NKY Thrives

Northern Kentucky Real Estate and Development

Northern Kentucky enjoys the presence and commitment from national, regional and local developers as well as an aggressive real estate community who help to create a successful business environment. Check www.NorthernKentuckyUSA.com as a clearinghouse for all sites and buildings listings in Northern Kentucky.

Northern Kentucky Real Estate Drives the Region

Northern Kentucky has enjoyed a rich history of growth and development thanks to the entrepreneurial courage, personal investment and commitment that many local and national real estate developers have made to the community and the region. Talented real estate professionals continue to make a lasting mark on Northern Kentucky as we envision and build for the future. It’s really what differentiates our community from so many others. The immediate Northern Kentucky area has both real estate product and sites available – ranging from master planned parks housing powerhouse companies like Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America and Fidelity Investments to Class A office and industrial buildings, prime sites and redevelopment opportunities, including those in the urban core and lining the vibrant riverfront. Layer on the sophisticated and affordable IT and utility infrastructure, adaptable and educated workforce, likable and livable communities, as well as a range of excellent educational and training opportunities, and you have a recipe for success in Northern Kentucky. We invite you to take a look at Northern Kentucky through this special commercial real estate issue of Thrive – there are many options for businesses of all sizes. The sites and building section of www.NorthernKentuckyUSA.com will connect you to customized solutions for your real estate needs. This GIS-powered site selection tool will navigate you through size requirements as well as utility and zoning information. Site specific business analytics as well as demographics are also easily accessible. We'd love to share the future with you. If you like what you see, call us to set up a personalized tour. Karen Finan, SVP, Northern Kentucky Tri-ED, markets the community regionally, nationally and internationally. She works with companies in the technology and distribution sectors. Contact her at kaf@NorthernKentuckyUSA.com

URBANEXUS forum will be streamed live online

If you can’t make it to Northern Kentucky University for the first ever URBANEXUS event, showcasing the city’s most creative and innovate thinkers, you can watch and ask questions online. URBANEXUS, sponsored by Next American City magazine will be streamed live online on USTREAM. Viewers will be able to ask questions of the panel in real time leveraging Twitter (@SoapboxCincy). The event tag is #cincyinnovation. The event is being hosted with help from Soapbox Media, CincinnatiInnovates.com, Northern Kentucky Forum and Haile/U.S. Bank Foundation. “The panelists who will be taking part in the URBANEXUS conversation represent a diverse, cross-section of innovation in our region, from both the private and public sectors.  Greater Cincinnati is flush with some of the world's most innovative companies - what we are trying to better understand is how we can leverage this corporate innovation into our civic realm and put Cincinnati on the map as a progressive, innovative and creative region,” said Soapbox Media Publisher Dacia Snider. Cincinnati’s URBANEXUS will be June 25, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Northern Kentucky University’s Student Union on the Highland Height’s campus. Themed, Creating the Innovative City, it will encompass a panel discussion on how the community "can tap Cincinnati’s internal innovative culture to inspire a broader civic culture that makes Cincinnati synonymous with creativity, ideas and energy." It’s free and open to the public. Next American City is published by a national non-profit of the same name, dedicated “to promoting socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth in America’s cities and examining how and why our built environment, economy, society and culture are changing.” The non-profit is based in Philadelphia. There’ll be a meet and mingle before the panel at 5 p.m., also at the student union. Admission to that is free only for Next American City subscribers. Admission is $15 for non-subscribers in advance or $20 at the door, and includes a one-year subscription to the magazine. Confirmed panelists are: Mark Peterson, Director of External Business Development at Procter & Gamble; Anne Chasser, associate vice president at the University of Cincinnati's Intellectual Property Office; Cincinnati City Manager Milton Dohoney; Doug Perry, College of Informatics Dean at NKU; Niki Robinson, director at Cincinnati Children’s Center for Technology Commercialization and Chad Reynolds from Fanattik.com, a web site that allows users to create customized school sportswear. Writer: Feoshia Henderson

NKU launches online Library Informatics degree

Northern Kentucky University continues to push education boundaries with a new online bachelor’s degree in Library Informatics, starting this fall. It’s part of the new Center for Informatics at the Highland Heights university. The program marries technology and convenience; courses will be offered totally online and is geared toward those with associate degree. It is designed for students to “better understand the relationships among people, information and technology,” according to NKU. The 60-credit-hour program can be finished in two years.“The new BSLI degree program opens a new market to NKU, which should result in further growth to the University,” said Arne Almquist, assistant provost for library services at NKU. “The profession is in need of additional librarians and the program will help us to attract younger people who may not currently be aware of the profession. Again, by providing a direct link with high school graduates, it should help to increase the diversity of the profession.”This degree is the 5th undergrad degree and the 11th NKU program to be offered online. It was developed by NKU faculty for the university’s Steely Library.“This program fills a serious need for education and training of both library professional and paraprofessional staff,” said Wayne Onst, Kentucky’s state librarian and commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Having this program available through distance learning means that students from every area of the state can participate in class work leading to a Bachelor’s degree. Library users across Kentucky will be the beneficiaries.”    Graduates can compete for a number of jobs with the degree including library paraprofessional, online researcher, end-user trainer, market research and electronic public relations.Construction on the highly anticipated Center for Informatics at Northern Kentucky University started in May with a groundbreaking. The state-of-the-art center seeks to combine technology, available data and real world application to a wide variety of occupations. NKU’s College of Informatics, the only such college in the state, was created by an act of the Kentucky Legislature. In the fall of 2006, 1,057 entered the college under various disciplines. In addition to new offerings like informatics, the college puts a number of NKU’s existing disciplines under one roof. It includes four departments: Business, Communication, Computer Science and Infrastructure Management. It includes such diverse disciplines as journalism, healthcare, computer programming and research development design. It’s one of less than a dozen such colleges dedicated specifically to informatics study in the United States.Writer: Feoshia HendersonSource: Chris Cole, Northern Kentucky University director of media relations and communications

Newport’s East Row Garden Walk

OH First Lady to offer keynote at Strive Community Forum on Education at Xavier

The upcoming Strive Community Forum on Education has gotten a big boost with the announcement that Ohio First Lady Frances Strickland will be the keynote speaker at the June 26 event. Strickland, an education advocate and Kentucky native, is also scheduled to lead one of the forum’s breakout sessions at Xavier University. Strive is a public-private collaborative aimed at improving education in Greater Cincinnati. Based in downtown Cincinnati, was founded in 2003 as a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks Foundation, an education initiative funder. Strive is focused on developing Cincinnati’s urban core, including cities in Northern Kentucky, through identifying better education strategies from birth through some form of college into a career. The community forum is free and open to the public. It will be from 8:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. at the University’s Cintas Center, and lunch will be free for people who pre-register. The forum is being hosted jointly by Strive and Xavier’s Community Building Institute. The forum’s goal is to get feedback from the Greater Cincinnati community on how to move education improvement forward. Among the breakout sessions theme are: “Increasing the Pace of School Improvement,” “Academic Rigor and Teaching Excellence,” and “College Access and Success.” See the entire schedule here. Strickland has a doctorate in educational psychology at the University of Kentucky, where she met her future husband, Ohio governor Ted Strickland. She is a former public school educational psychologist and a children’s book author, who wrote The Little Girl Who Grew up to Be Governor about former Kentucky Governor Martha Layne Collins. To register, contact Nancy Hackett at 513-745-3264, or hackettn@xavier.edu Writer: Feoshia HendersonSource: Laurel Bauer, Media Relations Coordinator Xavier University

Cool science jobs from cave explorers to forgery detectives

Being a integrative science professor may not sound like the coolest job in the world, but Hazel Barton would beg to differ. The Northern Kentucky University professor was able to travel to seven continents last year exploring caves.  Barton studies the hardy forms of life that thrive in cold, dark, seemingly barren reaches below the ground that are often referred to as "extremeophiles" by scientists. Barton is one of several scientists on a panel called "Cool Jobs" at next week's World Science Festival in New York City.  She will be joined by Tyrone Hayes, a biologist from the University of California at Berkeley and Maurizio Seracini who examines works of Italian art. Read full article here.

Gateway, Kenton library, Cov schools to bring urban campus to Covington

After several years of waiting for state funding, three Northern Kentucky educational institutions have joined for a new project to broaden Gateway Community and Technical College’s reach into the urban core, with a new planned campus in the heart of Covington. Gateway, in partnership with the Kenton County Public Library and Covington Independent Public Schools, announced they’ll join efforts to make this happen. The planned urban campus will comprise Two Rivers Middle School, 502 Scott St., that will close this to middle school students summer and a brand new building adjacent to nearby the library set to open in 2014. The library and this new building would be connected by walkways and doors with both the library and the college using the space, according to the college. Lynda Jackson, Covington Schools Superintendent, said the partnership was a “win-win” for the school district and college. “We are moving the middle school to the Holmes High School Campus this summer, and we were concerned that the middle school would be vacant. Having Gateway at that site will mean the building will continue to be used to educate residents of our urban core.” Gateway has worked to get funding from the Kentucky legislature for several years and in 2008, lawmakers approved $21.3 million to build it in a “contingency budget” that depended on excess tax revenues. Now Kentucky is facing one of its largest budget deficits in history $1 billion over the next two years, so it’s unlikely that state funding will come any time soon for Gateway. That’s when the local officials started looking for creative ways to get things done. The library had been planning a major renovation project similar to what Gateway was planning. The work together was the smart seemed the smart thing to do, said Dave Schroeder, Library Director. “When we began thinking about our renovations plans and the college’s building plans, we discovered that we would be building between 14,000 and 18,000 square feet of space that the college was going to build. We agreed that we should pursue a joint plan that would save approximately several million dollars in construction costs,” Schroeder said. Gateway’s had 3,130 students in 2007, the latest figures available. It has expanded in recent years and has campuses in Boone County, Covington and Edgewood.  It also has an urban learning center in Covington and a center in Park Hills. It’s not been decided when Gateway will start classes at Two Rivers but, it could begin as early as this fall, the college said. Writer: Feoshia HendersonSource: Gateway Community and Technical College News Release

Pergola Restaurant & Bakery bringing fresh and local food concept to Ft. Thomas