High school vs. neighbors: How tennis complex plans strained a century-old relationship

On one side of the thin line of trees behind Withrow University High School are the athletic fields where students have been playing and watching games for as long as anyone can remember.

On the other side are the backyards of homeowners who have grown accustomed over the years to the ping of aluminum bats, the crack of shoulder pads and the pop of tennis balls striking rackets.

The border is, for the most part, a friendly one. But like anywhere big schools and quiet neighborhoods meet, change can test that relationship.

And change may soon be coming for Withrow and its neighbors.

Withrow and Cincinnati Public Schools are considering a private foundation’s proposal to build a $3 million indoor tennis complex near the tree line between the school’s property and a dozen or so homes on Kendall Avenue in Hyde Park.

Withrow’s principal, Jerron Gray, likes the idea, calling it a “great opportunity” to bring year-round tennis to his students. At a school board committee meeting last year, Gray said the complex could help establish a tennis program at Withrow that would teach the game to kids who might otherwise never get a chance to play.

“We want to be a part of it,” Gray said.

The neighbors? Not so much.

“It’s just going to be a huge difference in our neighborhood,” said Leslie Raasch, who lives on Kendall with her husband, Jeff. She and others on the street fear the new building, which would sit about 100 feet from their property lines, would disrupt their lives and lower the value of their homes.

The neighbors don’t know exactly what the view from their backyards will be when the building goes up, but it will be different from what they’ve known for decades.

The design still is a work in progress. The most recent renderings depict a steel structure, roughly 35 feet high, next to a new parking lot. There will be more outdoor lighting. Some trees might come down. Some green space will be lost.

The new complex, which would include resurfaced outdoor courts, resembles the kind of athletic field house that schools have been building for decades. Nothing fancy, just a big steel rectangle. The problem, neighbors say, is location.

Rick Ganulin, an attorney and former assistant Cincinnati city solicitor who lives on Kendall Avenue, said putting the indoor courts close to the neighborhood is akin to building a “Soviet-era monstrosity” in someone’s backyard.

Earlier this month, Ganulin, Raasch and eight of their neighbors sent school board members a 30-page opposition statement, with 142 pages of exhibits, outlining their concerns. They said they understand why the school might want to give more kids an opportunity to learn and play tennis, but they said the current plan for the fields would destroy a “tremendous public asset.”

If the opposition statement looked a little like a legal document, there was a reason. Ganulin said the neighbors are prepared to go to court, if necessary.

“We are going to fight to the death about this,” he said.

'A big box retail store behind my house'

The neighbors and the school didn’t go from peaceful coexistence to legal threats and Cold War imagery overnight.

Withrow and the neighborhood have coexisted since the school opened more than 100 years ago. And for much of that time, the unwritten social contract between the two changed little: The kids make a ruckus after school or on weekends. The neighbors relax in the evening and watch the sun set behind the trees.

The athletic fields, neighbors say, are a big reason why the relationship works. There are no buildings, aside from a storage shed, and the area has evolved over the years into a community space, shared by teenaged baseball players and middle-aged neighbors walking their dogs.

But while the space may have been shared, it always belonged to Withrow. With help from local charities, the school added fences around the ball fields a few years ago and resurfaced its outdoor tennis courts.

Those additions didn’t raise alarms on Kendall Avenue. But a proposal in 2021 to build a $10 million indoor tennis facility did.

The Cincinnati Tennis Foundation, a nonprofit that runs free and reduced-rate tennis programs for kids all over the city, floated the idea in hopes of creating a permanent home for year-round tennis instruction. The plan was for the foundation to raise the money to build the facility and for the school to grant a long-term lease to the foundation for the land.

“The foundation’s mission is to positively impact lives through access to tennis and education,” the foundation’s chief operating officer, Nikki Cioffi, said at the time.

The foundation and the school moved off those early plans before opposition could gain momentum. But there was opposition. When the foundation came back with a smaller design – two courts instead of eight – the neighbors still didn’t like it.

“It’s like having a big box retail store behind my house,” said Bob Shaffer, a Cincinnati lawyer who lives on Kendall. Based on architectural renderings of the project, Shaffer produced computer-generated images of the steel structure towering over his backyard and included them in the neighbors’ opposition statement.

He also used bamboo and duct tape to construct a roughly 35-foot-tall pole that shows how high the proposed tennis complex would stand next to the tree line.

While all this might seem like a classic case of “not-in-my-backyard” objections from a neighbor who, literally, doesn’t want something next to his backyard, Shaffer and other neighbors say their objections are about more than how the project would impact them.

He said the indoor tennis complex is as bad a deal for the school as he believes it is for the neighbors because it would require the school to give up control of part of its campus to a private foundation for little or no financial compensation. Early plans also suggested the school would help pay maintenance and utility costs.

Several neighbors said they suspect the foundation wants to establish an indoor facility as a destination for serious tennis players from all over the city who can afford to pay in full for coaching and programs run by the foundation. Once the indoor courts are built, Shaffer said, there's no guarantee the foundation would prioritize public school kids over those players.

“The public schools should not be in the business of subsidizing private tennis clubs,” Shaffer said. “It seems really crazy to me.”

Principal backs idea, sees benefits for kids

That’s not how it seems to Gray, Withrow’s principal, or to some other school officials. Gray did not respond to interview requests but he embraced the foundation’s plan last year when he spoke to the school board’s finance committee.

He sees the indoor facility as a chance for public school kids to experience a sport that often is the domain of wealthy kids from the suburbs. More than 90% of Withrow’s 1,300 students are non-white and 85% qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch because of their families’ income.

“One of my primary objectives is to make sure that tennis is accessible for all students in Cincinnati Public Schools,” Gray said at the committee meeting. “You really need indoor facilities to be able to do that.”

The foundation’s executive director, Matt Dektas, said he’s committed to helping the schools build middle and high school tennis programs, including tennis teams. In an email, Dektas said 88% of current program participants who report a school say they attend a Cincinnati public school.

More than 3,000 kids, including those who are visually impaired or in wheelchairs, participated in programs last year for tennis and pickleball, according to the foundation's annual report. Many attended at a reduced rate. Last summer, 96% of kids involved in tennis or pickleball programs did so for free or at a discount.

"Whether a player has the goal of playing recreationally or playing in college, we are there to provide that opportunity to kids who might not have even known it is an option,” Dektas said.

Dektas and Gray both assured school board members last year that the school and foundation would work with neighbors to minimize any potential impact on their property. In addition to reducing the size of the building, they’ve moved it from 35 feet to 100 feet from the property line.

But Dektas said something else at the meeting that worries the neighbors. In time, he said, the structure could be expanded along the tree line, where the outdoor courts are today. He didn’t say how much bigger it could get, but bigger is not a selling point for the neighbors.

Raasch, whose home sits directly behind the proposed site of the courts, said the current plan is risky enough. A retiree, she’s certain the home she considers her nest egg will lose value if the project goes forward.

“See my screen porch up there?” she said, walking along the tree line on a recent afternoon. “I sit there every night. I’ll get to look at a building now.”

School board members aren’t saying how they’ll vote on the project, but Eve Bolton, the board’s president, said she believes it may have enough support to win approval.

She said the board could vote as soon as next month. After that, the district would seek a zoning variance from the city to allow construction to begin, something the neighbors say they also will fight.

Bolton said she still has reservations. She’s unconvinced the district’s students will be a priority once the indoor courts are built, and she’s concerned about the damage the project could do to the long relationship between Withrow and the residents on Kendall Avenue.

After so many years, she said, change won’t be easy.

“We try to be good neighbors,” Bolton said. “I think we have to be very careful anytime that we kind of intrude on the sanctity of the neighborhood.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Neighbors oppose plan to build indoor courts at Withrow High School