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I haven’t spent much time in Cincinnati, but I had an opportunity to spend a couple of hours down there in the riverfront today. Maybe I am misguided, but as we drove on I-71 along the southern end of the business district, I couldn’t help but to think, “Wow.” Driving along that stretch of I-71 and looking north into the city, it looked VERY dense with. street after street of urban canyon, with large buildings packed in tightly. It looked and felt like a BIG city.
The riverfront itself was a complete maze of freeways and access roads which was difficult to navigate. But it was dotted with so many interesting buildings, parks, stadiums, etc. Lots of cool-looking residential buildings.
We went over to the Newport area and had lunch at Mitchell’s Fish Market. The development it was in, like a mini Easton, seemed pretty nice and had a significant amount of activity – lots of people everywhere. Though it was fairly mall-like, it did represent thriving retail in the downtown at a level that Columbus no longer has.
I was only there for a few hours, but I couldn’t help but to walk away with a very positive impression. It felt MUCH more “big-city” than Columbus and seemed to have a lot more character, density and things to do. I would like to head back down again soon to spend more time exploring the rest of the downtown.
This all came as a surprise to me because I can remember a thread here on Underground where people seemed to think that Columbus and Cincinnati were fairly comparable, or that Columbus had the edge.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Columbus, but, by comparison, Cinci just felt like the type of city I hope Columbus can become more like, especially in terms of density. It felt like there were many more building in Cinci, whereas Columbus is 40% surface parking lot. I checked the data on Emporis, and sure enough, Cinci seems to be way ahead of us on the number of buildings in the city at 12 stories or higher…
Columbus: 181 http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/ci/?id=columbus-oh-usa
Cincinnati: 316 http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/ci/?id=cincinnati-oh-usa
Does anyone else have this same impression, or am I off base?
Cincinnati’s an older city and was built up earlier than Columbus, and that plus the geography there (so much has to be jammed in between the hills, as opposed to being able to sprawl over miles and miles of flat land) I think is why it looks and feels that way more than Columbus.
But as a city it is really moving in the wrong direction, like on a Detroit path. It’s too bad, because it does have a lot going for it as a city, but Cincinnati is severely effed up in about a thousand different ways. And I speak here as a native of the place.
In Columbus I feel like the city’s best days are ahead of it. In Cincinnati I just never have that feeling.
(And not to be anal retentive, but Newport on the Levee and all the stuff over there isn’t considered part of downtown Cincinnati…different city, different state. That’s a big issue down there, why all the development is happening on the Kentucky side while Cincinnati sits around with their collective thumbs up their asses trying to get something, anything built on the Banks and downtown continues its death spiral)
I was in Cincy recently. I’ve only been there a few times, but this time I was looking with an eye toward city and regional development.
I noticed a great number of buildings with boarded up windows near UC. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, but this is pretty close to downtown. I seemed a little tired, but tired can mean character or tired can mean, well, tired.
Oh, I should have recommended lunch or dinner at Pigall’s which is run by the former head chef at the now defunct, but nationally renouned French restautrant the Maisonette. Was supposed to go there with my family, but obviously that’ll never happen. Pigall’s is supposed to be the next best thing and I’d like a review. Sadly for Cincy, so much of the population is very negative and really buy into the city=dangerous ghetto notion. Just look at the Cincinnati Enquirer, though there have apparently been a few positive articles on urban Cincy, though whether that’s a fluke we will see. Columbus is much more fortunate in that it’s not so much suburbanites fear going downtown or into one of our great urbs, but that suburbanites here just are really down on downtown (pun unintentional). They just complain how boring it is and how there’s nothing there, which I’d argue is much easier to overcome than what Cincy is dealing with.
also, i will say… friend was graduating from law school. after the ceremony we tried to get a meal at 4pm on Saturday. We had to hit up 4 restaurants before we found one open (sit down places). So, we have that in common- the businesses downtown are dead at times.
Who goes to a new city and eats at a chain restaurant? Especially one that comes from where you live? Why not just go to Wendy’s? What happened to “When in Rome”
Speaking of Rome, tall buildings are highly overrated, especially in the digital age. I wish Columbus would have rejected all tall buildings and made the City look more like London, Paris, Madrid….we would alomost be unique and have something only DC has in this country now.
Economically, is you cut Ohio in half, the bottom southern half would look pretty darn good. It is northern Ohio that is dragging the whole state down.
I guess I wasn’t clear.
We went to four non-fast food, sit down, handed a menu, order a meal, leave a tip local restaurants, walking around downtown until the 4th was finally open. We were led by the recent graduate (and Cincy resident) to these places… oh yeah, there is this Indian place… walk…. closed… oh yeah, this Chinese place… walk… closed… etc.
We passed several open fast food joints on the way- no real indication of a city’s health. So, good question. Who does go to a new city and eat at a chain restaurant?
Circumstances led us to eat at a chain restaurant. We were just passing through Cinci and didn’t have much time to kill. We tried one local place that turned out to be closed, so we settled on the Fish Market. If Cincy had been our destination and we had more time, I definitely would have sought out a few local places.
Personally, I have always appreciated the beauty of a big city skyline. When heading north on I-71/75 in northern Kentucky, there is a point when Cincinnati is not in view, then after a curve in the road the skyline appears out of nowhere and looks amazing. It kind of reminds me of the same type of effect when heading into Pittsburgh. The freeway emerges from a long tunnel that goes through a mountain and the skyline suddenly appears and really looks cool.
At the same time, I realize that many times tall buildings do not have a well-thought-out street presence. Many of Columbus’ skyscrapers do not offer much pedestrian interest (think of the Rhodes Tower or the County Courthouse).
When James Howard Kunsler was in town for a talk at OSU a few years ago, he referred to the landscaped area around the Nationwide tower as a “cartoon landscape” which he felt was less than ideal. Personally, I have always liked that area with all the park-like greenery, fountains, etc., but he seemed to think that it didn’t represent the type of street presence that tall buildings should have.
I certainly agree somewhat with the no skyline comment. It is possible to have skyscapers and be vibrant, however, in our case it was at the expense of a pedestrian friendly city and if I had to choose one over the other I’d easily go without a skyline.
Echoing many above sentiments – the growth on the KY side of the river while great for KY was at the expense of Cincy. A huge bone of contention is the fact that the Munich-based Hofbrahaus (sister-city of Cincy) initially to be placed on the OH side eventually was wooed by KY. It’s one thing for a Newport to seek out fertile grounds, but for Cincy to miss on Hofbrahaus, the shoe-in of the century, is frustrating, and a microcosm of how Cincy has squandered their riverfront…
Instead, two stadiums take up a huge portion of that space. And even finding a place near Great American (Reds park) before/after a game is surprising frustrating. Might as well cab it to Newport.
Newport is definitely nice, a mini-Easton as said above, but like Easton, nowhere to eat outside of chains (CM, Brio, etc). But hey, Newport is just getting started when downtown is shutting down for the day…
Comparing Columbus and Cincy in terms of Urban Residential usage, I have only anecdotes, but feel Cincy is behind and as Hegemo said, moving in the wrong direction. I know medical residents (non-natives) who came in and got downtown apartments, assuming the downtown scene matched the impressive skyline only to find there’s nothing much for them to do. They end up cabbing it to Hyde Park or Mt Adams, regretting not having just moved directly to those areas. There used to be an impressive Main St. scene which was very urban, but bars started precipitously closing after the riots and the opening of Newport.
The Skyline IS indeed impressive – I love that view coming up thru KY on 75/71 – beautiful. But it’s also a snapshot in time – most of those buildings are 60 years old. Similarly, Cleveland has views that reveal a very dense core, reflecting a time in history when it was one of the most populous cities. Columbus’ skyline reflects a much more modern cities (I don’t mean Jetsons, I frankly mean younger buildings). I think a nice skyline can be cool, especially if your skyline has immediate recognition. But not a means to an end. That said, if Cardinal Health decided to move its HQs downtown, I’d welcome whatever creation they’d bring and get excited about the addition to the skyline.
As for European cities, Paris does have a skyscraper “district”, west and completely separate from the Paris we’re familiar with. Never been, but it appears mostly commercial and outside of neat modern architecture, not much for tourists. But perhaps more to your point, it’s entirely functional, and not used by the French as their outward image – they sell many more Eiffel Tower trinkets :wink:
All of these comments have been excellent. Its so cool being able to come to Underground, post some thoughts, and then watch the discussion the develops. I really enjoy hearing the different perspectives, and its been great to see that there are so many different people that have spent a lot of time thinking about these things.
Very cool! :)
Great point about Cardinal Health building a downtown headquarters, and I’m glad I’m not the only one who daydreams about what Columbus might look like if even just Cardinal Health, the Limited, Chase, Wendy’s, and Ashland each built one impressive skyscraper around capital square. What kind of incentives would it take to bring them home…?
It probably just depends on if any of these companies are interested in commercial real estate. The companies who are most likely to build office towers downtown are the ones who are interested in leasing out a large portion of those offices to other companies instead of housing their own offices there. This primarily means banks and insurance companies for Columbus. Oh, and Chase already has a building downtown. I don’t know if they have any of their own offices there anymore, but it’s still theirs.
I could see Cardinal Health building something downtown before Limited (or Victoria’s Secret), Wendy’s, or Ashland. I don’t think Wexner wants to move anything from the Easton/New Albany area, and Wendy’s seems to be pretty proud of being based in Dublin. Their closing of their original store downtown sealed the deal in my eyes that they don’t care at all about downtown Columbus. It would probably be more likely for White Castle to move their offices out of their ugly building and closer into downtown.
Grange is really ramping up their development in the Brewery District. Perhaps some other locally based insurance companies could be approached for expanding and developing? There’s Motorists, Safe Auto, and State Auto.
With Huntington sponsoring the new ballpark for the Clippers, perhaps they could be a potential investor in more of downtown in the near future.
Or maybe Retail Ventures could open something downtown?
What I’d like to see is Columbus luring more out-of-town companies into setting up satellite offices in Columbus. We’re a good central location for a midwestern branch, and already much cheaper for setting something up compared to Chicago. I’m sure plenty of big companies on the east and west coasts would be interested in expanding into the midwestern market.
Oh yea….I have often thought about this as well. What would it be like to live in a city where most of the companies valued being located in the central business district. I often think of the impact Bank One (now J.P. Morgan Chase) could have had if they had decided to build a skyscraper complex in downtown Columbus instead of that giant dinosaur of a building in a cornfield at Polaris.
I am sure the arguments against it would include: “We need to be close to where our employees live,” “It doesn’t make economic sense,” and the ever-popular, “But where would everyone park???????”
I think Kyle Ezell is exactly right when he argues that “the landscape reflects the culture.” The Columbus business culture predominantly values the suburban/car-based model of development and sees little if any value in the urban model.
To get more back on topic though, I’ve only spent a little time in Cincy, and while I agree that the skyline view coming north on 71/75 is really amazing, I’ve never really felt like their downtown area has much to offer outside of the hours of 9-to-5. Not that Columbus is much better. Both have downtown business districts, but I really don’t think Cincy’s density give it much of an advantage for street level aesthetics when there’s no vibrancy past 5pm.
Pretty from a distance and empty up close does not a downtown make.
I do think their downtown portion of 71 is something that Columbus should be looking to for fixing the split. The vertical concrete walls are much more appealing than the slopes of unkempt weeds and trash we’ve got right now. The decorative bridges and walkways from downtown to the Stadiums are nice in Cincy, but I’d prefer to see more of it capped over with businesses, offices, or residences on top, like I’m hoping we’ll be doing with our highways.
I have never had a chance to walk around in the downtown area (aside from my short visit to the riverfront) in order to see first hand what constitutes all that density. I do agree that if there is no vibrancy, then there isn’t much value in a great-looking skyline. One thing Cincy seems to have going for it though is that it appears that they didn’t tear down all of their old, historic buildings in order to make room for parking as we did here in Columbus. They may have a lot of underused, old buildings whereas we have tons of butt-ugly, crumbling, old parking lots and relatively few old buildings.
It did strike me to think about how much of their river front real estate is dedicated to freeways. It felt like a complete spaghetti maze of huge concrete bridges, ramps and parking lots. Not very inviting. I can’t help but to contrast that with the Chicago lakefront that basically has a single road that separates the city from the water, with plenty of pedestrian crossing points. Way more appealing, and much closer to what we may have here in Columbus after the Scioto Mile is completed.
I have also wondered how we ended up with a big tangle of freeways right in the middle of one of the only key geographical features we have: the confluence of the Scioto and the Olentangy rivers. Instead of a great park there, we have freeways (and one restaurant).
Yeah, I think most people have come to realize that Ft. Washington Way (the freeway that runs along the riverfront in Cincinnati) was a huge mistake, because it cut off downtown from the riverfront. Unfortunately, as with 70/71 here, two major interstates come together at that stretch (71 and 75, which merge through N KY and split off again south of Florence), so it’s difficult to undo it. They did do a major reconstruction a few years ago in order to get rid of some of the “spaghetti junction” elements of it and provide better access between downtown and the riverfront. That’s also when they added all the new landscaping and walkways that Walker referred to, which really did improve at least the aesthetics.
There’s some interesting discussion and history here:
http://www.cincinnati-transit.net/fww.html
Of course, arguably the bigger mistake Cincinnati made was, once the decision was made to fund and construct two new stadiums and implode Riverfront, locating the new Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ball Park right back on the Riverfront, taking up huge swathes of land that could potentially have been something a lot more valuable in the long run to downtown’s renewal. There was at least a debate with the ball park and the question of locating it at Broadway Commons in OTR but that ultimately lost out to the usual local short-sightedness and conservatism (in the unwilling to change sense, not the political sense) that seems to keep Cincinnati locked in its cycle of bad urban planning choices.
And just on the skyline issue…of course I am always going to argue that few skylines anywhere are as handsome as Cincinnati’s, with the hills and the river framing the buildings, and the grand old buildings like Carew Tower and whatever the Central Trust building is now (PNC?). But the Columbus skyline has actually grown on me over time…I think it looks very nice lit up at night, especially when they put the different colors on the top of the LeVeque Tower and with the new color-changing light ribbon atop the AEP Building. Especially from the other bank of the river behind COSI.