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New police substation reclaims former crime hot spot

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New substation location in former “Red Point” storefront

Back in the day WHRF shared an office with the Cincinnati Police substation on the corner of Hemlock and McMillan. We moved out and set up our own digs and now the officers at the substation get a chance to try out a new space of their own. Starting in mid-December, the police substation will be moved to 921 E McMillan (better known as the Red Point).

“That area of McMillan has been improving as far as safety goes,” said probation officer Nick Kern, one of the officers who will be working out of the new substation. “We’re excited to be there and to help continue that positive transformation.”

The Red Point was once a center for drug activity, and WHRF worked together with the Cincinnati police to get it shut down. In less than a year, a storefront which was once a hot spot for crime will become a hot spot for safety. The old sub-station location will be improved to attract a new ground-floor retail or office tenant. Now, that’s progress!

New Restaurant Coming to Walnut Hills in 2014

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City’s oldest remaining firehouse to be home to Fireside Pizza. Get a sneak peek inside on November 20th.

We’re proud to announce that not only will a great historic asset in the neighborhood be renovated in the coming months, but it will also become a new restaurant serving fantastic food to residents from the neighborhood and throughout the city. Fireside Pizza has joined us at all of our Cincinnati Street Food Festivals and even a Five Points Biergarten with their brick oven on wheels, and we can’t wait for their brick-and-mortar location to open in Walnut Hills!

If you weren’t lucky enough to be at the press conference for the new Fireside Pizza restaurant, we’ve got you covered! On November 20 from 6 pm – 9 pm, the firehouse will be the site of our monthly Meet-up (Facebook Event). Fireside will be there serving up their amazing pizza, and to help you visualize your future dining experience even more realistically, we’ll be serving up cold beer from Mt. Carmel.

Plus, this month we’re having a raffle you don’t want to miss – a free one-night stay at Spring Hill Suites. That’s right, ladies and gents, for just $2 you could be rolling in fluffy hotel pillows. We’re also partnering with the Marines to collect Toys-for-Tots! Please bring a toy (of a value up to $30) for a child up to the age of 14. Every toy donation gets you one free raffle ticket and a warm feeling in your heart.

Here’s a bit more for those interested in the development-side of the Firehouse renovation: Developer FC16 LLC, led by Kent Hardman of Hardman Investment Group, is buying the Firehouse, located at 773 E. McMillan St., as well as the adjacent brownstone and two parcels of vacant land from the City of Cincinnati. The restaurant will be located on the ground floor of the firehouse (brief history of the firehouse), with an apartment on the second floor (More from the Business Courier).

Talking Form-Based Code with Vice-Mayor Qualls

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Our Executive Director, Kevin Wright, joined Vice-Mayor Roxanne Qualls yesterday on WVXU‘s Cincinnati Edition to discuss the City’s new Form-Based code implementation and how the new code impacts our neighborhoods! Walnut Hills is one of four pilot neighborhoods in Cincinnati that volunteered to adopt this new type of zoning, and we’re very excited about the opportunities it will provide

According to Vice-Mayor Qualls, the Form-Based code “specifies proportion and relationship to the street and to other buildings. People are choosing more and more to live in our neighborhoods because they want an urban experience and we know the value of the architecture and the original urban form of our communities. Form-based codes respect that and it actually allows for new development that is also respectful of that original urban form.”

Qualls adds that the new code “makes things very clear to developers what they can do in a specific neighborhood. You should be able to get all your approvals in a very short amount of time.”

In the case of Walnut Hills, Kevin Wright states that it “allowed the community to create a vision for their business district and how they want it designed. We took that vision and are attaching a zoning code to it.”

According to Wright, the new code system “creates a win-win-win for community, the City and the developer”. “When we visited Nashville”, he continues, “some developers even admitted being skeptical at the beginning, but once they started developing under the code and saw that the form based code was much easier to use than conventional zoning…developers loved it.”

Click below to listen to the full interview: