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I am looking at a position at UC and would prefer to walk. Many of the neighborhood posts I have seen were dated 2007-8 and so I am curious about how the new economic realities have impacted the university environment. I have been searching the following n'hoods for homes to purchase housing. Clifton; Mt. Auburn; Coryville; Clifton Heights; University Heights; Fairview; The Heights; Avondale. What did I miss? I may be walking late at night. Am I deluding myself that walking is a possibility? I am 6'5" and weigh 230 lbs. and have not had problems living in NYC, as I am aware of my surroundings. I am clear that one street can be perfectly fine while two streets away there may be nefarious activity occurring. I have several months to make a decision. Where should I be investigating on the campus perimeter? Where are the absolute danger zones? Thanks! P.S. I have not seen Clifton Gaslight mentioned in the Real Estate listings. Why not?
Clifton Gaslight is a pretty good walk up to the center of the University. and its up hill. But it is a great place to live and you could walk up there safely night or day.
There is also a lot of apartments across Clifton Ave. Safe enough. My son lived at Riddle and Clifton for a few years then Bishop St. the third choice. Clifton Gaslight is a nice lifestyle. They are almost 100% occupied in my friends buildings, the Telford, Marburg and others.
Summarize:
Gaslight long walk
Stratford across from McMicken Hall
Bishop/Jefferson across from DAAP
I am looking at a position at UC and would prefer to walk. Many of the neighborhood posts I have seen were dated 2007-8 and so I am curious about how the new economic realities have impacted the university environment. I have been searching the following n'hoods for homes to purchase housing. Clifton; Mt. Auburn; Coryville; Clifton Heights; University Heights; Fairview; The Heights; Avondale. What did I miss? I may be walking late at night. Am I deluding myself that walking is a possibility? I am 6'5" and weigh 230 lbs. and have not had problems living in NYC, as I am aware of my surroundings. I am clear that one street can be perfectly fine while two streets away there may be nefarious activity occurring. I have several months to make a decision. Where should I be investigating on the campus perimeter? Where are the absolute danger zones? Thanks! P.S. I have not seen Clifton Gaslight mentioned in the Real Estate listings. Why not?
Probably because "Clifton Gaslight" is not really a neighborhood in and of itself--it refers to the (mostly) residential streets in Clifton which have old-fashioned gas-style streetlamps. These are typically the more upscale parts of the neighborhood.
When you say purchasing housing, I hope you don't mean literally buying a property, but rather are talking about looking for a place to rent or lease for the time being. Although I'd advise anyone wanting to buy a home to spend some time here in a rental first, this advice is magnified many times over with regard to the areas around the University. They're diverse, and because of the location within the city can be pretty pricy.
We've had several threads recently on this board and there's quite a bit of good information in them. I think some of them mentioned people working at University Hospital and Children's Hospital, if that's a help when doing a search.
Am I deluding myself that walking is a possibility? I am 6'5" and weigh 230 lbs. and have not had problems living in NYC, as I am aware of my surroundings. I am clear that one street can be perfectly fine while two streets away there may be nefarious activity occurring. I have several months to make a decision. Where should I be investigating on the campus perimeter? Where are the absolute danger zones? Thanks! P.S. I have not seen Clifton Gaslight mentioned in the Real Estate listings. Why not?
I do not think that you will have any problems given that the predators generally go after easier victims. That is as long as you don't plan on getting totally plastered or start flashing large bills.
I do not think that you will have any problems given that the predators generally go after easier victims. That is as long as you don't plan on getting totally plastered or start flashing large bills.
Ditto. Last year on Calhoun St I averted becoming a statistic by being tall, middle-aging, and casually dressed while the preferred victim was of medium height, 20-something, in preppie gear, and wearing an iPod. The area east of campus can be dicey at any hour (a student fought off six muggers armed with a knife at around 11 AM one day last spring.) South of Calhoun/McMillan is OK for the most part. My take on this section, which I grew up knowing as "Lower Clifton" but also goes by several names all prefacing "Heights," is that the only time to not want to be out and about is between about midnight and 4 in the morning. That's when the "thuggz" are at work looking for intoxicated undergrads. Otherwise it's a laid-back environment and pleasant for strolling around. Bellevue Hill Park, at the south end of Ohio Ave, doesn't fall into the limelight much thanks to "jewel" greenspaces like Eden Park and Burnet Woods. It's an inviting shady grassy expanse with a million-dollar view. Last year I had the entire place to myself one early morning for watching the river mist burn away and the traffic downtown gradually build.
Most RE ads for Clifton properties will mention "gaslight" within the first sentence of the listing. In the popular imagination the gaslight district lies north of Ludlow and west of Clifton Ave, but some streets south of Ludlow also sport the antique (or replica) lamps as does each one east of Clifton Ave all the way over to Bishop St. This doesn't automatically mean that a block will contain nothing but upscale houses if not mansions. The "urban removal" fever of the 1950's and '60s saw to that, with its legacy in the form of ugly brick box apartment houses on a few blocks. Older apartment buildings are in harmony with their surroundings and a few, i.e. on the southeast corner of the Telford/Bryant (maybe Senator Place?) intersection, are even eye-catching. Whichever side of Clifton Ave you're on, there's a lot to like, but the demographics and feel of the area change pretty abruptly where Glenmary, Bishop, and Ruther descend to Vine St. Nowhere is the abruptness more profound than along Woolper Ave. One minute you're atop a hill opposite the original Clifton School with churches and big fancy houses all around. Descend and you hit Vine St, with a gas station (maybe closed) and two raggedy pony kegs and a Richie's Fast Food "gracing" the trash-strewn intersection. The higher the house number on Woolper, the higher the asking price - literally!
One of my hidden-gem Cincy enclaves is the part called Fairview Heights, which begins southwest of Hughes High School at the Clifton/McMillan corner. A neighbor from childhood, bereft of a child and divorced, moved to a house on Fairview Ave about thirty years ago. When I ran into him earlier this summer I asked whether he were still there; he smiled and said, "Never gonna leave." It might be but a hop skip and jump from UC, but the "kids" forgo it in favor of being that much closer to night life. Since all the "Greek-letter" houses are along Clifton Ave or Jefferson and there's no bar scene west of the high school, what'd be the attraction?
In all of the "Heights" areas (aka "Clifton, near") you'll find homes priced more cheaply than in the gaslight district. This largely has to do with the properties themselves, not so much relative crime rates. Single-family dwellings tend to be narrower if not smaller. Most of the yards are of a scale that you could practically mow the lawn with kitchen scissors. This also holds true for the portion of Clifton south of Ludlow and west of Clifton Ave, albeit with more upscale residences especially between Ludlow and MLK Drive.
Don't even think about living in Avondale. Nuff said.
Clifton Gaslight is a pretty good walk up to the center of the University. and its up hill. But it is a great place to live and you could walk up there safely night or day.
There is also a lot of apartments across Clifton Ave. Safe enough. My son lived at Riddle and Clifton for a few years then Bishop St. the third choice. Clifton Gaslight is a nice lifestyle. They are almost 100% occupied in my friends buildings, the Telford, Marburg and others.
Summarize:
Gaslight long walk
Stratford across from McMicken Hall
Bishop/Jefferson across from DAAP
One thing you will notice as missing from my assessment is the area south of the University. It plenty close and you may be told that it is safe like the following:
Quote:
Originally Posted by goyguy
South of Calhoun/McMillan is OK for the most part. My take on this section, which I grew up knowing as "Lower Clifton" but also goes by several names all prefacing "Heights," is that the only time to not want to be out and about is between about midnight and 4 in the morning. That's when the "thuggz" are at work looking for intoxicated undergrads. Otherwise it's a laid-back environment and pleasant for strolling around.
Its not safe. This is the area to specifically avoid. All of the vermin that plague the University area on a daily basis live within a couple of blocks of McMicken Ave. at the bottom the hill to the south. To find stores to hang out at and shoplift from and meet up, and things worth stealing and people worth stealing from, they migrate up the hill toward Calhoun Street. Despite the yuppie population along the "view" streets of Warner Klotter, etc., along the way there are breakins and other unpleasant encounters every day. At the top of that hill was a Shell Station that had an armed car jacking about once a week. The University has purchased and destroyed much of the attractive nuisance, but only so much can be done.
This is the pathway of the thugs.
The three areas I cited above are all a few blocks from trouble but so is everything in Clifton. They are just not on the pedestrian route for daily vermin traffic.
I'd like to follow up on my comment above for those folks who read a thread like this and really do not get the actual street view of the problems of "urban" living.
When you live in a bad neighborhood or near one, it is not your neighbor who breaks into your place while you are at work or puts a gun in your face when you walk up the street. Actually, even the most derelict of these folks are pretty engaging on a one on one basis. I have met several of the criminal element that live at Main and McMicken about 300 feet from my office. They ask, but since I do not do criminal cases, it ends there. They don't break in to my place because they know me and we make eye contact and they are not anonymous.
But the pedestrian traffic from one thug area to another is the problem. The disturbed population from the Pendleton area walk west to meet up on Vine Street or on to Garfield Park. Like a little line of ants headed for the picnic basket they go back and forth east and west along 12th street and 13th street. Stopping at the market at 12th and Main for rolling papers or blunts or a bottle of diluted vodka and to pick up some junk food and a few dollars from the ill advised Franciscans on Main St. And to congregate on the corners along the way with like minded scoflaws. And, along the way, the number of cars with broken windows and rough panhandling and even street robberies soars. At Sycamore and Orchard where I am located, we are not on the pathway to anything but the Short Market, hence almost no crime. But, when a crime does occur, you can bet it is someone who is headed north or south from Pendleton along Sycamore Street.
So, the key to "urban" living is not to be in the flight path of the thugs who populate one area and migrate to another.
Gaslight Clifton is on the way to nowhere. Pretty much anyone you encounter there belongs there. Same for the other two recommendations I made above. And, I suspect that it it always this way. If you sit down between the picnic basket and the anthill you are gonna be scratching before long.
If you sit down between the picnic basket and the anthill you are gonna be scratching before long.
I like this quote and agree with the theory expressed as it is sound.
Friends from way back have lived on Warner St between Ohio Ave and West Clifton Ave since 1987 - no B & E's, no muggings, no nothin'. The worst that has happened is, they rent a bay in a free-standing garage so their jalopy is protected from "the weather." In almost a quarter century, the garage has been broken into - on three occasions. Their car's always been left alone. A hornet's nest of crime this area is not. If it were, I wouldn't call the Parker House my home base on non-familial return visits much less recommend it to anyone.
Don'cha just love how somebody gets rolled on Chickasaw at 3 in the morning, then five weeks later a first-year grad student newly arrived from Boise leaves the front door to his/her apartment house on Stratford unlocked and the place gets cleaned out, and all of a sudden the entire neighborhood should be avoided? The OP has lived in New York and attests to having street sense. Lower Clifton is no worse than many a block in Park Slope. I will say, though, that I wouldn't want to live on West Hollister. (Vine St is the east/west divider throughout the city, incidentally. With very few exceptions, i.e. East Epworth in Winton Place or West Tower in Price Hill, any street prefaced by one of those direction pointers intersects with Vine.) That's the one completely dicey street south of McMillan and west of Vine 'round that way, and - no surprise - connects the two. The street is short, steep, narrow, and dark. Cops have been killed there and burglaries go on "all the time." Here again, though, one of my sisters dated a CCM student who lived for two years - incident-free - there.
Cincy's primary axes of evil follow the Gilbert/Montgomery, Reading Rd, and Vine St corridors (from a long time ago) and Glenway, Harrison, and Colerain Ave's (more recently.) Some other areas aren't so hot either, OTOH not every part of the axes of evil is bad.
Opinions, like bellybuttons, are owned by us all. But we live or have lived in the gamut of types of places and that helps shape those opinions. From having grown up in a chi-chi la-de-da inner suburb - been robbed at gunpoint there, too - and in a city neighborhood in Japan...then - upon attaining adulthood - living in two wildly differing college towns, AND in five Boston-area communities with varying degrees of affluence and diversity...whew...my opinions will inevitably diverge from those of someone who may not have grown up "privileged" but lives in a bastion of privilege today.
What to do? See for yourself, literally, and not just during one or two drive-throughs. I could (and do) know yet more people who live near UC today or once did. But their crime-free sojourns, and the multitude of times I've spent around there with nothing bad to show for it but an averted mugging last year, feed into my perspective. Realize also that a sizable man with a confident stride is given different advice than what a woman in her late teens or twenties from a rural area would be offered. That should be stating the obvious, but there are always those who aren't so swift on the uptake.
My nephew is a HS senior in Northern Ohio who is really interested in attending engineering school. UC is pretty much off of his list because of the perceived danger in the area. Why he considers it unsafe, I have no clue. I never talked to him about the campus or the area and he has no other relatives in the Cincinnati area. And I have reminded him that there are high-crime areas near Ohio State and the University of Dayton. (And he is pretty much the size of the OP.
Quote:
Originally Posted by goyguy
I like this quote and agree with the theory expressed as it is sound.
Friends from way back have lived on Warner St between Ohio Ave and West Clifton Ave since 1987 - no B & E's, no muggings, no nothin'. The worst that has happened is, they rent a bay in a free-standing garage so their jalopy is protected from "the weather."
That area of Fairview Heights from Chickasaw west to Ravine is one of the few areas in the UC campus area which is quiet. I attribute it to a small core of elderly residents who have NO HESITATION in calling the police department if they see any issues.
If the OP is looking for a good area to live, that area would be the place IF the person has access to a bus or vehicle. There is little access to groceries and the like in that area. And on-street parking is a PITA not so much due to the volume of cars as the lack of space between driveways and the narrowness of the lots.
What to do? See for yourself, literally, and not just during one or two drive-throughs. I could (and do) know yet more people who live near UC today or once did. But their crime-free sojourns, and the multitude of times I've spent around there with nothing bad to show for it but an averted mugging last year, feed into my perspective. Realize also that a sizable man with a confident stride is given different advice than what a woman in her late teens or twenties from a rural area would be offered. That should be stating the obvious, but there are always those who aren't so swift on the uptake.
This is scary, all this agreement.
Ultimately, this is the best advice for settling in any new area. Get a puzzle you can work or a good book and pkry yourself on the nearest park bench all afternoon. Then try it in the evening. Repeat as often as possible and you will get better info than any of us has to offer. Pay attention to school hours and students.
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