Licking County keeps Union Township dead end as public road ahead of housing development
Because of a vote from the Licking County Commissioners this week, a rural, residential street could become a major thoroughfare in Union Township.
Commissioners Tim Bubb and Duane Flowers voted Thursday to deny removing about 208 feet of Grand Pointe Drive from public roads. The commissioners did approve vacating about 422 feet of a plotted, but not constructed, part of Simeon Drive from public roads.
The Union Township Trustees approved vacating both sections in October.
The residents of the 17-home Grand Pointe neighborhood off Ohio 37 (Lancaster Road) petitioned commissioners to vacate both parts over concerns that the dead end of Grand Pointe Drive could be used to connect a new housing and commercial development to the east with Ohio 37, becoming a major thoroughfare — something residents say the roads weren't built for when the subdivision opened about 20 years ago.
Between the Grand Pointe neighborhood and Canyon Road sits 187 acres of farmland that was annexed into the city of Heath in November. The city also annexed an additional 48 acres on the east side of Canyon Road. The 187 acres were zoned for potentially hundreds of single-family homes and multifamily dwellings. Part of the 48 acres was zoned for commercial development.
According to zoning adopted by the city of Heath, the minimum lot size for a single-family home would be 7,500 square feet. That would allow for nearly six lots per acre.
No development plans, which would include the number of lots and location of streets, have been submitted to the city. Prior to the vote, Flowers said the decisions would be made based on fact "and not on speculation of future possibilities."
Before the vote, neither commissioner explained why they were denying the petition. They said a resolution will be released later this month with the criteria they used to make the decision.
As for Simeon Drive, Bubb said that part was never finished and there was no opposition to vacating it.
In an interview after the vote, Bubb said the decision was based on the public convenience and welfare, and it was the right decision based on the bigger picture of continued to development in Licking County.
"Whenever you have growth, you want interconnectivity between communities so that you don't have a bunch of dead end streets so that emergency services, fire departments, police can get to where they want to go and move within the community," he said.
For any development, multiple access points are also needed in case one is blocked for any reason. The 187 acres has frontage on Canyon Road, but this allows for a potential access point to Ohio 37, Bubb said.
"There's a lot of considerations, but it makes sense when you put more people in an area to have at least two outlets where people can come and go safely," he said.
Grand Pointe neighborhood residents Judd Templin and Kerry Hamilton, who attended the meeting, expressed disappointment and anger with the commissioners' decision.
"They had a chance to stand up for the people, the citizens of the Union Township and our community, and instead they chose to support a developer," Templin said. "What they've said with this vote is they are OK with our community being a sacrifice for progress and changing our community from something it never was — and it was never meant to be — into something entirely different."
Hamilton said the commissioners chose to prioritize convenience for a developer over local constituents. Vacating Grand Pointe Drive, he said, would not stop or impede the development, just protect the residents from potentially thousands of cars traveling down their street.
In addition to any potential development on the annexed land, Microsoft is acquiring more than 200 acres just 3 miles south in Hebron for more data centers.
The decision can be appealed to Licking County Common Pleas Court, and Templin and Hamilton filed their intent to do so less than three hours after the vote.
"We're going (to) look at what we can do because it's the right thing. What's not right is for the county commissioners to side, again, with developers who for their own convenience are willing to ruin communities," Templin said. "This was never about their development. It is about our road and changing our community as a matter of convenience for a developer."
Neither an attorney representing the family that owns the 187 acres nor a real estate broker working with them returned phone messages from The Advocate, as of Friday afternoon.
Only Bubb and Flowers voted on the two petitions because Commissioner Rick Black recused himself. He owns adjacent farmland to the south of the 187 annexed acres.
Heath Mayor Mark Johns said it's still very early in the development process for the annexed parcels, and there are still thousands of steps coming. For example, the city, property owners and any potential developer will need to work together to prepare the area's infrastructure, including roadways and water and sewer lines. Currently, water and sewer service, which will be provided by the city of Heath, is not available at the site.
"This is not a development that is going to happen overnight. No development ever does, but there are still many moving parts to this development concept," he said.
mdevito@gannett.com
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Twitter: @MariaDeVito13
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Union Township dead end to stay public road ahead of housing development
