City Hall will host a meeting on June 7, 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 801 Plum Street ,3rd Floor, to discuss assistance available for mortgage payments and back taxes on your home. 

$$ for Military families in past or current foreclosure

$$ for homeowners coping with unemployment or reduced income. Call 352-5280 for more info.

Applied to mortgage or back taxes up to $25,000

Programs to help reduce your mortgage permanently

Be there! Form-based codes charrette opens April 28

Make plans now to join residents, property owners, and developers at the Plan Build Live Form-Based Code Urban Design Workshop on April 28. Cincinnatians have the opportunity to shape the way their neighborhoods look, and  help spur desired development – and prevent unwanted development – in their communities, by participating in this process to implement a new approach to building community character. >>> See the attached flyer for details>>>>>

After a decades-long hiatus on the planning for a key recreational asset in Madisonville, the City of Cincinnati is gearing up its planning process again for an off-road hiking/bicycle trail on the eastern side of Madisonville along Little Duck Creek.

The trail along Little Duck Creek, for which the City developed an initial plan in 1976, would, if built, start at the Murray Road bike trail and follow Little Duck Creek through Bramble Park. Past Bramble Park, the trail would extend in a northeasterly direction, following Little Duck Creek past Roe Street and Settle Street and ending near the point where Plainville Road crosses Little Duck Creek.

On January 13, Madisonville residents Frank Henson and Bill Collins met at City Hall with three staff people from the City’s Department of Transportation and Engineering (DOTE), along with one key staff person from the Cincinnati Park Board and one staff person from the Cincinnati Recreation Commission. The three DOTE staffers in attendance were John Brazina, a supervising engineer; Jim Coppock, a senior engineer; and Melissa McVay, a city planner. After the meeting, Coppock and McVay said that they would revisit the 1976 plans, leveraging modern GPS data to develop a new plan for the Little Duck Creek corridor that the community will be able to review and comment on later this year.

A report published by the City Planning Commission in January 1976 stated, “In 1975, the Madisonville-Eastwood community plan recommended that a linear park-recreation area should be developed along 65 acres of open space along Little Duck Creek through Madisonville. This recommendation was endorsed and given a high development priority in the 1974 Master Recreation Plan for Cincinnati’s Eastern Communities.”

The 1976 report went on to say, “This concept first appeared in the Cincinnati Master Plan of 1948 which proposed that a green strip be developed along Little Duck Creek, through Madisonville, to preserve its scenic qualities and provide various park and recreational facilities for the community. . . . Pursuant to Madisonville’s recommendations, this plan was prepared to identify the corridor precisely and prepare alternative design schemes for which a program could be developed.”

People who would like to review a digitized copy of this hard-copy1976 report (some parts of this document were garbled during Google’s scanning process) can view it at http://tinyurl.com/7zpx65n. In this 1976 report, a copy of the June 9, 1972 letter from the Madisonville Co-ordinating Committee (a predecessor to the Madisonville Community Council) was included. In that letter, signed by the Rev. Ezra Luessen, the Madisonville group endorsed the idea of the linear park along Little Duck Creek.