The Yellow Springs Senior Center announced this week that it has signed a contract to purchase the former lumberyard property at 108 Cliff St. The Senior Center had previously announced in January that it was considering the Cliff Street site as a location for its future new facility.

As outlined in a March 28 press release, the contract represents what the Senior Center describes as a “strategic shift — not a restart,” following months of analysis, community input and negotiations with the property’s current owners.

The move is a change in direction from a previously planned new build on a Livermore Street parcel the nonprofit purchased from Antioch College in December 2023. Rather than build its new facility from the ground up, the Senior Center now plans to rehabilitate the Cliff Street site’s existing post-and-beam structure.

In an interview this week, Executive Director Caroline Mullin said the shift came after extended discussions between the Senior Center board and Massies Creek Ventures, the Cliff Street property’s current owner.

“It took a lot to figure out exactly how we fit,” Mullin said, noting that negotiations required “some compromise on both sides.”

Board President Jerry Sutton said the process took “about six months to make it a reality,” moving the possibility of developing the Cliff Street site from “a gleam in the eye” to a secured contract.

Mullin said the Cliff Street property addresses feedback from Senior Center and community members about a desire to keep the center downtown, where it can be both visible and walkable, while also offering room for growth. According to the press release, the lumberyard lot is “approximately 25% larger” than the Livermore parcel and includes existing infrastructure, and can be expanded vertically to include a mezzanine level and elevator.

As the News reported in January, a space usage study completed previously by Dayton-based architect firm LWC Incorporated identified the Senior Center’s need for roughly 11,000 square feet — about three times its current building’s size of 3,700 square feet. Mullin said developing 11,000 square feet can be fully realized on the Cliff Street site’s ground floor alone, in addition to the possibility of expanded space in an upstairs mezzanine.

“All of the rooms that LWC had considered we needed fit within one level on the Cliff Street property,” she said. “So there’s the opportunity to build up and add even more.”

A feasibility study completed in 2025 by Loring Sternberg and Associates to assess the organization’s fundraising capacity noted room for phased construction as a “priority” for the Senior Center; Mullin said the Cliff Street site, with its size and existing infrastructure, will allow for a phased approach. Earlier this year, Mullin stated that the total project cost was projected to be around $7 million; the ability to build in stages, she added this week, could allow the project to move forward even if full funding is not secured upfront.

The organization has already begun the first phase of a capital campaign to fund the acquisition, inspections and site preparation, with plans to sell the Livermore property to help finance the project.

“There’s one overarching goal [for the capital campaign], but there is an immediacy that’s necessary to close on buying the Cliff Street site,” Mullin said. “So right now, there’s a push to get $850,000 in hand, some of which will come out of selling the Livermore Street lot.” 

The Senior Center purchased the half-acre lot on Livermore Street for $300,000; Sutton said the Senior Center will offer the land for sale via bid, with the aim to “recoup our cost.”

“We’ll see what the market has done in the intervening two years,” he said.

“The market has changed,” Mullin added, “and we also had a slight shift in the lot size, because we went through an alley vacation process, so there’s a little more land now.”

Mullin reiterated that the Senior Center’s current facility on Xenia Avenue, purchased in 1978, has long been constrained by limited space, accessibility challenges and parking shortages; she told the News in January that those constraints have already limited the number and type of programs the center can offer, even as demand continues to grow. She added this week that a previous board originally identified the need for a new space in 2008.

“It’s been almost 20 years; we’ve had every assessment of this building done to know if we could stay in it — and we can’t,” Mullin said.

By contrast, the new site would allow for a largely single-level layout, with around 30 parking spots available on the property, as well as access to nearby parking areas at the Bryan Center and the municipal lot on Dayton Street, which are near the bike path along which the Cliff Street site is located.

Sutton added that the expanded space available in the former lumberyard building will also offer opportunities to partner with and potentially house other local nonprofits; he said early conversations have begun with such groups, though no formal agreements are in place.

“We’re open to use of that space as a community cultural center,” Sutton said.

As the new building project begins to come into focus, Mullin said Senior Center membership has recently surpassed 800 people — more than we’ve ever had,” she said —  up from about 700 two months ago. Those who use the Senior Center regularly, including its members, are often residents age 60 and older — who account for about 40% of the local population — but also caregivers, volunteers and community members of any age who attend meals, classes and events hosted at the center.

Looking ahead, the Senior Center plans to present updated schematic designs at its annual meeting, slated for Wednesday, June 10. An open house at the Cliff Street site is being planned for May to give community members a chance to view the former lumberyard building and learn more about the project.

If all goes as planned, Mullin and Sutton said, detailed construction drawings could be completed by the end of this year, with a build timeline of 18 to 24 months, putting a potential opening for the new facility in late 2028 or early 2029.

The Herndon Gallery at Antioch College will host Chicago-based theater collective Theater Oobleck for three performances of “Song About Himself,” a dystopian, language-driven play by ensemble cofounder Mickle Maher, Friday–Sunday, April 10–12.

The production will mark Theater Oobleck’s second visit to the village after bringing “The Hunchback Variations” to the Foundry Theater in 2024. That show held up the creative process writ-large to a tragi-comic light, and “Song About Himself” continues Theater Oobleck’s practice of examining what it is to be human, this time in a world gone feral after the collapse of the internet.

The play greets audiences immediately with fragmented speech from its focal character, Carol. Unlike those with whom she interacts regularly in gesture and “mumbles,” Carol retains some language fluency, which leads her to encounter, as Theater Oobleck describes, “a mysterious social media site created by a rogue artificial intelligence within the Web itself, only to find that, strangely, she is its only member.”

Playwright Maher, who spoke with the News last week, said the play’s premise grew out of anxieties that were already present when it premiered in 2015.

“If you’re going to write a dystopian future about the internet, AI was absolutely unavoidable,” he said. “It wasn’t what it is today, but that’s where we were headed — the difficulty of identifying what is human and what is not on the internet. I wasn’t any Nostradamus for predicting that.”

The play leans hard into science fiction — of which Maher said he’s proud, since plays don’t have “access to spectacle” in the same ways that films do. Instead, “Song About Himself” relies on language to communicate its core concerns about how people connect — or fail to do so. The world that reveals itself within the play is one in which the internet — the major point of connection for humankind — has been struck a fatal blow.

“What if someone just wrote some malware, and it destroyed everything? There would be nothing we could do,” Maher said. “The dystopian conceit of the play is that, if the internet suddenly collapsed after we’ve invested all of our cultural energy and memory into it … it would be like a trauma. … What would that do, worldwide, to our ability to communicate?”

He noted that the play is “wordy in a perverse way,” in that it requires the audience to be carried along by the curious rhythms and tones of its language as Carol interacts with the AI “Host/Hostess,” as well as the mysterious Tod, who throws a wrench into the AI’s plan when he attempts to log on.

“There’s a lot going on in the play that I don’t expect people to get,” Maher said. “But hopefully they can follow the plotlines of the story and be moved.”

The cast features Theater Oobleck ensemble member Diana Slickman as Carol, alongside Vicki Walden as Host/Hostess, and H.B. Ward as Tod. Slickman, who previously appeared in the company’s local production of “The Hunchback Variations,” originated the role of Carol and returns to it more than a decade later.

“Diana’s my go-to; she’s in pretty much everything I’ve done over the last decade or more,” Maher said. “Playing the part again 11 years later, it’s different, but much of what she brought to it before is still there. She had to completely rediscover the part.”

Maher described the play’s unusual syntax as particularly demanding for actors, but said both performers and audiences can ballast themselves via some familiarity with the work of Walt Whitman.

“A lot of the language is a corrupted version of his verse,” he said, citing Whitman’s “Song of Myself” as inspiration. “Just read a little bit of Whitman before you come; a few lines to sort of refresh yourself.”

Theater Oobleck was founded in the 1980s and operates without directors, instead developing work collaboratively among ensemble members. That ethos carries through to “Song About Himself,” and the play is staged with minimal design. Maher said many of his works have been written to be performed “in any kind of room,” and “Song About Himself,” too, is adaptable to untraditional spaces.

“It’s best performed in the round — or in the rectangle, as we have it now,” he said. “We’re pretty flexible with it.”

Maher described the “in the rectangle” setting — that is, with the audience seated on all four sides of the cast — as paramount to the production. The configuration places the audience in close proximity to the actors, but also within intimate line-of-sight of one another.

“It’s unavoidable to see your fellow audience members,” Maher said. “They become the set and other characters in the play in a kind of ghostly way.”

That closeness, he added, creates a sense of shared experience that both echoes and contrasts with the isolation depicted onstage.

“There’s a feeling of community that you have when you put people in a circle, and you imagine the first theaters maybe were like that,” he said. “Just people around a campfire, telling stories.”

Maher said “Song About Himself” is the “least funny” and “saddest” of his plays, though he noted that Slickman is “hilarious” as Carol. At the same time, he said, the play leaves some room for the possibility that connection, however fragile, can still be rediscovered.

“There’s a kind of tiny sliver of hope,” he said.

Performances of “Song About Himself” run about 90 minutes and will take place Friday and Saturday, April 10 and 11, at 7 p.m., and Sunday, April 12, at 2 p.m., at Herndon Gallery in Antioch College’s South Hall. Seating is limited. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $5 for students and youth; for more information and tickets, go to http://www.bit.ly/SongAboutHimselfHerndon

By Alissa Paolella

Yellow Springs Home, Inc. has secured a $450,000 award through the Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati’s Affordable Housing Program to fund 25 home repair projects — 12 in Yellow Springs and 13 in Dayton-area neighborhoods.

The funding, awarded in partnership with The Huntington National Bank, will support repairs for income-qualified homeowners, primarily older adults and people living with disabilities. Work will focus on safety, accessibility and energy-related improvements.

Eligible projects include roof replacements, HVAC systems, accessibility upgrades such as wheelchair ramps and bathroom modifications, as well as plumbing, electrical and window work.

The award reflects both demand for repairs and Home, Inc.’s shift toward regional partnerships to compete for larger funding pools.

“There is a significant pent-up need in Yellow Springs and across the Miami Valley,” Executive Director Emily Seibel told the News, noting many applicants are older residents on fixed incomes facing rising maintenance and utility costs.

Home, Inc. qualified for the competitive funding in part by committing that 13 of the 25 projects would take place in majority-minority census tracts.

“That leveraged additional resources coming into Yellow Springs that wouldn’t have been available otherwise,” Seibel said.

The home repair program began in 2018 with a single $5,000 wheelchair ramp project. Since then, the organization has added local, state and federal funding to expand the work.

Current support includes funding from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati’s Carol M. Peterson Housing Fund, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Housing Preservation Grant and several local and regional foundations, including the Yellow Springs Community Foundation and The Dayton Foundation.

Much of the work now runs through the Dayton Home Repair Network, a coalition formed after the 2019 tornadoes to coordinate applications and funding across agencies, including the City of Dayton, the Dayton Energy Collaborative and Habitat for Humanity of Greater Dayton.

Through the network, applications are processed centrally, with social workers helping residents navigate multiple funding sources.

“The idea is that we could be stacking resources to do more in a particular house,” Seibel said.

Many of the projects address urgent needs. In one recent case, an older Yellow Springs resident lost heat during the winter when their furnace failed. Home, Inc., without immediate funds available, worked with partners to secure emergency assistance.

“That’s an emergency situation,” Seibel said. “There’s a physical and health risk to not having heat in the winter, but there’s also an isolation and mental health impact.”

Other projects have included bathroom renovations to improve accessibility, roof replacements to prevent water damage and mold, and energy-efficiency upgrades to reduce monthly bills. Some homes, Seibel said, appear stable from the outside but require significant interior repairs.

“It’s not always obvious that someone’s suffering just by looking at the outside of their house,” she said.

Home, Inc. identified about 85 potential projects during its most recent application cycle. Individual projects have been approved for up to $16,000–$20,000 per home, depending on the funding source.

Previous USDA grants supported HVAC systems, roof replacements and accessibility upgrades for 11 Yellow Springs homeowners. Unlike some programs, the USDA funding does not include age restrictions or strict project caps.

As the program has grown, so has the organization’s capacity. Despite a small staff, many with more than a decade of experience, Seibel said contractor relationships and internal systems have helped the group manage more complex funding requirements.

Partnerships with the YS Community Foundation and The Dayton Foundation have also supported fellowship roles focused on client services and grant administration.

Looking ahead, Seibel said the goal is to reach more eligible homeowners.

“Ideally, everyone who qualifies would be able to benefit,” she said.

Homeowners interested in future repair funding can complete an interest form at http://www.yshome.org or apply through the Dayton Home Repair Network.

*Alissa Paolella is a local resident and freelance writer for the News.

After nearly 20 years under a familiar name, Bentino’s Pizza in Yellow Springs is preparing to reintroduce itself.

The Xenia Avenue pizza parlor will soon become YS Pizza Company, owner Carl Lea told the News last month. The change, he said, will formalize what has already been true for years: the local restaurant, which grew out of a Jamestown location, has become its own operation over the years.

“We’ve already made a lot of changes to make it our own place,” Lea said. “Now it’s just official.”

Lea said the name change stems from a recent split with the Jamestown business, from which the Yellow Springs restaurant originally leased the Bentino’s moniker.

“The relationship between us and the owner of the Bentino’s in Jamestown has deteriorated,” he said, adding that the parting of ways is mutual. But a pizzeria by any other name, he added, is still as delicious.

“It’s all the same people. It’s the same owners,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Bentino’s opened in Yellow Springs in late 2006, when Lea, then 25, brought the Jamestown brand to town after training there and working out a deal to lease the name, recipes and menu. Since then, the restaurant has grown beyond its original model: the Yellow Springs location’s sauce recipe diverged from Jamestown’s 15 years ago, and ingredients and menu items have also been adjusted over that time. The Hawaiian Deluxe and Mediterranean pizzas, for example, are Yellow Springs menu originals.

The business has also changed physically: In 2022, Carl and Kim Lea purchased the building at 107 Xenia Ave. where Bentino’s had rented since opening. After neighboring Subway closed and later tenant Omnibus came and went, the Leas expanded into the corner space, opening a dining room in November 2024 that increased seating from about 12 seats to 44.

That expansion, Lea said, contributed to recent financial strain that led local friends, family and pizza-lovers to organize a GoFundMe for his family and the business last September. The problem, he said, was not a lack of customers, but rather debt incurred to get the dining room open — specifically, a short-term loan with steep weekly payments. Just last week, the restaurant paid off that loan, he said, and is entering spring with a big helping of optimism.

“We’re on the upswing,” Lea said, adding that the business recently had “two of the best weekends we’ve ever had since we’ve been in business.”

The shift to becoming YS Pizza Company will be the most visible change — local business owner DJ Galvin, of Urban Handmade, is helping the Leas develop a new logo and signage — but some other, smaller name changes are expected, too.

“We’re going to rebrand,” Lea said. “Some of the specialty pizzas we’re just going to call different things.”

Other menu changes are expected to be additive: Lea said he intends to add lasagna to the YS Pizza Company menu, as well as boneless wings and a crispy chicken salad. He said he’s also considering some ingredient additions to existing specialty pizzas.

“Our Chicken Ranch, I think we’ll add bacon to it, so it’ll be a Chicken Bacon Ranch,” Lea said. “And I’ve always thought the Greek pizza should have black olives on it, so I’ll probably take this opportunity to make a Greek-olive pizza.”

The restaurant’s website will change, too; as of Tuesday morning this week, the Yellow Springs location no longer appears on the Jamestown Bentino’s website. The restaurant’s phone number, 937-767-2500, will remain the same.

Lea acknowledged that, just as some longtime local residents still call Tom’s Market by its older name, Weaver’s, it’s possible the name “Bentino’s” will stick around colloquially for a while. But whatever folks call it, he said, the restaurant’s central aim remains the same: “Our dedication will be to continue making a good, quality pizza.”

Ohio’s new cannabis and hemp laws, embedded in Senate Bill 56, which bans the sale and possession of intoxicating hemp products, took effect Friday, March 20.

Under the legislation THC- and CBD-infused seltzers, candies and plant parts can only be sold through licensed dispensaries regulated by the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control.

The whole of Senate Bill 57 became law after Ohioans for Cannabis Choice failed to collect more than 248,000 signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties to get a referendum on the November ballot to repeal Sections 1, 2 and 3 of the bill that Gov. DeWine signed into law in December.

Despite considerable efforts across the state, and even a local push in Yellow Springs, the signature campaign for a referendum fell short.

Now, the village’s headshops and smoke stores have removed all intoxicating hemp products from their shelves — in some cases, paring down their largest revenue streams. Bars and gas stations can no longer stock cannabis drinks.

At Tweedle D’s, the front door is locked for good. A sign reads “Closed indefinitely due to Senate Bill 56. Thanks DeWine!” 

The News caught up with Tweedle D’s co-owner and villager Shane Ayrsman as he was packing up his plants and taking down his Xenia Avenue storefront.

Ayrsman said he was devastated by the implementation of SB 56, but not surprised.

“It’s always been a continual struggle for all factions in the cannabis industry, and I think there always will be until there’s some national recognition,” he said. “Until then, Ohio needs to get it together.”

A village native and Antioch alum, Ayrsman moved back Yellow Springs three years ago with his wife, Sarah DeVore, to open up a hemp retailer to help their neighbors find relief from physical pain, anxiety and other ailments from their products — which were largely derived from hemp that Ayrsman and DeVore grew themselves on their farm in Oregon.

Since 2023, Tweedle D’s operated in full compliance with state law, selling tinctures, topicals, pet products, drinks, edibles, smokeables and more. Only those 21 and older were allowed in the store.

At the time of its closure, the downtown store had nine employees: “People who are now back out there in the job market, and people who have since told me that they can only make half the wages they made here,” Ayrsman said. “As a result, they’re saying they might not be able to live in Yellow Springs anymore. So, in a way, this law is contributing to the gentrification of this town.”

Though Tweedle D’s sold a variety of items, Ayrsman said they were all ancillary to the THC- and CBD-derived products that lined his shelves. He said he could have continued to operate his shop, but said it would have been like “your favorite pizza parlor that made the world’s greatest pizza suddenly selling ‘take-and-bakes.’” So, he opted to close.

Though Ayrsman bemoaned the loss of Tweedle D’s, he said it’s not over for him and DeVore’s downtown presence, let alone their work in the cannabis industry. The owner of their building at 255 Xenia Ave. is letting them continue renting the commercial space, giving Ayrsman and DeVore the time they need to come up with a new business plan — perhaps one that veers back to selling helpful cannabis products, provided different state politics in the future.

“So, we’re in a good position with our farm and our other store [in Florida],” he said. “While we feel this greatly, we may feel it a bit less than others. We’re being given the chance to have another stab at it, and we have a buffer period to think about how to do that.”

A few downtown blocks away, the staffers at The Joynt on Dayton Street are also feeling the effects of SB 56. 

Equal parts head shop and consignment boutique, The Joynt opened its doors last summer in the space that previously housed The Import House. According to co-owners Dan Lukasavitz and Rocky Brennan, a large portion of their shop’s revenue disappeared overnight from last week’s full passage of the law.

“It’s left a lot of space in the shop feeling bare, empty and, honestly … a little sad,” the couple wrote to the News in an email.

As the News wrote when The Joynt opened, the shop’s pièce de résistance is its wide-ranging selection of hemp-derived flower buds imbued with tetrahydrocannabinolic acid, or THCA — a kind of cannabinoid not dissimilar from traditional marijuana, but until last week, legal to sell outside dispensaries.

“Since Friday, [March 20] our foot traffic has dropped off significantly,” Lukasavitz and Brennan wrote. “Our front door used to ring constantly throughout the day, and now it’s a pretty rare occurrence. There’s no clean way to spin that.”

They continued: “What’s hitting us the most, though, is our regulars. A lot of people weren’t just stopping in for fun; they were using these products to help manage sleep, anxiety, pain … real, everyday stuff. And now they’re kind of left without many options.”

The pair said they have no immediate plans to close up shop — they’re now reliant on glass, art and apparel sales. They’re also making adjustments to operations — reducing hours, reworking staffing and “taking a hard look at where we can cut and tighten things up just to stay afloat.”

“If there’s one thing we wish people understood,” they wrote, “it’s that this isn’t just as simple as ‘just don’t sell it anymore.’ This impacts small businesses in a big way,  and it cuts off access for people who found real value in these products. There’s a human side to it that gets overlooked.”

Back on Xenia Avenue, but a bit down the road from Tweedle D’s is The Smoking Octopus, which has been selling hookahs, glassware and other smoking-related products for more than a decade out of the iconic brick Oten Gallery.

Owner Sarah Webb said that, while The Smoking Octopus won’t close due to the implementation of SB 56 forcing her to take her hemp products down, it nevertheless cuts into her margins. But more than that, like the guys at The Joynt, Webb said she’s worried about some of her customers.

“We see a lot of people who use these products as a replacement for alcohol and dangerous substances,” she said. “So some people have said to me that they’re worried about losing their decades of sobriety over this decision, and hearing stories like this is just so heartbreaking.”

Like all the others, Webb said she sees SB 56 as an affront not only to small businesses like hers — “the ones doing it the right way and following all the rules,” she said — but also an affront to the will of the people.

Webb referenced the passage of Issue 2 in the Nov. 2023 statewide election, which legalized the recreational use of marijuana for adults aged 21 and over, and then the following August, recreational sale. Fifty-seven percent of Ohio voters approved Issue 2.

Beyond prohibiting the sale and possession of intoxicating hemp products, HB 56 rolls back several other cannabis industry regulations.

Now, there is a statewide cap of 400 dispensaries, which can be no closer to schools, playgrounds and churches than 500 feet. It also bans public smoking and vaping — now classified as a misdemeanor offense — and requires cannabis products to be stored in a vehicle’s trunk while driving.

“This isn’t progress,” Webb said. “We’re backtracking. I don’t feel like the governor understands the gravity of the decision that he made.”

Last October, before his signing of SB 56 into law, Gov. DeWine declared “an adulterated consumer product emergency” for items containing intoxicating hemp, as an attempt to “get the products off the streets” and “to protect our children,” as he said at an Oct. 8 press conference.

During the conference, DeWine held up a box of THC-infused gummies designed to emulate the appearance of a well-known candy brand that, as DeWine indicated, could appeal to under-age consumers.

According to Ohio Poison Control, exposures to delta-8-THC and delta-9-THC among those ages 19 or younger increased from 419 in 2021 to 994 in 2024, with more than half of all cases involving children ages five and under.

Those with whom the News spoke were unconvinced by DeWine’s rationale for signing the bill.

“This is about respecting the will of the voter,” Ayrsman said of Issue 2’s 2023 passage. “We said ‘yes’ overwhelmingly. This now is about lobbyists for big businesses and steamrolling small businesses, which creates this disparity between people who want and need cannabis and those who grow it.”

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