Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/669874
LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 5.16 53 foot. According to the Greater Louisville Association of Realtors, February 2016 home sales in Jeferson County were up 26 percent from February 2015. Germantown trails behind Bashford Manor, Old Louisville and Tyler Park, the three neighborhoods with the fastest-rising home values, according to Kentucky Select Properties. Hank Oechslin started buying properties when he was younger. In the '70s he bought four houses between Hickory and Texas on Lydia Street and paid between $8,000 and $13,500 for each. "Shotgun house went up (for sale) last week, corner of Texas and Lydia — $202,000 they're asking for it," he says. "Me being in the game, I don't miss a real-estate transfer. 1124 E. Burnett just sold for $230,000. Was nothing but a shotgun. I went to school with them kids. Tey were about the poorest in the neighborhood. Te man next door to them is 91 years old and he's very shook up. He's been there for years and years and had a swing on his back porch, could see all the way up to Texas and had a good view. Tey added that room and blocked him. He's very disturbed. It's changed the landscape of Germantown. Te culture of Germantown has changed." He and Nancy say that most of the new bars and restaurants are too expensive for the residents of their generation. "Tey go to Check's and buy a beer for $1.75. Why go 50 feet further (to Monnik) and pay $5 for it?" Hank says. "When I was a kid, I'd stand on a chair and play the pinball machine where Lydia House is now. Habensteins were the original owners, opened about 1939." (Te place actually goes back to 1892, when it was a grocery.) "I talked to (Lydia House owner) Emily (Ruf)," Hank says. "She had a bag of garbage. I said, 'Looking good, Emily, have those garbage cans full.' Anytime you're in business, I'm pulling for you. She's been there a little over a year. Tey call that the hump in the tavern business. You wanna get over the hump." "I went in there…" Nancy begins saying. "Teir prices are high," Hank says. "Oh, they're high," she says. "I stopped in; I thought I'd try their food. I ordered a Reuben sandwich and a cup of soup. Nothing to drink. It was $11-something. I said, 'What?' She said, 'Oh, that's the special.' I got home and thought, oh, I haven't had a Reuben sandwich in years, sauerkraut and everything. I get home and it was half of a sandwich — half — and a little bitty old cup of soup. Tat's not my style. I'm going to Check's. And it didn't even taste like a Reuben. It had a diferent kind of meat and everything." "Do you wanna do the good cofee or the cheap stuf?" a guy working the counter at Lydia House says on a dreary spring morning. Te good cofee is French-pressed from Seattle, he says, and the other one is just some generic brand. "I'll have plain old cofee and an ice water," Susan Brunton says and we sit down to talk about the neighborhood. Brunton and her husband bought their house on Lydia Street for $87,500 in 2001. "Everybody seems to think (the neighborhood changes) are universally, 100 percent wonderful, but there is a downside," she says. "You have someone that's been renting here for years. Tey've only been paying $650, maybe $850; now the rents are $1,500 for little tiny houses. You've got older people with fxed incomes. Teir property taxes have gone through the roof. It's not all great. It's tempting to sell, but to go where? Plus, all the time I've spent volunteering and investing in the neighborhood, if I did leave I wouldn't want to go far." She started Go Green Germantown in 2010 to help beautify the area and make it more environmentally friendly. She wanted to have a neighborhood tree, to plant a bunch of a species that could be a good attraction to the neighborhood, much like Audubon Park's Festival of the Dogwood. After doing some research, she decided on the redbud, which grows a taproot that stretches down like a carrot instead of spreading out and buckling up sidewalks, something she calls "bad tree PR." She has made T-shirts, one of which she's wearing, to raise funds for the plantings. Sometimes she'll get several volunteers but often it's just her and her husband out planting. So far she's helped plant 121 trees, 94 of them redbuds. She's trying to come up with something fun to celebrate the planting of the 100th redbud and is thinking next spring could be the frst Schnitzelburg Redbud Festival. "Like a mini St. James with artists," she says. "I wish (the late) Councilman Jim King were here to see it. Man really loved trees." Brunton, 48, and her husband have had two children since moving to the house and always thought that maybe they'd buy a bigger one in the neighborhood, but now they can't aford to. (Public schools, depending on the section of the neighborhood, are Bloom and Shelby elementary, Highland and Meyzeek middle, and Seneca, Atherton and Shawnee high.) She's been staying home with her kids before her four- year-old reaches kindergarten and her husband works for DIRECTV (he has installed the service at several of the new businesses). "Tere's a couple on this block looking into the cost of putting on a camelback," Brunton says. "I guess I'm naive. I said, 'What's that cost? $20,000? $30,000?' Tey said, 'Maybe for the bathroom.' "Dinks, I think they're called. Dual income, no kids," she says. "Yeah, $14 sandwiches, $5 beers, bring it on. But that's out of the range of a lot of people who have lived here for a long time. I was talking to somebody about a $200,000 shotgun and he said, 'You've been busting your ass for 12 years in this neighborhood. Don't complain now.' Jesus, is there something in between boarded-up homes and $200,000 shotguns?" Zach Driscoll shares Brunton's mixed feelings about the neighborhood's "You have someone that's been renting here for years. They've only been paying $650, maybe $850; now the rents are $1,500 for little tiny houses. You've got older people with fxed incomes. Their property taxes have gone through the roof," says resident Susan Brunton. Opposite page: Hank and Nancy Oechslin at their home on Lydia Street.