Donna's Stop and Shop

This post is triggered by an online discussion at Victorian Antiquities about the nearest building in the photo below. It is 24 West Elder Street, and the City recently added it to a list of building's that they propose to demolish:

My earlier post on 1974 Findlay Market included this photo of these buildings:

A map of the area, there once was a school in the north half of the Findlay Playground:

Following are some photos from this weekend:

The owners of this building are completely unreachable or maybe even deceased. The tax mailing address is a housing project in the West End that was demolished years ago. The OTR Foundation included this building in a proposed receivership proposal to the City in 2008. As far as I know the receivership plan has not progressed beyond talk. The side, front:

Alianthus tree growing out of window:

Rear of the building, where two alleys meet, and across the street from the Findlay Baseball field:

Deteriorated side porches:

This corner of OTR is interesting. It is more abandoned than the rest, and many of these buildings have unreachable or stubborn owners who do nothing. These two buildings are just north of the Findlay Playground on a stub of Republic Street, near Schwarz's Point. Seems like this owner was in the news for criminal resale of baby formula or some such scandal:

More vacancy along Goose Alley. The other side of these buildings face Race Street:

Republic Street, just south of the park. The pink building on the left is a really cool lot with buildings that face both Republic and Vine Street. Not surprisingly, this is another vacant building owned by longtime slumlord Sondra Walls:

The north wall of the Sondra Wall's buildings:

Northgate 40% Vacant and Bankrupt

I was just on the Enquirer website and made the mistake of reading the comments on a few stories and was (again) completely blown away by the ignorance and hatred of both our city and of our fellow citizens.

Someday, and it won't be long, those people who think the city is a sewer and that Northgate Mall is is going bankrupt because it went "ghetto" will wake up and realize that the world has changed, and doesn't revolve around their old high school rivalries. While scrounging their next meal out of a cheeze doodle bag in their mold-infested "finished" basement they'll get their fat ass out from behind their TV screen and car windshield, and maybe actually walk on a sidewalk and interact with strangers.

Look, malls are history. A new mall has not been built in this country for years. Northgate is not vacant because black people started shopping there. It is vacant because we have too much ugly sprawling crap-selling retail stores, and you keep building more.

Wake up! This is a wide, diverse and beautiful city, and everyday downtown is getting better.

Time to decide: join the crowd and move further out ...or beat the crowd and return to the city.

The Snowy Hillsides

 

 

trail to Art Museum 

city from mt adams 

mt adams 

Haste Makes Waste

For every hour spent in a car you will, on average, decrease your life by 20 minutes.

NAHB Changing Course

The National Association of Home Builders is a trade organization that for 68 years has advocated for sprawl. Since the 1940s they have lobbied local and our national government for more roads, less zoning and cheaper vinyl siding.

A few weeks ago they held their convention, and an associate noticed an interesting trend in the program topics:

-Back to Smaller, Better Floorplans
- Transit-Oriented Development: The New Wave of Site Selection..
- Making Workforce Housing Work! Examples from around the country
- ASLA/NAHB Land Planning Workshop
- High Density-50 Units per Acre and More
- Attainable Housing-Designing for the Workforce
- Rethinking Density: Maximizing Infill Development Opportunities
- Boomers in the City: Designing for an Urban Lifestyle

The members in the NAHB are very traditional in their thinking, and seeing some of these topics in their agenda is very surprising.

Urban Farming Program

Urban Farm Program Seeks Urban Farmers

Ready to make that career transition and jump into work you love? Are you a great gardener seeking to make your avocation your vocation? Or, maybe you are farming in the hinterlands of metro Cincinnati (or beyond) and want to establish market production plots just blocks from Findlay Market. Or, perhaps you have friends, family, neighbors, church members, or others who you know would be great urban farmers if only they had the land and the opportunity. The key variable is the willingness to earn significant income through the long hours and hard work of commercial vegetable production farming. This will be long-term, ongoing work.
Findlay Market seeks both apprentice and experienced farmers. We will train apprentice farmers (having less than two years experience) and support skilled farmers (at least two years growing and commercial selling of produce, dairy, or meats). Working together, we will take vacant lots and develop them into lush, green, productive, and income producing farm plots. Farmers will be responsible for all aspects of growing food in the urban core: clearing ground; preparing raised beds; tilling; adding organic soil amendments; irrigating; and planting, cultivating and harvesting vegetables. Participants will write business plans; plan their plots; market and sell their harvest; keep expense and incomes records; analyze and evaluate all aspects of their work; and strive to make a living.
Interested in applying? Know someone who needs to apply? Contact Urban Farm Manager Ken Stern at the Corporation for Findlay Market, 513-665-4839, x14 or kstern at findlaymarket dot org. Interviews will be in February and chosen participants will jump into planning their 2010 farm plots in March.

Great Transit Articles

This was the set of links in the weekly email from Protransit. If you're not on their email list and are supportive, send your contact info here.

Investment, Not Spending
Every High-Speed Rail system around the world generates operating surpluses (including Amtrak’s Acela) and are highly popular with riders.

Can high-speed rail succeed in America?
High-speed rail represents the kind of long-term infrastructure investment that will pay back for decades, just as the interstate highway system of the 1950s has.

Accessibility, mobility and automobile dependency
During the last century, faster and cheaper automobile transport significantly increased accessibility, but those improvements essentially peaked about 1980.

The Architecture of Healthiness
“It’s not necessary for us to go to the gym.”

Magic Highway Predicting Today

I've been thinking a lot about predicting the near future, and watching a video like this from 1958 shows the weaknesses starkly.

This is not to say that much of what is predicted didn't come true. Unfortunately much of it did. See for example at 2:44:

..The shape of our cities will change as expanded highway transportation decentralizes our population centers into vast urban areas. The commuter's radius will be expanded many miles...

All of which has certainly happened. And I can appreciate and maybe be nostalgic for the optimism shown in the video, however a more realistic predictor would have seen the negative consequences of 62 million cars on congestion and energy demand.