Recession Ending Anecdote

About two years ago my classmates from college reunited and began a group email. At that time, much of our email discussion was about the tough economic climate and how construction projects had slowed to a halt. In 2009, we had a reunion, and since then, the back and forth emails have slowed to rare or seldom.

So this morning one classmate sent out a blast email saying his office was looking to hire several project managers. What was interesting was the response. Several other classmates responded by saying that their offices were also getting busy and looking to hire more people. Since these people are mostly architects, developers and interior designers, this tells me that more projects are being planned for construction this year, which should be good for construction and other related industries. It seems a bit tentative, and there are still a lot of people on the sidelines looking for work, but I definitely see the signs of improvement in construction.

Finance Quote of the Day

"Construction lending is really the cocaine of the banking industry..."

At least it was... until 17% of them went into default ...

"If a bank forecloses on a house, it's a house. Everybody knows what to do with it,..But if you're dealing with a half-constructed hotel or a half-constructed strip mall, not only does no one want it, you now have to maintain it" ... many bankers have chosen to wait it out, extending the terms of loans to troubled developers to keep from having to foreclose and take possession of a half-built headache. Which leaves bad loans and troubled property in limbo...

- USA Today article

SCPA Outdoor Theater

I noticed that at the rear of SCPA (near the corner of 12th and Elm, they are just now installing the outdoor theater. I think they were holding off on this until they raised the money. It looks like they will extend the canopy from above the door all along the wall:

Anytime you dig aroung here, you dig up old building remnants

The bricks are the remnants of these buildings:

Pics of the demo at this corner.

Great American Tower in Origami

Like everyone else downtown, I've been watching the crown go up on the newest tower in Cincinnati. From some vantage points, ie: Mt Auburn/Mt Adams, I find it it is disturbing. But from the river, as in this origami it presents a decent face:
 

Found here(PDF) an advert for Oldcastle.

BTW, the view of this building from 4th street (when you look up at all of that 40+ stories of flat glass) was exactly what Frank Lloyd Wright meant when he called modernist boxes "flat chested".

Pleasant Street Shaping Up

Jerry's Disco Palace

Before and After:

[where: 1344 Vine Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202]

I'll have a lot more about this building as construction continues.

Reunion - Does Anything Really Change

My old mates from the 1980s DAAP returned to Cincinnati this past weekend. They came from all over the country had a few beers together, then they all quickly left again. Most of them have not been to Cincinnati in 20 years and will likely not come back soon.

Back in 1989 our lives were completely in flux. Most of us moved several times in that first year out of school. It's hard to remember, but back then, none of us had ever heard of email much less Facebook. We lost track of each other, and I really never thought I would see them again. I kept in touch with one or two of my best friends. Sometimes in my work, I will run into one old classmate who stayed in Cincinnati, but not very often.

But here they all were, re-assembled for a short weekend. I guess my first impression is that the essence of a person does not change over time. It was almost like we had just been away for 20 days, not 20 years. And unfortunately, that was their impression of Cincinnati. Several of them remarked to me that driving down Vine Street from Clifton was like going back into a time warp. Nothing had changed. "So much potential..." I heard that phrase over and over.

I made my attempt at showing the positives. I took a small group on a tour of Downtown, Clifton and OTR. And even though they demanded we see the starchitecturual icons, I don't think they found the Eisenman, Gehry, Libeskind or Hadid buildings the most memorable. I took them to a few OTR rehabs, including a building on Broadway that is being lovingly restored. They were fascinated with the quality of the buildings. And when we went all the way to the rooftop and saw OTR spread in front of us with the church steeples, the distant hills and the curve of the river, they were again blabbering about "the potential" of it all.

So I did my duty as ambassador until Sunday 1pm when I drove some to the airport. Sitting at the Delta Check-in door were three other classmates heading east. I said, come back in 5 years and it will be even better. "Yeah, OK..." They made a crack about Walter Cronkite actually dying 5 years ago, and it just now making the front page of the Enquirer. That was pretty funny.

Then I drove back home through Florence Y'all, back up 75. I turned on the radio and first heard Jimmy Buffet. The next station was country. The next had a DJ saying that Cheap Trick was coming to concert and "Next up.. some Jude-aass Priest..." Ugh.

Building Laying Down

You've probably seen this already, but it is so fascinating to me, I just had to comment. Somehow a building was built in China with poor foundations on quicksand like soil, and tipped over like a domino while still under construction. The layers of safety, permits, engineering reports, insurance requirements and special required inspections guarantee that nothing this flimsy could ever be built in this country:
and  

 

Weird hollow tube footings:
 

City Home

City Home is a mix of new townhouses and condos in existing buildings. This is a unique parnership between several parties, notably OTR Community Housing and 3CDC. The development encompasses much of the 1400 block of Pleasant Street. If you don't know, Pleasant Street runs parallel/between Elm and Race from 14th to Findlay Market. The main selling point is proximity to Music Hall and off-street parking. For the new buildings, it is a rare chance to own a townhouse instead of a condo in OTR. Personally, I prefer the larger historic buildings, but having these 2-3 story townhouses adds to the mix of choices to potential homebuyers.

View from the northern end of Pleasant Street looking south and east. The new garden area is to the immediate left:

Looking down on Pleasant Street from the rehabbed building on the west side of the street:

View from balcony of rehabbed building on west side of street:

Interior of new townhouse, living room:

Stair:

This laundry area is at the top of the stairs. The areawell lets light in and separates the front of the house from the garage:

Kitchen:

Bedroom in new townhouse:

Inside of bay window:

Each townhouse has inset area with patio below:

This is the area where a new community garden will be planted. Underneath is storm detention tanks required by MSD:

The rest are photos from a month ago, when I was looking at how they installed the electric underground and re-used the granite curbing:










See here, the granite curb was re-laid with a gentle curve to widen the sidewalk enough for a (future) tree:





Electric being installed under sidewalk:

Trinity Flats

Trinity Flats is a new building at the southwest corner of 14th and Vine. I have followed this project from the early demolition of the old buildings, and through construction. This is the first new building on Vine Street since "Gateway I" (in the 1100 block).

There are 9 condos, one storefront and a first floor garage parking. Each unit has balcony and 3 of them have roof decks. The total project budget was $2.5 million and I noticed that a couple have sold. A bunch of my photos were blurred, so only a few photos here, and none of the Rookwood tiled elevator and entrance lobby:








[where: 1331-3 Vine Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202]

Across the street, the next project is under construction:


UPDATE: See Glaserworks website for floor plans on this project.

14th and Vine Condos Update

One thing I try to do is correct myself or apologize when I was wrong. When I saw the original drawings for this building, I was pretty negative on it. But now that it is almost completed, I have to say it is looking good.

In the original rendering, the walls were shown blue. I didn't know it would be brick. For a building like this, details matter, and they have paid attention to some important details, such as the stone base and the alumacore detail around the uplighting. I think it all comes together. Sorry for the cell-phone pics:

Overall view from across the street:
 

The corner is transparent:
 

Uplighting detail
 

Storefront glass garage doors:
 

Also, the building across the street is just begining to take shape:
 

Thinking is for Losers

I just finished a satisfying home-improvement job. I have a list of at least a dozen similar projects, some quite big. This blog post is mostly a reminder to myself that building is better than browsing the internet, writing a blog or reading a book. Better to live your life than read or write about it.

I was talking to our herdshare farmer the other day, and he commented that he was helping his brother build his house. And they were making quick work of it, just the two of them. And this reminded me that I once had that attitude.... that I can just go out and build it. And, Ive seen lots of people in the city take a vacant building or a vacant lot, and make a home for their family.

Most people work their whole lives to own their house. But we have made the whole building enterprise too specialized but at the same time too generic. People think about resale value instead of putting themselves into their home. And what do those paperboard houses look like now, with the overgrown grass, faded vinyl siding and rotted wood deck? Are they real homes, or are they just drywall rooms for our stuff?

This reminds me of another person I just heard about. Houses are so cheap around town, that this guy decided to just buy one and use it for his personal storage unit. He was tired of paying $200 a month to store all his junk. So why not buy a house for $9,000 instead?

But seriously, everyone should once in their life build a house, or save one from demolition, rehab it, expand it. It is the most rewarding work. I guarantee you that no one who is building their own house suffers from depression. Physically constructing a home is the complete antidote to malaise. And better yet, do the work with your life-mate, and you build strong loving memories. What couple can divorce, when their home is the physical embodiment of so many happy memories of them working together?

Quit thinking about it, get off your ass and make it happen.

14th Street New Building

I've been watching this building go up. This photo is of the north side, along 14th. The first level structure was concrete and is being faced in a sandstone type material, and is detailed pretty good to match the neighborhood. There also appear to be quite a few outdoor balconies which are critical when building down here. I'm still not so sure about the circular roof at the corner, but I'm keeping an open mind about it:

 

Building Cincinnati says that these condos are now available.

SCPA Construction Update

 

Broken Windows and Incremental Repair

[Where: 1810 Elm Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202]

Last summer, this building was fully occupied. It was built in the 1880s, occupied as rental housing with a storefront for 80 years, then rehabbed under the project-based Rental Rehab program in the 1970s by Tom Denhart. During the 1970s rehab, it was sandblasted, and gutted. Much of its historic character was removed. The storefront was converted to housing. Smaller aluminum windows were installed in the bigger brick openings.

When I first came to OTR, I thought that the biggest problem was getting the vacant buildings rehabbed. But since I've stuck around long enough, I now see that is not enough. It is not enough because many buildings that were completely rehabbed in the 70s, 80s and 90s are now vacant again...

I think it is worth pondering what the difference is between a building that is continually occupied vs. one that is periodically vacant. It is the difference between incremental repair and major construction, the difference between ownership and absentee landlords, the difference between salvage and gutting.

See, the building above is owned by a corporation, Hart Realty. The owner is old and supposedly bankrupt. But the remnants of the corporation still litter the city. And these windows will stay broken and will attract more stones, probably for years, until someone comes up with a very large mortgage to completely rehab it again. And if it is done by a another corporation, who just sees this building as a way to make money, it will probably be vacant again in 30 years.

(And by the way, I don't know about every one else, but standing there looking at these broken windows, with stones laying at my feet, I was tempted to break some glass too. Now I would never do that, but it is interesting that these tendencies are so strong. )

But, if the building were to be bought by someone who could give it some love and care, it could really blossom. The front still has remnants of its former beauty, and structurally it is solid. Part of the problem in OTR is that many of the buildings are too big for small time owners. It is one thing to buy a single family rowhouse in Newport or Northside and do all the work yourself, but it is quite another to take on a 5-unit building with a commercial space in OTR.

But it is possible...

OTR Under Construction!

This new construction in Over the Rhine is very exciting. It is so strange to see new wood framing in the Washington Park area. Both projects are at about the same rough framing stage and are showing lots of promise. Enjoy.

First is the new construction on Pleasant Street by OTR Community Housing. In the photo are the 5 new townhouses, but the project also includes the rehab of several buildings.

The garages, with living above, facing alley:
Visible between two buildings:
I love this new view of Pleasant Street taking shape!
Previous posts on this project: Demo and Foundations.

Next is a condo project by The Model Group. This has first a concrete first floor commercial space, with wood-framed residential above.

View from Republic and 14th:
View of the Model Project from Vine:
Previous Post showing demolition of previous buildings on this site. First Concrete and rendering. Progress photo from August.