]

So I’ve always been curious about this....I recently visited Nashville and Austin this past week with a few friends for a mini vacation.

 

These 2 cities are seemingly similar to the size of Cincy, but are experiencing way more construction and cranes everywhere.

 

Cincy seems like a much more stronger financial hub. We have (I believe) 9 Fortune 500 companies, which is less compare to what Nashville and Austin have.

 

Corporate giants like P&G/Kroger/Western and Southern/Fifth Third have a really strong corporate presence not just regionally but across America and beyond.

 

My question is, why isn’t Cincy experiencing this same massive boon, that these cities with less of a corporate presence are experiencing? There downtown is full of residences, and the streets are full of life and energy even on weekdays.

 

I feel like are urban core (aside from parts of otr) literally resemble a ghost town during certain hours of the week day.

 

I’m just curious why isn’t there the same level of interest from developers that other cities are experiencing? What is it about Cincy that make out of state developers pass on? I don’t get it...we are located between 2 other states, so we are sort of centrally located, and we have a strong corporate impact. Yet, development always seems about the same year in and year out.

 

I love this city, and think that there are so many things that make Cincy unique and incredible. At the same time, I feel like it’s equivelant to pulling teeth when it comes to actually getting sizeable new residential towers built.

 

While Nashville and Austin seemingly have towers sprouting left and right...I don’t get what Cincy is missing to not attract this level of development in our city?

[jim uber]

Because our Mayor sucks, and is completely unable or unwilling to articulate why investment in a strong urban core benefits the region and the neighborhoods.

[Brutus_buckeye]

So Ive always been curious about this....I recently visited Nashville and Austin this past week with a few friends for a mini vacation.

 

These 2 cities are seemingly similar to the size of Cincy, but are experiencing way more construction and cranes everywhere.

 

Cincy seems like a much more stronger financial hub. We have (I believe) 9 Fortune 500 companies, which is less compare to what Nashville and Austin have.

 

Corporate giants like P&G/Kroger/Western and Southern/Fifth Third have a really strong corporate presence not just regionally but across America and beyond.

 

My question is, why isnt Cincy experiencing this same massive boon, that these cities with less of a corporate presence are experiencing? There downtown is full of residences, and the streets are full of life and energy even on weekdays.

 

I feel like are urban core (aside from parts of otr) literally resemble a ghost town during certain hours of the week day.

 

Im just curious why isnt there the same level of interest from developers that other cities are experiencing? What is it about Cincy that make out of state developers pass on? I dont get it...we are located between 2 other states, so we are sort of centrally located, and we have a strong corporate impact. Yet, development always seems about the same year in and year out.

 

I love this city, and think that there are so many things that make Cincy unique and incredible. At the same time, I feel like its equivelant to pulling teeth when it comes to actually getting sizeable new residential towers built.

 

While Nashville and Austin seemingly have towers sprouting left and right...I dont get what Cincy is missing to not attract this level of development in our city?

 

It is not as bad as you think. Yes both Nashville and Austin have more activity and Nashville always has over the last 30 years but there are certain things to consider.

 

1) Nashville Construction & Austin is all new whereas there is a ton of renovations of former vacant property in OTR and other areas to convert to living space. This does not get the same attention that a 30 story crane does.

2) Remember the areas outside of the tourist district of Nashville are dead too on the weekends. Walk up by the statehouse and in that area of downtown and there really is no activity.

3) Nashville has a better city/county government to help pool resoruces and dedicate them toward massive projects. Cincy was behind the curve on this and is finally starting to catch up.

4) Both Nashville and Austin while smaller are growing faster and thus getting more attention. Perception is 80% of the reason.

 

 

Certainly there should be and could be much more in Cincy than is happening but I don't think that any one party is to blame for this, a lot of it stems from things and decisions made 50 years ago or longer that predicate this. THings are happening though, some of it is under the radar

[troeros]

I mean mayor Megan Barry was a pretty horrendous mayor who was forced out, but Nashville still experienced a construction boon regardless.

 

Developers are itching to be in those markets, but why?

[Cincy513]

Developers are itching to be in those markets, but why?

Because they're popular places where young people are moving/want to move and they both have huge amounts of tourism. 

[GCrites]

I bet matthew67 has some ideas

[IAGuy39]

Cincinnati is definitely more of a corporate town than Nashville or Austin. I'd much rather live in Cincinnati but it's easy to see them and say "How are they doing it?". Well, the popularity of country music is the big one of course which they built the tourism around.

 

Cincinnati will probably have a different type of tourism because there is only so much country music to go around and Austin and Nashville have a huge chunk of that. Cincinnati could probably do better on a lot of things and have PromoWest I think would have helped the music scene but would it have caused spin-off? I doubt that.

 

If the people behind the current music scene can keep growing it then we will get more of that but it won't be Austin or Nashville. The best thing that could happen for Cincinnati is to bring in as much jobs downtown as possible while at the same time pushing for smart growth and TOD growth, build out BRT lines and re-do metro. But currently our mayor doesn't want any of that and all he cares about is pleasing his people and its a massive hindrance to growth whether people want to believe it or not.

 

And I don't think the Mayor of Nashville was anti-everything city like Cranley. She actually proposed the massive mass transit proposal in Nashville.

[edale]

Because our Mayor sucks, and is completely unable or unwilling to articulate why investment in a strong urban core benefits the region and the neighborhoods.

 

Nah, you can't blame decades of decline on Cranley, as easy and tempting as it may be. The issue of why some cities decline while others thrive is so complicated and requires such a comprehensive understanding of municipal history and economics. It really can't be explained in a single message board post.

[Guest jmecklenborg]

Mayor Barry didn't come up with the transit plan.  Her handlers -- i.e. the blue bloods that put her in power -- made her push their plan. 

 

Nashville is still significantly smaller than Cincinnati and at its current rate of growth won't even up for another ten years. 

[taestell]

Because our Mayor sucks, and is completely unable or unwilling to articulate why investment in a strong urban core benefits the region and the neighborhoods.

 

Nah, you can't blame decades of decline on Cranley, as easy and tempting as it may be. The issue of why some cities decline while others thrive is so complicated and requires such a comprehensive understanding of municipal history and economics. It really can't be explained in a single message board post.

 

Much of the boom that is happening in American cities can not be attributed to the actions of any particular city's Mayor or City Council. Almost all mid to large sized American cities are experiencing growth right now. However, the actions of the local government act to either step on the gas or step on the brakes.

 

Right now, many of our peer cities are stepping on the gas: improving public transit, adding urban circulators, adding bike lanes, implementing pro-growth urban policies and form-based zoning codes. Right now Cincinnati is stepping on the brakes: "punishing" OTR by raising parking meter rates to parking garage levels in an effort to wring out as much money as possible from the neighborhood, intentionally crippling the streetcar, blocking the implementation of our bike plan, laying down roadblocks for downtown developments, constantly telling other neighborhoods that "growth in downtown and OTR hurts your neighborhood!" in order to perpetuate our So Cincinnati anti-downtown attitude, borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars for new interchanges and road repaving instead of investing in downtown, etc.

 

Cranley is definitely not the only anti-urban mayor that Cincinnati ever had. However, what makes Cranley uniquely bad is that in a time when cities all across America are growing and nearly all of our peer cities are stepping on the gas, we are stepping on the brakes.

[GCrites]

The suburb worshipping in the Cincy metro really causes a lot of trouble.

[edale]

Cranley does no favors to downtown, but he is not the reason Cincinnati isn't performing as well as Austin or Nashville. First of all, almost no cities are performing as well as those two are right now. They're going through extreme periods of growth- the likes of which Cincinnati hasn't seen since its very early days. Is Nashville booming because of bike lanes? It doesn't have any transit to speak of, and neither does Austin. Sure, downtown Cincinnati should be growing at a faster clip, and the issues with the streetcar should have been ironed out long ago (at least the quick fix ones, though I think there are some big flaws with the design of the system, too). But these things are not the reason for the under-performance of the region.

 

Nashville struck gold with its music tourism industry. It became a hot place for people from the coasts, especially creative types, to relocate to. Because of this, it got an incredible amount of buzz and publicity, which only made its tourism industry further grow. Austin was a sleepy, weird alternative to the other big Texas cities and all of a sudden took off to become a nascent giant. Texas as a state is growing extremely fast, and Austin has been able to capture, if not drive, a lot of that growth. They had some success stories with tech companies and Whole Foods, and like Columbus, they have the huge state university + state capital thing going for it. But I don't think there was one single factor that led to Austin's seemingly over night success. I think Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, Atlanta, Phoenix, etc. are growing fast primarily due to the large population shifts that have been underway in this country for a very long time. People move to the South and West for cheap housing, better weather, and a new start. Austin and Nashville just happen to be the boomtowns de jour. In earlier decades it was Dallas and Atlanta. These cities are all doing some great things, but they didn't magically create growth, just like Cincinnati can't.

 

Last point. As far as stifling downtown development projects, I think the story of the most recent downtown tower projects speaks way more to the reality of the situation than the Cranley boogeyman theories. Skyhouse had to walk away from their project because they just couldn't get the development to pencil out. 4th and Race is having a hell of a time getting built because the market economics just aren't favorable here. Whether it's high labor costs, high material costs, conservative lenders, low expected rents...whatever, Cincinnati appears to be a challenging market for high rise development. A project that receives $5.5 million in city subsidy and STILL can't get off the ground (4th and Race) is a bad sign. I don't fault Cranley for not throwing insane amount of subsidy at these projects, IF he is supportive of offering smaller subsidies to a greater range of projects. When I think about the state of the city now, you have neighborhoods that are finally starting to turn around in a meaningful way. Walnut Hills, Madisonville, Westwood, College Hill, hell, even Evanston are all showing new signs of life. OTR continues to redevelop at a pretty fast pace, too. The city needs more than just downtown to be stable if it wants to grow, and I think we are finally seeing that. I would love to see Cranley get out of the way more. Fix the low hanging streetcar issues. Stop spending money on stupid shit like interchanges no one needs or wants. Implement a sensible parking reform for basin neighborhoods. But I really don't see him being the total hindrance to Cincinnati becoming Nashville and Austin style boomtowns.

 

[jjakucyk]

People move to those cities because people are moving to those cities.  Growth begets growth, because so much of our economy is based on the construction industry.  It's a self-reinforcing cycle, until it isn't. 

[IAGuy39]

^I don't think Cranley stifled any potential projects, etc. and maybe they wouldn't have helped otherwise but boy he sure could help out on a few things like the streetcar, Form based codes, etc. which would really help get more development moving and possibly move in some of the out of town investors or flippers and do some more work.  Who knows how much different it could of been if we fixed teh streetcar from the get go, completed the bike lane plans, had the Liberty Street Road Diet, enacted form based codes, literally everything that every other city in this country has done which are simple and hardly cost anything, we would be so much further ahead, IMO.

 

All that said, I think people do need to understand that Cincinnati hit a deep hole like the Cleveland's, Detroit, Buffalo, etc. (though not as deep, it belongs in that grouping on the next tier down). Cincinnati has bounced back quicker than those cities too but it's conservative culture of no taxes except for cops and firefighters is starting to bite our ass in the year 2018. List of cities with highest population declines from peak:

 

St. Louis, Missouri 856,796 856,796 1950 319,294 537,502 62.7%

Detroit, Michigan 1,849,568 1,849,568 1950 713,777 1,135,791 61.4%

Youngstown, Ohio 168,330 170,002 1930 66,982 103,020 60.6%

Cleveland, Ohio 914,808 914,808 1950 396,815 517,993 56.6%

Gary, Indiana 133,911 178,320 1960 80,294 98,026 55%

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 676,806 676,806 1950 305,704 371,102 54.8%

Buffalo, New York 580,132 580,132 1950 270,240 309,892 53.4%

Niagara Falls, New York 90,872 102,394 1960 50,194 52,200 51%

Flint, Michigan 163,413 196,940 1960 102,434 94,506 48%

Scranton, Pennsylvania 125,536 143,333 1930 76,089 67,244 46.9%

Dayton, Ohio 243,872 262,332 1960 141,527 120,805 46.1%

Cincinnati, Ohio 503,998 503,998 1950 296,943 207,055 41.1%

New Orleans, Louisiana** 570,445 627,525 1960 384,320 243,205 38.8%

Utica, New York 100,489 101,740 1930 62,235 39,505 38.8%

Camden, New Jersey 124,555 124,555 1950 77,344 47,211 37.9%

[Brutus_buckeye]

If we wanna go into building who have been vacant and left basically abandon, look at 312 Race Street. Its the old Pogue warehouse building, prime real estate in the front of the city. Drury hotel group bought the building in 2003!. There is a 30 year tax abatement on the building, not sure how or why. 15 years have gone by since they purchased the building and nothing has been done. Its a shame because the building either needs to come down, or reworked.

 

Also attached I found an old proposal for the site that carries the Drury name.

 

I have never seen this before. This would be a great location for such a hotel or any hotel. Closest to the stadium and the easiest access to the highways for people coming and going from downtown. I am surprised nothing has come to fruition on this site.

[IAGuy39]

Here are a couple interesting things to look at too:

 

Historical Nashville Population:

 

1810 1,100 —

1820 3,410 210.0%

1830 5,566 63.2%

1840 6,929 24.5%

1850 10,165 46.7%

1860 16,988 67.1%

1870 25,865 52.3%

1880 43,350 67.6%

1890 76,168 75.7%

1900 80,865 6.2%

1910 110,364 36.5%

1920 118,342 7.2%

1930 153,866 30.0%

1940 167,402 8.8%

1950 174,307 4.1%

1960 170,874 −2.0%

1970 448,003 162.2%

1980 477,811 6.7%

1990 510,784 6.9%

2000 569,891 11.6%

2010 626,681 10.0%

Est. 2017 691,243 [3] 10.3%

 

Historial Austin Population:

 

1850 629 —

1860 3,494 455.5%

1870 4,428 26.7%

1880 11,013 148.7%

1890 14,575 32.3%

1900 22,258 52.7%

1910 29,860 34.2%

1920 34,876 16.8%

1930 53,120 52.3%

1940 87,930 65.5%

1950 132,459 50.6%

1960 186,545 40.8%

1970 253,539 35.9%

1980 345,890 36.4%

1990 465,622 34.6%

2000 656,562 41.0%

2010 790,390 20.4%

Est. 2017 950,715 [94] 20.3

 

Historical Cincinnati Population:

 

1800 850 —

1810 2,540 198.8%

1820 9,642 279.6%

1830 24,831 157.5%

1840 46,338 86.6%

1850 115,435 149.1%

1860 161,044 39.5%

1870 216,239 34.3%

1880 255,139 18.0%

1890 296,908 16.4%

1900 325,902 9.8%

1910 363,591 11.6%

1920 401,247 10.4%

1930 451,160 12.4%

1940 455,610 1.0%

1950 503,998 10.6%

1960 502,550 −0.3%

1970 452,525 −10.0%

1980 385,460 −14.8%

1990 364,040 −5.6%

2000 331,285 −9.0%

2010 296,945 −10.4%

Est. 2017 301,301 [58] 1.5%

[taestell]

I don't think Cranley stifled any potential projects

 

Cranley pulled the plug on the Fourth & Race project because it was going to be built by an out-of-town developer (Flaherty & Collins). He got 3CDC involved in order to downsize Flaherty & Collins' role in the development. Then he pushed forward the Court & Walnut development which ate up most of the TIF funding that had been earmarked for Fourth & Race.

[IAGuy39]

I don't think Cranley stifled any potential projects

 

Cranley pulled the plug on the Fourth & Race project because it was going to be built by an out-of-town developer (Flaherty & Collins). He got 3CDC involved in order to downsize Flaherty & Collins' role in the development. Then he pushed forward the Court & Walnut development which ate up most of the TIF funding that had been earmarked for Fourth & Race.

 

I think he pulled out of a $12 million forgiveable loan for a $5.5 million one?  I didn't think that it was going to be any TIF on that, or maybe that's what you mean with the loan?

[jmblec2]

I don't think Cranley stifled any potential projects

 

Cranley pulled the plug on the Fourth & Race project because it was going to be built by an out-of-town developer (Flaherty & Collins). He got 3CDC involved in order to downsize Flaherty & Collins' role in the development. Then he pushed forward the Court & Walnut development which ate up most of the TIF funding that had been earmarked for Fourth & Race.

 

Blessing in disguise IMO. We would have been stuck with a small grocery store operated by a yet to be named company, which was only required to be in business for 5 years. Instead we get a real grocery store operated by a for profit entity that won't walk away if things are going great after 5 years, in a much more centralized location and directly on the street car route. Much better for downtowns long term growth. 

[Guest jmecklenborg]

Blessing in disguise IMO. We would have been stuck with a small grocery store operated by a yet to be named company, which was only required to be in business for 5 years. Instead we get a real grocery store operated by a for profit entity that won't walk away if things are going great after 5 years, in a much more centralized location and directly on the street car route. Much better for downtowns long term growth. 

 

A real-life example of what you describe happened ten years ago in Columbus at the South Campus Gateway.  A small grocery store called "Sunflower" or something like that opened with the rest of the development but closed within 2 years.  The nearby Kroger was a dump but it was rebuilt around 2010. 

[taestell]

The Fourth and Race "grocery store" would have been a glorified convenience store, much like the one that opened at The Banks. Nevertheless, it would have still been a place for downtown residents to get some basic necessities, fresh produce, etc. I'm glad the Kroger development is moving forward, of course, but that's not going to actually open until late 2019.

[jmblec2]

The Fourth and Race "grocery store" would have been a glorified convenience store, much like the one that opened at The Banks. Nevertheless, it would have still been a place for downtown residents to get some basic necessities, fresh produce, etc. I'm glad the Kroger development is moving forward, of course, but that's not going to actually open until late 2019.

 

Not really. The store at the banks is 1,500 sq. The actual grocery store at fourth and race was proposed to 15,000sq.

[Guest jmecklenborg]

Bring in Geraldo:

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/downtown/hilton-cincinnati-netherland-plaza-to-open-long-locked-safe

[Cygnus]

Take DCI's 2018 Downtown Cincinnati Perceptions Survey featuring a photo from taestell[/member] : https://www.research.net/r/2018DCISurvey

[taestell]

One of the two downtown CVS stores is closing...

 

 

[jim uber]

^ is this related at all to rehabilitation of that building? I remember some time ago there was "talk of plans" to turn it into apartments.

[taestell]

I think he actually meant to say that the one at 6th & Race is closing. The upper floors of that building were recently converted to apartments. I bet the closure has very little to do with that and more to do with the fact that there's another CVS two blocks away.

[bfwissel]

And a Walgreens directly across the street probably didn't help them much either.

[Cincy513]

I live right by there and always go to the Walgreens over the CVS.  

[thomasbw]

2 hours ago, Cincy513 said:

I live right by there and always go to the Walgreens over the CVS.  

 

 

That Walgreens is much nicer than the CVS

 

[DEPACincy]

6 hours ago, thomasbw said:

 

 

That Walgreens is much nicer than the CVS

 

 

Ditto. It's not even close. 

[The_Cincinnati_Kid]

EXCLUSIVE: Tire Discounters buys downtown Cincinnati building for new HQ 

By Tom Demeropolis  – Senior Staff Reporter, Cincinnati Business Courier

 

 

Tire Discounters has purchased a downtown office building that will become home to the growing retailer’s headquarters.

 

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