Catching Our Eye News Roundup, Oct. 5, 2026

Every morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio and around the country and world that is catching our attention. We call this feature Catching Our Eye, republished here.

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Catching Our Eye

• We’ve all been there… The Ohio Newsroom’s Kaitlin Thorne digs into “The challenge of growing colossal pumpkins inside Ohio’s prisons”

Behind barbed-wired fences and multiple security checks sits a small patch of land in the center of the Belmont Correctional Institution in southeast Ohio’s Belmont County.

The growing season is over, so it doesn’t look like much now, but just a few weeks ago it was home to a colossal pumpkin weighing 1,700 lbs.

The pumpkin-growing tradition dates back to 2022, when Mansfield Correctional Institution issued a challenge: grow the biggest pumpkin in a prison yard. The Larry Stewart Giant Pumpkin Challenge, in its fifth year, now involves correctional institutions across the state.

• Notes from the underground. The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Sydney Franklin reports, “Cincinnati firms chosen to plan next steps on reviving subway tunnels”

The effort to revive Cincinnati’s abandoned subway tunnels is not over. And some of the world’s leading design and engineering experts have vied to study how to repurpose them, a sign that this could be more than a city daydream.

Over-the-Rhine-based Woolpert Inc. was ultimately chosen to lead the study for $284,073.

City records obtained by The Enquirer reveal that Woolpert and its team have likely been working on the feasibility study throughout this year. The final study is estimated to be done by early 2027.

• Delay tactics. Jonathan Walsh from News5Cleveland reports, “A man has lived in a $4.5 million mansion for 15 years while fighting foreclosure — now he’s facing eviction”

Louis Telerico has been living in a 17,000-square-foot home in Barrington Estates, an exclusive residential area in Aurora, near the 17th green of a golf course.

A foreclosure on the property began in August 2011. Court records show Telerico filed numerous motions over the years, including multiple bankruptcies, appeals, and other filings. The foreclosure took 14 years before the bank finally acquired the property in 2025, then sold it to investment company ERADAL.

At a recent eviction hearing, a magistrate approved the eviction of Telerico. However, Telerico’s attorney, Mark Graziani, indicated the situation may not be fully resolved.

Telerico told News 5 he plans to live in the house until he dies and said he believes he will be able to secure financing.