WVXU's Round the Corner series takes you into the heart of Greater Cincinnati's communities. This time, we're getting to know Camp Washington. WVXU's Nick Swartsell explores the neighborhood's historic Crosley Building.
Nothing symbolizes Camp Washington's past, present and possible future the way the Crosley Building does. The looming white building with its stately tower is currently empty and in significant disrepair — but it might get new life soon.
A development company from Indianapolis, TWG, has been working on an ambitious plan to redevelop the building into roughly 180 units of moderately priced housing and space for artists.
That would be a big deal, community advocates say. If all those units filled up, it could increase the neighborhood's population by more than 15%. And former Camp Washington Community Board Director Joe Gorman says it would fix up a significant landmark.
"A lot of people would reverently come to Camp to check out this building, take pictures, come through it, because it was such a monster of an attraction," he says. "A lot of people in Camp worked here. They would walk to work here. We've always dreamed of renovating it, getting it back to life."
In the early 1920s, Lewis and Powel Crosley formed the Crosley Radio Company. Their economical radios soon exploded in popularity. They were the first electronic mass communication technology affordable to working people.
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Business was so good the Crosley Company needed to build big. They commissioned famed Cincinnati architects Samuel Hannaford and Sons to design a new 330,000-square-foot factory on the corner of Arlington Street and Colerain Avenue in Camp Washington.
Rusty McClure is the grandson of Lewis Crosley. He wrote a book about the business empire his grandfather and great uncle launched. He says the brothers' business acumen guided the building's construction.
"This building was all built with cash," he says. "Unheard of. You've got an eight-plus story building here that's like the epicenter of the wonder machine — the first great electronic product of its era, which is radio — and it's all built with cash."
That proved important. Just months after construction finished in 1929, the stock market crashed and the nation plunged into the depths of the Great Depression. But the Crosley Company was largely unscathed, and work hummed right along at the new Arlington Street factory.
Perched on the top floor was Crosley's most far-reaching achievement: the studios for WLW, the most powerful radio station in America at the time. The world-famous musicians, news and other programming broadcast in the state-of-the-art studio could be heard across the country.
The company branched out into refrigerators and automobiles. During World War II, Crosley worked on top-secret military contracts from the Arlington Street location.
That bustle mirrored Camp Washington's overall economic vitality, but it didn't last forever.
Powel Crosley sold his company in 1946, and the Arlington Street building passed through a number of hands before falling completely vacant about two decades ago.
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Community leaders hope TWG's $100 million plan to redevelop Crosley comes to fruition. But there are challenges.
The Ohio legislature passed a law last year prohibiting developers from using both federal historic tax credits and low-income housing tax credits at the same time — two key funding sources for TWG's plans for the Crosley Building. And millions of dollars in remediation work remains to be done. TWG Vice President for Tax Credit Development Ryan Kelly says it's a complicated effort.
"This is one of the trickiest projects," he says. "You've got several layers in the capital stack. You've got federal historic credits, state historic credits, some incentives from the city from (payments in lieu of taxes) or tax abatements. So it's really going to take everything to make this thing work."
There's a sense of urgency to fix up the building. A seven-alarm fire erupted right next to the Crosley Building March 4. It was one of the biggest fires in recent Cincinnati history. Luckily, the historic Crosley Building wasn't harmed.
There are dozens of vacant buildings like the Crosley Building dotting the landscape in Camp Washington. But right next door to any particular one you're just as likely to find a full apartment building, well-kept home or bustling business. Community leaders hope the Crosley Building will join those soon.