Wednesday, September 01, 1999
Street succumbing to retail sprawl
BY SARA J. BENNETT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
SPRINGDALE — The house where Sue and Ray Neighbor renewed their wedding vows and buried their beloved dog, Kato, soon will disappear. So, too, will the street where the couple's two sons played and neighbors knew one another by name.
McClellans Lane, home to the Neighbors for nine years, is a residential island amid the discount stores, shopping centers and restaurants off booming East Kemper Road.
Soon, that growth will swallow the cul de sac whole.
Costco Wholesale plans to build a 155,000-square-foot warehouse membership store on the 15-acre site. Demolition is scheduled for early next year, and the store could open in August.
Bowing finally to development that has crept up on them over the years, the residents of the 19 homes on McClellans Lane decided to sell their properties.
Many already have moved. Others are looking for new homes. Some are waiting for North American Properties, the company developing the site, to close on the property.
All face the knowledge that a place many have called home for more than 40 years will no longer exist.
“I'm going to miss it. I loved this house, I really did,” said Mr. Neighbor, sitting amid boxes in his living room. “When you came down this street, it was like you were in a whole other world. You were in the country, but you were five minutes from everything.”
Tucked between a new Target store and a church off East Kemper, McClellans Lane is a tree-lined street where older brick and ranch-style homes perch on ample yards. Chirping insects can still be heard over the whoosh of traffic and the hum of nearby delivery trucks.
Most of the homes on McClellans were built in the 1940s and 1950s, Hamilton County auditor's records show, and the road existed before Springdale was incorporated, said City Manager Cecil Osborn. Lori Wendling, a retired representative of North American Properties who worked with McClellans Lane residents, estimates the average homeowner has lived there 40 years.
Bertha Hawks moved to the street 43 years ago, into a small gray house with a backyard view of a farm field. Then Interstate 275 arrived, bringing commercial, retail and industrial development.
In 1997, she and her neighbors learned North American Properties wanted to buy the first four houses on their street. Rather than live with another business in their back yards, the residents voted to offer North American all of their homes.
“We moved here from Norwood to get out to the country,” said Ms. Hawks, 67. “Guess the city caught up with us.”
With a wheelbarrow of impatiens in the front yard and potted plants on the porch, Ms. Hawks' home is one of few that still shows signs of life.
The Neighbors bought a house on a wooded lot in Milford. To them, the new Costco means an exciting opportunity to relocate.
“We used to see trees and fields, now we see concrete and floodlights,” Mr. Neighbor said. “Once things started moving in around us, we started to realize we had to let those memories go, because what we have is not what we bought.”
With residents cooperating, the Costco development has moved swiftly through Springdale's approval process. City Council rezoned the site last month, and the project will go before the planning commission for detail plan approval this month.
Depending on the outcome of that meeting, North American Properties will move toward closing the real estate deal, Ms. Wendling said.
“What I'll miss is the space of the yards and the quiet of the street,” Ms. Hawks said. “After 11 or 12 at night, you can hear the crickets and the frogs. It's sad, but like I say, you got to go on. You still have your memories.”
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