Cincinnati = progressive and cutting edge

My committee for the Mayor’s Young Professional Kitchen Cabinet had the pleasure of hosting a guest at our meeting tonight – Brewster Rhoads, who is Governor Strickland’s representative for the Southwestern Ohio region. What a ball of energy! Brewster wowed us with countless reasons that we should all be bragging about how progressive and cutting edge our city is and I’d like to share a few of them right here.

 

Did you know that by the end of 2010, the percentage of power used in the city of Cincinnati that is generated from renewable energy will be the highest of any metropolitan area in the US? The future ‘front porch’ of our city, the ever-anticipated Banks project, will be majorly powered by solar power. Wonder why suddenly The Banks is receiving a big chunk of the economic stimulus money? No, not to build more parking garages. It’s to make it a truly green development. Shovel-ready, renewable energy projects – we got one! Yea Earth!

 

“What?” you say, “Cincinnati?!? Green and progressive?!? No way, I still remember going Christmas shopping at Pogue’s with my mother and spending the whole day downtown. It was a special event. There were department stores with deluxe window dressings and the streets were bustling. But not anymore. This city is dead. It will never be like that again.” Wellll, take another look my friend. Just as the decline of this once great city took many years, it will take more than just 3 years to get it back. But we are moving in the right direction, without a doubt. And a huge part of the renaissance that continues to pick up speed in the Queen City is our role in the state of Ohio’s vision to be the Silicon Valley for renewable and progressive energy. It is mandated that by 2025, 25% of the energy sold in the state of Ohio must have been generated from a renewable source. And half of that energy (so 12.5% overall) must have been generated IN Ohio. But how do we accomplish such an aggressive (but oh-so Earth friendly) goal? Brewster has a plan.

 

Ohio is the capital of auto parts manufacturing. No other state supplies (or supplied, as the case may be) the auto factories as heavily as Ohio. “Oh crap,” you say, “and just LOOK at the auto industry! We’re doomed!!!”

 

Now let’s look at the glass half full. The empty auto parts manufacturing facilities come along with a highly skilled workforce that is currently serving your fries at Burger King. And 12.5% of the energy consumed in our state must come from renewable sources in 15 years… which means lots of windmills and solar panels.

 

Have you seen the monstrous windmill in Cleveland on the shores of Lake Erie? We’re going to be seeing a lot more of these in the coming years. And we have to get the parts from somewhere. These towers are chock full of finely machined parts and gears. Not to mention the 300 foot towers they are mounted atop. Do you think it makes sense to ship these towers from China? Of course not. European companies that have already developed some of the technology are actively shopping for US sites to manufacture their products. And guess where they’re doing a lot of the looking? Yes, ma’am. It’s round on the ends and high in the middle…

 

And what about all this education spending we’re hearing about? Did you know that when public schools in Ohio build new or improved schools that they must be LEED silver certified in order to receive state funding? In the next three years, Cincinnati Public Schools will have 12 LEED silver schools – more than any other district IN THE COUNTRY. Not highest percentage, highest number of schools. I love it!

 

A few other cool tidbits: Cincinnati is the only city in the state of Ohio that offers a 15 year tax abatement to property owners that build their new building LEED certified. Talk about incentive to go green.

 

And remember all the press about the Emerald Ash Borer invading the area, effectively wiping out ash trees in our neighborhoods? Well, the powers that be in the city have worked out a great plan to resolve this issue. As the Parks district is going around and cutting down the dead and dying trees and replacing them with new, they are sending them to a mill in Chillicothe. The mill is processing the trees into lumber and returning them to a women and minority owned business in Wyoming (the city on the west side of I-75, not the old West), where they are made into furniture, flooring and wall paneling for the new schools. And all for the same price of pressed board furniture from China. Yea Earth!

 

So before you start poo-pooing our wonderful, diverse, progressive and growing city, think on some of these points. They are improvements and they continue each and every day due to the energy and dedication of citizens who care enough to make it happen rather than sit at home and commiserate about back in the good ol’ days of McAlpin’s and Crosley Field. I’ve no doubt those were good times, but I’ve also no doubt we’ll get back there again and very soon! Yea Cincinnati!

 

…stay tuned for a blog entry about my trip to the Materials Recovery Facility a couple weeks ago, complete with photo documentation…

A different perspective on the state of the world today

Remember back in the day, waaaay back in the 80’s and before? When you went shopping for something special like a piece of furniture, a new dress, a home decorative item and didn’t usually find it on your first trip? You sometimes spent weeks, and depending on what you were looking for, maybe even months scouring Kmart, the mall (notice I didn’t say malls), Sears catalog, perhaps a couple local boutiques, until you finally found what you had in mind. No Bed, Bath & Beyond, no Crate & Barrel, no IKEA, no Express or Ann Taylor or Talbot’s within a 20 minute drive or a click away on your laptop.

Maybe my memory is a little off having grown up in a town that STILL doesn’t have a full-blown Gap, but I was reminded of these days while walking downtown Cincinnati tonight and noticing the different merchants that have shops down here. Rather than get in my car and drive to the wine store and pizza place (now you know what I’m having for dinner tonight!), I decided to take a walk and get these things from my neighborhood. As I was passing an antique Persian rug dealer, I caught myself thinking, “Cool! I never knew I could get an antique Persian rug within a mile of my place!” Mental note for when I have an extra five or six grand I think would be best spent on something people walk on and my cats sleep on…

Later in my walk, pizza in hand, wine in my backpack, I passed a deluxe fabric shop and thought, “Really? You mean if I had the means and desire to re-cover my Value City Furniture couch, I could just walk down the street and pick out a pattern?” And I realized I could probably survive living downtown Cincinnati without a car if I really had to, although the variety of choices would be severely limited. Kind of like back when I was a kid and sometimes had to settle for what was available at The Little Red Shoe House because there simply weren’t any other stores in Traverse City that carried narrow shoes for toothpick skinny 9-year olds! And that got me started on the train of thought… maybe that’s where we are heading now with the contraction of our economy.

The S&P 500 index, which is in my opinion the best measure of the stock market in general, closed today at levels we haven’t seen since October, 1996. What were you doing 12 ½ years ago? What was life like? Egads, how things have changed for me! I was a brainy freshman at the fine institution that paid for my education, Western Michigan University, struggling to ace my honors Chemistry class, teaching my pre-calc teacher how to teach trigonometry, and skating by in my engineering drafting class since I couldn’t have cared less how to draft for engineers. I spent Tuesday and Thursday evenings rehearsing with the vocal jazz group I was lucky to audition into (which helps explain why I DON’T know that Seinfeld episode that every situation reminds you of), I didn’t have a car (my ’87 Ford Tempo, ‘Shirley Tempo,’ was being subjected to the whims of my still-lead-footed little brother back home), and shelling out $1.99 for an order of breadsticks at the Little Caesar’s in our Student Union was a true splurge. My, my, my what a difference 12 ½ years makes!

It’s hard to ignore the constant barrage of bad news right now. The Big D word is being thrown around more and more. No, not that D, this post is about the economy, not relationships! And we’re all beginning to wonder if Grandpa didn’t really have a point when he did the mental calculation of what a $175 pair of jeans would have cost back in the ‘40’s after the Great Depression. (for the record, that was $175 well-spent for what it does to my backside – MUCH better-spent than the fees I paid to PNC Bank for ONE record-keeping error!!!)

I find myself mourning the loss of stores like Linens’n Things and Circuit City. I mean, where am I supposed to go when Bed, Bath & Beyond, Target, Meijer and IKEA don’t have the perfect soap dispenser for my bathroom redecoration? Where do I turn for the latest flat-panel LCD tv when I don’t like the prices at Best Buy, Walmart or hh gregg?

So perhaps we’ve all become pretty spoiled over the past 20 or so years. Or maybe the past 50 or so years. I mean heck, as Americans we’ve been spoiled pretty much since the conclusion of the Revolutionary War when we gained the freedom to govern ourselves! Perhaps it is time to get back to basics.

There has been a nice undercurrent of thinkers and seekers lately pointing out that true happiness is probably not contingent on the size of your SUV (insert mental image of 105-pound soccer mom trying to back up her Excursion, almost needing a phone book to see out the rear-view), the square-footage of your home (how often are all four of those bathrooms REALLY in use anyway?), or the designer label on the sole of your shoes (while I can’t say from experience, don’t those Jimmy Choos do a number on your poor little piggies?). Deep down, we all know this. I mean, I confess to living in an apartment that is at least twice as spacious as I really need, and I DO own a pair of $175 jeans (did I mention how great my butt looks in them though?), but when I really sit down and think about my priorities and what I could and could not live without, I realize it’s probably not all bad in the long run.

Before you call me a Socialist, remember that I make my living by assisting individuals with maximizing their wealth by investing in the stock market. I’m not saying that we should all feel guilty for extracting pleasure from the material things in life. And I’m certainly not saying that consumerism is or should be dead! How will the stock price of Coach ever recover if the market for ridiculously expensive handbags bites the dust for good? 

I suppose I’m just recognizing that there is a balance and that our society as a whole was probably leaning a little too far to the ‘gimme-gimme’ side of the scale. It might not be the blackest day in American history when an average citizen strikes out to buy a new lamp for the living room and doesn’t find it on the first trip!