Monday, February 01, 1999
Retail hopes fading into quaint notion
New offices dominate Olde area
BY AMY HIGGINS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
UNION TOWNSHIP — Victoria Alvarez looks wistfully out the front window of her studio and pottery store, beyond the cars zooming past on Cincinnati-Dayton Road, across to the 100-year-old buildings turned into professional offices.
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EYE ON WEST CHESTER
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Union Township's Olde West Chester is at a crossroads. Some residents and officials want the mile-long corridor along Cincinnati-Dayton Road to become a hub of specialty shops and other retail outlets. Others encourage a path toward office development.
In a three-part series starting today, reporter Amy Higgins looks at what has happened in Olde West Chester's business district and how its struggles today could lead to future opportunities.
• Today: A lack of unity among local residents, businesses and officials has hurt Olde West Chester's chances of becoming what some hoped would be its destiny: an enclave of small, successful retail shops and boutiques.
• Tuesday: Professional offices are taking over Olde West Chester. But business owners are looking nervously at the emerging Union Centre Boulevard development and wonder if it will help or hurt their community.
• Wednesday: A national development expert offers his vision of what Olde West Chester could become.
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She once had high hopes the buildings would become quaint coffee and sandwich shops — another step on the path of making Olde West Chester a miniature Waynesville, Lebanon or Nashville, Ind. But eyeing the slow takeover of offices, Ms. Alvarez concedes she's giving up her dream of a Butler County craft and shopping mecca.
“Sometimes I feel like I'm a dying breed, the last of the little stores, quaint shops,” Ms. Alvarez said.
That dream of creating a shopping district was why business leaders about 10 years ago dubbed the one-mile stretch of Cincinnati-Dayton Road “Olde” West Chester, hoping the moniker and marketing ploy would create a quaint-enough feeling to draw shoppers in.
It hasn't worked.
At least four shops have closed in the last two years — mostly because not everyone shares the dream of Ms. Alvarez and others. While half the area's property owners are pushing for a quaint retail district and the other half resists it, shoppers and shop owners have gone somewhere else.
“There hasn't been unity among the people who live in the area,” Township Administrator Dave Gully said. “People who live there just don't want commerce.”
Unable to agree on a single destiny, residents and business owners along Cincinnati-Dayton Road may have lost their chance. Township leaders are already deep in their plans for the future of Olde West Chester — and not all of them include Ms. Alvarez's dream.
Mr. Gully said the future of Olde West Chester lies in offices, which now outnumber shops and boutiques by nearly a 2-to-1 ratio.
Some say those offices have stopped craft and antiques stores from coming in. Others say the lack of those specialty shops — fostered by the lack of shoppers — has brought in the professional offices. Whichever came first, no one disputes the area has been slow to take off.
“If we had something here, we'd have shoppers,” said Roger Stagge, whose family has lived in Olde West Chester since 1981. “It's a Catch-22.”
Mr. Stagge said the biggest problem impeding retail development in the area, more than disunity, is apathy. He tried to organize a group he called Community Alliance for Olde West Chester to bring merchants, residents and property owners together. His invitations received just four responses.
“They have not gotten involved,” Mr. Stagge said.
Jeff Prohaska shares the same frustration. Divisions and broken promises are part of the reason the Prohaskas closed their gift store, the Rare Rabbit, after the holiday shopping season.
But Mr. Prohaska said the death knell to his store and the others that left last year — such as the Cinnamon Cupboard and Jennifer's Main Street Gallery — was the opening of Union Centre Boulevard interchange at Interstate 75. Mr. Prohaska said traffic through his store decreased 35 percent since the project opened late last year, allowing drivers to bypass the Cincinnati-Dayton Road corridor.
By some accounts, progress is being made. Township leaders have gotten involved to create special zoning for the area and new tenants are mov ing in — albeit office dwellers.
Judith Carter, township director of planning and zoning, said the township is paying for a $16,500 study designed to attract shoppers to Olde West Chester. The report, to include recommendations on sidewalks, streetlights, banners and traffic controls, is due in April.
Ms. Carter agrees the area lacks such amenities as sidewalks and streetlights. While the township can't afford to install those, it requires developers to put them in as buildings are built and restored.
Mostly, though, Ms. Carter sees the same problem with Olde West Chester as the merchants: nothing to draw customers.
Ms. Alvarez agreed: “It's not inviting for other people to come and set up a business,” she said. “Somebody has to do something to make people want to come here.”
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