Would FC Cincinnati stadium price West End residents out of the neighborhood?

There's a lot riding on FC Cincinnati's highly-anticipated decision on where it plans to build a new major league soccer stadium – including the future of one of Cincinnati's oldest and most impoverished neighborhoods.

Predominantly black and lower-income, the West End has been in decline for years and has struggled to regain property values lost in the Great Recession.

In 2010, about a year after the economic recovery began, total residential values in the West End stood at about $77 million, according to non-inflation-adjusted property values from the Hamilton County Auditor. By 2017, that number had dropped to $71 million - about an 8 percent decline.

By comparison, residential property values in nearby Over-the-Rhine have spiked more than 400 percent over the past decade, and Pendleton home values are up more than 155 percent.

Could the West End be the new Over-the-Rhine?

The West End remains one of three sites, including Newport and Oakley, still in the running for a professional seat soccer stadium that could breathe new life into the area's real estate market and stimulate future economic growth.

Joe Jarvis and his wife, Rosemary, are counting on the West End's revitalization.

The couple, who moved to Cincinnati from Washington, D.C., to be closer to family, are set to open the 20-plus unit Kuhfers Flats condo development on Friday along Wade Street, just west of the Cincinnati Public Schools’ Willard R. Stargel Stadium.

The stadium next to Taft High School would be torn down to make way for FC Cincinnati, which has proposed building a new high school stadium near Ezzard Charles Drive and John Street.

The Cincinnati Public Schools board, which would have to sign off on the deal, met privately Wednesday to discuss the FC Cincinnati deal in West End. Ater the meeting, President Carolyn Jones said the board has had talks and will continue "informal" talks with the team.

The Jarvises said they started buying vacant buildings on Wade Street for condos and short-term rentals in 2014 long before the neighborhood was proposed as a site for the soccer stadium.

But they welcome the potential boost to economic development and property values in the area that they expect the stadium to bring.

"I didn't know about the stadium until about a month and a half ago,'' said Rosemary Jarvis. "But it's definitely going to impact us. It's going to expand the market for this property.''

Shawn Baker, a Realtor at Comey & Shepherd and listing agent for Kuhfers Flats, estimated a two-bedroom, two-bath unit with just over 1,000 square feet of space would initially list in a price range of $225,000-$230,000.

But he acknowledged the stadium could quickly accelerate pricing: "Demand will push the price up.''

The impact on property values in urban neighborhoods anchored by professional sports stadiums can already be seen in cities such as Columbus, Oho, where the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets' Nationwide Arena is located.

Since opening in 1999, the total market value of real estate in the so-called Arena District near downtown Columbus has grown by more than $744 million, according to The Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority.

Fears of 'gentrification ... and displacement'

Rising properties values can have many benefits, including a higher return on investment for homeowners and developers, as well as millions of dollars of additional tax revenues added to city coffers.

But such a development boom has consequences for residents already living there, including a potentially unsustainable increase in the cost of living.

As property values and rents increase, homeowners are forced to pay higher property taxes, and renters must spend a larger proportion of their income on housing.

Housing costs could increase so much that many longtime West End residents might ultimately be unable to afford to live in their communities.

Some West End residents and civic leaders have already voiced such concerns at often-raucous West End Community Council meetings in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, the West End Resident Council Presidents delivered a letter opposing the soccer stadium to the Cincinnati Board of Education and Cincinnati City Council, which both must sign off on the deal.

"We remain solidly against the location of an FC Cincinnati stadium in our West End neighborhood because we know that this would lead to the further gentrification of our neighborhood and the displacement of ourselves and many of our neighbors,'' reads the letter from the residents council, which represents just over half of the West End's approximately 6,627 residents.

At least one resident said the benefits of a soccer stadium far outweigh concerns about displacement and gentrification.

Making the neighborhood 'a better place to raise a family'

Rodney Williams, who has lived in City West development in the West End since 2009, acknowledged the stadium and other new developments could place added financial burdens on some low-income residents.

But just as City West helped transform the blighted, low-income area, Williams believes the FC Cincinnati stadium would go a long way toward alleviating the area's high crime rate, poor infrastructure and lack of commerce.

"It (soccer stadium) could be one of the best things to ever happen to the neighborhood,'' said Williams, co-founder and CEO of Cincinnati-based tech-startup, Lisnr. "More redevelopment will make the neighborhood a better place to raise a family.''

Williams, who is also a member of the University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees, owns a building in the West End that he plans to convert to offices for his business.

But he was quick to point out that he invested in the neighborhood long before real estate investors began snapping up properties on rumors of the soccer stadium coming to the neighborhood.

"I’m not a real estate investor,'' Williams said. "For me, it’s not about property values. It's about how we're going to grow our company in a part of town that we believe in.''

Williams, who is black, said the West End has a lot of similarities to the neighborhood he grew up in amid Baltimore's urban core, where he was taught the importance of reinvesting in his own community.

"Where I'm from, I was taught not to move out into the county. I was taught to move next door,'' he said, underscoring the principle.

Cameron Knight contributed