Streetcar Update on Development

Kahns, I'm going to have to agree with Q on this one. You are making good arguments but you're not selling me.

Q is right about the city throwing money at Saks and other retailers in the name of 'bringing people downtown'.

In the City of Cincinnati department stores are so 50's. Outdated.

I like what Cleveland did years ago and built a downtown mall. Don't have any idea how it's doing now but years ago I thought it was a great idea. Gave us out of towners a place to go, spend money, drink and eat, until the game started or it was time to go out on the town.

Q is right about the restaurants. There are a few in quality. The Masonette closed its doors. Got tired of the pan handlers right outside their door and couldn't do anything about it.

Q is right about movie theatres or other family entertainment. Newport on the levy should be envied. With 4 kids, the restaraunts on the levy are more my style, the IMAX is a place to take the family, the aquarium is a place the kids enjoy.

And talking about greasing hands....the only reason the Streetcar project is going through is because of the Casino's. Bring people downtown to gamble their money away. Not quite family entertainment in my book.

From Q's post...
"I am not against revitalising the down town area, but I am against another short-sighted pipe dream that has a huge chance of following other such proposals, down the proverbial drain."

Examples
- Macy's
- Saks was a waste of money.
- The Freedom Center is a money pit and a morgue.
- The Bengals stadium is the worst deal in NFL history except for Mike Brown.

Kahn's if you will.....what Newport on the Levy ideas are sucking up tax payer dollars?


From Kahns post....(I'm sorry but this is weak. You seriously think that anyone really thinks that Q is against any of these)
"So, you're against highways, public utilities, police and fire departments? None of these ideas turn a profit and private industry isn't going after any of these. "

The fact of the matter is that while city council was approving the Streetcar project, they were at the same time (in Dec)ready to lay off 30 or 40 police officers.


Kahn's you know I don't normally rag on ya, but I'm just not buying your argument.

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Originally Posted by coasterville95

Guy - I've been wanting that east side light rail ever since it was hinted about in the whole Metro Moves campaign. I recall that one started out as CVG airport to downtown, to XU to hyde park, finally ending up at Kings Island.

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The residents of Hyde Park, Mount Lookout, Newtown, Mariemount, Milford, etc... all seem to be a little more progressive than your average metro area resident. I think they will really get behind this light rail.

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Originally Posted by sweet16

Why in god's name would you want a streetcar that extended to XU? What demographic would you be going after there........under 21 with little to no disposable income?

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I think it would be great for X. Outside of Dana's, there isn't much opportunity for fun outside of X's campus. I would have loved it, as a student, to be able to jump on the streetcar every once in a while to explore downtown, drink, and get home safely.

Also, I'd imagine a streetcar would be good for the development around X. Perhaps families will park at X, enjoy some new restaurants, and take the streetcar downtown. Or perhaps some downtown residents will take the ride up to X for some shopping/bar hopping. It would give the development projects around X and edge over Rookwood.

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Originally Posted by JimmyTwoTimes37

Theyve decided on a route to uptown..



Vine street
http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics...for-streetcar/

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I'm being picky, but what genius decided to use a map with McMillan spelled wrong?

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Originally Posted by MADXSTER

Q is right about the restaurants. There are a few in quality. The Masonette closed its doors. Got tired of the pan handlers right outside their door and couldn't do anything about it.

Kahn's you know I don't normally rag on ya, but I'm just not buying your argument.

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I don't really know how I feel about the streetcar, but I do think that there are a lot of solid restaurants and bars downtown these days. When I have been out eating and drinking downtown at night it has been a pretty vibrant scene with a lot of people around. You have Morton's, Ruby's, Palomino, Via Vite, Rock Bottom, Black Finn, Bootsy's, Nada, McCormick and Schmick, and several more places to get food. If you want to go out drinking you have Black Finn, Lodge Bar, Mynt, Bartini's, Righteous Room, Nicholsons, Cadillac Ranch, and probably several others that I am missing.

All those places are easily and safely walkable from fountain square. You can park in the fountain square garage and bar and restaurant hop all night if you want to.

What I am not as sure about is whether or not new businesses will pop up along the route if the streetcar gets built. The current economic environment is a tough one to start a business in.

MadX,

I don't know the ins and outs of the Macys and Saks deals do make any judgement on the return on those investments. I do know that those are specific business incentives, and should be judged on an entirely different scale than transit infrastructure projects. The Freedom Center is a political correctness debacle that deserves its own discussion, but I'm certainly no fan of that thing. The stadium is a county project.

Why not use an city infrastructure project to compare to? The revival of the Fountain Square and garage has drawn an estimated $125 million in investment around the square. That is a recent example of public dollars spent on an infrastructure project that has encouraged private investment in the surrounding area.

Your comment that there aren't quality restaurants downtown makes me wonder when you were last downtown. And in all honesty, with 4 kids, you aren't necessarily the demographic the streetcar is looking to attract.

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Originally Posted by Denver Muskie

I'm being picky, but what genius decided to use a map with McMillan spelled wrong?

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Seriously. That is embarrasing.

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Originally Posted by MADXSTER

From Kahns post....(I'm sorry but this is weak. You seriously think that anyone really thinks that Q is against any of these)
"So, you're against highways, public utilities, police and fire departments? None of these ideas turn a profit and private industry isn't going after any of these. "

The fact of the matter is that while city council was approving the Streetcar project, they were at the same time (in Dec)ready to lay off 30 or 40 police officers.


Kahn's you know I don't normally rag on ya, but I'm just not buying your argument.

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Well, no I don't think that Q is against any of those things. I was actually responding to 87. I don't believe 87 is against those things either, but I was responding to an argument that the streetcar can't be a good idea because if it was, private industry would have already done it. My response simply reminds everyone that profitibility is not a standard for public projects.

As far as laying off the police officers, that is an operating expense. A big reason they have to lay off those officers is because the tax base is shrinking. The tax base is shrinking because Cincinnati doesn't attract young people, and families head for the suburbs.

If you want to accelerate that process, a great way would be to raid the capital budget to pay for operating expenses.

Sort of useless to debate the need/logic of building the streetcar at this point. It's a done deal. It's coming to Cincinnati and it's a start.

Personally, I wanted what I've experienced in Atlanta, Chicago, New York. I wanted a subway downtown moving up to light rail going out towards the burbs. But every time they tried to get that to pass, somebody with their head in the sand shouted it down saying we didn't need to waste tax dollars.

Deals like Saks and Macys are completely different, as they were tax breaks and not infrastructure investments. City council members were acting out of desperation. They did save jobs, just not as many they would have liked for as long as they would have liked.

The Freedom Center was railroaded by Rob Portman in a move that he somehow felt would transform the racial problems our community experiences. He doesn't talk about it now as one of his accomplishments for a reason. Aside from all the private sympathy money they raked out of companies and people like Oprah, how community leaders allowed this to actually happen I'll never understand, since this is one of the most poorly planned facilities I've ever seen. If you're going to build something that big on valuable Real estate, let's see some detailed plans. Forget about whether you agree with the premise, they have no decent model for making an income there. No cafe, no kitchen, no rotating exhibition space, no planned out rental spaces...all things that when done right keep visitors coming back to experience new things. They learned about these grave errors within the first five months.

It's completely different from the streetcar project, which is bolstered by federal dollars--that are going to go to some community whether you like it or not--to build infrastructure that serves a wide region of the community and connects the two largest areas of employment in Greater Cincinnati. (Downtown and Clifton) I'm glad they figured out how to invest the money here. It's not overspending. It's smart spending.

The project, even before the thing is built, is sparking major deals. Read the article I originally linked to. There are people lining up for the investment opportunities. There are existing businesses that looking into improving their space in anticipation of more people coming through. Will the streetcar run profitably? No, no form of mass transit does. But this investment will bring in more residents and people spending dollars at businesses along the route, which adds to the tax base and helps pay for core city services.

Is this the best option? No way. But I'm glad it's finally happening, because the longer nothing like this happened the worse it was going to be where these areas saw no investment. That just kills off the urban core and the out communities will eventually suffer.

Oh, and Downtown is actually about 10 blocks by 10 blocks and adding the OTR and Mt. Auburn sections make much much bigger. This is going to give the city such an advantage when trying to land conventions (bringing in big money), not to mention just make that whole area more attractive to live in. Once Kroger rebuilds there at the top of the line, how huge will that be for people who could ride the street car?

I'm optimistic.

What Sirthought said...

As far as laying off the police officers, that is an operating expense.

KK, tell that to a young, enthusiastic police officer just hired or with little seniority who has just been laid off and has no idea when, or even if he'll get his job back.
Yes, it's an operating expense, but I was pointing out the numerous times in the past when money was lavished on something of little benefit to the community--like Saks--and the real needs of the community were never even addressed. Jobs from Saks? Oh, hell, never mind.
But it might surprise you to know some of the payments you and I and everyone in Cincinnati and Hamilton County make every month for Riverfront Stadium that has long since gone over the rainbow.
Sometimes when I think back to some of the hard news stories I tried to write but had squashed by a publisher (pre-Post) I'm glad I got into sports where the worst thing I ever had to deal with was the NCAA. If you think city and county government--all three parties if you consider the Charterites more than Ninth St. Republicans--was somewhere between ineffective and just plain corrupt as far as conflict of interest was and is concerned, it would pale compared to the misadventures of our local state university and its athletic programs over the years. But that's another pissing contest.
You know, it's one thing to despise the behavior of a spoiled child, but quite another to ask how he, she, or it got that way. It's one thing to dislike Mike Brown, but quite another to stop and think we,--me included-- who through our elected Hamilton County officials made the deals with him for PBS . We as Hamilton County residents vote for that sales tax increase that failed to take into consideration there might also be bad times ahead. It's sort of like a bride and a groom who forget the part of the ceremony where each promise make their promises to love in good times and in bad...
I really think that is what makes us so mad at Mike Brown. We, through our politicians, gave Mike, Katie, Paul A., Nancy and Pete and Troy and all the other members of the Bengals family that 63,000-seat monument on the Ohio River. And our kids will still be paying for it long after we shuffle. So maybe the next time we want to vent against that evil genius or whatever you want to call Mike at the time, stop and look in the mirror and reflect on that vote, no matter what it was.
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