BY ANNE MICHAUD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
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Whitewater Trustee Ray Schaible enjoys tinkering with cars in his yard: 'That's what I moved out here for.'
(Steven M. Herppich photo)
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WHITEWATER TOWNSHIP -- Ray Schaible put his four-wheel-drive truck into reverse and backed down the road a hundred yards. "There, you see them?" he pointed.
Beneath a row of trees, wandering in the tall grass, were five wild turkeys.
They seemed to have little concern for city life, a short 18 miles from downtown Cincinnati. But soon they and their Whitewater Township neighbors will be forced to pay attention. As development moves in from several fronts, this pocket of country life is becoming one of Hamilton County's most endangered species.
Whitewater Township is a place where a person does as he pleases with his land -- as proof, small businesses dot the back yards of residential neighborhoods. One homeowner parks his semi-truck in the front yard between hauls. Most other places have rules against that kind of thing.
Township voters have rejected such rules, or zoning, three times to keep government from limiting their lives. But the pressure is building to live with the government fetters because they can also protect.
Construction of public water and sewers is expected to start in the spring. A county planning committee has considered a "suburban activity center" of retail and office development at the intersection of Interstates 74 and 275. County commissioners are leaning on township trustees to push for zoning once again to encourage orderly growth.
Neighboring Harrison and Crosby townships are as rural as Whitewater, but they have zoning. Whitewater, and a small unzoned part of Miami Township, have taken the hands-off-my-land living to its extreme.
"It seems like the wild west starts at the Great Miami River," said Mr. Schaible, a township trustee.
He grew up in Green Township, and as a young man, he liked to work on cars in his father's garage. A neighbor called zoning authorities regularly to complain about him -- even though one of the cars he repaired belonged to the neighbor's brother.
Today, Mr. Schaible, owner of Miamitown Auto Parts, has an electric car lift in his garage at home, shielded from neighbors by 16 acres.
"I tinker; it's what I enjoy," he said. "That's why I moved out here."
Life, Whitewater style
Paul Bath wears the paint-speckled eyeglasses of a man who does a lot of home maintenance. His hard work shows all over the quaint 1850 brick home he shares with his wife, Carolyn.
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Much open land remains near the intersection of Interstates 275 and 74.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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The Baths have taken full advantage of Whitewater's way of life.
Mr. Bath and his brother farmed land north of their home for several years. They married sisters. Later, Paul and Carolyn Bath bought Ye Old English Tavern on U.S. 50 at the Indiana border, next to their current home.
They added a drive-through liquor sales warehouse in the rear yard. They worked hardest on Sundays, when Indiana residents crossed the border in search of Sunday liquor sales, which Ohio allowed.
The tavern was in the path of the new interstate. With the settlement they received, the Baths built a restaurant on the opposite side of their 6 1/2 acres. Now under new ownership, it's called Delaney's. He has treasured his close-to-home life: "It's convenient. You don't have to go out and fight the highway. You can walk to work and stagger home."
The couple recently sold 40 acres of farmland to a gravel mining company, which is a fast-growing interest in Whitewater Township. The township is home to two riverbeds, those of the Great Miami and Whitewater rivers, which have created rich sand and gravel deposits.
"When people can get $10,000 an acre for gravel ground, you are not going to farm it, with the price of farming," Mr. Bath said.
Five gravel operations are active in Whitewater Township. They are buying more land daily, it seems, Mr. Schaible said. The township is also home to three construction debris landfills and a sanitary landfill. A six-acre tire dump, which was a breeding ground for mosquitoes, closed two years ago.
Longtime resident Howard Gieringer said the lack of control by the township has turned Whitewater into a community that is, in parts, "disorderly and ugly."
"We're the dumping ground for all of Hamilton County, period," he said.
"The gravel mining is pretty orderly, but without zoning, we don't even know when they're buying more land," said Mr. Gieringer, who helped write one of the three zoning codes that were defeated at the ballot.
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Derrell Lowe makes repairs to Tom Pellman's taxi in front of Pellman's mobile home.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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He decries the idea of opening a business in a back yard and the overwhelming number of mobile homes -- by one estimate, they are 46 percent of the homes in Whitewater Township. Both harm property values, he said.
"How would you like to live in a neighborhood, and somebody comes along, buys the home next to you, and he starts a welding business? It depreciates the property and drives down your tax base," said Mr. Gieringer.
Mobile homes decline in value each year, he said, so property tax bills go down. Some mobile homes are in neat trailer parks; others are crowded together in the hamlets of Elizabethtown or Hooven. His zoning proposal would have defined a minimum lot size for mobile homes, eliminating future developments like Elizabethtown.
"The people in the new homes, the nice homes, those are the people who really pushed for zoning," he said.
That can push out people who have moved to Whitewater because it is affordable, said Jim Brett, another township trustee. He owns the Dry Fork Mobile Home Park, which will hold 117 homes when complete.
"I can understand that someone doesn't want to build a $200,000 home and have a 1960 doublewide trailer move in next to them," he said. But zoning can take away affordable housing opportunities by limiting lot sizes.
"We need to make sure we allow for affordable housing because we're not a wealthy community," Mr. Brett said.
Holding back time
The trend is toward new, expensive homes. Nearly 60 have just been completed or are on the drawing board for Harrison Road. The new homes will come with deed restrictions against adding a business in the back yard.
Harrison Road is the township's most obvious row of homes and businesses existing side-by-side. There is a vintage car sales trailer beside a pink Victorian home and a backyard cabinetry operation, welding shop, motorcycle repair.
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Dan Vogel overlooks a lake in Whitewater Woods where he is developing homes.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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"The problem is anybody could do anything right next to you," said Dan Vogel, who is developing Whitewater Woods, nine homes on five-acre lots surrounding a manmade lake.
He plans to live there himself, moving up the hill from the Harrison Road home he has had for 30 years, which abuts the Miami Whitewater Forest.
"I've lived in the woods. I want to keep it like that," he said.
A good number of people want to keep things the way they are. They just can't agree on whether that means freezing all development -- possibly with zoning -- or holding onto the freedom to do as you like.
"Twenty years from now, I want this to be exactly like this," said Hubert Brown, sweeping his hand to encompass the view of the Whitewater River from his rear deck.
Mr. Brown, a third township trustee, built his home in a floodplain 10 years ago because nobody said he couldn't. The house is on heavy concrete stilts and can withstand most storms without interior damage.
"Zoning is a good thing. Zoning is the only controls and limits you can put on an area to keep it nice," he said. "That said, the residents of Whitewater Township have emphatically said "No.' " Seventy-five percent of voters said no last time, in 1995.
"If three out of four people told you they don't want it, what do you do?" Mr. Brown asked. "You don't champion the cause."
Not everyone understands the issue, but most people have a "hard gut feeling on it," he said. When township trustees begin to sense that changing, they will back zoning again, Mr. Brown thinks, but not before.
Mr. Brown moved to Whitewater from Colerain Township when he was in his late 30s. He saw Colerain develop from a "hick" area to the suburb it is today. Moving to Whitewater was like turning the clock back 30 years, he said. People are nicer in the country.
"People aren't packed in," Mr. Brown said. "You can afford to be nicer, and life is a bit easier."
Being Blue Ash
Hamilton County commissioners and the Regional Planning Commission have said, from time to time, that they envision the western part of Hamilton County growing up to be Blue Ash someday.
It's a vision Mr. Brown loathes: "If we wanted to be just like Blue Ash, we'd live in Blue Ash."
At a recent county commission meeting, the board designated Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus to impress on Whitewater Township trustees the importance of zoning.
"As development occurs -- and it continues to occur as we bring in water and sewer lines -- it's important to bring as much planning to this area as possible," Mr. Bedinghaus said.
There are several examples of bad development in Hamilton County, he said: Beechmont Avenue, Colerain Avenue, Delhi Pike.
"If you had known what was going to develop there, you might have done things differently," Mr. Bedinghaus said. "This is our chance to do things differently."
Mr. Schaible understands the argument. But like Mr. Brown, he refuses to push something on voters that they clearly don't want. Mr. Brett said he wants to create a compromise proposal that more people can support.
Mr. Schaible said he has a growing sense that residential and commercial development will occur naturally in different parts of Whitewater Township, without zoning. Much vacant land is taken up by floodplains and gravel operations.
The chief benefit of zoning is separating land uses, Mr. Schaible said. It really doesn't give trustees much control, in the end.
"The thing with zoning is, if big money moves in, they're going to get around anything," he said. "The guy that gets hurt is the guy with two acres who wants to put a shed on his property."
Residents of the Hidden Valley housing development can attest to that. They are about 1,300 families next to Whitewater Township, on the other side of the Ohio-Indiana border. Many of them own campers, but they are not allowed to park them in their yards.
What do they do? They drive back across the border and park the campers at a lot in Whitewater -- for a monthly fee.
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