Friday, March 12, 1999
Suburbs find room for more
Tristate boom continues at record clip
BY MICHAEL D. CLARK and TERRY FLYNN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The burst to Greater Cincinnati's burbs continues at record pace.
New U.S. Census Bureau data show the number of people living in the 14 counties ringing Cincinnati has grown by 7.3 percent since the 1990 Census.
In an analysis of county growth patterns from 1990 to 1998, demographic experts estimate 1,972,041 people call the Tristate home. That's an increase of about 133,400 from the 1990 Census.
And it's no surprise where most of the region's growth can be found — along Interstate 275. Warren County had the largest single-year growth spurt in Ohio, adding 5,889 residents in 1998. Only Hamilton County posted a population decline during the eight-year period. It lost roughly 19,000 resi dents since 1990, despite having the state's third-highest number of births last year, 12,075. The other local counties in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana posted strong gains.
But experts say there is a price to pay as more residents crowd into such places as Florence, Mason, West Chester and Milford:
• Traffic congestion: Interstates and state and county roads are getting cramped.
• School crowding: Taxpayers have spent tens of millions in the past five years building schools. But that's still not enough in some areas. At Warren County's Little Miami
Schools, for instance, some elementary students may be forced to attend classes in churches or a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in the fall because of a classroom crunch.
• Strained services: Many communities are buying more fire and police equipment, hiring more officers and firefighters and expanding water and sewer systems.
• Overdevelopment: How many times have you cursed traffic jams along Beechmont or Colerain avenues or near Florence Mall? Some officials contend not enough thought has gone into planning in some suburban pockets. The result: gridlock.
“What you are seeing is the "metropolitization' of America's population that has been going on for years,” said Samuel Staley, policy analyst for the Buckeye Institute think tank in Dayton.
“Metropolitization” refers to the exploding trend of companies, retail centers and other centers of commerce pushing farther and farther into the suburbs.
This trend, experts say, is drawing away residents who used to live near Cincinnati or in Hamilton County.
One such household is the Martin Sanders family.
Mr. Sanders, his wife and four children had lived in Montgomery since 1984, but his family recently decided any improvement in their quality of life would mean leaving Hamilton County. Mr. Sanders' family began moving Thursday to Warren County's rural Maineville community in an effort to escape the traffic gridlock and overdevelopment that often clogs nearby Montgomery Road.
“There is a cluster mess all the way along Montgomery Road. I don't see any improvement in sight,” said Mr. Sanders as he waited for movers to arrive.
“Sitting in stopped traffic is such an idle thing to do with your life,” he said.
His wife, Karen, agreed. Their new community in Warren County, she said, “has plenty of elbow room, and you don't have a lot of traffic like we do now. You can go down the street to the store and not run into wall-to-wall traffic.”
Hamilton County's top planning official said gridlock contributed to some of the county's estimated 2.2 percent population loss since 1990. But he said there is another factor causing residents to move: The lack of upscale housing in Hamilton County, compared with what is offered in the suburban counties.
It's a problem that's driving county residents away, said Ron Miller, executive director of Hamilton County's regional planning commission.
“We've not been able to develop upper-end housing in the county so people can move up,” Mr. Miller said. “So in order to move up, they have to move out. We're only beginning to do something about that now,” he said in reference to the speeding of sewer and road development in western Hamilton County.
Don Wiedemann, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Northern Kentucky, said Northern Kentucky builders “have traditionally been able to build over here for less than in the Cincinnati area. Generally, the rule is about $10,000 less for the average home in the $100,000 to $150,000 range.”
More than 2,000 single-family homes were started in the five-county Northern Kentucky area of Boone, Kenton, Campbell, Grant and Gallatin counties in 1998. More than half of them were in Boone County alone.
That's largely why Boone County posted the largest percentage increase — 38.3 percent — of any Tristate county in the new census data.
Kevin Costello, executive director of the Boone County Planning Commission, said the county has set records each of the past three years for single-family and commercial building permits, exceeding 2,700 combined commercial/residential projects in 1998.
“The reasons are straightforward,” he said. “A good business climate, a large county, excellent education system, very diverse in terms of areas to build. And the airport is an employment magnet drawing people to the community.
He said the county's influx of residents is coming from as far as California and Florida — and as close as eastern neighbor Kenton County. “And we've always gotten our share of new residents from the Ohio side of the river, mainly from Hamilton County,” he said.
Dennis Dunn knows why people are moving into Boone County. He grew up in Kenton County, but he found everything he wanted for his wife and three young children in neighboring Boone.
“There wasn't one specific reason for building a house in Boone County, but several reasons,” said Mr. Dunn, 33. “We looked at a lot of new developments, and Boone County offered us a better selection than anywhere else.”
The Dunns built a house three years ago in the Treetop subdivision by Fisher Homes, off Ky. 237 near Hebron. They moved only a few miles from Erlanger in Kenton County.
“We felt we were moving into a new rural area when we built there,” he said. “We are close to schools, close to day care, close to church and close to both our jobs, but we're still removed from the big-city atmosphere.”
Demographic experts say another reason people are rushing into the suburbs is communities' ability to land new companies.
In Northern Kentucky, for instance, extensive commercial development springing up around the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is triggering construction of more subdivisions to house workers.
“The availability of land for commercial and residential construction is a major factor, as is the proximity to I-75 and I-275,” said Dan Tobergte, senior vice president of Northern Kentucky's Tri-County Economic Development Corp. (Tri-ED), which recruits businesses to Northern Kentucky. “When companies come in, the people come with them,” he said.
The same holds true in Warren County, which has landed 16,500 jobs since 1990 — more than any other Tristate county during that time. Hundreds of acres of farmland have been plowed and turned into sprawling subdivisions.
Bob Craig, director of the Warren County Planning Commission, said his county's increasing growth — 28.2 percent since 1990 — “is amazing.”
“It's pretty much tied to the economy and the economy is going so well,” he said. “But there would still be some growth and development even if the economy slowed down; it would just be slower.”
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