Walk down Plymouth Street this month and you will pass a building that almost wasn't here. The former Mount Washington Ice and Beer building, a warehouse dating to the early 1900s, sat empty long enough that its future looked like a teardown notice waiting to happen. Instead, Blue Ash-based Sebastian Bakehouse bought it, restored it, and opened Sebastian Coffeehouse inside it this spring. A few blocks away, past the water tower that has marked the corner of Beechmont Avenue and Campus Lane since 1940, a different kind of construction is still underway. It is a trail, and it is not done yet.
That gap between what just opened and what is still being built is the story worth paying attention to if you already live here. Mt Washington is not waiting for its infrastructure to catch up before its business district starts moving. The coffeehouse, the restaurant turnover on Beechmont, and the crowds that show up every November for the Pumpkin Chuck are all happening on a corridor that is betting on a connection that has only half arrived.
The Icehouse Becomes a Coffeehouse
The building itself is the headline. A century-old ice and beer warehouse does not usually get a second act, and this one had been flagged as at risk before the current owners stepped in. The restoration kept the structure that made the building worth saving in the first place, and Sebastian Coffeehouse now occupies the space where residents once picked up block ice and cold beer for their iceboxes.
It is not the only new name on the strip. Sweets & Meats BBQ, a woman-owned catering operation founded in 2014, runs its commissary out of Mt Washington and has become one of the neighborhood's more visible small businesses, alongside longer-running spots like Sutton Bar & Grill and Grove Park Grille. Commercial listings for the block have specifically framed new tenants as joining a business district revitalization already in motion, name-checking Sweets & Meats and the Italian eatery Ramundo's as evidence that Plymouth Street is filling back in rather than emptying out.
None of this is happening in isolation. The Mt Washington Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit formed in 2015, has spent years working two problems at once: getting people into storefronts on Beechmont Avenue and getting a real trail connection into the neighborhood. Those two goals are more linked than they look.
The Trail That Isn't Finished Yet
Here is the part that gets skipped in the shorter version of this story. Last November, the Elstun Trail opened, connecting Beechmont Avenue and Elstun Road directly into the Little Miami Scenic Trail, the 78-mile paved route that runs from Springfield down through southwestern Ohio. The completed segment links the Skytop area of Anderson Township and Mount Washington to that trail, and from there to the Ohio River Trail and the trail systems around Lunken Airport Playfield and Otto Armleder Memorial Park.
That sounds like the connection is done. It is not, at least not for the part of Mt Washington most people actually live and shop in. The Elstun Trail lands at the edge of the neighborhood, along the Anderson Township border. An extension is still planned to link the south side of Beechmont Avenue, the stretch that runs through the actual business district, into that same trail segment. Until that piece gets built, the walk or ride from Plymouth Street to the river trail involves a lot more Beechmont Avenue traffic than anyone would design on purpose.
| Segment | Status | What It Connects |
|---|---|---|
| Elstun Trail (Beechmont Ave & Elstun Rd) | Completed, November 2025 | Skytop area of Anderson Township and Mt Washington households to the Little Miami Scenic Trail, Ohio River Trail, Lunken Airport Playfield trails, and Otto Armleder Memorial Park |
| South Beechmont extension | Planned, no confirmed completion date | Would bring the Plymouth Street business corridor directly onto the completed Elstun segment |
There is also a live disagreement about exactly how that last piece should get built. Some residents and park advocates have pushed back on routing a direct connector through Stanbery Park itself, preferring a route that runs along Beechmont from Ranchvale to Elstun instead. That disagreement is a reasonable part of why the extension does not have a firm timeline yet. Trail connections through established neighborhoods rarely move in a straight line, literally or otherwise.
Why the Timing Actually Matters
This is the part that changes how you should read the Plymouth Street openings. A business betting on foot and bike traffic from a regional trail usually waits until that trail is finished before signing a lease. Sebastian Coffeehouse, Sweets & Meats, and the rest of the current wave of Beechmont tenants are opening before that traffic exists in full.
That is either bad timing or good timing, depending on which side of the opening you are standing on. If you already live in Mt Washington, it is good timing. Right now, the coffeehouse in the restored icehouse and the restaurants filling in around it are serving a neighborhood-scale customer base, not a regional one. Once the south Beechmont extension closes the gap to the Little Miami Scenic Trail, that same corridor becomes a stop for cyclists and walkers coming from Anderson Township, Lunken, and the river trail system beyond. The businesses that are already established by then get the benefit of that traffic without having built their customer base around it in the first place.
In practical terms, this is the window where you can grab a coffee at Sebastian without a line that did not exist a year ago, and where the restaurant rotation on Beechmont is still shaped mostly by what residents want rather than what a trail crowd expects. That will not last indefinitely once the extension gets built.
The Calendar Already Has November Marked
None of this has slowed down what Stanbery Park does regardless of trail construction. The park itself covers 130 acres and holds one of Cincinnati's more extensive hiking trail networks, independent of anything happening on Beechmont. In late July, the neighborhood plan's steering committee hosted a bird walk there, led by the founder of Queer Birders of Cincinnati, as part of the city's ongoing Mt Washington Neighborhood Plan process, which held another public meeting on quality of life and health earlier this month.
The bigger date on the calendar is November 7. That is when Stanbery Park hosts the 19th Annual Pumpkin Chuck Festival, a tradition run by the Mt Washington Community Council in partnership with the Stanbery Park Advisory Council. Locally built trebuchets launch pumpkins into the park's sledding hill for a $5 or $15 fee, with proceeds going straight back into community initiatives and park upkeep. It is the kind of event that keeps happening whether or not a single trail extension ever breaks ground, which says something about how much of Mt Washington's daily rhythm already runs on its own schedule.
That is really the throughline here. The neighborhood is not waiting on infrastructure to have a business district worth walking to or a park worth showing up for. The trail extension will eventually change who else shows up on Plymouth Street. Until then, the people getting the most out of the restored icehouse, the Beechmont restaurant lineup, and the November trebuchets are the ones who were already here.
If you are one of them and you have found yourself wondering what any of this is doing to your home's value on paper, that is a different conversation, and one worth having with people who actually track this corridor. Close to Home Consultants works Mt Washington alongside the rest of Cincinnati's east side neighborhoods every week. Get Your Home Valuation whenever you are ready to see where your street stands.
