BY LEW MOORES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Ellaine Hagerdorn, 4, of North College Hill chews a doughnut from North College Hill Bakery.
(Yoni Pozner photo)
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NORTH COLLEGE HILL -- In the morning, the bakery is filled with the aroma of home and hearth: home-baked, homemade, sugary confections with homegrown fruit, summoning comfort and all that is familiar. There are fresh-baked breads and rolls and cookies and homemade pies on trays behind lighted glass counters, like this apple pie with its crust all browned and with a dab of fruit peeking from its center.
Linda Braunwart still stops at the North College Hill Bake Shop, as she has since she went to school at St. Margaret Mary across the street. She stops in and orders two hard sugar rolls.
Mrs. Braunwart has lived in this community of 11,000 all of her life, and her memory invokes the bakery on West Galbraith Road, as well as the games children played on the streets and in school yards.
"Here I am, at the age of 49, still going to the bakery," Mrs. Braunwart said. "Still getting the same order. You still see the people there in the neighborhood, getting their same orders." North College Hill is a square pocket of residential neighborhoods, crossed at its heart with the twin arteries of West Galbraith Road and Hamilton Avenue. It is sandwiched in central Hamilton County between the older communities of Mount Healthy and the Cincinnati neighborhood of College Hill.
Veer from the main crossroad and the commerce that stretches in either direction, and you can still find people who sit on the porches of their Cape Codders and pass the time.
"My mom and dad are retired, and that's their big thing," Mrs. Braunwart said. "They sit on their porch and talk to neighbors." It's a community in flux. The full impact of the Ronald Reagan Highway -- the final leg of which opened late last year -- has yet to be felt, and the work begun in mid-February on major road and utility improvements is not expected to be completed until next spring. Both have the community talking.
The sword of the highway may cut both ways -- siphoning traffic away from the commerce of Galbraith Road and rendering those same businesses more accessible to those coming from outside the community.
More immediate is the construction work on West Galbraith. More than $3 million in improvements will be made, with the city kicking in $750,000 to $800,000, the state providing $695,000 and Hamilton County and utilities providing the balance.
City expanding
The city has outgrown its infrastructure; the electric lines, sewer pipes and water mains that hummed and carried the life-line of the community for years must be replaced.
West Galbraith is torn up and strewn with orange and white-striped construction barrels and yellow barrier tape.
Sidewalks are patched and traffic is sparse.
Outside North College Hill Bake Shop -- a community mainstay for 67 years -- construction equipment raises dust.
Traffic moves one way, to the west, and the noise of jackhammers can drown out the ringing telephone at D&D Outfitters just up the street, where Dave Robinson wipes the dust from the smooth fiberglass hull of a canoe.
The store opened in January 1989. "Look at the dust. Clean it, and in a week it's dirty again," Mr. Robinson said.
Jerry Thamann, safety-service director for the city, said the improvements have been on the drawing board for 10 years, and the construction was timed with utility work that includes major sanitary sewer improvements.
On-street parking will increase, many overhead wires will be eliminated, curbs and sidewalks will appear new, brick pavers will replace concrete, green space will be created and replica gas lights will be installed.
"It's hurt and helped," said Stephanie Corvi, president of the North College Hill Business Association and owner of Corvi Photography.
"It's going to look great when it's done. But our restaurants are suffering right now because of the road construction. It's making it impossible for people to get around and park."
Change a challenge
Mayor Daniel Brooks has his architect office right in the middle of the hub-bub on West Galbraith.
"It's an area in transition -- upward transition," Mr. Brooks said.
"We have good schools. Great location. It's very affordable housing. It's a safe community. That's not to say we don't have any problems. We have growing pains."
Mr. Brooks said the challenge for the city is finding a "more palatable way" beyond raising taxes to generate money for the city. "I prefer being imaginative and designing ways to raise our income levels without taxes."
One way is to attract new business, the mayor said. "If you have a strong business base, it takes the burden off the citizens. I keep saying that over and over. The whole reason you see the whole emphasis on Galbraith Road right now is because if we can take advantage of our proximity to Cross County (now the Ronald Reagan Highway), if we can take advantage of all the positive things in North College Hill, then we're going to attract new businesses to complement our existing businesses."
Clovernook Center -- Opportunities for the Blind, a North College Hill institution since 1903 that serves people who are visually impaired and otherwise disabled, has grown as well.
About 180 people work for the center, and about 110 of them are visually impaired.
And, said Janet Burns, vice president of development and community affairs for the center, "a number of those people who are impaired live in the community."
"North College Hill has been good to the Clovernook community," said Ms. Burns.
This is a community predicated on its affordability, an enduring selling point even today.
Homes an attraction
In 1921, you could buy a two- or three-bedroom cottage in town for from $1,750 to $2,600.
You could find a five-room home, complete with furnace and electric lights, a slate roof and concrete cellar on DeArmand Avenue for $3,700.
By the 1950s, Mrs. Braunwart said, her parents could find a home in the $16,000 range, plus another $100 for a larger front porch. Today, a three-bedroom Cape Codder with a finished basement on Goodman Avenue, one of the older residential streets in the community, might fetch $78,000.
The homes along Goodman, which has taken some of the traffic since Galbraith became one-way while under construction, are small, neat homes, with uncluttered front yards, some fenced, some sitting atop hills not far from the street.
Almost 77 percent of the homes in the city were built by 1959, and more than half -- 54 percent -- were built between 1940 and 1959. The city, something of a historical afterthought that really didn't develop until this century, took off in population between 1920 and 1930, and again between 1940 and 1960, when it topped 12,000.
Then Ronald Reagan Highway construction devoured households, dropping the population to around 11,000, where it is today.
Roger Krummen had his home built here 22 years ago, when it "one of the few places left in the city to build on."
He has lived in the community for most of his life and is president of the city's council.
He is taken with the small-town feel of the community, a place where "you know the mayor or your elected officials if you choose to."
His children went to the same grade school he attended, there is a community swimming pool and neighbors take care of their property. "I feel comfortable, secure and safe," Mr. Krummen said. Said Ms. Corvi, "It's a place where you can pretty much walk down the street in the evening."
Lure of the schools
While a school tax issue hasn't been successful here since 1989, Stanley Wernz, superintendent of North College Hill City School District, said support for the schools and community involvement has been "great."
A resident theorized that the reason money issues may have trouble in the city is because of an older population that doesn't want to spend the money and a younger population that doesn't have it to spend.
Yet, talk to residents about what they find attractive about the city, and the quality of schools is ranked up there with housing affordability.
Mr. Wernz said the hallmarks of the school district are its solid academic program, its use of computer technology and its high degree of participation in extracurricular activities.
"Parents turn out for extracurricular programs and fill the auditorium for music programs," said Mr. Wernz. Parent-teacher conferences involve about 99 percent participation in the elementary schools and about 80 percent in middle and high school.
Business dropping
"We are hurt tremendously in the afternoons," said Charlene Weitzel who, with her husband, Gary, owns the North College Hill Bake Shop, where everything is made from scratch.
Outside, construction equipment moved along the street. Saturdays are still good business, Mrs. Weitzel said, when work stops for the weekend.
The family grows apples and Concord grapes on their farm in Ross to make fresh apple pie and seedless grape pie.
They watch as customers come and go, new faces joining old. The bake shop is a bellwether of changing customs and habits.
Customers still come in and order baked goods by the dozen, but not as much as in days gone by, when families sat down and had breakfast together.
Now people drop in for an item or two and a cup of coffee, and it's off to work.
A customer walked in late one recent morning. Just one customer waited for an order to be filled.
"I guess you don't need a number this morning," he said.
