the urban news for the week ending Sunday, July 6, 2008
 The bill to repair Franklin County's damaged baseball park could reach $200,000, and commissioners are preparing to sue if the contractor that sank a section doesn't pay up.
...a report obtained after The Dispatch filed a public-records request places blame on that plumber for as much as $200,000 in damage to Huntington Parkââ¬Â¦
A second-story floor is cracked and a crane is holding up a steel supporting column at Huntington Park after a concrete footer sank over the weekend, causing an undetermined amount of damage to the new home of the Clippersââ¬Â¦
NetJets Aviation and sister company FlightSafety International were formally awarded state job-creation tax credits valued at $26.4 million today.
The city council finance committee will meet with the seven city department directors Tuesday night to ask what projects need done in the city during the next five years, NBC 4's Mikaela Hunt reported.
Millions over budget. The city's divisions of police and fire are headed toward red ink, and it's partly because of excessive overtime hours.
The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved the tax credits for the New Jersey-based private aviation company, which are tied to creating and retaining nearly 2,800 jobs in the region. NetJets and FlightSafety International were awarded 75 percent credits for 15 years to help them expand their Columbus operations.
The Transportation Division of the Columbus Public Service Department decides the locations of parking meters, the length of permissible parking time, hours of enforcement and fees. The department's Parking Violations Bureau empties the coins from meters and issues parking tickets for expired meters. Some related factsââ¬Â¦
No matter how hard city leaders work to compete for convention business, without enough full-service hotel rooms near its convention center, Columbus will be disadvantaged, regardless of what else it has to offer.
City officials say they're reining in capital spending, even though the November bond issue is 2 1/2 times larger than any other put before Columbus voters. Dorrian said recently that he will halt bond sales for the rest of 2008, and he was among a group that worked to pare the list of projects in this year's package.
The former Ohio State University basketball star is looking into developing a boutique hotel at the northwest corner of Gay and High streets. His Toledo development company is trying to make the numbers work for a four-story, 150-room property on what is a parking lot.
Why spend the money on rehabbing brick streets when there are other streets to pave and fix? The city said it's a matter of safety and that just because the process is more expensive, it can't be ignored.
Redevelop Our Area Responsibly (ROAR), a group composed of organizations surrounding Copper Stadium, last Thursday held an open meeting to inform residents on why its members believe a racetrack would be detrimental.
There are 32 miles of brick streets in the city and German Village will be the first area worked on. Webster estimated the entire cost of the program will be about $200,000.
The company's primary role will be to review and analyze any financial proposals presented by Nationwide Realty, the developer of Grandview Yard, and report on the financial impact a proposal will have on the city, Conley said.
Home prices are poised to fall further in coming months, economists said Tuesday after a closely followed index showed that prices in April had fallen at their steepest year-over-year rate since at least 2000.
From Atlanta's urban core to leafy neighborhoods filled with chirping crickets in Charlotte, N.C., some 2.2 million homes are expected to go through foreclosure âââ‰â¬Å and stand empty âââ‰â¬Å by the time the mortgage meltdown ends, according to Global Insight, an economic research firm.
A total of 2,064 central Ohio homes were sold in May, a 15.7 percent increase over April's total, the board announced yesterday. However, the number represents a 17.2 percent decline from the previous May.
Sales of existing houses in Central Ohio dropped more than 17 percent in May, the second largest percentage decline this year, the Columbus Board of Realtors reported Thursday.
The Columbus Metropolitan Club just recently started to post their forums online after they occur. In May I moderated a discussion for the CMC about "Developments on the Urban Frontier" that was geared to talk about what opportunities lie downtown now that the downtown "boon" has subsided.
The first question school officials face is why a district that is significantly smaller than the one that successfully sought a 6.95-mill levy in 2004 now seeks a far larger tax increase.
The board approved the measure to place a 7.85 mills operating levy and $164 million bond on the ballot, 10TV's Tracy Townsend reported.
According to a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, DHL notified ABX on June 20 that it would reduce the services ABX is providing by 23 aircraft by the end of 2008. That will affect 16 of ABX's scheduled air routes, the airline said.
Around three weeks ago GM officials announced its plans to shut down the plant in Moraine forcing around 2,500 workers out of a job.
Ohio ranked 47th in the U.S. in entrepreneurial activity in 2007, according to a recent study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The nonprofit organization based in Kansas City supports entrepreneurs.
If America does not act, says Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association (RPA), a body that plans for the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region, it will have the infrastructure of a third-world country within a few decades. Economic growth will be constricted, and the quality of life will be diminished.
Dayton has an empty cargo facility. Cincinnati has empty cargo space. The last thing that region can support is another cargo operation, Boyd said.
Moving freight by rail has the potential to save Americans hundreds of dollars and time in the car, according to the Congestion Relief Index, a study of traffic congestion in 82 major urban areas.
Research groups are looking for alternatives to paying for gas laid out a plan they think could work for anyone.
People tend to think gentrification goes like this: rich, educated white people move into a low-income minority neighborhood and drive out its original residents, who can no longer afford to live there. As it turns out, that's not typically true.
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