Buddy LaRosa's Golden Gloves boxing program faces resistance in search for new home

Cincinnati Golden Gloves for Youth has been Anthony Frakes’ home away from home for eight or nine years.

More recently, he’s helped the Over-the-Rhine gym nurture the next generation of boxers – bringing daughter Promise, 4, and son Ny’Eir, 6, to his daily workouts.

“He asks me ‘Can we go to the gym?’ every day,” the 25-year-old amateur boxer said of his son.

Soon, maybe even this year, the Frakes family will find Golden Gloves at a new address.

The Cincinnati institution – created in 1989 by pizza chain founder Buddy LaRosa and operating from the Over-the-Rhine Recreation Center for the last decade – wants to move to a shuttered school in Elmwood Place, a village just north of Cincinnati.

But first it needs two OKs. The school board that owns the closed school building signaled its support on Monday.

The other – from a village council that wants to tear down the school to make way for developers – could be harder to come by.

‘Extremely excited’ for more space in new home

Anthony Frakes, who works for Amazon and drives himself and his kids to Golden Gloves for their daily visits, lives in the West End.

He's among about 60% of all gym visitors who travel to Over-the-Rhine from other neighborhoods.

With declining ties to OTR, Golden Gloves leaders decided to “see if we could come up with something better or more suitable” as the city firmed up plans to change up neighborhood recreational facilities, said its executive director, Christina LaRosa.

Plus, they were not keen to move, as the city proposed, from the first to second floor of the building, with less overall space.

When they learned that Elmwood Place Elementary would soon be empty, they began chasing that as the new home for the nonprofit.

With more space, Golden Gloves could host its own events and double its number of participating boxers to 300, LaRosa said.

The school building also has office space for six nonprofit partner groups that Golden Gloves wants to bring with it. The groups – SuperSeeds and I Dream Academy among them – likewise serve mostly at-risk youth.

Golden Gloves, with just more than $300,000 in annual revenue as of 2022, has already kicked off a $1.5 million capital campaign to improve the Elmwood Place site.

“We are extremely excited,” LaRosa said. “We’re ready to go as soon as we can.”

School board took action Monday

Elmwood Place Elementary opened in 1962, built on a 2-acre block in the center of the village. Its students vacated the building at the end of 2023, moving to the brand new, $33 million St. Bernard-Elmwood Place School campus in St. Bernard in January.

Last week, LaRosa signed a letter of intent to buy the Elmwood Place school building for an amount she said was confidential. Its current market value is about $4.9 million, according to the Hamilton County Auditor's office.

This week, the St. Bernard-Elmwood Place School Board, which owns the school, voted to accept the letter at its regular monthly meeting. The board will now move to sell the building to Golden Gloves, holding on to a gym and other space for school bus operations.

"This is an opportunity for students in Elmwood Place," school board President Linda Radtke said, adding that Golden Gloves could attract homebuyers, businesses and students to the community.

With the school board support, Golden Gloves advances to the next round – a fight for a zoning change from the Elmwood Place Village Council.

Elmwood Place ‘needs development’

If the council were voting on a zoning request from Golden Gloves today, the answer would be “no,” according to Elmwood Place Mayor Ronald Spears Jr.

The village does not have anything against the organization and will review any forthcoming application, he said, “but we have to consider what is best for the whole community, not just the kids.”

The long-struggling village of 2,200 – which has lost about half its population and a good number of its businesses since the 1960s – would be best served by buying and tearing down the elementary school to make way for new construction, Spears said. It earlier won a $285,000 county grant to buy the property.

“We really need to focus on development,” he said, a message he reiterated during heated discussion with the school board. "We know what works. We're there every day."

Village officials also think clients of Golden Glove and the other nonprofits could create issues that require increased spending on police, fire and emergency services.

“I don’t think it’s the right fit,” said Village Council Member Virgil Holmes.

As a maintenance staffer at the school until it closed, Spears also says the building is a better candidate for demolition than nonprofits. “The building has so many issues,” he said.

Golden Gloves ‘gives kids more to do’

Christina LaRosa, 44, left a law career in Chicago six years ago to sign on as executive director of Golden Gloves and in-house counsel for the pizza restaurant company her grandfather created and her uncle Mike and father Mark now run. She is proud of the organization's mission to train young boy and girl boxers and its record in Golden Gloves, USA Boxing and Olympics competition.

She understands Spears’ concerns about development and policing. But, like the school board, she thinks Golden Gloves could help on both counts.

“We're going to make Elmwood Place a safer place because we’re going to give their kids more to do,” she said.

On the economic front, Golden Gloves and its partner groups might hire local residents and attract other investors to the neighborhood, she added. “We really do make things better and safer,” she said.

If village officials in Elmwood Place don’t agree, Golden Gloves will move on to Plan B. LaRosa has her eye on an empty building at Queen City and Boudinot avenues in Westwood, just north of LaRosa’s first restaurant and its corporate offices.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Buddy LaRosa's Golden Gloves program faces resistance