Earlier this year, the Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati selected the second phase of Rockford Woods as the site of CiTiRAMA 2009, but some Northside neighbors don’t believe it should be built.

The Rockford Woods subdivision, a planned development (PD) approved by Cincinnati City Council and home to CiTiRAMA in 2001, was abandoned in by developers EEHV, LLC following the construction of the 16-home first phase, leaving the 37-home second phase in limbo.

Because documents relating to the subdivision were not properly recorded and no homeowners association was ever formed, residents were left on the hook for basic maintenance and improvements and many lacked full legal access to their properties.

Residents of the first phase hired an attorney to protect their legal rights and, after spinning their wheels, asked the Northside Community Council (NCC) to approach the City on their behalf to ask for all issues related to the PD to be resolved.

With the NCC's help, the developer, the City and the residents finally ironed out a memorandum of understanding that has remedied eight of the nine homeowners' demands and allows the second phase to move forward.


Ingress and egress

In a May 10 e-mail to Councilmember Laketa Cole, Hart Avenue resident Emily Rockenfelder says that many people in the older part of the neighborhood don't want more houses.

"We all have our reasons - our traffic doubling on our tiny streets, the loss of more woods, the tax money we may have to pay to have Rockford accommodate the traffic and the old Rockford neighbors who may lose part of their yards and street parking," she says.

Brian Frederick Eastman, pastor of the Revelation Spiritual Church of Christ/Cincinnati, owns a home on Rockford Place and remembers the discussions leading up to Rockford Woods.

"During the hearings, I remember someone - I believe a city official - explained that a development such as this would require 2 different street exits," he says in a letter to Councilmember Roxanne Qualls. "Yet the first development grew, with just Rockford Place - what is essentially a single-lane road - as its entrance and egress. And this has been a problem."
Eastman doesn't see how Rockford can handle more cars on the narrow street.

"I can see no way that Rockford can handle a bunch more cars as new home-dwellers move into Rockford Woods," he says. "Yet I have heard no plans for creating another exit street."

And he has no idea how the street could be widened.

"Are they going to tear into the hillside which is already so water-soaked that there is a constant stream running down the street into storm drains," he says. "That sounds like a sure bet for hill slippage down the road. Or are they going to take away the other side's lawn, so our porches will literally be sitting by the curb?"

Gwen Marshall, secretary of the NCC board, worries that taxpayer money will be used to widen Rockford, even though Mayor Mark Mallory personally assured her that it would not.

"I would need to see that in writing with bonding before I could believe that the million or more dollars that this would cost won't end up coming out of the taxpayers’ pockets," she writes.

Michael Cervay, director of the City's Department of Community Development, says that the City's Department of Transportation and Engineering is looking into the redesign and improvement of the segment of Rockford Place between Hamilton Avenue and the Rockford Woods development.

No timetable has been set for that work, and the funding source has not been identified.


Hillside trust

Eric Russo, executive director of the Hillside Trust, says that their Land Use Advisory Committee sees quite a few problems for the developer to consider.

"There are approximately 15-17 homes along the eastern edge of the extended Rockford street, overlooking Spring Grove Cemetery, the soils of which were identified in a 1988 H.C. Nutting report as glacial till," he says.

And although he doesn't know if the soil contains lakebed clays, he points out that the presence of lakebed clays in certain glacial till compositions are widely acknowledged as a prime factor in instability and landsliding.

"Even without the presence of lakebed clays, glacial till is expensive to develop because of the nature of the soil and the underlying depth to bedrock," Russo says.

Russo also says that a creek at the base of the hillside has the potential to erode the toe of the hillside, and says that LUAC estimates that three or four lots on an extended Rockford would require above-average engineering to ensure that erosion does not occur.

Russo says that the developer has two options to consider before the Hillside Trust will support the project:

* Remove the eastern flank of homes from the plan, reducing the number of housing units by 50 percent
* Perform an engineering analysis to determine the presence of lakebed clays and hire an engineering geologist to study the hillside for its stability

"Together, these investigations would indicate whether the hillside ought to be developed and, if so, the safest and most appropriate manner for ensuring its permanent stability and integrity," he says.


April 21

Marshall says in an April 30 e-mail to Councilmember Cole that the most recent NCC approval of Phase 2, at their April 21 meeting, was "fatally flawed" and should not be considered as a NCC vote of support.

"The 55 property owners who live in the historic part of the affected portion of the Northside neighborhood did not vote for this," she says. "The supporters to continue Rockford Woods development were from other parts of Northside and from the people currently getting a tax abatement in Phase 1 of Rockford Woods."

Marshall includes in her e-mail an article titled A Tragedy in Northside, or a Wake Up Call, a detailed account of her perspectives from the meeting.

"At our April meeting a vote occurred on a motion that was not in writing, that was amended, that neither of the secretaries, nor the motion maker, nor the council president clearly stated the content of the motion as a completed unit to those voting," she writes.

Marshall says that the confusion led to a tie vote.

"Instead of saying this was a tie and the agenda item needed to be moved forward to the next meeting, or restating the motion followed by a revote, the person conducting the discussion used Roberts Rules and broke the tie herself," she writes.

She says that days after the meeting, everyone had different impressions of what had been decided.

Would the issue come back before the NCC if soil tests found that the hillside was unstable? Would the second phase of the development go through no matter what?

"The problem is that of the 67 votes cast in that room at 9:50 pm, it would be hard to find two people who could actually agree on what was just agreed to or what should happen next," she writes.

Rockenfelder says that she and other concerned citizens were simply not listened to.

"The developer barely batted an eye," she says. "When I later wrote the NCC President Tim Jeckering, he said he would do his best to make sure proper soil tests would be administered, but it is ultimately the City who will oversee this matter."


Development planned

In February, neighborhood resident Karen Nagel contacted City Council to question why they would want to build 40 more houses when it took six years to sell 16 in the first phase.

Rockford Woods resident Matt Zeller says that these assertions about poor property sales are totally untrue.

"It's funny because when this group began putting signs up in the neighborhood is right around the time we got everything done legally," he says. "There were three houses up for sale, and realtors began to market them aggressively. Two of the houses sold within two weeks."

Zeller points out that, rather than being a private enterprise, as a PD the Rockford Woods development is a public-private partnership and falls under guidelines spelled out in Chapter 1429 of the Cincinnati Municipal Code.

Before the April vote, the NCC approved creation of the PD by votes in November 1996 and in May 2001, and even mentioned it by name in the Northside Comprehensive Land Use Plan that was approved in November 2006.

Because it has already been approved - several times - Zeller doesn’t understand why Phase 2 is being debated as if it’s a new idea.

"If it didn't move forward, 16 homeowners would be responsible for an area meant for 53 homeowners," he says. "I wouldn't want that. Would you? There are many of us who are very disappointed that another group of homeowners would try to hold things up."

Marshall believes that, aside from the credibility of the NCC, there is much more at stake.

"This isn't just an academic exercise; it pits neighbor against neighbor where what is at stake is the largest financial asset that most of these people have, their homes," she writes. "It can't be just about fulfilling the human, insatiable desire for 'more'; this is an important wildlife corridor between larger 'wildlife' islands and if the roads are put in, but the lots not sold, the damage to 'Mother Nature' will already be done."

A letter by Zeller is scheduled to appear in an upcoming edition of The Northsider.

Phase two of the development is likely to have fewer houses, more green space, and work within the U.S. Green Building Council's Neighborhood Development Pilot guidelines.

Previous reading on BC:
Amendment made for, questions asked about Rockford Woods (3/4/08)
Rockford Woods aid passes unanimously (2/19/08)
City to finally resolve Rockford Woods fiasco (2/5/08)