Monday, June 28, 1999
Boone Co. growth crowds 50-year-old nursery
BY KRISTINA GOETZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Dick Ammon, owner of Ammon Nursery, prunes an oakleaf hydrangea on land being considered for a wastewater treatment plant.
(Patrick Reddy photo)
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FLORENCE — All Richard Ammon wants to do is grow trees. It's all he's known for 50 years, rain or shine, through marriage and raising his two children, as he built his nursery business. But as development has spread in Boone County, his land has been nibbled away.
Now, Mr. Ammon stands to lose again. This time it's 40 acres in Belleview, along the Ohio River. Sanitation District No. 1 is planning a new wastewater treatment plant and could take some of his land.
Mr. Ammon wonders how long it will be before there's no land left to plow.
“When you've been raised in an agricultural community and you lose it, it's kind of sad,” the 70-year-old said. “They keep thinking progress is what they want, but it's just causing problems.”
Mr. Ammon and his family say their rural way of life has been replaced by a development boom.
The Kentucky State Data Center estimates that Boone County's population could be 79,172 by the year 2000. In 1950, it was 13,015.
Although 80,000 acres in Boone County are designated farmland, only 6,000 to 7,000 of that can be used for row crops: tobacco, corn and plants like Mr. Ammon grows, said Jerry Brown, Boone County's extension agent for agriculture.
The other acres are held by developers, held by farmers for pasture or are woodlands. “There's only so much land to farm in the county,” Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Ammon's family business has grown along with the county. But he also can track the growth of each of Boone County's major developments — Interstate 75, Florence Mall and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport — as it took land from his business.
Shirley Ammon, his wife, says it's hard to leave each piece of land because they start to feel like home.
“We started from scratch, and you finally get to a place where you feel comfortable,” she said. “I'm not a person for changes. I'm pretty content. ... You feel possessive about a place. It could go back to when Dick and I were first married.”
Mr. Ammon and his wife started their nursery in the spring of 1950. They had 31/2 acres then on one stretch of land where Mall Road and Ky. 18 now meet.
“My father gave me that piece of land,” Mr. Ammon said.
They started out growing perennials and a few shrubs.
“As land became available, we'd purchase it,” he said.
They now have about 265 acres on five sites in Boone County. They grow shade trees, holly, flowers and hundreds of other varieties of plants, and employ 100 people during peak times.
Along the way, the Ammons had two children, a son, Greg, and a daughter, Pam, who have joined the business.
“After you have land for a while, it becomes a part of you,” Mr. Ammon said. “That's what's been taken away from us. When you work the land and understand the land, you hate to lose it.”
Mr. Ammon's land losses started when I-75 snaked its way through Florence around 1961.
“They took a narrow strip off that 31/2 acres,” Mr. Ammon said. “Just enough to widen the road.”
By 1968, the Ammons' holding there had grown to about 55 acres. Then developers wanted to build Florence Mall.
“They tried for two years to get me to sell,” he said.
Instead, they worked out a land swap. Mr. Ammon kept 10 acres and the developers gave him the farm the family now lives on.
Two years ago, when the airport wanted 35 acres of Mr. Ammon's land, on Limaburg Creek Road, he tried to work a similar land swap.
He'd take no money for the land they wanted if he could have comparable land somewhere else in the county.
“They didn't find anything anywhere else that would work. ... What they offered me is about one-fifth of what I need to buy land around here,” he said.
Mr. Ammon and airport officials have all but settled on a price, but they could have taken the property through eminent domain if he hadn't agreed.
That no comparable land is available only shows Mr. Ammon how much farm land has been paved over in Boone County.
“I can't replace it. There's no good farmland left that anybody is willing to sell. They're wanting $20,000 to $30,000 an acre for something half-decent to plow.
“If it wasn't for eminent domain, I guess there wouldn't be progress,” he said.
Mr. Brown said a day doesn't go by that he doesn't hear a Boone County farmer complain about development.
“Farmers are concerned that they don't have control of their land anymore,” he said. “Their land can be taken for highways, sewage plants, schools or anything else.”
Mr. Ammon knows that fact well. But that's not all he has to worry about. Progress is hungry for even more of his land.
Developers have been pressuring him the past couple of years to sell frontage on the property where he lives, a 110-acre area on Ky. 18 at Camp Ernst Road, which also holds one of his nurseries.
“Constantly we're getting people who want to develop this front corner,” he said. “Kroger was after us for a couple of years ... McDonald's, Walgreens, Burger King, Revco Drug, Winn-Dixie.
“There's no question on the money,” he said, “but it's a question of whether I want to sell.”
He doesn't, even though developers have offered him millions.
“We'd never make that kind of money in my lifetime,” he said. “(But) we wouldn't spend any more money if we had it.”
And now, the Ammon family is afraid they will have no choice but to sell the 40 acres for the wastewater treatment plant.
Three parcels are being considered. If none of the property owners agrees to sell, the land can be condemned and obtained by the sanitation district through eminent domain.
He's afraid that before long his children's inheritance — the business he cultivated his whole life — will be all but gone, faster than the time it took him to build it.
“I don't think they'll have it long,” Mr. Ammon said. “Finally the pressure will build up and they'll have to sell.”
Until then, Mr. Ammon will walk out to his nursery in the early mornings before the heat of the day and stand amid his many rows of trees.
Through rain and shine, he'll watch them grow.
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