The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 62

CJIailMiMW uAUWffli mmmh nmmusiih vmiww wmhmh tmm MMWh mi Editor: Nancy Berlier, 768-8395 Thursday, May 12, 1994 1- 0 hi f1 nDiLl ri mii i Births2 Property transfers6 LaJt M.i. I HIT in ii a Vl ii una ill in MhhJ ISSSBWW ill i.timj School board notes7 piuBwywnw yni.iiM i 1 W. pWp 4J East 1 Central West I JL Fire department flap yields lawsuit 3 blame city for releasing information 1 he only comment I really care to make is that I see a serious deprivation of individual rights because (the investigation report) was made public. Chuck Stidham, complainant's attorney Hodges would not comment on the suit. City Law Director John Wykoff was out of town last week and could not be reached-for comment.

Besides the city and Hodges, the suit also names as defendants Police Chief Steve Vollmar, police Capt. Kenneth Hughes, police Lt. James Meyers and police Detective Robert Wright. The suit resulted from a city-ordered investigation that began in June, 1993. The probe, which documents two years of problems within the fire department, resulted in a 690-page report.

The investigation resulted in one criminal charge against James Holly II. He was acquitted of the charge of completing a false police report. According to the investigation report, Holly called police after he noticed former Fire Chief Dan Anderson and his wife in (Please see LAWSUIT, Page 3) medic Donna Holly, 44, along with her son, James Holly II, 23, of Fairborn Drive are each seeking $150,000 in compensation and $500,000 in punitive damages, according to the suit filed May 2 in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. Danny Smith is Donna Holly's brother and James Holly II's uncle, said City Manager Ray Hodges, who was named as one of the defendants in the suit. Attorney Chuck Stidham, who represents the three, said: "The only comment I really care to make is that I see a serious deprivation of individual rights because (the investigation report) was made public." Stidham said the report is available to the public at the Parkdale Branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton BY WALT SCHAEFER The Cincinnati Enquirer FOREST PARK A former volunteer firefighter and a former part-time paramedic have filed a civil suit against the city, claiming confidential information provided to police was made public.

The suit also claims that the third plaintiff, who also was a former volunteer firefighter James Holly II was charged with filing a false police report without just cause. According to the suit, confidential information was shared with Forest Park police who were investigating allegations of wrongdoing in the fire department last year. Former firefighter Danny Smith of East Dewdrop Circle and former para Loss of Lakota Hills golf course sinks in County, in Forest Park and was discussed during public television broadcasts. Smith and the Hollys could not be reached for comment. ''-'li A.

to buy the already zoned multifamily property, his firm sold it, Zaring said. Schurenberg gives his wife, Lorraine, credit for saving the ponds, with its ducks and geese, on the golf course. "She took it in her hands, and got the job done," he said. In addition to preserving the ponds, Zaring's company also saved 80 to 90 of the trees by moving more than 150 of them, Zaring said. "I feel pretty good about what we have done," he said.

"I think we have raised property values." Property values have remained about the same, and new homes and neighbors are nice, admits Schurenberg, a golfer, -v- i 'Most of us feel our way of life has been disrupted' BY IRENE WRIGHT The Cincinnati Enquirer WEST CHESTER Timothy Sendel-bach used to gaze out windows of his home in Lakota Hills Estates at the soothing greenery of Lakota Hills Golf Course. Now he looks at a housing construction site 50 feet from his property line. The golf course is gone. "I understand it had to be done for financial reasons, but it's a shame it had to happen," said Sendelbach. Three years ago, the golf course was in a tug of war between residents desperate to protect property values and a development firm needing the site to keep pace with rapid residential development.

"Most of us feel our way of life, the reason we bought in Lakota Hills, has been disrupted," resident Carl Schuren-berg said. He feels betrayed that Union Township trustees didn't save the golf course through eminent domain. He said predictions of increased traffic, water problems and higher police and fire service costs have come true. Allen Zaring admitted that if he were one of the residents, he would have been upset at losing the course. He is chairman and chief executive officer of Zaring Homes, which bought the course for $1.4 million in 1990.

The company is building about 245 homes averaging about $200,000 in the new Lakota Springs subdivision. "The problem was the residents had owned the golf course and lost the golf course," Zaring said. "It was going to be developed. I hope people look on us as doing a good job." The 156-acre course had a financially stressed and controversial history since its development in 1969. There were no legal reasons for it to stay a golf course, nor did residents impose restrictions when they owned it from about 1982.

They sold it in 1986 to American Golf which put it up for sale in 1989. To smooth the controversy after Zaring bought the property in July, 1990, the company offered to sell it to the township for $1.5 million. The offer was not accepted, nor was Zaring's offer to donate a YOUR TOWN Carthage to have its day CARTHAGE Games, raffles, shopping, homemade baked goods and other refreshments will be available Saturday during "A Day in Carthage." The free event, in the Winton Savings Loan parking lot, will start with a flea market from 8 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. Other activities are scheduled throughout the day.

At 2:30 p.m., the local band Oola Khan will perform. The event is sponsored by the Carthage Business Association, the Civic League, the Senior Center and the Youth League. Emergency workers cited UNION TOWNSHIP Trustees on Tuesday approved a resolution proclaiming May 15-21 Emergency Medical Services Week. Trustees wanted to recognize the services provided by township EMS personnel, Nell Kilpatrick, township administrative assistant. Also during the trustees meeting, bids were taken from blacktop contractors and a report on the results was given by Robert McGuire.

It also was announced that the Union Township Fire Department will hold a fish fry beginning at 4 p.m. May 20 at the recreation hall of St. John Church, 9080 Cincinnati-Dayton Road. Musical entertainment will be provided. Clovernook selling bricks NORTH COLLEGE HILL The Clovernook Center, Opportunities for the Blind is inviting individuals, families and businesses to participate in creating the Trader Historical Garden at the center, 7000 Hamilton Ave.

The garden will honor the memory of Florence and Georgia Trader, who founded Clovernook in 1903 as the first home for blind women in Ohio. Engraved bricks, purchased by supporters, will be used in building the garden in the front of the center, near Hamilton Avenue. Bricks are available for $40, $60, $100 and $500. The deadline to purchase bricks is Sunday. Call 522-3860.

Order forms also are available at the center. Quilt show at shopping mall FOREST PARK The 12-foot wide Columbus quilt and the Bicentennial quilt, which are usually shown at the Museum Center at Union Terminal, will be among the 200 quilts on display at the Ohio Valley Quilters' Guild show this week. The shows will take place today through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Forest Fair Mall.

On Sunday, the show will be open until 5 p.m. Admission is $3. SPOTLIGHT WILL GREINER General manager Age: 42 Community: Sharonville Greiner, general manager of the Sharonville Convention Center, which opened in March, began work in August, 1992, when the city launched its effort to build a center. The Chester Road center caters to regional meetings, business and professional groups and public shows. Greiner, a a Cincinnati native and graduate of Moeller High School, started out in the hotel business 20 years ago with Stouffer's in downtown Cincinnati (now the Clarion Hotel).

He also worked for Ramada Inns, was marketing director of the Dayton Convention Center and was a self-employed meeting planner for conventions and trade shows. Greiner and his wife, Vicki, have three sons: Jason, 18, Brad, 16, and Evan, 9. He is on the marketing committee of the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau. "I love to play golf when I get the chance," he said. ThaVinclnnatl EnquirerFred Straub Lakota Hills Estates resident Carl Schurenberg says he feels betrayed that Union Lakota Hills Golf Course through eminent domain.

14-acre school site to Lakota School District, and seven acres for a park. School officials said the land would be difficult to develop because of flooding from Gregory Creek west of Cincinnati-Dayton and Maud-Hughes roads. The land, however, has been developed as part of the Stoney Creek condominium complex along Cincinnati-Dayton and Maud-Hughes roads. "He (Zaring) held to his word at a trustees' meeting that he would build no multifamily homes," Sendelbach said. "He did not.

He apparently sold off the land, and someone else built multifamily homes." Zaring stands on the record that he did not personally intend to develop multifamily homes. When Hill Communities offered Welcome sign reminded 'friends' The Cincinnati EnquirerFred Straub Township officials didn't save the "But, I'd sure rather have a golf course." Township Trustee Gary Cates thinks most residents have accepted things. Cates has the same attitude. "A number of homes near the golf course have sold, but I have not detected any problem with reduction in price," Cates said. "It hasn't seemed to have affected people buying homes.

They don't have a history of the golf course, and are interested in acquiring a home in a subdivision." Barry Spaeth, who formerly lived in the Mason area, said he and his wife moved to Lakota Springs last August because they needed more space. "We thought this was a tremendous value," Spaeth said. "We love the looks of the neighborhood." not to fight Lockland Mayor Jim Brown. "We never heard a complaint. Never heard a word from anybody." But Mayor Carnevale said he's starting to reconsider the matter.

"I've been thinking about it, and I kind of think that sign prob- ably ought to go back up there." Passing over the friends sign in this renovation is an admission that the sappy and sanguine may not be significant. And nothing is further from the truth. If history is the glimmer from passing facets of life significant footsteps that mark a time and place, a stream of comings and goings that people now remember but could one day forget if that is history, then this sign is certainly historic. A bridge is a big dumb thing, a mute arrangement of concrete. Not so a cheesy, off-kilter sign with a burned-out bulb that speaks to friendship and mutual co-existence between a couple of communitip.

1 '1 Jonn Eckberg Friends met here. That's what the strange sign from another decade asserted, anyway, as it swung above a rainbow bridge connecting Reading on the east and Lockland to the west. The sign is gone removed when the bridge over the Mill Creek was rebuilt from the shoreline up. But memories of it linger. On one side, the sign, which was about the size of two telephone books end-to-end, said: "Welcome to Reading Where Friends Meet." On the other side, the sign said: "Welcome to Lockland Where Friends Meet." Both claims were patently untrue when the sign went up decades ago in the middle of the roadway across the bridge.

Some folklore surrounds the sign, which is now stored in a closetin a Reading municipal building. The story goes like this: People from Reading and slightly more genteel. Reading had dirt roads. Lock-land had brick streets. Lockland had the Miami Canal and four locks, as well as businesses and the burghers who owned them.

Reading was a town of working stiffs. But the two did share a bridge. Midge Brown, Reading city clerk, has become something of a bridge historian. She filled out the forms and pressed for repair dollars to fix up the bridge when the Mill Creek Valley Conservancy District wanted to tear it down in the late 1980s to make way for a dredging operation. The bridge is the second-oldest rainbow concrete through-arch in the country.

It looks like parallel rainbows, with arches on either side of the roadway Wyoming Avenue in Lockland and Benson Street in Reading. Brown believes the bridge, built in 1909, may actually be the oldest span of this sort, but she doesn't have evidence to support that contention so a Tennessee bridge gets that honor. The friends sign, lighted from within so it could be seen by anyone contemplating a midnight brawl, is now in storage, said Brown, probably packed away down at the water plant or another Reading building. The sign was not reinstalled because councils from both towns thought the bridge should be restored to its original condition, the way it looked in 1909. "People thought it looked shabby," said Reading Mayor Frank Carnevale.

"We put the nice plaques on the bridge, and people thought they didn't need (the old sign)." The plaques simply say "Welcome to Reading" and "Welcome to Lockland." No mention is made of friendship. "We sat down and decided not to put sign back," recalled Lockland would work that second shift down at the plant. It was a tough job. They'd get off work, drink maybe one or two too-many Burger beers, remember some slight or perceived offense, and head off into the night to the bridge for a good-natured bout of fisticuffs. Eventually, somebody thought it might be a good idea to bust that tradition, so up went this sign about friendship even though there was precious little of that commodity to go around between Reading and Lockland.

In fact, the two didn't have much in common. Though both were blue collar, Lockland was.