03 July 2008

Red Horse Bar

In the 1980s and into the early 90's, this was the Red Horse Bar. It had harsh flourescent lighting, dirty linoleum flooring, formica bartop and a bare glass front. It served cheap drinks for drunks and addicts. The police were there all the time. It was a place I was afraid to walk past. Lately it has been a used furniture store and then vacant.

Al Rohs, who owns Rohs Hardware store 3 doors down, told me that his grandfather had a jewerly store in this building. He said the beautiful first floor showroom opened up to a grand second floor showroom. You can see the windows for this upper level showroom here in the photo.

The current owner, Model Management, has been doing tons of tax-credit projects, which are rented to low-income renters, but they are also doing lots of condos too. I have no idea what their plans are for this one.

[Where: 1411 Vine Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202]

4 comments:

Morris said...

I was in the second floor of this building a couple of years ago when a couple of friends and I were looking at Vine St. real estate. It's pretty amazing- I wish I had brought my camera. As I remember, the second floor has nice tin ceiling with a giant mural on one of the walls that's deteriorating and peeling off. There's a large atrium like opening into the first floor that's been boarded over. And there were a ton of bicycles being stored on the floor for some reason.

When we were there, the first floor was a convenience store called Chiefs.

I think this building is going to be tough to do for condos because of the costs of renovation and the limited amount of condos you could put in it. It would make nice commercial space though.

CityKin said...

You should have bought it! I don't like it at all when one developer owns so much of the neighborhood.

I hope they don't do condos on the second floor, but somehow keep it open to the first floor as commercial.

Morris said...

Buying the building is the easy part. Getting the numbers to work when rehabbing a building is the hardest part. The problem is that commercial space is pretty worthless with rents running around$10/sqft per year.

CityKin said...

Very true.

Apartments or condos makes sense, but retail space has little current value. I know this from personal experience.