Talent : Development News

The next food truck to hit the streets in Cincinnati won't look like any that have come before it. Queen City Cookies' "Schnecken Shack," set to roll through downtown before the end of April.

Sure to get attention, the truck incorporates the elephant-inspired vision of Queen City Cookies owner Peggy Shannon, with assistance from graphic designer Lisa Ballard. "I had the idea the truck should be an elephant and have the blanket area open to serve from," Shannon says. "Lisa thought to put the elephant in the back window, which I think is a stroke of genius. It completely expresses the essence of who we are: fun, unexpected, attention-to-detail and delicious."

As with the rest of Queen City Cookies' ventures, from the storefront at Findlay Market to gourmet offerings in specialty stores like Dean and Deluca and online, the focus on good taste and joy shaped the food truck's initial menu. "We’re focusing on three areas of service for the truck, so the menu will change out during the day," Shannon says. "For our breakfast fans, individual schnecken rolls (or by the box for those who can’t get enough), pig pockets (adorable pig pop overs filled with ham, cheese), my latest creation, donut toast (a baked donut in the shape of toast that’s sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, frittatas, a vegan popover option, crack pie (which lives up to its name) and of course, Coffee Emporium coffee to kick start the day. Later in the day, we’ll have ice cream sandwiches made with Madison’s gelato and our cookies, amazingly dense Oreo brownie explosions, Bundt cakes (think bourbon), cupcakes and light-as-a-feather meringue swirls in cardamom, Madagascar vanilla, heavy cream, violet lavender, tangerine, raspberry. We also have a full line of beverages — Steez Tea, Synergy drinks."

For more information, visit Queen City Cookies online and read the Soapbox Q&A with Peggy Shannon.

By Elissa Yancey
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This summer, when choir members and fans from around the world descend on Cincinnati for the World Choir Games, they’ll discover a new way to transcend the language barrier called Globili, the brainchild of MidPoint/Fountain Square/Bunbury developer Bill Donabedian.

All you need is a mobile device to send a text message or scan a QR code located on signs around the city. Globili translates the signs or other written materials – think menus – into a wide range of languages and dialects.

Since it uses texts as well as QR codes, the service is not intendedonly for smart phone users. “With people coming from all across the world, we don’t know what devices they’ll be using,” says Globili co-founder Ran Mullins. “Ninety-eight percent of cellphones have text messaging.”

Even your six-year-old cellphone, held together with duct tape, can make use of Globili, so long as it is able to send and receive text messages. Users text the numbers marked on Globili signs and indicate their preferred language. They are then texted the newly translated information.

“As long as people have mobile devices, Globili has a place in the market,” says Donabedian. Globili can translate from a pool of languages with a dedicated database that is easily managed by clients who wish to update and edit how they want their signs to be read.

“Wouldn’t you rather, as a business or city, appear to be more welcoming?” asks Donabedian.

Globili is free to users in need of translations and is being tested now on Fountain Square, where 45 signs can be translated into more than 200 languages. So far, some of the most requested languages for translation include Latvian and three Chinese dialects.

Based on the Google Translate engine, Globili simplifies the experience into a single query that does not require users to painstakingly write out each word in sentences.“Translation is just a piece of it,” Donabedian says. “It’s about taking static content -- a sign. We’re working to make that more dynamic. When you start to think of that type of impact, you can find out what languages are being most used, where and at what time.”

By collecting the requested languages on an individual user basis, Globili plans on collecting plenty of analytical language data. Clients will be able to determine which languages their customers use and adjust their accommodations accordingly.

By Sean Peters

Laura Pavey can sound a little crazy when you talk to her on the phone. But you might, too, if you wore as many hats as she does daily. She’s a trainer, an esthetician and a spiritual guru. And those are only her day job(s).
 
Pavey, 43, is the CEO of Transformula Studios in Liberty Hilli, a new wellness center that seems a bit schizophrenic in terms of the services it offers. Face peels, Pilates, yoga and eyelash extensions are just a small taste of what this new wellness Mecca delivers.
 
But there is method to Pavey’s madness. She’s not looking to just help you with dry skin or inflexible knees: she’s looking to give your body, mind and spirit a complete, youthful overhaul.
 
“Transformula Studios is all about anti aging,” Pavey says. “It’s about feeling good and looking good, but not just for vanity’s sake.”
 
Pavey traveled a multi-forked career route before arriving at Transformula Studios. Her resume reads like vocational training pamphlet. She began her career as a social worker in San Francisco. When it became difficult to survive financially, she migrated east to Colorado for grad school and then to New York, where she became a freelance make-up artist.
 
As a makeup artist “I got really obsessed with skin,” Pavey says. “Makeup looks best on good skin.”
 
She moved to Cincinnati when her father became ill and quickly dipped her toes into the wellness field. Pavey emphasizes that she’s very interested in people’s cellular-level health, from skin to joints. Many of the services offered at Transformula Studios are designed to make your cells as healthy as possible.
 
“My skin care is all about rejuvenating the cells without invasive therapy,” she says. Her skin peels – one of her most popular treatments — are done with Physician’s Care Line products that only go to the skin’s epidermis layer and no further.
 
Pavey also emphasizes Pilates for joint and cartilage health. “We’re at a crossroads where our organs are living longer,” she says. “You can beat cancer and other diseases, but our skeleton and joints have a 45-year lifespan.”
 
Pilates helps maintain and strength joint flexibility and prevents wear caused by a life’s worth of use, she says. “I can’t think about my social security running out. I’m too worried about my joints.”
 
Volunteerism is also big part of the Transformula ethos. In keeping with her social work past, Pavey encourages staff and clients to get involved in the community through fundraising and volunteering.
 
“We also believe that doing good things keeps you young inside,” she says. “Nothing ages you more than negative energy.”
 
By Ryan McLendon

City Flea co-founders Nick and Lindsay Dewald are poised to make cool-shopping history again this year, with a new schedule and more venues, including stops in the reopened Washington Park in OTR.

“We loved how the flea was jammed into an underutilized lot last year, but feel that being integrated into the park will prove to be a great move for us, the vendors and the shoppers,” the Walnut Hills’ couple writes in an email. “We will be sharing the park with a dog run, a state of the art playground, brand new restroom facilities, a parking garage, fountains, a grassy lawn, shady benches and so on.”

Four of the couple’s seven June through December monthly events will be held at the OTR park, with Music Hall as a beautifully historic backdrop. Additional stops are slatted for the original 12th and Vine Street lot and at the American Can Lofts in Northside. They will also be a part of the OTR Summer Celebration, and have a mystery, yet-to-be-announced location for the November Flea.

With the application process for vendors open now through May 12, the Dewalds are looking forward to creating even better experiences for vendors and shoppers alike. For now, that means keeping the Fleas monthly instead of making them more often. “We feel like keeping them once a month is a nice frequency and forces people to make sure they definitely go instead of just saying they'll make it next week,” they write. “Lots of the vendors are very small operations and we think that a month in between each event allows them to restock their shelves.”

In the future, though, those monthly shopping sprees may not be enough. “We would love to get to a point where The City Flea could be a weekly event that is sustained by a steady combination of tourists and a critical mass of urban residents,” they write.

And the entrepreneurial-nurturing entrepreneurs are trailblazers, too. “We have heard of at least four or five other urban flea markets that are about to pop up in other cities, several of which have contacted us for info,” they write. “Hopefully the city will continue to embrace our events and we will be thought of as being a bit ahead of the curve. We would love for The City Flea to gain a reputation that extends outside of Cincinnati and contribute to bringing visitors and import residents.”  


By Elissa Yancey
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Earth Day next month marks the second anniversary for Rachel DesRochers’ business baby, Grateful Grahams. In honor of the occasion, she has been cooking up a new batch of vegan graham cracker bites, cookies sized to be eaten in just two bites.

“We are thrilled to have these bites to add to the grateful grahams family,” says DesRochers. The original “bite” flavor is cinnamon raison, but upcoming flavors include chocolate chocolate chunk, peanut butter and jelly, and peanut butter/peanuts/chocolate chip.

After starting with a booth at the 2010 Earth Day festival downtown, DesRochers now sells her vegan edibles in more than 20 stores, from Sacramento, CA, to Rockville, MD. Locally, she stocks Park+Vine on Main Street, Nordstrom’s eBar in Kenwood Towne Centre, the Blue Manatee Bookstore in Oakley and through Green B.E.A.N. Delivery, among others.

For more information, visit Grateful Grahams on Facebook.

By Elissa Yancey
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With less than two weeks left in her latest Kickstarter campaign, Stacy Sims is especially pleased by the number of strangers who have helped fund a New York workshop of her Cincinnati-born play with music, The Vivian Girls. It shows that in a social-media influenced world, the creative works in one city can transcend borders and, she hopes, build a lasting piece of art.

What started as a New York museum visit has become collaborative play with music for Sims, a Cincinnati artist/teacher/dancer/entrepreneur/program director who defies easy categorization. She’s working with composer Peter Adams and choreographer Heather Britt to create The Vivian Girls, an exploration of how people – in particular teen girls -- create identity, as told through adolescent figures first sketched by folk artist Henry Darger.

This month, Kickstarter featured The Vivian Girls as a “Project of the Day,” which was a special boost to more than Sims’ morale. “It is a huge deal because of how many awesome international projects are on there all the time,” she says. “Financially, we got about an $800 bump that day, and the cool thing is that we don't know many of our backers this time.”

So far, she’s nearly three years into the process, which took shape after hearing Adams’ work under Britt’s choreography for the Cincinnati Ballet. An initial fundraising campaign on Kickstarter in 2010 led to initial work on the project. “Forty-nine backers funded the first Kickstarter project we did,” Sims says. With less than $3,500, the trio ran a Cincinnati workshop of the first act, including a week of CCM workshops and paid actors, stage managers and more.

The new campaign’s goal of $4,500 provides for taking the production to the American Folk Art Museum, where Sims first got the idea. The Museum’s Darger Study Center has offered to host a week of rehearsals as well as a May 12 work-in-progress performance.

While she talks Kickstarter and logistics, Sims also continues to work with her collaborators on shaping the play into a creatively satisfying whole. “We are all challenging our ideas and trying to let the work tell us what it should be,” she says.

In the beginning, she saw the story unfold in static scenes, much like Darger’s collages themselves. “Making them blend together in movement and story is a different trick,” she says. “And I am so grateful to the collaborators for helping me see what I cannot and making the VIVIAN GIRLS world more full and vibrant.”

By Elissa Yancey
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This summer, the little piggies will be back, filled with porcine glee, as ArtWorks once again brings a herd of pig sculptures to downtown and OTR for the Big Pig Gig. With 70 pigs already lined up, the arts nonprofit expects 100 porkers to hit the streets as the season heats up.

With additional schools and nonprofits in search of pig sponsorships, ArtWorks is looking for donors to bring in the bacon for either “Whole Hog” sponsors, who get to keep the pig for $8,000; or “Sow-lo-ist” sponsors for $5,000, with the pig going to auction. For businesses or individuals who want to help a school or nonprofit get their pork on, $4,500 covers a pig and an artist, while $3,500 covers a pig who already has an artist standing by.

Schools and nonprofits that still need support include: Duke Energy Children’s Museum, Moeller High School, Art Beyond Boundaries and JDRF.

But pigs are the only goings-on at ArtWorks. While the Big Pig Gig takes shape, the organization is also gearing up for its summer mural projects in neighborhoods around the region. For the next six weeks, donors can sponsor apprentice artists in their efforts to beautify communities while learning skills and making money.

Completing assignments in college can seem pointless when there is no more return than a grade. So, instead of designing a fictitious building, why not pair students with the developer to design viable ideas for a real structure in their own city?

The pilot project for the startup Student Designed (SD), founded by Adam Treister, did just that. Treister, a DAAP architecture alumni and architect at City Center Properties (CCP), paired CCP with 34 interior design students to spend an entire quarter working on developing ideas for the Guildhaus building in Over-the-Rhine. Last Friday, all 34 students presented their ideas for the ground floor, basement and sub-basement of the building on Vine Street. CCP doesn't yet know if they will use one of the designs, but the project gave students real-life experience and a development company 34 ideas for the development of their building.

"The building has a lot of potential," Treister says. "We are seeing some very innovative uses for the Guildhaus."

Treister has been working on the idea for more than a year, and now, with a site designed by Mindbox Studios, SD is launched. SD is a database-driven site that brings students, professors and companies together. The idea was born out of seeing countless hours spent on projects that never came to fruition. The site allows businesses to submit projects, teachers to review them, and students to search and send on to their professors. Businesses will specify a charitable donation when they post a project that they want to outsource to a university. Universities can then search through the projects, and assign them to students. SD will provide a cheaper outsourcing of work for businesses and provide income to universities, all while giving students real-world experience.

"Student Designed provides a better experience for everyone involved," Treister says.

After winning Xavier's Launch-A-Business competition in 2011, Treister received six months of mentorship and assistance in developing his idea, and now, after launching the site, he is applying for a spot in the first round of UpTech in Northern Kentucky. At first, Treister plans on working on getting projects for UC and Xavier, but thinks the business will grow organically. 


By Evan Wallis

With cooking lessons booked until June, Dan Wells, owner of Sushi Bears in Findlay Market, is bringing his culinary knowledge to Main Street. 

Wells is opening a 1,700-square-foot space called Main City Station March 30, on the corner of Orchard and Main Street.. MCS will house Well's own Panda Chef, a cafe, complete with table service and and kitchen that will serve and teach Thai, Indian and Sushi cooking classes. To cater to people who want to try out their newly-learned cooking skills at home, MSS will also house a small market. 

"There aren't many places around where you can get all the ingredients you need to cook the food we offer lessons on," Wells says. "People can take lessons then buy what they need to make it at home, all in the same place." 

Sushi Bear will still operate its Findlay Market location, which has been open for a year and a half and hosts cooking classes every day. Wells has been looking for a location to expand with the high, and growing, demand for classes they offer. The idea for the co-op space was formed after finding the large space at a cheap price. Renters will use utilities, internet and a security system. 

With the large space, Wells knew they could rent out some of the space to other tenants and have found two so far. Flashbox and The Cincinnati Film Festival are confirmed and a vintage and upcycle jewelery retailer is in the works.  Flashbox, a photography company, will house its offices in MSS but will also have a permanent photo booth on site. Each month, the photo booth will be designed by a local artist and be open to the public for events, like Final Friday.

The Cincinnati Film Festival will host screenings of local and independent films, as well as plan their upcoming three-day festival.

Main City Station hosts a grand opening party Final Friday, March 30. 

By Evan Wallis

In Silicon Valley, GOOD Ideas for Cities spurred development of new transit plans for buses with wi-fi, comfy seats and bike racks traveling business-friendly express routes. In Los Angeles and New York, and just this month in Portland, Ore., like-minded sessions have paired the area’s top design minds with pressing city concerns in an effort to reinvigorate civic problem-solving.

Cincinnati marks the next stop of the GOOD Ideas for Cities tour, which pairs designers with city problems proposed by urban leaders and spotlights solutions at public forums. The University of Cincinnati’s Niehoff Urban Studio hosts the program, which will culminate with a public event May 16.

“Cincinnati is the perfect city for us to go to next as part of the GOOD Ideas for Cities program,” says Alissa Walker, Los Angeles-based writer and community members at GOOD. “We're seeing many of the challenges there that other mid-sized cities are facing, issues around urban renewal, transportation, and fresh food access. But there's also such a vibrant and established creative community that's already so engaged in the city.”

Frank Russell, director of the Niehoff Urban Studio, has begun looking for civic-minded designers who want to be a part of the program. “Cincinnati has the benefit of a tremendous pool of design talent due to its place as a design and brand hub as well as its world-class design educational institutions,” he says. “I am excited to invite these emerging leaders to engage with GOOD to envision creative solutions for Cincinnati.”

Since 2008, GOOD has hosted 10 of these events in three cities and at three schools. Last year, GOOD added the urban think tank CEOs for Cities to the mix and changed the name to GOOD Ideas for Cities. This year’s outreach into five mid-sized cities is funded in part by ArtPlace, a collaboration of national foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts and other federal agencies.

“We hope GOOD Ideas for Cities will be able to connect these creatives with local urban leaders to design some innovative and exciting ideas for Cincinnati,” Walker says. “We also hope to see some of those ideas become reality, as we've seen happen at several of our events across the country so far.”

For examples of previous GOOD Ideas for Cities projects, click here.

To apply to be one of Cincinnati’s GOOD Ideas for Cities’ civic-minded designers or design teams, email Frank Russell.

By Elissa Yancey
Follow Elissa on Twitter.

Last Tuesday, the downstairs of Below Zero Lounge hosted the first performance by the newly formed Young Professional’s Choral Collective (YPCC).

KellyAnn Nelson and her husband Christopher Eanes formed the YPCC after talking to friends about their love of choral music, but lack of interest in attending concerts.

“There’s a disconnect somewhere,” Nelson says. “People used to perform in high school or college for social reasons, so we decided to try to recreate that.”

In November, Nelson and Eanes started recruiting and thought they could find around 20 people to form a choir and a practice space with a piano nearby. That’s when Nelson met Nigel, the owner of Below Zero. Nigel allowed the newly formed choir to use the club space, along with a hollowed out piano that houses a keyboard, all for free. The YPCC held two open practices in November to see how much interest they could garner. The results were more than Nelson and Eanes had hoped. Now with more than 60 members, the YPCC did Caroling in the Quarter, performed their first concert to around 200 people at Below Zero and already have another performance scheduled at Memorial Hall, May 22.

With only six rehearsals before the first performance, Nelson and Eanes didn’t know what to expect, but the event went off without a hitch. More than 150 people made reservations to attend.

“It was this little idea we had,” Nelson says. “Now it’s really happening and we have some momentum.”

The YPCC has received attention for its unique structure, so Nelson and Eanes want to find unique venues to perform and different organizations open to collaboration. Because of busy work and social schedules, the YPCC features different singers in each performance.

“We need our experiences to be unique,” Nelson says. “We want it to be something that draws new listeners in but still connects to old music fans.”

By Evan Wallis