By John Kiesewetter
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The dented silo on Tylersville Road at Cox Road, a West Chester landmark, will be razed soon to make way for a bank and small shopping center. It was damaged by a storm in 1980 and sits near Dudley's Dented Silo Pub, which will remain. The Cincinnati Enquirer/GLENN

WEST CHESTER TWP. - Another local landmark - the Dudley farm's dented silo at Tylersville and Cox roads - soon will be knocked down and replaced with a small shopping center.

"It's a landmark, but we have to make room for progress," said Evonne Dudley-Long, owner of Dudley's Dented Silo Pub at the busy intersection. "It really has no value."

Except to her bar patrons - who win a drink on the house if they can drive a golf ball 210 yards off the dented dome.

Midland Atlantic, developer of the Voice of America Centre across Cox Road, has applied for a demolition permit for the silo, which was damaged by a 1980 storm, according to family members.

On Monday, the company will present final development plans to the West Chester Zoning Commission for three commercial buildings - 16 storefronts in 31,000-square feet - where the silo stands, near Interstate 75.

The shops will face Cox Lane, which will be extended south from behind Fifth Third Bank and TGI Friday's to Tylersville Road. A Bank One will be built this spring immediately south of Fifth Third.

The property has been in the Dudley family since 1914. Dudley-Long's grandparents' dairy farm once stretched from the old Voice of America west over what is now Interstate 75 and Wetherington Golf and Country Club. The cows have been replaced by cash cows - fast-food restaurants, banks, a home improvement retailer and five-lane roads.

"We're sitting here in the middle of a giant jigsaw puzzle," said Dudley-Long, whose uncle, Jim, lives in the stately farmhouse next door. "It was time for him to get with it and do this."

Dudley-Long says she also reluctantly has agreed to let Midland Atlantic change the name of the pub's access road off Tylersville Road to Cox Lane from Cara Lane, which was named after her grandmother who started the farm in 1914.

"I don't think it's right, but I'll let them do it," Dudley-Long said.

The name change bothers her more than tearing down the glass-lined grain silo, namesake of the tavern she opened four years ago. "No, I'm not changing the name of the Dented Silo," she said.

Bar patrons Friday agreed with her that demolishing the 1887 red-brick Union Township schoolhouse, at Tylersville and Cox roads, two years ago was a much more significant loss than the empty silo.

"The big story was tearing down the old schoolhouse," said Keith Ledoux, a Dented Silo regular who painted the Dudley farmhouse on Tylersville Road in 1981. "It had a lot more history to it."

E-mail jkiesewetter@enquirer.com