Linden area gaining population again, while Franklinton and some Hilltop areas declined

Linda and Perry Barfield bought their East 22nd Avenue house in Columbus' South Linden in 1965, and they have seen their neighborhood decline and rebound several times over that 56-year period.

While boarded-up homes remain on their street, the two 79-year-olds say the neighborhood is back on the upswing with redevelopment in the area, progress that has likely helped contribute to what the 2020 U.S. Census shows has been a more than 17% increase in population in their area since 2010.

"I think people now are just beginning to realize that the city is the place to be," said Linda Barfield. "This is prime property."

After years of decline, blight and falling population, much of Linden is growing again, according to new census numbers released last month. That's thanks in part to its location and affordable housing as many parts of the city and Greater Columbus have become too expensive for many.

Meanwhile, Columbus' Franklinton neighborhood to the west of Downtown lost population between 2010 and 2020, as did much of the Hilltop.

Columbus census tracts with population changes by The Columbus Dispatch on Scribd

Ginther pledge to revitalize Hilltop and Linden has had mixed results

Soon after taking office in early 2016, Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said one of his first goals as mayor would be to revitalize Linden and the Hilltop after both areas suffered decades of decline. The city and its partners created the One Linden and Envision Hilltop plans, which outlined efforts to try to strengthen each area.

But the results of those efforts have been uneven.

Michael Wilkos is senior vice president of community impact for the United Way of Central Ohio and has long studied demographic and population trends. Wilkos said that Linden has a number of factors in its favor now.

"Linden is in a very attractive location," Wilkos said. "It's close to the airport and benefitting from its proximity to Easton. There's good transit access, and it's also close to the University District and Downtown."

Parts of the West Side don't have as many large employment centers nearby, and although Franklinton is adjacent to Downtown, the housing stock there is often older there than in other parts of the city, he said.

In Linden, with its workforce housing, it is less costly to renovate those homes, Wilkos said.

Linden also is benefitting from being next to costly neighborhoods to the west from Downtown through Clintonville to Worthington, Wilkos said.

"Many buyers and renters are jumping the railroad tracks for the first time," he said.

Wilkos added that the city has done a fairly good job of removing chronic blight from Linden.

Between 2010 and 2020, 403 structures were demolished in North and South Linden, 281 on the Hilltop and 261 in Franklinton, according to John Turner, administrator of the city's land bank.

North Linden's 2020 census numbers show population increases in most census tracts, including an 8.3% increase in a census tract mostly north of Hudson Street and east of McGuffey Road and an 8.1% increase in a tract south of Oakland Park Avenue and east of McGuffey Road.

In the case of the latter tract, census numbers for race and ethnicity showed 7% decreases in both Black and white only populations, but a 315% increase in the Latino population from 66 to 274, a 775% increase from 20 to 175 in the number of people who marked "other" on their census forms, and a 257% increase in those who marked "two or more" – 82 to 293 – on their forms.

Even in the heart of South Linden the population has increased. In one census tract that straddles Cleveland Avenue north of East 17th Avenue where the Barfields live, the population jumped by 17.4%, increasing by more than 500 residents, even though there hasn't been a lot of new building there.

Census numbers don't show this now, but Wilkos said that perhaps people are moving in with other residents of Linden.

Carla Williams-Scott, the director of the Columbus Department of Neighborhoods, said she knows people who are doing just that.

"Young people are buying houses and young friends are moving in with them," she said.

The cost of housing in Columbus has risen dramatically, said Rich Russo of Rich Russo Realty. But housing prices in Linden are relatively affordable, even though values have increased over the past 24 months in North Linden in particular, he said.

"They are selling really well right now," Russo said.

"The buyers have come from everywhere. I've had investors, local people," he said, adding that out-of-town buyers are often flipping or renting homes.

"It’s an affordable option. And honestly, with rent rates going up, a lot of people are buying rentals there," Russo said.

Meanwhile, many first-time buyers are purchasing homes in Linden because of the affordability, said Erik Vanston of HER Realty.

"It definitely is an area that buyers consider," Vanston said.

More recently, there's been new housing in Linden, such as affordable builder Homeport's 45-unit Kenlawn Place development on Cleveland Avenue. Homeport also has a 100-unit senior apartment building planned for a site near Cleveland and Myrtle avenues that would be an anchor to a proposed new "downtown Linden."

Sundi Corner, a real estate agent who also chairs the South Linden Area Commission, pointed to the $25 million "614 for Linden" effort created in 2019 to boost affordable housing and other programs as the latest effort to drive investment in the community.

Corner said she sees houses selling for more than $200,000 in Linden now, and is seeing white people as well as members of the Asian and Latino communities moving into what has been a predominately Black community.

Hilltop lacks amenities, meaningful development, longtime resident says 

There have been population gains in some census tracts on the Hilltop, while others have declined. A census tract that includes the Westgate neighborhood dropped 2.1%, and one north of West Broad Street and west of Interstate 70 lost 2% of its population.

"The amenities are gone," said Geoff Phillips, a longtime resident and leader of the Highland West neighborhood in the eastern part of the Hilltop.

Phillips said Ginther is making a mistake by just concentrating on social services for the Hilltop. "We want meaningful development that affects everybody," he said.

"This was always a middle-class area, a working-class area. That has shifted drastically," Phillips said. "We have a chance to create a multi-cultural, multi-racial neighborhood here."

Phillips said he has never seen so many people living in garages and so many who are homeless.

"We need prosperity brought back. Bring people in with high incomes adding to the mix," Phillips said.

"A lot of people have moved because they have lost hope."

Steve Torsell, executive director for the nonprofit Homes on the Hill, said he wonders if some Latinos who have made the Hilltop their homes were reluctant to report to the census bureau.

But the tract where Phillips lives north of Broad showed a 158% increase in the Latino population — from 233 to 601 residents — with a 25% decrease in the white population.

Lisa Boggs, a longtime Hilltop neighborhood leader who lives south of Sullivant Avenue, said she feels like she has a more vibrant neighborhood, which showed a 1.3% population increase.

Boggs said 29 of the 32 homes on her block are filled. A decade ago, she said, 13 of those homes were vacant.

"We had an empty street here," she said.

Development may help reverse Franklinton population decline 

Franklinton has seen much development recently in its eastern section across the Scioto River from Downtown, with new apartments and the skeletons of more residential and commercial buildings under construction rising over the Scioto Peninsula. Over the past decade, though, the overall neighborhood saw an outflux of residents.

The tract east of Route 315 that is seeing much redevelopment lost 19% of its people, including 60% of its Black population.

Trent Smith, the executive director of the Franklinton Board of Trade, said he believes those population numbers will rise once those residential projects are finished and filled.

In 2011, the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority closed the Riverside-Bradley public housing complex in Franklinton. The River & Rich apartments now sit on that site.

"It's a hard fact that some folks are starting to get priced out of the neighborhood," Smith said.

Because some renters are starting to place higher demands on landlords about what they want units to be like, some homes are staying vacant longer than they have in the past, he said.

Then, Williams-Scott said, investors will sit on them.

"They have deep pockets," she said. "They, too, read the papers and know the area is ripe for revitalization. They hold out until they think can get a decent profit off of it."

But Chris Knoppe, a partner in Franklinton-based New City Homes, said it's expensive now to sit on a home without income. Knoppe said Franklinton has been losing population for decades

Census figures confirm that Franklinton has been losing population for several decades, with the area hit hard during the foreclosure crisis a decade ago, then the opioid epidemic.

"It's a very real problem. Fueled together with a massive amount of blight, that tends to be contagious," Knoppe said.

He said that in the past few years, his company has renovated about 50 rental properties while selling another 20 houses to homeowners.

"There can be friction between longtime residents and those new to the neighborhood, while high construction costs and citywide demand for housing will inevitably push rental rates and home prices higher," Knoppe said.

"We must remember that it's nearly impossible for neighborhoods to stay the same over time," he said. "They either deteriorate or prosper."

mferench@dispatch.com

@MarkFerenchik

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Linden population up while Franklinton and some Hilltop areas struggle