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Cincinnati neighborhood on cusp of renaissance

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By STEVE KEMME, The Associated Press 1:36 PM Friday, February 10, 2012

CINCINNATI — Through all the years when once-thriving Walnut Hills seemed to be engulfed by rampant crime and deteriorating buildings, Clarence Taylor never stopped believing in the Cincinnati neighborhood.

His parents moved to Walnut Hills from Evanston in 1970 when he was 8. Taylor has never left the neighborhood. He and his wife, Brenda, live a half-block from the home of his 83-year-old mother, Millie Taylor.

"I saw the potential," said Taylor, who recently became president of the Walnut Hills Area Council. "I always felt that when people understood the amenities of Walnut Hills — Eden Park, the nice big homes, the luxury of living near downtown and the interstate highways, being able to walk places — things would turn around."

The faith in the neighborhood he and others have displayed over the years is starting to pay off.

After decades of decline, Walnut Hills is showing signs of being on the cusp of a renaissance.

People of all ages, both white and black, are moving into newly built houses and condos, as well as large, older homes. Crime has dropped in recent years. With encouragement and help from the city, the neighborhood is attracting the interest of commercial and residential developers.

The total residential property value in Walnut Hills has risen from about $146 million in 2000 to $171 million in 2010, a 17.1 percent increase, according to an Enquirer analysis. During that same period, citywide residential property value fell 5.4 percent.

Some small businesses — restaurants, offices, retail shops — have popped up at various spots along McMillan, William Howard Taft and Gilbert, the neighborhood's primary arteries. Neighborhood and city leaders and private developers are trying to recapture some of the grandeur Walnut Hills enjoyed before a decline that began after World War II.

The rebirth comes at a critical time for Cincinnati.

Less than a mile away in Over-the-Rhine and Downtown, more than $500 million in new investment in recent years has sparked a rebirth of the city's urban core that's delivering new condos, apartments, restaurants and storefronts.

"Cincinnati's experiencing a major urban renaissance, and we think Walnut Hills is next in line for that to happen," said Kevin Wright, the new executive director of the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation, a nonprofit development corporation.

A key focal point of efforts to revive Walnut Hills is the East McMillan Street business district, centered at Gilbert Avenue. For years, it's been dominated by deteriorating, vacant buildings.

The city has recently invested $900,000, using funds from the Walnut Hills tax increment financing district, to buy up property and clear blighted buildings on property it owns in the corridor. Another $1 million has been reserved to help stabilize the buildings that remain.

"Neighborhoods are like ecosystems," said Wright. "If you let just one thing go, it has a ripple effect on the entire community. This street and district was abandoned, but we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here to really transform it."

In step with the city's efforts, Walnut Hills-based developers Ed Horgan and Al Merritt have also been buying property along McMillan with plans to create a mixed-use development that could include retail, offices, condos and apartments. Some existing buildings would be rehabbed, others torn down.

In the past decade, Horgan and Merritt have redeveloped more than a dozen properties along Park, McMillan and Gilbert avenues in hopes of sparking the neighborhood's renewal. Their work has yielded more than 200 renovated condominiums at restored properties including the Verona at Eden Park and Cooper Historic Residences — two neighboring buildings on Park Avenue that were converted from apartments into condominiums in the last five years. The units are selling from $150,000 to more than $400,000, with the Cooper completely sold out and more than 75 percent of the Verona sold.

In 2007, Horgan purchased the former Frisch's restaurant on McMillan. He says he did it to block plans for a dollar store.

Since then, Parkside Cafe — a restaurant serving breakfast and lunch — has opened and become a "neighborhood gathering place," Wright said.

Key to supporting the new development are plans to make one-way McMillan and William Howard Taft into two-way streets.

"People are speeding through at 50 miles per hour," said Horgan. "Shop owners don't have a chance."

By the end of the year, Wright said, the redevelopment foundation hopes to have a developer on board to help craft a plan for the city-owned properties along McMillan.

"We're on the precipice of a major transformation of this district," Wright said. "Hopefully 2013 will be a year of ground-breakings for Walnut Hills."

Improvements in the neighborhood's homeownership rate — which ticked up 3 percent in the last decade — and work to revitalize Walnut Hills' business district are all steps in the right direction, says Frank Russell, a professor of urban planning and director of the University of Cincinnati's Community Design Center and the Niehoff Urban Studio.

"I think they're doing all the right things," Russell said, "but the fundamental, key factor for any neighborhood is going to be leadership. I think they have that now in Walnut Hills."

The neighborhood inherited its name from Walnut Farm, owned by the Rev. James Kemper, a Presbyterian minister who moved there in 1794.

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