An unlucky day for quite a few Ohioans — on Friday, the 13th, a dramatic windstorm knocked out power for more than 100,000 folks throughout the state, according to the National Weather Service.
The day’s highest wind speed, recorded by the Wilmington, Ohio, NWS forecast office, occurred not far from Yellow Springs, at the Dayton International Airport, where a gust of 77 miles per hour was recorded.
Yellow Springs was far from immune to the weekend’s impressive wind speeds. Between Friday and Monday, several neighborhoods temporarily lost power; fallen trees caused considerable residential and municipal damage; and downtown, awnings on several storefronts were torn asunder.
A memo from Electric and Water Distribution Superintendent Ben Sparks — delivered via Assistant Village Manager Elyse Giardullo at the Monday, March 16, Village Council meeting — addressed the Village response to the power outages, which began at 1 p.m. Friday.
“Our crews worked continuously until approximately 11 p.m. restoring service,” Sparks wrote, noting the difficult conditions still occurring when crews went to address the downed lines, almost exclusively caused by fallen branches, Sparks’ memo stated.
“Additional work continued through the weekend,” Sparks added. “On Saturday, our crew returned to complete a repair project that required running entirely new wire in order to restore service to one remaining customer. Then, on Sunday, another outage occurred when tree branches fell onto a line that caused multiple customers to lose power. Crews again responded and restored service.”
On Monday, as winds continued to flare, similar issues occurred, and Village crews again worked to restore service, Sparks reported.
Though several neighborhood pockets in the south end of town lost power more than once over the last week, the northern reaches of town saw the greatest physical damage from the wind — particularly the Fair Acres neighborhood.
Whitehall Drive resident Karen Nelson had a close call. The day’s high winds knocked over a massive oak tree on her property — its branches rending the roof, rafters and joists at one end of her house.
“It was cataclysmic,” Nelson said earlier this week. “I was standing in my bedroom, there was a loud noise, and the ceiling blew apart. I froze in place. Then it was quiet. I got a minor bump in the head and walked out without a scratch.”
Though the state of her home on Whitehall is a different story, Nelson said she is able to continue to live there, as she can close the door on the damaged rooms.
She added that friends, neighbors and local handymen arrived to the scene quickly, and Nelson said she’s grateful that no one was harmed with the oak fell.
“I feel like I’ve walked away from a plane crash,” she said.
On the south side of town, village resident Katleen Tong had a 100-year-old tree fall on her and her roommate’s cars on Friday, March 13.
While Nelson said her insurance will likely take care of her tree-related woes, Tong started a GoFundMe page to help her plight, stating: “My homeowner’s insurance is refusing to pay anything for the tree removal. … I am responsible for paying a tree company to remove the tree, cut it up and haul it away. As an inner city teacher, I live paycheck to paycheck and simply do not have that kind of money.”
To help Tong, go to http://www.bit.ly/3NcOu6e
Even a Village public works vehicle sustained damage from the weekend’s storms.
As Assistant Village Manager Elyse Giardullo recounted at the Monday, March 16, Village Council meeting, while Village crews addressed a fallen tree-related situation along the bike path, a tree fell on a public works truck — partially crushing the truck’s bed.
“The most important thing to note is that no one was hurt,” Giardullo said at Monday’s meeting. “We’re filing an insurance claim, and while I thought it was a total loss, [Village Manager] Johnnie Burns doesn’t think so.”
Despite all this damage from the windstorms, Superintendent Sparks maintains that the consequences could have been a lot worse.
“One important takeaway from this event is that the aggressive approach we have taken in maintaining and improving our electric infrastructure is proving to be effective,” Sparks wrote. “We had zero broken poles. In comparison to some of our neighboring communities, we were able to restore the majority of our electric service within six hours of the storm’s highest winds.”
The Village encourages residents to download and use the YSConnect mobile app — not only for emergency situation updates, but also to report power outages and other crises. The YSConnect app can be downloaded via any mobile device’s application store. For further instructions, go to http://www.yellowsprings.gov
Four local musicians spanning generations in age will take the stage at Little Art Theatre for the second annual Women’s History Month Songwriters’ Round.
Set for Wednesday, March 25, the event marks the second year of the Women’s History Month showcase, returning after its inaugural run last spring with a different lineup. The program this year brings together Sophie Joy, Raechel Morgan, Leah Mendenhall and Julie Lander Deis for an evening of shared storytelling through song.
The performance follows the “songwriters’ round” format established in last year’s event, in which musicians take turns performing original songs and speaking about the stories behind them.
For Mendenhall — known locally for her cover performances with SugRRocK — the event offers a chance to highlight a different side of her musicianship.
“I’m eager to showcase my original music and connect with the audience alongside three wonderful songwriters,” she said.
Deis attended last year’s inaugural event as an audience member and said the experience stuck with her.
“I remember thinking, ‘How cool that Kyleen came up with the idea of this show to honor female performers,’” she said. “I couldn’t be more honored to sit in the place Sharon Lane sat last year in this fantastic gathering of women.”
For Morgan, the moment became real recently when her family spotted a poster advertising the show.
“All of my kids proceeded to have a moment of excitement about it; it was a holy moment to me,” Morgan said. “As a woman, artist and mother that gets to be those three things in the way I so choose, I couldn’t help but be taken back by the beauty of the moment. A small, intimate moment was dripping with affirmation and power. The opportunities afforded to me by the women before my time propel me to sing and fight for rights and opportunities for my daughters.”
The performance begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 25. For tickets and more information, go to http://www.littleart.com.
It’s been two months since the Yellow Springs Development Corporation officially purchased the two downtown buildings at 252 and 254 Xenia Ave., and assumed the role of acting landlord for six residential tenants.
Though ownership changed hands from the local Baldwin family to the village’s designated quasi-governmental nonprofit and community improvement corporation, few significant developments have occurred since Jan. 9, when YSDC bought the buildings for $630,000 — money loaned from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation.
Rents from the tenants have been collected, some electrical and fire safety improvements have been made, but the future of the two buildings — particularly the first-floor commercial spaces that most recently housed the village’s only hardware and toy stores — remains uncertain.
“What do we want to do?” “Are we thinking we want to sell these buildings soon?” “Do we want to restore them and then put them up for sale?” “Let’s say we find commercial tenants — then what?” “Who would they be?”
These and other questions were at the center of YSDC’s last meeting, Tuesday, March 3, when the group — composed of eight voting members, two staffers and five ex-officio members — mulled over the potential that lies ahead for 252 and 254 Xenia Ave.
From the majority of those who spoke at the meeting, the prevailing goal of the group is to preserve the two buildings.
Though not on the federal National Registry of Historic Places, the buildings have local significance, several members of the group asserted.
“Preserving the building … is exactly why we’re shepherding this project,” new YSDC member Christine Monroe-Beard said. “We’re rapidly losing older buildings in town. That means we’re losing one of the big reasons why Yellow Springs is so cool. It should behoove us as a community to save as many historic buildings as possible.”
According to county records, the three-story brick building at 252 Xenia Ave. was built around 1853, and is one of the oldest buildings in Yellow Springs. The adjoining structure at 254 was built sometime in the following decades; a Yellow Springs insurance map from July 1895 depicts both buildings in their current locations.
In Monroe-Beard’s view — as the co-owner of several old downtown buildings, including Ye Olde Trail Tavern — as well as YSDC member Kevin McGruder’s — who is an associate professor of history at Antioch College — listing the buildings on the historic registry could open up channels for federal funds for renovations and improvement, and ultimately, preservation.
According to YSDC staffer Lisa Abel — who was voted in at the meeting as the group’s new executive director — she has been working with the YS Community Foundation, Village and other area stakeholders in seeking other financial assistance to rehab the buildings.
“We’ve been searching for grants, state funding, tax credits — looking into everything,” Abel told the group.
Beyond collecting rents from the tenants on the second floor above the former hardware store and exploring external financing, Abel noted that an expeditious way to generate income to fund building improvements could come from leasing the former toy store commercial space.
“It’s in pretty good shape,” she said. “It could be leaseable by April or maybe May. It doesn’t need nearly as much work as the hardware store building.”
She added: “But we want to set it up as a month-to-month lease. We don’t know when we may need to start major construction.”
But what kind of business will occupy that and, eventually, the former hardware store spaces?
Abel said they intend to pull the community in on that decision-making process. She said YSDC will soon set up a survey or “comment section” on their website — http://www.ysdc.org — for villagers to weigh in, and to say “what you’d like to see there, and what you definitely do not want to see there.”
To that end, Abel said that when YSDC begins formally accepting proposals for commercial occupancy on the first floors of 254 and 252 Xenia Ave., each applicant will need to address several questions. For instance:
• What do you want to use the space for, and who is your primary audience?
• What’s your business plan, and what kind of hours do you plan to keep?
• How does it fit with the rest of Yellow Springs — what businesses will it complement, and which ones will it compete with?
• Is there anything unusual about utility requirements?
Additionally, Abel said that tenant applicants will be measured against local values of diversity, environmental sustainability, artistic expression, community-mindedness and others.
“And we will let the proposers know about this criteria,” Abel said.
The last time YSDC brokered a commercial sale was in 2020, when the group handled the sale of the former Miami Township Fire-Rescue fire station. That space on Corry Street was sold to comedian and local resident Dave Chappelle, who had — and has since carried out — plans to build a comedy club.
According to past News reporting, of the three leading proposals the YSDC considered for the fire station, Chappelle’s plans ranked the highest in five of seven categories: profits/wages/taxes, environmental impact, local impact, diversity and COVID-19 considerations. The other categories were people/culture and job creation.
As Abel noted at this month’s meeting, none of the applicants for the fire station were made aware of that criteria. This time around, she said, they will be — for both the former hardware and toy store commercial spaces.
Abel also said that “five or six” potential commercial tenants have inquired about the soon-to-be-available downstairs commercial spaces, but declined to specify the names of those making queries.
“And we’ve gotten them without any solicitation or advertising,” she said.
Though no plan has been formally outlined, nor did the majority of YSDC members offer any visions for the future usage of the downtown buildings, some ideas still emerged from the last meeting.
“This is a wild idea, but what if we were to rehab the crow’s nest [the third story of the former hardware store building]? It would be a pretty cool Airbnb that we could generate a lot of money out of — like $5,000 a month,” Monroe-Beard suggested, noting that such a revenue stream could offset the relatively cheap rents on the second floor, as well as ongoing building improvements.
She also proffered the idea of splitting the ground-level commercial space into two — “Doubling the income,” Monroe-Beard said. She explained that there could be a Xenia Avenue-facing space, and a second, Short Street-facing space that includes both the former hardware store’s loft and downstairs areas.
“But this is just me spitballing,” Monroe-Beard said.
Drawing from lessons learned in the ongoing YS Schools’ facilities improvement projects, district Superintendent Terri Holden — who serves in an ex-officio capacity for YSDC — encouraged YSDC staff and those on the board to work with an eventual architect before committing to any one idea.
“Present them with several options, tell them what you want, then go with what you believe you can afford and what you believe you can feasibly do,” Holden said. “Get your options and the price points for each one. Then, go in with eyes wide open. Maybe you have the capacity to do those things, maybe you don’t. But you won’t know until an architect gives you their reports.”
Presently, YSDC has been working with architect Earl Reeder — the community foundation’s Executive Director Jeannamarie Cox’s spouse — to make inspections and recommendations for immediate structural improvements to the two downtown buildings. Several YSDC members alluded to the necessity of hiring a more permanent architect.
“That will be the key person,” McGruder said. “Whatever vision we have, that will be the person to actually come up with the plans, then put out bids to contractors. Yes, this has risks, but if you think about the future of this organization [YSDC], I think this can be an opportunity to learn and then use that learning in the future.”
YSDC member Joanne Lakomski also advocated for the value in learning along the way, despite the immediate unknowns.
“I’m viewing this whole thing as a learning, experimental experience — not just for this group, but for the community as a whole,” Lakomski said.
“There are many aging buildings all over town, and many of them are living spaces,” she said. “The upkeep of them has been very challenging, but considering how those buildings might continue to exist and thinking about what their future uses can be — [YSDC] can be a repository for learning how to understand potentials for funding … how to feed the community, as well as our own efforts.”
Membership round-up
Voting members of the development corporation include Carmen Brown (a Village Council member), Joanne Lakomski, Kevin McGruder, Marilan Moir (a Miami Township trustee), Christine Monroe-Beard, Rebecca Potter (a school board member), Senay Semere (another Village Council member) and Michael Slaughter.
Staffers of YSDC include the Village Economic Development Coordinator Aaron Arellano and the newly appointed Executive Director Lisa Abel, whose position is funded through a $2,500/month Miller Fellow grant via the Community Foundation.
Ex-officios include Village Manager Johnnie Burns, YSCF Director Jeannamarie Cox, Antioch College President Jane Fernandes, YS Schools Superintendent Terri Holden and YS Chamber of Commerce Director Phillip O’Rourke.
The next Yellow Springs Development Corporation meeting will be held Tuesday, April 7, at 4:30 p.m., in the Miami Township Fire-Rescue’s community meeting room, at 101 E. Herman St.
Beginning Tuesday, March 24, a stretch of U.S. 68, about six miles south of downtown Yellow Springs, will close for three days.
The closure — by Brush Row Road and Great Council State Park in Oldtown — will go into effect at 8 a.m., and will be in place through late Thursday.
While that stretch of 68 is closed, motorists will be detoured by way of state routes 343 and 72 and U.S. 42.
Crews will be installing beams for a pedestrian/bike bridge over U.S. 68, in continuation of the ongoing project of connecting the Little Miami Scenic Bike Trail on the east side of U.S. 68 to Great Council’s Shawnee Interpretive Education Center across the road.
Along with the new pedestrian bridge, the project includes the construction of another bridge over Oldtown Creek and improvements to the intersection at U.S. 68 and Brush Row Road.
Construction of the bridge began in early spring 2025, and according to a memo from ODOT, the plans are to complete the project and cease work by June of next year. ODOT contracted Eagle Bridge Company to complete the project for approximately $8.9 million.
The annual Valerie Ann Blackwell-Truitt Community Dance and Performance Arts Concert is set for Friday and Saturday, March 27 and 28, in the gymnasium of John Bryan Community Center, 100 Dayton St. The program starts at 7:30 p.m. both nights.
Some of this year’s performance artists and visual artists have been dancing, performing and creating art in this concert for years, some since high school, according to Blackwell-Truitt. Participants have come from Yellow Springs, Springfield, Beavercreek, London, Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati. At various times, friends, siblings, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, parents, and even grandparents have graced the concert’s performance spaces.
Admission is $10, or a food pantry donation; children 8 and younger will be admitted free of charge.
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