Cincinnati’s first-ring suburbs face unique challenges. Changing demographics, economic stability, and issues regarding resources and security are common threads among these jurisdictions.
The ways the 49 Hamilton County cities, villages, townships, and municipal corporations not only adjust but thrive is the focus of this series, First Suburbs—Beyond Borders. The series explores the diversity and ingenuity of these longstanding suburban communities, highlighting issues that demand collective thought and action to galvanize their revitalization.
A new start sometimes requires a clean slate.
The central Hamilton County village of St. Bernard, after years of planning and negotiating, has leveled acres of tired retail space in the heart of the community, making way for new housing and fresh businesses. The demolition marks a major step forward for a vision that’s been on the drawing board for several years.
“The best thing that we did was demolish this,” says St. Bernard Mayor Jonathan Stuchell, looking at leveled ground where a strip center once stood. “These were dilapidated structures. We needed to go with something fresh.”
Gone are a discount grocery store, a dollar store, a Chinese buffet, a bank branch and a bar, their structures dating 60 years or so. In the works are 190 units of market-rate apartments, and 5,000 square feet of retail space, whose tenants are still to be determined.
The property, several acres on St. Bernard’s main drag, Vine Street, is a link to the village’s business district, which is undergoing something of a renaissance. A project of this magnitude – estimates are for an eventual investment of $40 million – would extend the village’s “downtown” and could bring in new residents and further new construction.
“I believe this would be a catalyst for future development,” Stuchell says.
It’s an answer to a problem that many older, first-ring suburbs have – tired strip malls and retail centers that have long outlived their useful lives and are populated with undesirable tenants, vape shops, mobile phone stores, mattress outlets, aging bars and the like. Acres of parking that go unused and contribute to an urban ghost-town feeling.
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Joe SimonThe Wiedemann brewpub opened in 2018.In St. Bernard’s case, the Vine Street business district, rebranded as Heritage Hill, is experiencing a turnaround. A few years ago, a carry-out chicken and fish place at Vine and Mitchell was replaced with a new fire and police headquarters. Friars Club opened next to Roger Bacon High School in 2014, renewing its longstanding ministry of youth sports and education. A multimillion-dollar upgrade to the district included burying utility wires, adding brick pavers and architectural lighting. A 100-year-old building that was the site of a funeral home was
converted to a popular brewpub that revived the once-forgotten Wiedemann beer brand. A new public school opened in 2024 housing all students, kindergarten through high school, in the district, and the village aquatic center and recreation pavilion was renovated with pickleball courts and expanded.
“Our village services and amenities, I think, are second to none, and it's a very desirable community,” Stuchell says.
The strip center with its big empty parking lot was a blight on the otherwise encouraging development along Vine. With most of it now gone, plans can move forward to build new living space. St. Bernard, like many of its neighboring communities, has seen its population decline, dropping by nearly 25% percent since 1990 to about 4,100 today. New residents could support the business district, and create a virtuous cycle, as a growing population in turn attracts new business, which in turn attracts people.
The village is also home to the sprawling industrial park Ivorydale. Once home to Procter & Gamble’s soap-making enterprise, jobs and tax revenue have declined as manufacturing moved elsewhere. But in May, a maker of medical gloves announced plans to invest up to $240 million in the former St. Bernard Soap Co. facility to make a raw material used in the manufacture of the gloves. More than 200 jobs have been promised.
Tearing down, redeveloping, or renovating old retail centers is a move that other first-ring suburbs are doing, especially those that saw their populations and business activity peak in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but have experienced a long, slow decline since.
Delhi Township in 2024
opened Delhi Towne Square, a $70 million project at the former site of a supermarket strip mall. The project is a mixed-use development that includes 180 market-rate apartments, a recreation center, public space, and a preschool.
In Forest Park, officials over the years
acquired properties and demolished outdated, blighted buildings, eventually assembling 22 contiguous acres for redevelopment. The plans got a jump start when the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library built a new, $20 million library on the site, which serves as an anchor and a model for surrounding development. The library system also overhauled an old drug store in Mt. Healthy’s business district, moving that community’s library into an expanded and renovated space.
St. Bernard was awarded a grant from Hamilton County to help pay for demolition, which began with tearing down outbuildings that included a bank branch and a local watering hole. Demolition then moved to the strip center behind those buildings. Two existing businesses – a Skyline chili parlor and a coffee shop, have committed to redevelopment and will remain, Stuchell says. A third, a payday loan branch, has dug in its corporate heels and refuses to relocate. It will stay for now.
The plan calls for the apartments to be built close to the street, moving parking behind.
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A preliminary plan for St. Bernard SquareWhen the village bought the properties, the retail spaces were still occupied. The purchase, made through the village's not-for-profit community development corporation, gave the village control of the site but put it in the landlord business. Officials contemplated a redevelopment of the existing structures, but eventually decided on a clean start.
“We decided it was best to have it demolished and look at a redevelopment opportunity,” says Stuchell, who also leads St. Bernard's Community Improvement Corporation. “The village did the right thing at the time when the property became available, because this could have been a continued eyesore.”
These kinds of developments can take a long time to come to fruition, especially in small towns with tight budgets and small professional staffs in their local governments. Stuchell himself is a part-time mayor, now in his second term, whose day job is as a funeral director.
The next steps include working with a private developer, Cincinnati-based Civitas Development, to begin arranging financing for the project.
“Our goal is to create a destination in the central area of St. Bernard, to improve the walkability, and hopefully provide some new venues,” Stuchell says.
First Suburbs—Beyond Borders series is made possible with support from a coalition of stakeholders including the Murray & Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation:
The Seasongood Foundation is devoted to the cause of good local government; Hamilton County Planning Partnership; plus First Suburbs Consortium of Southwest Ohio, an association of elected and appointed officials representing older suburban communities in Hamilton County, Ohio.