Flight and Former Front Yards
A cargo flight departs the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport for Tampa on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2021.
I went to hear David Sedaris speak recently. I’ve always admired the man’s writing and his appearances on public radio, but seeing him in person was something else. There was a casualness to it, his personality coming through a lot more honestly than it does in carefully crafted texts or professionally curated audio. At the end, during the Q&A, an audience member asked about his writing process and he responded with insight about pens, typewriters, his eventual adoption of a laptop, and never taking a day off from writing—punctuating it all with the approach that he doesn’t “force” anything. The simple notion struck me, because it seems like obvious advice, but it’s guidance I’ve been struggling to accept lately.
At the front page of my current notebook, there’s a quote by my friend Wonder Brown: “Don’t give a shit, just write.” And I do, usually daily. Sometimes it’s just free form gibberish spewing out after a few drinks when I didn’t get the chance to loudly proclaim every point of some rant I’d been on at the bar. Other times it’s very intentional: work on a project, a freelance piece, or something long-form I’ve been trying to craft for awhile. But I’ve got these “smaller” stories too, ones that don’t always seem to carry much weight or significance.
Back when I first started Queen City Discovery, I was hellbent on sticking with a specific theme. Anything that went up, it had to fit the loose motif of the site. As time went on, though, I stopped caring. There were self-imposed rules I’d still create for myself, but eventually QC/D morphed into what this website is now: just whatever I want it to be. But those “smaller stories” still persisted and despite writing every day, they’d sit in my “drafts” folder waiting to be told because I couldn’t seem to push any “deeper” meaning out of them. Although I claimed to be unconcerned, I’d still argue with myself: “who really gives a shit about this and what does it say about me that I’m posting it?”
This story here in particular, there’s not much to it. And in my usual evening (or early morning) typing, i’t’s been hard to work up the energy on these “minor” posts—especially after devoting so much time, love, and care into “bigger” stories this year (such as this one and this one).
“What did the subject say about years-long work with urban exploration?”
Or
“Is there something to be said about one’s home becoming abandoned, something deeper to this?”
Or
“What was my mental state that day? Why, out of everything I could’ve (or should’ve) been doing on a Sunday afternoon, did I go wander around an abandoned subdivision?”
Maybe those were all legitimate angles, but I never felt too particularly passionate about pursuing them (and the “home” perspective couldn’t really get much more personal than this piece from 2020). So, instead of trying to compel some deeper meaning into existence (although, maybe I’m trying to doing exactly that now with the whole Sedaris opening line and every paragraph before this one), here are some photographs and straight-to-the-point context with a caveat: there are folks out there for who I’m sure this story is personal or significant. Did you once call this place home? If so, I’d love to talk further.
Anyway, here’s “Flight and Former Front Yards:”
An abandoned home east of CVG’s 9/27 runway that may have also been the victim of airport noise.
By the end of the 1980s, Delta Airlines (along with affiliate Comair), had established a full-fledged hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG). As construction of a brand new north-south runway neared completion in the Spring of 1990—the facility eyed an extension of its east-west runway known as “9/27.”
Comair / Delta Connection’s deserted Concourse C as seen in a 2014 story. This concourse was eventually demolished in the wake of CVG’s downturn.
“Ethan’s Glen” (occasionally listed in newspaper accounts as “Ethan Glen”) was a suburban enclave of Cincinnati located in Burlington, Kentucky. Due west of CVG, the subdivision’s streets and numerous homes were in the direct flightpath of 9/27. By April 19, 1990, residents had told The Cincinnati Enquirer that the noise was so bad, real estate agents had allegedly stopped showing homes in the area. In the same article, reporter Dave Beasley noted that airport officials were holding public meetings as they prepared a plan to mitigate noise. Proposed measures of the time included the airport buying homes, soundproofing them, and then reselling them. Additionally, plans could call for the “direct purchase” of homes in “future noise areas” such as Ethan’s Glen where “these homes would be razed.”
Ethan’s Glen as seen in an April 1993 aerial photograph via the U.S. Geological Survey & Google Earth.
Over the next few years, the subdivision became the focal point of news coverage surrounding the airport’s increasing noise on local quality of life. CVG was on a path that would eventually lead it to become (for a time) Delta’s largest hub outside of its base in Atlanta. Per The Cincinnati Enquirer on May 13, 1991: the airport was working to “rearrange flight patterns” and had applied for a federal grant to “soundproof or, if necessary, buy homes where the noise problem is worst.” Ethan’s Glen (credited with “about 150” homes at the time) received particular mention as “citizen activists” recommended departing planes “bear 15 degrees to the northwest in taking off to ease the noise.” Although the airport and this particular runway predated the housing development, jet technology and travel demands had grown alongside the area’s booming population.
By 1992, as CVG formally proposed an extension to runway 9/27, the airport also purchased a home in Ethan’s Glen. Per the reporting of Ben L. Kaufman in the March 7, 1992 edition of The Cincinnati Enquirer: the airport now owned a two-story, four-bedroom home in the subdivision where a third-party consulting firm had been hired to audit sound levels. “Noise reached 92 decibels in bedrooms upstairs” per the project manager while “the discomfort level [of human hearing] is somewhere between 90 and 140 decibels.” CVG was in a complicated geographic position as it related to noise mitigation. The airport couldn’t simply reroute flights to a north-south runway since complaints from across the river in Delhi Township, Ohio had also been a longtime problem (the increased use of runway 9/27 over the years now tormenting Ethan’s Glen had once been a solution to ease noise in Ohio). By this point, airport officials were preparing to offer residents two options: buy their home or insulate their home. Further tests at the CVG-owned residence would be used to determine the best soundproofing methods.
What remains of Ethan’s Glen as seen via a Google Earth satellite on September 23, 2021.
On December 1, 1995, Terry Flynn of The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Ethan’s Glen was “nearly deserted” with “all but a handful of houses” having been purchased by the airport. Newspaper records of the subdivision mostly disappear after that.
Entrance to a former Ethan’s Glen road.
Power lines still up in what was once Ethan’s Glen.
A former fire hydrant.
One of the subdivision’s few maintained roadways. Note that the grass is still being cut. Two homes in the area are still occupied.
A former road in Ethan’s Glen.
Weeds growing through the cracks of a road in Ethan’s Glen.
Overgrown brush in what was once Ethan’s Glen.
Deteriorating roadway.
Former infrastructure/sewer grate.
There would eventually be less noise in the area, but this was due to economic influences rather than any strategic sound mitigation efforts. CVG’s recent history is a story all its own (one covered a few times here over the years), but the airport would see a sharp decline in the new millennium as Comair closed and Delta navigated bankruptcy. Eventually, CVG would lose its status as a Delta hub and currently in the wake of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic—the airport isn’t even considered to be a “focus city” for the airline. Compared to the grim stories of 2012 and 2014, though, CVG has navigated a fresh path forward. New airlines have arrived, facilities have been completely overhauled, and it’s now one of the continent’s busiest cargo airports serving as the global hub for Amazon Air and several other freight carriers. Noise is still an issue on both sides of the river, however, with stories occasionally cropping up in the press. Currently, runway 9/27 is is the airport’s longest at 12,000 feet—credited by the airport as its “most utilized.”
Ironically, while wandering around the remains of Ethan’s Glen in the Fall of 2021, it was eerily quiet. 9/27 was closed that day, nearing the end of yet another upgrade project.
The former Ethan’s Glen.
On the other side of the airport—there’s another emptied neighborhood. These few houses are still standing, though, and appear to have only been somewhat recently deserted. Surrounded by industrial facilities and sitting due east of 9/27, I suspect that noise from ever-increasing freight traffic also played a factor here.
Since 2007, the content of this website (and its former life as Queen City Discovery) has been a huge labor of love.
If you’ve enjoyed stories like The Ghost Ship, abandoned amusement parks, the Cincinnati Subway, Fading Ads, or others over the years—might you consider showing some support for future projects?
