FAIRFIELD -- In this growing Butler County slice of suburbia, the vehicle is king.
Long live the car, the minivan, the pickup and the sport utility. After all, four wheels rule the cul-de-sac.
Maybe that's because Fairfield didn't arrive until 1955, about the time America elevated the automobile to an art form, and because the city had consisted mainly of farms and rural villages.
If you wanted to go to tiny communities named Stockton and Symmes Corner, you had to drive.
"Thirty-five years ago, when I came here, we had a lot of cornfields and cows," Police Chief Gary Rednour recalled. "Life was a lot slower then, but I guess that's true everywhere. We had a great deal of undeveloped agricultural land, and Fairfield was somewhat a farming community.
"From there, it progressed to a bedroom community. People drove to jobs in Hamilton County and even in Dayton. Then in the late 1970s and early '80s, the city really got into economic development. We were no longer just a bedroom community."
Today, the city is 24 square miles of action. Businesses are arriving in Fairfield; new families are arriving. The city is creating new history with new people.
For years, its old buildings -- and its history -- were torn down and blacktopped over, especially in Symmes Corner on Ohio 127 (Pleasant Avenue). Over the years, 19th-century farmhouses and buildings near Nilles Road and Pleasant Avenue -- Fairfield's vague focal point -- disappeared in favor of Kroger's, strip shopping centers, franchise restaurants and other businesses.
The area doesn't look like a downtown, or act like a downtown, but it's the closest available facsimile.
This year, however, a local developer announced The Village Green, a retail-residential quadrant to be built on the 120-acre McCormick farm, near Pleasant and Nilles.
Plans call for 160 residential units, retail stores and small offices. Officials say the project will finally give Fairfield an identifiable downtown -- complete with a "village" square. "The project will create a true new town center, with an amphitheater and possibly a library and cultural center," said Patrick Merten, deputy planning director. "It's coming to fruition. . . . The town center area is attractive to developers. We already have several Colonial-looking buildings, so we want to create a real image for the downtown."
Mr. Merten, who is fairly new to the city, said he finds the place an interesting mix -- "a little old, a little new. But we have a lot of economic development, which strengthens the city's tax base." That base received a lift in March, when Financial Inc. broke ground for a $57 million office tower to be built next to its Fairfield headquarters along Mack Road. The 410,000-square-foot building will house existing workers and new employees who will process information, underwrite insurance and work as a support staff. More developments mean a greater chance that Fairfield will continue to figure prominently in the development of Butler County. The strategic location -- across the border from Hamilton County on Ohio 4 -- assures highway access.
Even now, officials are discussing plans to connect Symmes Road to the new Union Center Boulevard interchange at Interstate 275.
"It would be a major link," Councilman Donald Hassler said, "an immense help to businesses and the people."
Such growth continues to amaze older residents, who still remember rural Fairfield of the 1950s.
Through them, Fairfield retains some institutional memory. Its resident historian, Esther Benzing, a former county archivist, writes and publishes books about the city's past. She can vividly recall the days when grange halls and bean suppers dominated the social scene, and Fairfield had a village-sized population.
The only evidence of those days is a large black-and-white aerial photograph that hangs on a wall in the city building. The countryside extends for miles, with nothing but an occasional farm and a few subdivisions in between.
Just how rural was Fairfield? In 1963, only 5,000 to 6,000 people called it home. The Police Department employed nine officers and operated on a budget of less than $100,000.
"No dispatcher, no clerk, no radio system," Mr. Rednour said. "The chief drove his own car, and we had only two cruisers. We worked out of one office."
Joan and Ralph Schwab know of those days.
"There were 47 people in our class when we graduated from Fairfield High School in 1947," said Mr. Schwab, 69, who with his wife recently opened Fairfield Pack & Ship at 5080 Pleasant Ave.
The high school sweethearts were retired for 16 years before they decided to go back to work by opening their own shop in the Fairfield Town Center.
"It's a new adventure," Mrs. Schwab said. "Fairfield is a good place to do business. We get a lot of customers from south Hamilton. We're already in the black."
Today, Fairfield is not much larger in area, but its population is about 43,000. The Police Department employs 74 people, operates a fleet of 27 vehicles and has a budget of $5 million annually.
Despite the growth, some of Fairfield's larger retail buildings remain vacant. The city wants to correct the problem by studying about 5 miles of Ohio 4 in the next 12 months. The purpose is to find ways to strengthen existing businesses, develop the road economically and minimize vacancies such as the ones at Central Hardware and Van Leunens.
"We've got over 300,000 square feet of vacancy, and that's a lot," Mr. Merten said. "Council has made a proactive effort to look at the older suburban corridor and turn it around. The corridor will always be a major route into the city. It serves as a first impression for visitors. So we need to think about it. There are some aesthetic and traffic issues to deal with there."
But such problems seem small when compared to Fairfield's successes. Since the 1980s, it has overcome the closing of General Motors' Fisher Body plant on Ohio 4. When that occurred, some people predicted Fairfield's economic demise. But it never happened.
"It was devastating," Mr. Rednour said, "but with typical Fairfield pluck, we were able to overcome. We've learned by our mistakes. We have diversification -- a lot of different types of industry.
"Through it all, Fairfield has kept its charm. Neighbors still greet neighbors. That has made my years here rewarding. My kids graduated from Fairfield schools. I've never had any regrets about being a part of this city."
