The Heights of Harrison

W hen Ryan Grubbs was growing up, he remembers Harrison being a quieter town, a place with farms and cornfields, where the land north of I-74 was relatively vacant. “I was raised four minutes north of here and spent my entire life around Harrison,” he says. “I remember when that strip of businesses by Tall Oaks was pretty much the only thing. I remember when the McDonald’s was built. All the rest of it was open field.”

Both the city and Grubbs are different now. The western Hamilton County community has undergone substantial development—subdivisions for young families, strip malls for busy shoppers, and myriad other establishments have rapidly popped up around Harrison. For his part, Grubbs is now serving his first term as Harrison’s mayor after a decade on city council.

While many families have only recently moved to the Harrison area to raise their children, others have been around for generations, and events such as annual food truck rallies and Christmas parades carry on decades-long traditions. Things don’t look quite the same as they did before, yet Grubbs says that the small-town feel he remembers from his childhood persists. “Sitting at the park, listening to live music, and just enjoying the evening with kids and adults dancing are things I remember as a kid, and that’s what made Harrison great,” he says.

On the border of Ohio and Indiana, 20-plus miles northwest of downtown Cincinnati, Harrison is a prime location to live and work for people who want to be close to the luxuries of an urban environment without being in the middle of it. Its growing popularity is evident—in the last 20 years, Harrison’s population has nearly doubled, from about 7,400 to more than 13,500.

City officials have encouraged development over the years, focusing on bringing more business to the city— small entrepreneurs and large commercial companies alike—to create more jobs, and they have been largely successful. “Whether it’s retail, restaurants, medical,” says Grubbs. “It’s also trying to recruit and bring in some large corporate customers and commercial customers that can potentially alleviate some of that tax burden on our residents.”

Recently, Divert, a company that creates sustainable infrastructure to prevent wasted food, has started the process of opening a new location in the city. “They chose Harrison for a number of reasons, including proximity and access to the Krogers of the world,” says Community and Economic Development Director Matt Eisenbraun.

The District , Harrison’s historic downtown along the Whitewater River, is home to f boutiques, restaurants, and shops. Some have been in business for decades, such as the Harrison Home Bakery, serving customers since 1972, and some are new, like The Lilac Moose, a vintage and home decor shop that opened in April. “The District is becoming more of a destination,” says Sara Cullin, executive director of the Greater Harrison Chamber of Commerce.

Three new breweries are opening in the area just this year, and The District also hosts a number of local events such as the Taste of Harrison.

Not all residents have been happy to see these changes. The city made headlines early this year when a number of confederate flags were installed by a resident in response to a zoning dispute. The ensuing conflict spiraled until a city councilman was removed from office for vandalizing that resident’s property. As Harrison has approved plans to construct more residential developments—there are currently around 3,400 housing units in the city, with plans for hundreds more in the coming years—citizen advocacy groups call for responsible growth, worried about how the rapid development could overwhelm their infrastructure and diminish the city’s small-town charm.

It’s a concern that both Grubbs and Eisenbraun say they take to heart. According to Eisenbraun, the Economic Development, Building, and Zoning department is putting together a strategic development plan to look at the next decade of growth and decide how to accommodate it with more supportive infrastructure.

“It is inevitable that a portion of the population is going to be unhappy about growth,” says Grubbs. “But as Harrison continues to diversify, it allows us an opportunity to give more thought and perspective to all of our approach as we move forward and really be an all-encompassing community.”

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