A private, off-campus apartment complex geared toward students and located just blocks away from the University of Cincinnati is facing possible foreclosure.

The Bank of America has filed legal action in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas against the owner of McMillan Manor, a five-story, 122-unit apartment building that opened in 2006.

Read More

Faced with the choice between job layoffs or a second round of unpaid furloughs for employees, executives at the financially troubled Gannett Co. announced today they were selecting the latter course.

Gannett, the parent firm of The Cincinnati Enquirer, announced a furlough program that will require most non-unionized workers to take at least five days of unpaid leave sometime in April, May or June. The move is expected to save the company about $20 million.

Read More

Almost a full decade after Cincinnati voters passed a charter amendment that changed the way police chiefs are selected, it's being used for the first time.

City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr. announced this morning that he's selected a candidate from outside the current police ranks to head the Cincinnati Police Department. James E. Craig, who currently is the chief in Portland, Maine, will take the top spot here beginning in about a month, a city spokeswoman said.

Read More

(** UPDATE FOLLOWS AT END)

With another round of layoffs hitting The Enquirer and other Gannett newspapers nationwide, time will tell if a separate trend at the media company will occur soon in Cincinnati.

Gannett announced last week that it was pulling the plug on the print editions of two faux alt-weeklies, Metromixin Indianapolis and Noise in Lansing, Mich. Both will maintain an online presence, at least for now.

The move follows the cancellation of Metromix's print edition in Nashville last winter and the end of Velocity as a stand-alone paper in Louisville, which is being folded into The Courier-Journal.

Read More

Following a long battle with cancer, former Cincinnati City Councilman and Vice Mayor David Crowley passed away early this morning.

Crowley, 73, had struggled with the illness since leaving City Council in 2009 due to term limits. After a grueling round of chemotherapy that took a toll on his body, Crowley appeared to have beaten the disease but it recently returned. He is survived by his wife, Sherri, four children and six grandchildren.

Read More

Read More

UPDATE: Some courthouse officials are saying CityBeat's sources are wrong, and that no decision has been made on who will fill Clancy's former job. The officials say applications were being accepted until Jan. 5, and the judges will decide later. One option would be to keep the position vacant, at least temporarily, to save money. Other sources, however, are saying the selection of Jodie Leis-George and Casey DeNoma to share the job is a "done deal" and courthouse officials are seeking political cover for the choice. We shall see in the weeks to come.

Read More

An animal rights group had one of its members question executives of the Kroger Co. grocery store chain at its annual shareholders meeting held here Thursday.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had member Lindsay Rajt, who also is a Kroger shareholder, ask during the meeting whether Kroger has plans to move toward a less cruel method of poultry slaughter, called "controlled-atmosphere killing" (CAK), instead of its current practice.

Read More

This morning, social conservatives around the world dug themselves into Armageddon-resistant bunkers, preparing for what they knew was coming. Today, marijuana and same-sex marriage were being legalized in Washington state.

But the bunkers may have been a waste of time and money, considering the end of the world didn’t occur. In fact, it seems like a lot of people are happy with the legal changes, which voters approved on Nov. 6.

From the perspective of this CityBeat writer, same-sex marriage would be great. It’s something I wrote about extensively before (“The Evolution of Equality,” Nov. 28 issue). As a refresher, not only does same-sex marriage bring a host of benefits to same-sex couples, but it also produces economic benefits for everyone. A recent study from Bill LaFayette, founder of Regionomics LLC, found that legalizing gay marriage would grow Ohio’s gross domestic product, which measures economic worth, by $100-$126 million within three years.

Marijuana has similar benefits. Not only does it give people the freedom to put a relatively harmless plant into their bodies, but it also provides a big boon to state budgets. For Washington, it’s estimated the marijuana tax will bring in as much as $500 million a year. 

Legalization also creates jobs and economic growth as businesses pop up to sell the product and customers buy the plant to toke up. Washington State’s Office of Financial Management estimates the marijuana market will be worth about $1 billion in the state. Considering the state is about 2 percent of the U.S. population, that could be extrapolated to indicate a potential $50 billion nationwide market.

Still, public use of marijuana and driving while intoxicated remain illegal. In a press conference Wednesday, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes said, “If you're smoking in plain public view, you're subject to a ticket. … Initiative 502 uses the alcohol model. If drinking in public is disallowed, so is smoking marijuana in public.”

The Seattle Police Department (SPD) seems a bit friendlier. In an email today, SPD told officers to only give verbal warnings until further notice. The warnings should essentially tell people to take their marijuana inside, or, as SPD spokesperson Jonah Spangenthal-Lee put it on the SPD Blotter, “The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a ‘Lord of the Rings’ marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to.”

The Washington law also faces possible federal resistance. Even though the state legalized pot, the drug is still illegal under federal law. That means the feds can still shut down marijuana businesses and arrest buyers, just like they have with legal medical marijuana dispensaries in the past.

In fact, maybe the limitations are what’s keeping the apocalypse at bay. Maybe social conservatives will get to make use of those bunkers if the rest of the country catches on to Washington’s example.

As expected, the ax fell quickly at The Cincinnati Enquirer this week as its parent company demands mass layoffs before year’s end.

Read More