With its I-75 exit set to close, Elmwood Place fighting for its future

Elmwood Place, already fighting to save a crucial piece of land inside its village borders, is facing what could be an even bigger loss: the ramps that have given it easy access to Interstate 75 for nearly seven decades.

The state of Ohio plans to remove the Towne Street interchange from I-75 as part of its giant Mill Creek Expressway project.

The good news for the struggling central Cincinnati community of about 2,000: the Ohio Department of Transportation has pushed the start of the project from this spring to 2028, giving village officials time to consider their options.

The less-good news: They are not sure they have options.

“It gives us more time to prepare for what might be the inevitable,” said Elmwood Place Mayor Ronald L. Spears Jr.

Towne Street interchange ‘good for industry’

In early March, Spears and fellow Village Council members were working on plans to tell the community the Towne Street interchange would soon be history.

They’d learned about four years earlier that Ohio planned to remove the ramps – both on the east side of northbound I-75, one exiting to Towne, the other re-entering the interstate. The reason cited by ODOT: their "relatively low volume" use.

They were told the work would start after the state finished upgrades on eastbound Norwood Lateral, anticipated for early June, and as it started work on the westbound Norwood Lateral lanes.

“I always thought it was a bad thing,” Spears said of the state’s decision. “The exit’s very good for industry.”

Losing quick access to I-75 could hurt small businesses like UDF and larger ones like Central Steel & Wire’s distribution facility, village officials said.

Aware of the state’s plans, the Petermann school bus operator in Elmwood Place was anticipating the need for new driver routes. “It’s more convenient the way it’s set up now,” General Manager Ralph Brown said, with buses dispatched from the Queen City Transportation lot on Towne Street.

Told about the four-year delay in the project by The Enquirer, Spears said he’d yet to hear the news from the Department of Transportation.

The department shared updates with communities in the path of the Norwood Lateral and I-75 work when the project hit a snag in 2022, department spokesperson Kathleen Fuller said.

The project website still says Phase 8 of the $550-$650 million Mill Creek Expressway project – which includes removal of the Towne Street interchange – starts this spring.

Inflation at fault for project delays

Costs forced Ohio to change the schedule and scope of the next stage of the Mill Creek work.

Originally, the state planned to start installing a fourth lane on I-75, in both directions, between the Norwood Lateral and the Ronald Reagan Highway this year. Also planned were improvements to interchanges and rehabilitation of three railroad bridges and their tracks, along with the Towne Street work.

Plans now call for just the railroad-related construction, at about $42 million, to begin this year.

In 2028, the state will spend another $117 million to remove the Towne Street interchange and add noise barriers there and elsewhere. It will also add an extra I-75 lane in both directions between Norwood Lateral and Regina Graeter Way, about a mile north of Towne Street. The interstate will get fourth lanes, from Regina Graeter to Ronald Reagan, after that.

Inflation is largely to blame for the delays, Fuller said.

With the cost of materials, labor, equipment, fuel and trucking on the rise, the lone bids for two different versions of the original project came in $60 million and $100 million higher than the state was willing to pay.

“These (rising costs) cannot always be accounted for in between the time we determine an estimate and the time of bid letting,” Fuller said.

The Towne Street exit and entrance, installed in 1956 along with I-75, is currently used by about 2,000 vehicles a day. Once removed, drivers will reach Elmwood Place from local roads that tie into Vine Street, its main drag. Or they can hop on Towne from Paddock Road – traveling three-quarters of a mile north from Paddock’s Norwood Lateral exit or a mile south from where it leaves I-75.

Village addressing immediate needs

As Elmwood Place officials prepare for a future that may not include the Towne Street interchange, they are focused on more immediate needs in a village that’s lost about half of its population and a good number of its businesses since the 1960s.

With close to $2 million of its own annual revenue, supplemented with outside dollars, the village is

• Repaving Towne (which becomes Township Avenue) and two blocks of Vine Street, a $747,000 project covered by state and county dollars.

• Chasing buyers for empty buildings and industrial sites; and chasing grants to improve parks, spur recycling and tear down blighted property. In the latter category are buildings once used for police, a church and the village pool that closed in 2017.

• Beefing up policing, with a new chief and half a dozen new officers in recent months; and starting work toward a new joint police-fire building.

“Elmwood Place can survive,” Spears said, when asked about periodic talk about folding into Cincinnati or nearby St. Bernard.

What the village needs most, he said, is to tear down the just-shuttered school in its center to make way for development.

As with Towne Street, that effort remains in flux.

’Key piece of property’ could bring in funds

At this date, the former Elmwood Place Elementary school at Vine and Maple streets is slated to become the new home of Cincinnati's Golden Gloves for Youth Program.

But the Village Council is not likely to support a zoning change Golden Gloves will need to buy the building, Spears, another council member and a former mayor last month told the school board that owns the building.

They have nothing against Golden Gloves – although they think it could be a drain on police, fire and emergency service resources – but want to lure development to the school site. They envision mixed-used real estate going up in its place, with retail and maybe an urgent-care health facility on the ground floor, and apartments and offices above.

“This is a key piece of property to develop to bring money into the village,” said Spears.

Spears, a 55-year-old Elmwood Place native, took over as mayor in December 2022 with the death of then-Mayor Joe Anneken.

The grandson of three-term village mayor Emmitt Spears (1971-79 and 1984-88), he handled maintenance at Elmwood Elementary until it closed and owns I AM Coffee in St. Bernard with his wife and fellow Village Council member, Carolyn Spears.

Elmwood Place needs to control its own destiny to move forward, he said. “We know what works. We’re there every day.”

Plotting next moves on two fronts

As the school battle plays out, Elmwood Place officials are also considering their next move on Towne Street.

Losing the interchange will make efforts to recruit newcomers harder, Spears said. “Industry, especially new, may bypass Elmwood Place,” he said.

Since he’d yet to hear news of the project’s delay directly from state transportation officials, Spears did not know if they’d be open to negotiation. When Elmwood Place officials first learned about the state’s plans, they were not given options, he said. “It was a discussion concerning what was going to happen and when it was going to happen.”

The state will take input at any time, said Fuller, the department spokesperson. But it would not reopen its formal public meeting process absent design changes that alter the project’s environmental impact, she said.

Spears retains hope that the conversation about Towne Street – and the school – can continue.

“I would like to see them change their mind about the exits,” he said.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Elmwood Place could lose I-75 interchange.