SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- If you love nature, you would love the 52 acres of undeveloped property in the heart of Springfield Township known as Warder Park. And if you lived nearby, you’d probably feel the same desire to preserve it that its neighbors do.
“I can almost hear the trees talking,” said Tracy Fryburger, who lives in the area but also works for the city of Cincinnati’s nursery on property adjoining Warder Park. “It’s kind of haunting, in a nice way.”
The property’s woods, its meadows and its lakes are church on Sundays for Jerry Judge, who walks his dogs there daily. It’s an oasis of green in the midst of the city, he said, with snapping turtles, foxes, herons and other wildlife.
“It’s just a magical place that grows on you,” he said.
That’s why he and other neighbors are so upset at the prospect of seeing it become a mixed-use development of office buildings, stores and homes – something called for in the township’s neighborhood master plan.
They and about 100 other residents formed Keep Warder Wild in November, a group dedicated to doing just that. They’ve created a website and collected about $900 in a GoFundMe account that they expect will be used for legal costs to fight the development.
“Imagine how (the neighborhood of) Hyde Park would react if they wanted to do development in Ault Park,” Fryburger said.
Advocates for developing the property say they want it to become a catalyst for economic development in Springfield Township, a bedroom community of 36,000 that has few undeveloped properties left.
“We’re looking for a nice, mixed-use, neighborhood development that would make people say, ‘Hey, Springfield Township is a neat area. It’s up-and-coming … Let’s think about moving there and staying there,’ ” said trustee Joe Honerlaw.
Honerlaw said he was the trustee who urged the township to buy the property in the late 1990s, when the city of Cincinnati decided to sell it. For years, it had served a tree nursery for the city’s parks and was the birthplace of many trees later planted in Mount Airy Forest, Fryburger said.
The trustees originally planned to make Warder into a township park with active recreation sites, such as soccer fields, and passive recreation sites, such as trails. That plan was approved in 2003, but eventually discarded because the township couldn’t come up with funds to cover the $12 million price tag.
In the late 2000s, trustees began hearing from residents leaving the township because they were getting older and wanted to move into upscale, attached homes that didn’t require as much care — a kind of housing that the township lacked. That’s the kind of housing now envisioned for Warder Park.
In March 2015, the trustees hired as Warder’s master developer Cincinnati-based Saint Francis Group, whose executive chairman is former Hamilton County commissioner Tom Neyer Jr. The company presented its preliminary concept plans for the property at a public meeting in December.
Dietz Walters, 3, tosses a rock at a puddle on a land bridge between two lakes inside the Warder Park property in Springfield Township. His sister, Alohna, 2, and his father, Justin, stand nearby. All of them live in Springfield Township. Photo by Kevin Eigelbach
They talked of creating office buildings along the land that fronts Winton Road, where 48,000 cars pass by every day; of an adjoining, walkable Main Street area with first-floor cafes/professional services offices and second-floor residences; of a community center near the main lake now on the property; and a man-made bridge where a land bridge exists between that lake and a smaller one.
They also envision a network of roads that would connect Winton Road with North Bend Road, at the other end of the property. They talked of leaving much of the woods intact and working with the natural topography, rather than bulldozing and making everything level.
Also at that meeting, members of Keep Warder Wild voiced their opposition and presented a petition with 500 signatures asking the trustees not to develop the property. In response, township administrator Michael Hinnenkamp offered two reasons why that wasn’t a good idea.
No. 1, he said, about one-third of Springfield Township is already greenspace, including Winton Woods and the 12 parks the township maintains. No. 2, he said, the township has sunk $1.2 million into the Warder property with no return for the community as a whole.
But doing nothing is an option, Honerlaw said, if the Saint Francis Group doesn’t come back to the trustees with a great plan for the property and interested buyers. A proposal to build big-box retailers, for example, wouldn’t fly, he said.
“I think the fears (about) this are that if something comes along, we’ll just jump at it because it is something,” Honerlaw said. “We will let it sit if it’s not going to achieve the great things we’re hoping for.”
