Where's the [insert amenity here]?

By Guest Blogger Zachary Schunn

“Why is there no ____ in my neighborhood?”

As a commercial real estate advisor, I hear this question all the time – from friends, family, community members, and property owners. Unfortunately, it’s a question that typically sets up a negative answer. There is always a reason there is not a grocery store, laundromat, restaurant, etc. in a neighborhood, and sometimes that answer is as simple as, “No one has thought of it yet.”

More often, there are three main reasons a certain business has yet to open in a neighborhood – money, people, and time. And thankfully, all three items are fixable.

Of course, businesses cost money to start. For entrepreneurs wanting to open, say, a restaurant, it can often come as a surprise that 200 or 300 thousand dollars in cash is seen as a small amount to start with. I often talk to entrepreneurs who are surprised to learn just how much rent costs, that landlords typically expect tenants to build out their own space, that so much in working capital is expected by landlords and banks, that loan officers have such strict lending and business plan requirements, etc. Can a savvy entrepreneur start a retail shop on as little as $10,000 in donations and friends/family money? Sure – I’ve seen it done. But if a business is to get off the ground running and stay afloat, $100,000 is a more common minimum.

So, it takes someone with capital to come along and want to open a business in a neighborhood. But to survive, they need people to come. Most experienced retailers have checklists they use to evaluate locations—things like: number of residents within a three-mile radius, day-time population, age and income demographics, traffic volume, etc. Currently, this is what hinders a lot of urban neighborhoods from attracting certain retailers. If a business is accustomed to certain road/highway presence in suburban locations, convincing the owners to consider an urban area can be tough. While “walkable neighborhoods” are gaining popularity in development and planning circles, many retailers still take a car-oriented approach, since higher population figures are seen in a fifteen-minute drive-time radius than within fifteen- minute walking distance.

The last “hurdle” is both an obstacle and a solution, and that is time. Opening a business (whether a start-up, re-location, or chain) takes a lot of advance planning and work. It is not uncommon for a retailer to take years scouting an area before opening a location. Just take Kroger as an example—people often ask why downtown-Cincinnati-based Kroger does not have a downtown store. Well, few realize that they have been scouting sites for years, trying to find one that fits their size, population, traffic, parking, and other requirements. Now that they are rumored to have agreed to a location on Central Parkway, there are still a lot of zoning, code, and other requirements that need to be met before it can even become official; then, of course, a lengthy construction period before finally opening. And during that process, there are a number of issues that could arise threatening the deal.

While time can be a detriment, it can also solve a lot of hurdles with a neighborhood attracting a certain type of business. Even if the money and the people do not seem to be there at first, a neighborhood can work to build the demand, attract investors, and convince a business to open. Sometimes this requires dramatic changes in a neighborhood (for example, who would have expected a store like “Kit and Ace” in Over-the-Rhine five or ten years ago?), but sometimes it just requires a neighborhood marketing itself well enough to attract these new businesses. And whether it is a pizza place in Walnut Hills, a grocery store in Avondale, or new restaurants on the west side, they all can and will happen given the effort and time.

So what will I say the next time you ask me, “Why isn’t there a ___ in my neighborhood?”

I’ll just smile back and respond, “Well, there isn’t one… yet.”

About the author

Zachary Schunn is a resident of Mt. Auburn and a commercial real estate advisor for SVN. He has two degrees from the University of Cincinnati (Architecture, 2010 and MBA, 2011) and has served on a number of non-profit boards and committees within the city. Zachary spends his spare time playing tennis, hiking Cincinnati’s many urban trails, and restaurant- and bar-hopping in Over-the-Rhine with friends. He has lived in Cincinnati since 2006 and is still working to learn all its unique nooks and crannies.

Where’s the [insert amenity here]?

By Guest Blogger Zachary Schunn

“Why is there no ____ in my neighborhood?”

As a commercial real estate advisor, I hear this question all the time – from friends, family, community members, and property owners. Unfortunately, it’s a question that typically sets up a negative answer. There is always a reason there is not a grocery store, laundromat, restaurant, etc. in a neighborhood, and sometimes that answer is as simple as, “No one has thought of it yet.”

More often, there are three main reasons a certain business has yet to open in a neighborhood – money, people, and time. And thankfully, all three items are fixable.

Of course, businesses cost money to start. For entrepreneurs wanting to open, say, a restaurant, it can often come as a surprise that 200 or 300 thousand dollars in cash is seen as a small amount to start with. I often talk to entrepreneurs who are surprised to learn just how much rent costs, that landlords typically expect tenants to build out their own space, that so much in working capital is expected by landlords and banks, that loan officers have such strict lending and business plan requirements, etc. Can a savvy entrepreneur start a retail shop on as little as $10,000 in donations and friends/family money? Sure – I’ve seen it done. But if a business is to get off the ground running and stay afloat, $100,000 is a more common minimum.

So, it takes someone with capital to come along and want to open a business in a neighborhood. But to survive, they need people to come. Most experienced retailers have checklists they use to evaluate locations—things like: number of residents within a three-mile radius, day-time population, age and income demographics, traffic volume, etc. Currently, this is what hinders a lot of urban neighborhoods from attracting certain retailers. If a business is accustomed to certain road/highway presence in suburban locations, convincing the owners to consider an urban area can be tough. While “walkable neighborhoods” are gaining popularity in development and planning circles, many retailers still take a car-oriented approach, since higher population figures are seen in a fifteen-minute drive-time radius than within fifteen- minute walking distance.

The last “hurdle” is both an obstacle and a solution, and that is time. Opening a business (whether a start-up, re-location, or chain) takes a lot of advance planning and work. It is not uncommon for a retailer to take years scouting an area before opening a location. Just take Kroger as an example—people often ask why downtown-Cincinnati-based Kroger does not have a downtown store. Well, few realize that they have been scouting sites for years, trying to find one that fits their size, population, traffic, parking, and other requirements. Now that they are rumored to have agreed to a location on Central Parkway, there are still a lot of zoning, code, and other requirements that need to be met before it can even become official; then, of course, a lengthy construction period before finally opening. And during that process, there are a number of issues that could arise threatening the deal.

While time can be a detriment, it can also solve a lot of hurdles with a neighborhood attracting a certain type of business. Even if the money and the people do not seem to be there at first, a neighborhood can work to build the demand, attract investors, and convince a business to open. Sometimes this requires dramatic changes in a neighborhood (for example, who would have expected a store like “Kit and Ace” in Over-the-Rhine five or ten years ago?), but sometimes it just requires a neighborhood marketing itself well enough to attract these new businesses. And whether it is a pizza place in Walnut Hills, a grocery store in Avondale, or new restaurants on the west side, they all can and will happen given the effort and time.

So what will I say the next time you ask me, “Why isn’t there a ___ in my neighborhood?”

I’ll just smile back and respond, “Well, there isn’t one… yet.”

About the author

Zachary Schunn is a resident of Mt. Auburn and a commercial real estate advisor for SVN. He has two degrees from the University of Cincinnati (Architecture, 2010 and MBA, 2011) and has served on a number of non-profit boards and committees within the city. Zachary spends his spare time playing tennis, hiking Cincinnati’s many urban trails, and restaurant- and bar-hopping in Over-the-Rhine with friends. He has lived in Cincinnati since 2006 and is still working to learn all its unique nooks and crannies.

Our "Moment of Leverage" is tonight at 6 pm.

Tonight the Over-the-Rhine Community Council will vote on whether or not to sign a letter of support for a proposed development at Elm and Liberty.

According to a post written by community activist, Margy Waller, on sway.com,  this is a large, prominent piece of land  with a massive development that will include 15,500 square feet of commercial space and almost 100 small apartments, plus a huge garage.  Margy thinks the Community Council should withhold their support.

An image from the marketing materials of the proposed development at Liberty & Elm

Not that she’s against the development of the property. Or this particular developer. Nobody is.  Her point is that the community hasn’t been given enough information to make an intelligent decision on whether or not this plan works for the people who actually live here and know each other by name, homeowners and renters and business owners who believe in their little place on the planet more than any other and are intimately familiar with its challenges.

Why the rush?  Why tonight?  Why no time for questions or discussion?  This is a decision Over-the-Rhine will live with for decades to come, an important conversation that deserves to be treated with respect.  Quicky votes that limit input are the norm in publicly subsidized commercial real estate development.

The logic is always the same:  If support isn’t given this minute, the whole deal could fall apart.  The neighborhood is lucky anybody wants to risk private capital to build anything, with the ubiquitous “job creation” carrot dangled liberally throughout the argument – because “job creation” is accepted on such faith within the political community, it’s almost a religion.   As long as a development is legal and can be financed, ALL development is always assumed to be good.

Baloney.

This deal is not going to fall apart if there’s more conversation.  Big developments like this take decades to acquire properties, work with architects and lobby elected representatives.  A few more months is not going to dampen the enthusiasm of the for-profit developer who has been dreaming this dream morning, noon, and night for years.  They’re not going to walk away from what they’e already invested.

As population precipitously drained from our cities, municipalities had to do whatever they could to stabilize the tax base.  Thank goodness the factors that required such desperate government intervention have finally reversed.  Buyers now want what we’ve got- an affordable, walk-able, urban experience with unique historic building stock and non-chain everything on a sweet little bend in the river .

Citizens, it’s time we learned how to negotiate better deals.  Which means we need to organize, show up for meetings, lobby politicians, and demand transparency.  The point is not to stop development.  But we absolutely have to get more for our money and lower the public risk, the exact same thing any smart for-profit investor tries to do.

This vote tonight is very, very important.  Not just for the future of Liberty and Elm.  It’s important for every neighborhood that wants a say in  the investments taxpayers make for the Greater Good in whatever part of town has captured their heart.  This vote is an important lesson in power to every Community Council in Cincinnati.

As Margy so astutely points out:

When developers seek our support—especially when they are hoping to get city investment, zoning and other land use changes, or other public benefits—it’s our moment of leverage.

Our “Moment of Leverage” is tonight at 6 pm.

Tonight the Over-the-Rhine Community Council will vote on whether or not to sign a letter of support for a proposed development at Elm and Liberty.

According to a post written by community activist, Margy Waller, on sway.com,  this is a large, prominent piece of land  with a massive development that will include 15,500 square feet of commercial space and almost 100 small apartments, plus a huge garage.  Margy thinks the Community Council should withhold their support.

An image from the marketing materials of the proposed development at Liberty & Elm

Not that she’s against the development of the property. Or this particular developer. Nobody is.  Her point is that the community hasn’t been given enough information to make an intelligent decision on whether or not this plan works for the people who actually live here and know each other by name, homeowners and renters and business owners who believe in their little place on the planet more than any other and are intimately familiar with its challenges.

Why the rush?  Why tonight?  Why no time for questions or discussion?  This is a decision Over-the-Rhine will live with for decades to come, an important conversation that deserves to be treated with respect.  Quicky votes that limit input are the norm in publicly subsidized commercial real estate development.

The logic is always the same:  If support isn’t given this minute, the whole deal could fall apart.  The neighborhood is lucky anybody wants to risk private capital to build anything, with the ubiquitous “job creation” carrot dangled liberally throughout the argument – because “job creation” is accepted on such faith within the political community, it’s almost a religion.   As long as a development is legal and can be financed, ALL development is always assumed to be good.

Baloney.

This deal is not going to fall apart if there’s more conversation.  Big developments like this take decades to acquire properties, work with architects and lobby elected representatives.  A few more months is not going to dampen the enthusiasm of the for-profit developer who has been dreaming this dream morning, noon, and night for years.  They’re not going to walk away from what they’e already invested.

As population precipitously drained from our cities, municipalities had to do whatever they could to stabilize the tax base.  Thank goodness the factors that required such desperate government intervention have finally reversed.  Buyers now want what we’ve got- an affordable, walk-able, urban experience with unique historic building stock and non-chain everything on a sweet little bend in the river .

Citizens, it’s time we learned how to negotiate better deals.  Which means we need to organize, show up for meetings, lobby politicians, and demand transparency.  The point is not to stop development.  But we absolutely have to get more for our money and lower the public risk, the exact same thing any smart for-profit investor tries to do.

This vote tonight is very, very important.  Not just for the future of Liberty and Elm.  It’s important for every neighborhood that wants a say in  the investments taxpayers make for the Greater Good in whatever part of town has captured their heart.  This vote is an important lesson in power to every Community Council in Cincinnati.

As Margy so astutely points out:

When developers seek our support—especially when they are hoping to get city investment, zoning and other land use changes, or other public benefits—it’s our moment of leverage.

Danny Klingler, OTR A.D.O.P.T.

Today’s post is by Danny Klingler.  Danny is the founder and executive director of OTR A.D.O.P.T. and a member of the board of the Over-the-Rhine Foundation. His love for Over-the-Rhine began with ‘discovering’ the neighborhood in 2003 after a year spent abroad in Hamburg, Germany. He and partner Sarah live in OTR with their cat Fox Mulder Baker.  In his off time, Danny enjoys playing with cats, fussing around the house, and acting as the stunt double for Jared Leto.

The Price is Right? Danny Klingler

Over-the-Rhine is seeing a tremendous resurgence, with huge amounts of investment triggering ever-greater demand for real estate in the historic downtown neighborhood. Where once the conversation revolved around blight, disinvestment, and open-air drug markets, the script has quickly flipped to fears of displacement, over-speculation, and the impact of market forces on affordable housing and diversity.

This vacant building on Republic St. recently sold for $235,000, then sold again for $260,000 two days later.

The speed with which this shift has occurred is astounding. Buildings that only four years ago weren’t attractive enough to warrant someone paying $1, are now selling for $150,000 or more. Investors who for years avoided Over-the-Rhine, preferring to keep their money parked in tried-and-true markets like Clifton and Pleasant Ridge, are now scouring the neighborhood, sending out mailers to every last property owner, offering cash on the spot for their buildings. Of the 1,500 buildings in the historic district, less than ten have not already been snatched up by investors, developers, owner-occupants, or neighborhood nonprofits.

A marketing email the author received in September from an investor that has been aggressively targeting OTR

Much of this resurgence has led to undeniably beneficial outcomes – the elimination of blight, the return of vibrancy, the reduction in crime, etc. But the near frenzied state of the Over-the-Rhine real estate market also raises questions — questions that, as the executive director of a real estate focused nonprofit, I have become keenly aware of. These questions strike at the core of the capitalist economic system and can be summarized as follows: If one owns an asset (building), should one always sell/rent that asset for as much as one possibly can? Should one extract the maximum possible amount of money out of that asset? Should any consideration be given to the potential (negative) impact such a sale would have on the community?

In Over-the-Rhine, there are hundreds of rational economic actors faced with these decisions on a regular basis. Certainly no one can be blamed for selling something for its market value. But how does it impact the community? What if everyone behaved this way in Over-the-Rhine from this point forward?

The easiest example is affordable housing. When someone sells a vacant building for $200,000, it places a very strict limitation on what that building can eventually become. The pool of potential buyers at that price point is likely to be limited to developers who want to build higher-end condos, or couples who have the means to spend $500,000 for a rehabbed home in Over-the-Rhine. If everyone from this point forward sold their property for its market value, Over-the-Rhine would, socioeconomically speaking, become very un-diverse.

These 3 new townhomes on Republic St. have gated parking. ‘Unit A’ is selling for $598,000.

I am reminded of David Throsby and his discourse on different types of value. Certainly there is economic value and it has a very important place in our society; but there are other types of value — artistic value, cultural value, historical value — that don’t necessarily reflect economic value. My fear is that it is these types of value that are not being adequately represented with the fevered pitch of real estate speculation in Over-the-Rhine. When an investor comes to Over-the-Rhine and buys and sells property based solely on the prospect of individual/familial financial gain, the best interests of the neighborhood are given short shrift.

My raison d’etre in Over-the-Rhine is to help it become a model for other places.  It can become a community in the truest sense of the word, where social cohesion is elevated by breaking down superficial barriers and differences between neighbors and where artistic, cultural, and historical values are appreciated as much as the almighty dollar. When rational economic actors place economic value above all else, it limits the space available for these values — limits the potential for small local businesses to open up shop, for working class people to walk to the symphony, for the beauty of Over-the-Rhine’s architecture to be fully appreciated, for the exchange of ideas among people of diverse backgrounds. Here’s to hoping the new property owners of Over-the-Rhine are willing to make a small sacrifice for a more balanced approach to development in the neighborhood — a sacrifice for a greater good.

Charlie Hinkley – writer at large

Charlie is a native of Cincinnati.  He studied marketing in college and has returned to his hometown excited to be a part of its development.  Charlie lives a car-free life in Over-the-Rhine and is especially interested in the role public transportation plays in a city’s growth.  Inspired by transit systems he has seen in other cities all over the world, Charlie is excited to help Cincinnati prosper.

Parking Free – by Charlie Hinkley

Cincinnati is caught up in the nation-wide paradigm shift concerning what makes a community attractive. Like many other older American cities, ours is growing with new residents and businesses for the first time in two generations. Nowhere are our improved fortunes—and new challenges—more evident than in our urban basin, home to both Fortune 500 companies and crushing poverty.

Elected officials and community leaders all talk about the need to maintain a mixed-income, racially diverse, inclusive Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Mostly they have focused on the creation or retention of low-income housing and rent-control policies, often as a prerequisite when building new, market-rate units. While these approaches can do much for many, they are not fully effective at reducing total housing costs, because rent is only a part of the problem.

My argument is simple: eliminating the absolute need for car ownership and the requirement to provide off-street parking will have the immediate effect of reducing the cost of living in the Downtown and Over-the-Rhine areas. Smaller housing costs mean that the neighborhoods are more affordable for a wider range of people.

I am frustrated with every announcement of new construction in Downtown or Over-the-Rhine, and the inevitable inclusion of off-street parking. I am frustrated because car ownership is a huge expense, and the cost of building all this parking is a huge expense.  In the context of creating a mixed-income neighborhood, then, we aren’t putting our money where our mouths are. The typical American household spends almost $10,000 a year on automobile-related expenses. And as a society, we have failed horribly at capturing the cost of negative externalities associated with all our driving, such as: urban flooding, pollution, psychosomatic illness, and the 30,000 Americans who die because of cars each year.

How do we adequately move around our city while also reducing the need and expense for costly car-related infrastructure? By funding a better public transportation system and changing the rules.

Cincinnati Metro already does a lot on a shoestring budget; the organization is regularly lauded for the creative ways it stretches each dollar. It could do a lot more with even a modicum of increased funding.  First, Metro should work to eliminate stops and increase the frequency of core routes. Transit is a constant trade-off between access and ridership. Does the system touch the greatest number of people at an infrequent rate?  Or does it focus on frequency and therefore ridership numbers along core routes? Metro should tip the balance of this equation toward ridership, an easy goal in hilly Cincinnati. Second, it should focus on building more defined stops and transfer points. Bus stops with more effective shelters—including cover from the elements and a bench—would increase route visibility and provide needed protection for its riders, as well as a space to post route maps and timetables. Providing faster, more frequent service between our neighborhood business districts (NBDs), primary jobs locations, and shopping destinations is the smart way to move people for work and pleasure.

While transit funding can be affected by City Hall, our local government’s major contribution to the creation of more broadly affordable housing should be to eliminate minimum parking requirements near the city’s NBDs, particularly within the urban basin. Note that this move would not forbid the creation of off-street parking; it merely removes the government mandate that parking must be built. Thus, the market can take over and developers can decide for themselves how much parking is required for a project. Two underlying policies must change for this to happen. One: the City must stop viewing parking as a primary source of income. Instead, City Hall should focus on boosting income, sales, and property tax receipts through increased economic activity in our NBDs. Two: developers and their bankers must become more comfortable with quality access to transit substituting for proprietary parking. This will take time and clear signals from City Hall.

When seeking to create a racially and socio-economically diverse community in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati’s leaders fail to take a holistic approach.  Rather, they seem to focus solely on the flawed metric of physical housing costs as a means to fight increasing rents and to maintain financial diversity. Their failure to design and fund a superior transportation system imposes unnecessary costs on those at the bottom and middle of the economic ladder.  The government policy of mandated minimum parking requirements distorts the market, reducing the efficacy of Metro while costing developers – and the taxpayers who inevitably subsidize them – millions of dollars. Our current policy may have been applicable when first designed, but it is no longer relevant. Indeed, it has failed for everyone, both those with cars and those without.

It is time we design a new transportation system to reflect our changed values and needs.

Price Hill [Can And] Will

Today’s guest post is by Ken Smith, Executive Director of Price Hill Will.  This is the first in a series.

Surprisingly, many people in the Cincinnati region are unfamiliar with Price Hill-starting with the most basic fact that it’s actually three separate neighborhoods: East, West, and Lower Price Hill, which together account for over 1/10 of the city’s population.

The community was one of the first to be settled outside the basin, as wealthier residents sought distance from industry and pollution.  Price Hill’s growth was greatly accelerated by the addition of the Incline, and by the beginning of the twentieth century the community was a stable, middle-class neighborhood.  This remained true until the latter half of the twentieth century when the housing stock and infrastructure began to age.  As with many areas of the country, people moved out of the urban core, once again seeking a better quality of life for their families. Since 1980, Price Hill has lost 26% of its population.

The community began to see significant disinvestment, which resulted in increased poverty, higher crime rates, conversion of single-family to multi-family housing units, abandonment of housing stock, and out-migration of long-term, middle-class homeowners.  Other results of the disinvestment were increased predatory mortgage lending, a departure of existing businesses, a conversion of commercial space to non-desirable specialty businesses catering to the low income populations, a decline in property value, and an in-migration of low-income rental residents.

In an attempt to reverse many of the negative trends, Price Hill Will began in 2001 as a group of neighbors gathering to talk how to effect positive change in Price Hill. They used a process known as Appreciative Inquiry, based on the premise that positive change can occur best by building on existing assets.  Three-thousand people were interviewed about the attributes of Price Hill.  Several widely publicized community meetings were held to condense these interviews into a comprehensive plan for Price Hill. The result was a unified vision for a healthy, dynamic, and vibrant neighborhood, which was presented in several “bold statements” that focused on Price Hill’s assets. Eight community action teams (CATs)—Arts, Diversity, Eco-Neighborhood, Housing, Churches, Block Clubs, Beautification, and Schools—were created to implement these bold statements.

Until that time, Price Hill Will had been operating as a program of Imago, an environmental education organization that has been active in Price Hill for many years.  By 2004 there was a growing list of successfully completed projects, and an ever expanding agenda. Considering the scope and mission of the work, creating a Community Development Corporation focused on community revitalization seemed to be the best path forward. On August 1, 2004, Price Hill Will incorporated as a separate non-profit focused on community engagement, economic development, and physical revitalization.  Price Hill Will continues to approach its work from the original asset based/appreciative inquiry model.

In the beginning the biggest challenges for the organization were lack of experience, knowledge, stable funding, and credibility.  In the first year, there were no permanent staff, and a total operating budget of $56,000.  With a lot of patience, Price Hill Will began to build on its successes while gaining the expertise to take on large projects.  Over the last eleven years, the organization has been directly involved in almost $26 million in real estate development including the Warsaw Federal Incline Theater  (in partnership with Cincinnati Landmark Productions), The Elberon Senior Apartments (in partnership with The Model Group), over 60 single-family rehabs, St. Lawrence Corner (a park and performance space), and the redevelopment of a commercial building for an urban agribusiness.

Future projects include the redevelopment of a 12,000 sq. ft. Masonic Lodge, the redevelopment of two areas of our business districts (nineteen parcels of land), the Olden Tot Lot Park, the continuation of our single-family rehab program, and the creation of a pilot homesteading program.

In our non-real estate work, we have numerous community engagement efforts including community gardening initiatives, a free, daily, orchestra program that works with eighty-five neighborhood youth called MYCincinnati, neighborhood planning, and community programming such as concerts, outdoor movie nights, holiday events, and gallery hops.  We also are engaged in various economic development initiatives including business support and entrepreneurial training.

We are proud of our accomplishments, but there is still have plenty of work to do.  Like many neighborhoods in Cincinnati and around the country, Price Hill faces many challenges.  We are confident that our strengths, strong foundation, and community partnerships will help us meet those difficulties, and we are glad to be a part of the revitalization efforts happening in Price Hill.

Bad Luck on W. 5th

A historic district is a group of buildings that have been designated as historically or architecturally significant – and the honest to goodness truth is that they are all – every last one of them – a ridiculously expensive, royal pain-in-a-developer’s-butt.

Tour a few “before” and “afters” it won’t take long to conclude there’s a special place in heaven for the idealistic, passionate believers who restore our structural past.   In addition to the normal bureaucracy of construction they have to contend with Historic Conservation Board hearings and specifications like compatible wood-framed windows that cost boatloads of money. It’s a herculean challenge to get an elevator to fit in a five story walk-up built in 1895 so that there’s a prayer somebody will carry groceries to the top floor in 2016.  All this after decades of neglect from absentee landlords, holes in the roof and damage from the elements.  It’s insane.

How does anybody do it?  That must be why cincyopolis is regularly privy to so many stories about historic buildings collapsing under highly mysterious circumstances. Last week Chris Wetterich of the Cincinnati Business Courier, decided one such example was worthy of broader public attention in the traditional press.

The four-story, 24,000-square-foot building at 313 W. Fifth St., built in 1860, partially collapsed recently.  According to John Blatchford, vice president of the Cincinnati Preservation Collective, it was probably after the owner or the tenants began cutting through joists in all the floors to install a spiral staircase without a permit.

In and of itself, the collapse is strange – but it’s particularly troubling in light of the demolition of the adjacent buildings a few years ago, property owned by Shree Kulkarni, member of the Historic Conservation Board.  He turned those into nice, efficient parking lots.

 

313 W. Fifth – to be demolished

 

Auditor’s photo from 2008 of the 2 historic structures torn down to make parking lots.

 

When City Manager Harry Black appointed Kulkarni to the Historic Conservation Board last August, it wasn’t well-received by preservationists.  They weren’t comfortable with previous comments Mr. Kulkarni posted to his Twitter account about the Board’s denial of the demolition of the Davis Furniture Building in Over-the-Rhine.

“Another example of how historic preservation, with no economic interest, is making economic decisions,” Kulkarni wrote. “Terrible result for developer.”  After the Mayor and members of Council vouched for the candidate’s character as a hard-working first generation American, the appointment was approved anyway.

It’s getting to the point citizens don’t know who to trust..  Today’s surface parking has a way of turning into tomorrow’s taxpayer subsidized new construction. One concerned preservationist decided to go check out the damage for himself at 313 W. 5th  and see if this was intentional destruction to circumvent legal protection or if the building really was a safety hazard to the public..

Here’s what he saw:

 

 

 

Accident or intentional sabotage, demolitions are very, very rarely actual emergencies that require immediate government intervention to protect the public from harm.  The real emergency seems to be to avoid public discussion until it’s too late for any other solutions. Owners know what they are buying when they purchase these properties, but they also know how to get around the rules.

It’s time to remind elected representatives why we have historic preservation districts. When Council confirms an appointment to the Historic Conservation Board, character isn’t enough.  We need knowledgeable individuals in a position to make objective decisions untainted by their personal economic interests.  Our built history is irreplaceable and these important decisions deserve more time and respect.

 

Make a noise.  Get feisty.

mayor.cranley@cincinnati-oh.gov

david.mann@cincinnati-oh.gov

yvette.simpson@cincinnati-oh.gov

kevin.flynn@cincinnati-oh.gov

amy.murray@cincinnati-oh.gov

chris.seelbach@cincinnati-oh.gov

christopher.smitherman@cincinnati-oh.gov

pg.sittenfeld@cincinnati-oh.gov

charlie.winburn@cincinnati-oh.gov

wendell.young@cincinnati-oh.gov