Development News (Cincinnati, Hamilton, Clifton: occupancy, studio, hottest)

[CinciFan]

Here's a link about the hotel: The Banks developers hope to have hotel ready for 2015 All-Star Game - Cincinnati Business Courier

I haven't heard of any height disputes involving the hotel. I think you may be thinking of when dunnhumby was looking at building their new HQ at the Banks. They were talking about putting a 30 story tower there, which a lot of people didn't like.

[fakkelsey]

^ You might be right. Thankyou for the link. I bookmarked that one.

[Johnny Ohio]

Originally Posted by Man About Town

Wow. I didn't know there were tunnels under Cincy other than the ones built for subway use. Can any of those other tunnels be put to some sort of transit-related use?

I doubt it. They're not nearly big enough for that. It isn't a big connecting network (that I know of), but a bunch of individual pieces that served mostly brewing purposes. Even if they were, I doubt that they'd be considered large enough, or even structurally sound enough to handle any transportation.

[motorman]

^ No, they weren't. They were all intended to be private storage-areas alone, rather than public transportation-modules.

[unusualfire]

Originally Posted by Johnny Ohio

I doubt it. They're not nearly big enough for that. It isn't a big connecting network (that I know of), but a bunch of individual pieces that served mostly brewing purposes. Even if they were, I doubt that they'd be considered large enough, or even structurally sound enough to handle any transportation.

ANYTHING can be custom fit. But unless the feds make a new pilot program to revive such structures. I doubt anything would be put down the in the near future.

[seanian]

Originally Posted by Man About Town

Wow. I didn't know there were tunnels under Cincy other than the ones built for subway use. Can any of those other tunnels be put to some sort of transit-related use?

They were used during prohibition to move alcohol around the area without having to have it hit the streets. They would move the booze all over OTR bringing it up to these bars that were in the backs of buildings, hidden from sight. There are tunnels connected buildings all over the OTR area from building to building, going under streets, etc... It's just that most of them have not been found, they tend to stumble onto them, or try to find hollow sounding walls. They'll find the large basements they didn't know they had and they are now slowly trying to clean up. Some will also have sub-basements. In the Christian Moerlein tour you can find out a lot about this. There is a building with a sub-basement they found by knocking out a section of the basement floor to see if there was anything under it and there was. There was a room with a 50ft ceiling underneath the basement. It's like finding a warehouse under your building, then cleaning it up and then finding an even bigger warehouse under that. Some of these are not small basements, some are very huge where you could probably host a wedding reception or have a night club. None of these are on any blue prints because they didn't want officials to know they were there. This is one of the problems with finding all of the passages and secret rooms.

There is no way these could be used for transportation, but if they could get all of these connected throughout OTR, it would be one of the coolest things ever to see.

[Ohiogirl81]

Originally Posted by seanian

They were used during prohibition to move alcohol around the area without having to have it hit the streets.

More accurately, the breweries built "lagering cellars", or tunnels, for beer storage -- before the advent of refrigeration and long before Prohibition.

They were quite common before electricity allowed large-scale refrigeration. Underground, temperatures were consistent and cool enough to ferment and store the beer.

[seanian]

Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81

More accurately, the breweries built "lagering cellars", or tunnels, for beer storage -- before the advent of refrigeration and long before Prohibition.

They were quite common before electricity allowed large-scale refrigeration. Underground, temperatures were consistent and cool enough to ferment and store the beer.

Yes, you are correct that they did have large cellars for refrigeration of the beer because it was the perfect temperature. Cincinnati was a big beer brewing city and it required many of these cellars for this purpose. Although that was not why the tunnels or other large cellars were built. They did build them to move alcohol around the city without hitting the streets. Cincinnati wasn't going to stop drinking just because the federal government said to stop, lol.

I always heard the same thing when it came to the cellars under OTR, but until I went on the tour, they said the network of tunnels and the other cellars were built during prohibition. Go on one of the Christian Moerlein tours, they actually explain all of this. If they are wrong, then you can question them on this. If I misunderstood them, then I guess I should've recorded the tour, lol. Actually that would've been a nice idea since things do sometimes get skewed. The tour is free and it is fun. I'm actually thinking of going back soon so I can have more questions answered. The guy was actually very knowledgeable.

[rrtechno]

"These various tours are 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours long and visit two or three historic pre-Prohibition breweries, including long abandoned lagering cellars and tunnels 30-40 feet below ground."

OTR Brewery District | Cincinnati, OH

[seanian]

Originally Posted by rrtechno

"These various tours are 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours long and visit two or three historic pre-Prohibition breweries, including long abandoned lagering cellars and tunnels 30-40 feet below ground."

OTR Brewery District | Cincinnati, OH

That is so cool. I want to go on one of these tours now too.