When the Lorain Skyport, operated by Ray and Ruth McClenaghan, was winding down operations in the late 1950s, the property became ripe for housing development.
An article in the January 4, 1956 Lorain Journal noted that, "A new southwest Lorain housing development, to involve more than $5 million and eventually include from 200 to 300 homes, will be started in April, it was announced today.
"The homes will be built on Lorain Skyport property north of Meister and east of Leavitt."
Thus the property that originally was the location of Lorain's Port Mills Airport was going to be ground zero for the city's postwar growth spurt.
As it sometimes happened when a huge area was being developed, some properties and lots ended up in the hands of different builders, who offered them to their clients.
When my parents wanted to build a new house in the late 1950s, they selected a builder who owned land on W. 30th Street west of Ashland Avenue (in the area described in the 1956 article). To decide which lot they wanted to purchase to build on, Mom and Dad had to use Ashland Ave. as a reference point, and count stakes and measure until they found the available property they liked.
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| Our house at 1604 W. 30th under construction in 1957 |
Anyway, one of the builders who apparently owned several lots north of Meister and east of Leavitt was J. Q. Builders, managed by John Quarando. The ad below ran in the Journal back on August 3, 1963.
Although I lived on the west side of Lorain until the mid-1980s, I still had to think for a minute where Reeves Avenue was, since I rarely needed to use it to get anywhere.
The house on Reeves in the ad is the second house off of Meister. Interestingly, the architectural rendering of the house (inexplicably called "The Jamaican") is the same one used in the 1962 J. Q. Builders ad with the downtrodden guy that I wrote about here.
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