Stroll with Barbara Wilcher-Norton through her Glenville neighborhood and you’ll reach this conclusion: Nothing much gets past her.
As the retired junior high school teacher walks along Wade Park Avenue, where Glenville meets University Circle, she points to houses and rattles off the names of current and past owners. As chair of Neighbor to Neighbor, a community organization covering a hefty swath of Glenville, she also has some of these properties on an unofficial watch list – especially those owned by developers and investors.
Wilcher-Norton keeps an eye out for developers seeking variances to raze buildings in the Magnolia-Wade Park Historic District and replace them with multi-unit structures. The district includes Wade Park Avenue and the streets that run off of it. It is characterized by stately homes, many with six bedrooms, built in the late 1800s and early 20th Century.
This is still our home. This is still an area that has so many opportunities and so much value that I’m not ready to give it up. I want young families to move in and have the same opportunities.”
Barbara Wilcher-Norton, chair of the community organization Neighbor to Neighbor, on why she fights to stabilize and preserve her neighborhood as a “family-oriented community.”
She vigilantly scans the landscape for investors who are turning roomy houses into student housing or to use solely as Airbnbs. Homes converted into de facto dorms have often been poorly maintained and have been the site of boisterous parties extending into the wee hours, Wilcher-Norton and residents said. Saturating the community with short-term rentals isn’t compatible with the historic residential neighborhood, she said.
“This is not what they’re supposed to be using these homes for,” Wilcher-Norton said. “This is not a commercial area, but a neighborhood of single-family homes.”
She’s set on keeping it this way. But Wilcher-Norton’s mission to stop what for generations has been a family-friendly neighborhood of owner-occupied homes from slipping away could be challenging. Her neighborhood abuts University Circle, where vacant land is scarce but demand for it is high. University Circle institutions are frequently looking to expand, and the clamor for housing near a healthcare, education and arts and culture hub continues to grow.
Such growth shouldn’t come at the expense of the neighborhood near University Circle’s back steps, Wilcher-Norton believes.
“This is still our home,” she said. “This is still an area that has so many opportunities and so much value that I’m not ready to give it up. I want young families to move in and have the same opportunities.”
A view down Wade Park Avenue at its historic and stately homes that Barbara Wilcher-Norton seeks to preserve.
Try demolishing a home in the Magnolia-Wade Park Historic District, and this is what could happen to you
Wilcher-Norton pauses in front of a house whose double-column portico is still eye-catching even after years of minimal maintenance. She knew the former house-proud owner. The person’s heirs sold the home about 10 years ago to an entity that wanted to demolish it and build a mulit-unit structure, she said. In order to do so, the owner needed Cleveland’s Board of Zoning Appeals to issue a variance. Wilcher-Norton successfully led residents in opposing that variance as well as another the owner sought a few years later, which would have partially demolished the house.
“Once you get spot zoning, it’s hard to stop it,” she said of allowing a multi-unit structure to be built on a block of primarily one-family homes. “It’s like a leak you can’t plug up.”
The house remains vacant and continues to deteriorate. The owner has since purchased additional homes nearby, which are being used as student housing and a short-term rental, she said.
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Since the 1950s, this has been a predominantly middle-class Black neighborhood. This remained constant even as much of Glenville changed and University Circle continued to grow. (Glenville was once such a desirable neighborhood for Black homebuyers that parts of it were known as The Gold Coast. In subsequent decades, large sections of Glenville were beset by urban blight often caused by disinvestment, including financial institutions refusing to lend there. Now the area seems poised for a comeback, but there is an increasing fear among residents that it won’t include them.)
Neighborhoods go through cycles. Now many of the longtime residents are elderly. They’re moving to smaller housing, in with children, to nursing facilities or passing away. Houses are always coming on the market, and developers and investors are always willing to snag them.
Though there were earlier signs, this really started taking shape about 15 years ago, Wilcher-Norton said. It was then that she and other residents spearheaded Neighbor to Neighbor’s redirection into an organization focused on what she describes as “stabilizing and preserving a family-oriented community” that felt under the threat of encroachment.
Her former next door neighbor and friend, who had shared similar sentiments about neighborhood preservation, had often been able to hold at bay what Neighbor to Neighbor was gearing up to fight. U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones’ untimely death in 2008, while still in office, meant the neighborhood had lost a powerful advocate, Wilcher-Norton said.
“Stephanie and I were very close, and I knew she would not tolerate what was going on,” she said. “She would be looking for us to step up and do what needed to be done to maintain the community.”
Since Wilcher-Norton is so plugged into her neighborhood, she often knows when properties are about to come up for sale. She tries to get to the owners or their families before investors and developers do.
“I tell them not to immediately go for the fast money,” Wilcher-Norton said. “Aren’t you even going to allow a family to have a fair chance at purchasing one of these houses to live in and maintain our community!?”
The fast money often wins.
‘A force to be reckoned with’
Ask residents about Wilcher-Norton and these words or their synonyms undoubtedly come up: Dedicated. Fighter. Caring.
“Single-handedly, she is the staunchest advocate and proponent for residents in our community,” said Cassi Claytor, who has known her for about eight years. “She is a force to be reckoned with.”
Residents respect Wilcher-Norton because they can count on her to speak up for the neighborhood, no matter what room she is in, Claytor said.
Wilcher-Norton pushes for residents to get to know each other, Claytor said, going beyond waving or nodding at neighbors as they leave or enter their homes. When neighborhood meetings are held at Wilcher-Norton’s home, they’re more than strictly business. She’ll bake a sweet potato pie, peach cobbler or other treat and encourage them to mingle.
“There is such a level of compassion and care she shows for us,” Claytor said.
What Wilcher-Norton wants most to give her fellow residents is a sense of hope.
“People get overwhelmed and they get tired,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Well, I can’t fight. I was told repeatedly that there was no way to stop the development.’ I don’t believe that, and I want to make sure the community knows that.”
A neighborhood struggle helped lead to CWRU’s Wade Park Community Engagement Center
The big brick house, built more than a century ago, still sits on Wade Park Avenue near Mistletoe Drive. How it escaped the bulldozer is partly a testament to the steely determination of Wilcher-Norton and Neighbor to Neighbor. She said preserving the building also shows how the relationship between University Circle institutions and residents is improving. Historically, interactions between University Circle institutions and the surrounding predominantly Black neighborhoods have been strained. Many of these residents have said they haven’t felt welcome.
About a decade ago, Neighbor to Neighbor successfully fought a developer’s plans to get a variance to raze the home and replace it with townhouses, she said. In 2017, Case Western Reserve University acquired the property.
Wilcher-Norton said that CWRU’s leadership back then told her the plan was to demolish the house because it was too far gone and the school had no use for the property. The house had sat vacant for years, exposed to the elements.
“I told them that we were going to fight them tooth and nail and that they had no respect for the area that was zoned a historic district,” she said. “And we did.”
Neighbor to Neighbor learned that if the community group could get the structure declared a nuisance in Cleveland Housing Court, the group could move to own the house through receivership, Wilcher-Norton said. After they started the process, CWRU began caring for the building, she said.
Wilcher-Norton said that, in recent years, the university has been “gung ho” about preserving the building.
Since 2024, the house has been CWRU’s Wade Park Community Engagement Center, which many residents and neighborhood groups use for free. The university spent more than $2.3 million rehabbing the house.
Since the center opened, more than 100 events have been held there, with a total of 2,000 attendees, said Julian A. Rogers, CWRU’s associate vice president of local government and community relations. He said the center is “playing a major role in strengthening the relationship between the university and our neighbors.”
“It is becoming a gathering place for CWRU faculty, staff and students to join together with neighborhood residents and community organizations, to build relationships, collectively plan for the future and learn and grow with each other.”
CWRU isn’t the only University Circle institution that has sought to have a better relationship with residents, Wilcher-Norton said. For two years she has sat on the board of University Circle, Inc. The nonprofit organization’s role includes advocating for University Circle Institutions. She said the group is now also focused on more community engagement, including having a collaborative process to determine how public spaces will be transformed.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” she said.
Barbara Wilcher-Norton’s commitment to Glenville is a lifestyle
Wilcher-Norton continues giving a mile-long walking tour of her neighborhood. She periodically pauses in front of houses to offer titbits about them.
On Ashbury Avenue, she notes that the famed poet and writer Langston Hughes once lived on the street.
“There is so much history here,” she said, adding that the name of the Neighbor to Neighbor Heritage Festival, started in 2016, reflects this.
She yells to a woman sweeping up glass in the street.
“Hey girl, are you all right?” Wilcher-Norton asks.
Samona Johnson tells her she is getting rid of the glass in an attempt to prevent anyone, including her, from getting a flat tire.
“I always say, ‘See something, do something,’” Johnson said.
Wilcher-Norton responds: “We all try to do that.”
“Barbara,” said Johnson. “You, much more than most!”
Far less active in Neighbor to Neighbor than she used to be, Johnson counts on emails and newsletters from Wilcher-Norton and the group to keep abreast of developments in the neighborhood. If they suggest action, Johnson doesn’t hesitate to join because she values Wilcher-Norton’s assessment of issues and longstanding dedication to the neighborhood.
Johnson said few residents have consistently remained as committed to Neighbor to Neighbor as Wilcher-Norton has. Few have the stamina, and often the faith that success is possible, to keep fighting the battle.
“It’s more than just a commitment to the community, it is a lifestyle,” Johnson said. “Barbara is a straight shooter. You can always count on her to show up and show out.”
As Wilcher-Norton enters the homestretch of her walking tour, she nears a community garden at East 108th Street and Wade Park Avenue. She notices some leaves and debris the wind has blown along the periphery.
“Let me come back here and bag all this stuff,” she said. “Looking at it is driving me crazy.”
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