By Jane Prendergast and Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Huntington Meadows apartments in Bond Hill have been boarded up since residents' leases were terminated in August. (MICHAEL E. KEATING photo) | ZOOM |

Huntington Meadows was Cincinnati's largest privately owned low-income apartment complex for 49 years.

Now, officials say, the sprawl of vacant brick buildings - windows shuttered with plywood - in Bond Hill is a symbol of something else: the largest decrease in serious crime of all 52 city neighborhoods.

Incidents of robbery, rape, burglary and other serious crimes dove 29 percent between 2001 and 2002 in Bond Hill, a northeast city neighborhood between Elmwood Place and Norwood.

Contrast that with the rest of the city, where serious crime jumped almost 12 percent. Bond Hill was one of only nine city neighborhoods in which serious crime dropped. Many others - among them Kennedy Heights, West Price Hill and Winton Place - were hit with crime increases of 20 percent or more.

Officials say the reason Bond Hill is safer today is simple:

Thousands of Huntington Meadows residents moved out in 2002 when the complex was foreclosed.

"You had a large number of people displaced out of the area,'' said Sgt. Rick Lehman, supervisor of the Cincinnati Police Department's Violent Crime Squad in District 4. "I can't put my finger on anything but that."

Paul Probst, president of the community council in neighboring Roselawn, said Huntington Meadows' closing affected his neighborhood, too.

"Car thefts have dropped dramatically,'' Probst said. "We had a big problem with that. They're kids. ... They (steal a car,) drive them around the block and say, "Well, I've done that.' "

LOOKING FOR INPUT

Sam Malone, president of the Bond Hill Community Council, said the group wants to hear from the community on what the future of the complex should be.

The crime statistics, released by the police department last week, come at a time when residents all around Huntington Meadows are waiting to see what the future holds for the 58 buildings that make up the complex at Langdon Farm Road and Seymour Avenue.

Larry Curtis, managing partner of the Winn Development Co. in Boston, said Huntington's future likely will be radically different from its past. His company, which bought the mortgage from Fannie Mae, and a partner, MCR Property Management Inc., both specialize in market-rate housing.

They would consider tearing down some buildings, Curtis said, and converting others to townhomes.

The property's previous owner, the PM Group of Michigan, went into bankruptcy in 2001. Fannie Mae foreclosed on the property, and the residents of its 1,169 units were evicted in September 2002. Some residents had started to move out before then, complaining about mold and asbestos.

The property was scheduled to be sold at a sheriff's auction last week.But Winn asked for a delay just hours before the gavel was to come down. The company "preferred more time to evaluate the property and the overall business strategy and dialogue further with the city," Curtis said.

The auction will be rescheduled for early April, he said.

Alice Warner, 71, whose children and grandchildren moved her out of Huntington Meadows on Labor Day, liked the complex enough to stay there almost 20 years. She knew and liked her immediate neighbors and had no problems coming and going.

"Where we lived was OK," she said. "But there were places where every time you looked up, the police were around."

Sam Malone, new president of the Bond Hill Community Council, said the group seeks community input on the future of the complex.

"We need a full-scale examination of all of those issues," he said, including crime.

"Certainly those safety issues were there with Huntington Meadows," Malone said. "Can we directly attribute it to that? It remains to be seen. There's still room for improvement there."

Police agree. Lt. Mike Neville said District 4 is completing plans for how it'll use its overtime dollars this year and which neighborhoods will be targeted as crime spots.

"We want to make sure we don't just have a relocation of the problems," Neville said. "So we'll be trying some things to try to make sure drug-dealing and other things don't get a chance to get re-established someplace else."

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com and gkorte@enquirer.com