The economy has diversified and the west valley is home to prominent warehouses (Chewy, Sub-Zero/Wolfe/Cove, REI, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Amazon, UPS, Anderson Windows, etc.) along with growth in the aviation sector and a few data centers.  

If you're in a fairly large city that's experiencing a booming real estate market, then look towards the suburbs even if it means it's 30-45 minutes from the center city.

Not an enviable position, by and large :) Move to passive investing in apartments and industrial and self-storage and data centers as soon as practically possible.

There is a lot of growth going on in NKY, including re-development of riverfront areas in Covington and Newport as well as Amazon's new distribution center at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport.

I commend your dreams of an Event Center.

Rent control is a high priority of the progressives (I'm center-liberal myself, but the wackos are going off the deep end).

Per Cathie Wood's ARKK Innovation strategies, these are the tech revolution area for next 10 years:Deep Learning ( Nvidia, Google,FB)Re-invention of data center (Cisco, Junipers)Virtual Worlds (Microsoft,Apple)Digital Wallets (Square, Paypal)Bitcoin (paypal/Visa)EV (Tsla/Nio/Xpeng/QuantumScape,Blink,Chargepoint)Automation (Apple, google, everybody)Autonomous Ride Hailing (Uber)Delivery Drones (Amazon)Orbital Aerospace (Nasa,Lockheed,Spacex)3D printing(HP)Long read sequeincing (Genentech)Medical Robotics (Intuitive Surgical)Cell and Gene Therapy ( many startups)All these companies has HQ and research facility in Bay Area.

Apartments around KU Medical Center would likely be attractive due to the student population for PT,OT, nursing and medical school,  These students have 2-4 yr programs so they tend to remain tenants for awhile.Let me know if you find a good team.

I need a favor, doing a house in Phoenix and need windows like yesterday.They are the pain windows, hard metal frames up to bricks on the inside and outside stucco to them.I was told to leave the frames in and cut out the center and buy windows with a fin for the outside and trim out the inside.I need them like ASAP. 

I dont see self storage as real estate per se its a business. that just happens to run out of a real estate location you own and operate not different than buying your own body shop or fitness center and owning the building..