Columbus Monthly / November 2010 / Worthington: The new 43085

 Email  Print

Worthington: The new 43085

When writer Jeff McCallister and his family needed more spacious digs, they realized his wife's hometown of Worthington had just what they were looking for.

When my wife, AnnMarie, finally admitted to herself about a year and a half ago that it was time to move to Worthington, it wasn't without some surprise. After all, we had moved to Clintonville right after we were married and loved living there. Our neighbors were wonderful, the location was perfect, we could walk just about anywhere we needed to go and our property had proven to be a good investment.

But when our daughter was born in 2006, we could almost feel the house start to shrink. Our son was nearly 4 at the time, so we already had lost some of our open space to the needs of our progeny. Though we added only one more to the household, it may as well have been a whole platoon.

We transformed the guest room into the baby's room. What little closet space remained instantly filled to the ceiling with diapers, toys and clothes that our new daughter would spend the next two years growing into. The breakfast nook from which we used to enjoy our morning cuppa while overlooking Glen Echo Ravine became a toy-strewn playroom. And we lost a quarter of the space in our dining room because it was the only room in the house large enough to put the train table and all the Thomas the Tank Engine track we had accumulated.

Most pressing of all, though, it became painfully obvious that our one bathroom wasn't going to cut it any longer. By the time the baby moved from walking to running, with potty training imminent, we knew it was time to move.

But Worthington? AnnMarie had grown up there, went away to college and, like youth in probably every hometown in America, never expected she'd someday move back. But it turns out having kids of your own can do a lot to change your perspective, and it didn't take us long to narrow our search to the 43085 ZIP code.

The boomerang-like pull Worthington exerts upon its natives is by no means limited to us. I've lost count of the number of times we've run into a neighbor and it's someone AnnMarie went to school with. Often, their conversation will include the phrase, "I know! I can't believe I moved back!" Of course, I now just roll my eyes when I hear that. After all, the same things that attracted their parents to Worthington continue to attract people today, and they're the same things that attracted us.

My wife, master of all that is pithy, narrows it down to "schools and second bathrooms." And while both of those are extremely important—she went to high school at the Linworth Alternative Program, and we are delighted our kids will have that opportunity as well when the time comes—what it really boils down to is the sense of community in Worthington. It's a sense that comes from Worthington's exceptional neighborhoods, each with its own unique character and each an essential part of the makeup of the city.

"We feel like our strong neighborhoods are the most valuable assets we have in the city," says Anne Brown, the city's community relations officer. "Our neighborhoods are what makes living in Worthington such a wonderful experience and is just about the first thing that people talk about when they talk about the city—how the neighborhoods foster that strong sense of community, how they really appreciate and bond with their neighbors."

So while it didn't take long to decide to move to Worthington, narrowing down a specific location took a bit more time. It's a complicated, time-consuming process with almost limitless variables, even for a Realtor with vast experience selling homes there.

"The new-to-Worthington home buyer usually has a style or era of home they want, and a location that they try to marry to fit their price point," says Cynthia MacKenzie, who heads Keller Williams Capital Partners" CyMacK Group. "In terms of location, a typical Worthington buyer's priority is close proximity to either Old Worthington, specific schools or the bike trails or parks."

"If that buyer wants an older home, a great match is Old Worthington or Colonial Hills," MacKenzie says. "If a buyer wants a mid-century home, there is Kilbourne Village, Rush Creek, Medick Estates and Wilson Hills. For the more traditional buyer who might want more space, Worthingway, Worthington Estates and Olentangy Hills are options. There are pockets of larger and newer homes in Wilson Hills and Kenyon Brook. Other popular areas across the river include . . . Potters Creek and Shaker Square."

We started out looking in Worthington Estates, where AnnMarie grew up and where her parents still live. The large houses with the family-friendly floor plans were appealing, but in the end, she decided that was a little too close to home. Besides, it was around that time we began looking at specific elementary schools for the kids, and though all of them we examined were impressive—hard to find anything wrong with any of the perpetually "Excellent"-rated schools—we both locked in on Evening Street School as the best fit for us.

That decision both complicated and eased the home search. On the one hand, it significantly narrowed the list of neighborhoods to look at. But on the other, we kept fretting about the list of those we had eliminated because there were some we really liked (including the cool Frank Lloyd Wright-styles of Rush Creek and the Colonial Hills area that reminded us so much of Clintonville).

Even after we narrowed it that far, there still were plenty of decisions. We really liked some of the newer styles that were available in Potters Creek and Perry Highlands. But we kept going back to one of the things we really liked about our old house: living within walking distance of just about anywhere we'd need to go. We loved the idea of pulling a wagon over to the Saturday farmers market or to Graeter's, of walking to school or the library or the bank. In the end, there was only one neighborhood that fit our entire profile: Old Worthington.

Unfortunately, most of the houses in this charming, historic district were out of our price range. We toured one on New England Avenue just steps from the heart of downtown Worthington that we absolutely loved—apparently just to torture ourselves, because even as a short sale, it seemed way out of our ballpark.

We realized we needed to rethink our desires—there had been several really nice places just a little farther from the Village Green. We still locked in on neighborhoods west of High Street to stay within the Evening Street School boundaries, but we decided to look again at a couple in Potters Creek, Kilbourne Village and Riverlea (which is technically not Worthington but is still in the school district).

Problem was, now we had a dream house that made every other place we toured pale in comparison. This one's nice, but it doesn't have that first-floor master bedroom we could use as a guest room for your parents. Or, This one only has a tiny finished portion of the basement. (A "playing basement" had been the only request of our kids, and after living with a train table in the dining room for three years, we were inclined to want that as well.)

One day while we were driving around the area yet again, we saw a "For Sale" sign go up in front of another house, a split- level on New England. It was a little farther from High Street, but still close enough to walk easily to downtown and the schools. We immediately called our Realtor and scheduled a tour. I think the seller was surprised—that call probably got to him before he even came inside from pounding the sign in his yard.

Yes, this one would work; there was a suitable guest room that my parents could get to without having to climb any steps, an amazing kitchen and an area on the lower level that would be a fine "playing basement." The asking price was a bit over our limit, but we decided an offer at the high end of our range would certainly not be insulting. We walked over to Scottie's downtown (perfect, right?) and our Realtor drew it up on the spot. We gave the sellers a couple of days to think it over and began plotting where our furniture would fit and which bedroom would be whose.

Then, with only hours left on our offer, our Realtor called: We had been outbid, and we had only an hour or two to decide whether to counter. It was time for some hardcore, deadline-driven soul-searching. A decent counteroffer would put us well above even the upper range of the figure we were comfortable with.

But we also were running out of time. Our house in Clintonville had gone into contract after only a couple of weeks on the market, and the buyer was waiting patiently for us to drop the contingency clause and get on with his own life.

We decided it was worth a shot to counter; we'd be in this home for the next 30 years, after all, so we could borrow a little extra from AnnMarie's folks and make the budgetary sacrifices we needed to until our income could catch up. We took nearly every minute of our deadline to decide, and gave the sellers another two days to look over our offer. But by early the next day, we'd been outbid again. No way we'd be able to counter this time, and it was devastating.

Our disappointment lasted only about as long as it took us to realize that our new budget model suddenly had us in the range of our original dream house. We put in an offer that very day.

Seems like the perfect place for a happy ending to our little story, right? If it had been up to the seller of the house, it probably would have been. But as a short sale, everything had to go through the seller's bank, and that led to some nervous moments. Daily calls to find out if the bank would accept the offer, getting an appraisal that would satisfy both them and our own lender and, again, the buyer of our old house waiting to move in so he could start demolishing the tiny kitchen.

Finally, everything was approved, but the anxious moments continued right up through closing. Even as we were signing the papers for our new home, the movers sat waiting, their truck fully loaded with all our worldly possessions. When we finished signing the last document, we asked the closing agent if we could take possession immediately, and after a few calls, she gave the go-ahead. We called the movers while we still sat at the closing table, then sped over to meet them at our new place.

That was the happy ending. But it also was a very happy beginning. Even before we finished unloading the truck, a friendly woman and her kids came up and handed us a flier inviting us to a block party, part of "Hi Neighbor!" Month in Worthington. When we finished unloading, we walked to Graeter's for ice cream. Two plates of cookies greeted us when we got back, with nice notes welcoming us to the neighborhood and offering to help us get settled in.

Yeah, I think we're going to like it here. Maybe the kids will even settle here one day to raise their own families. It might catch them off-guard, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit.

Jeff McCallister is a freelance writer.