Group: 30 acres of land should remain preserve

A committee that has spent the last year exploring potential uses for a 57acre site on Newark-granville Road recommended that more than half of the area remain a nature preserve.

Adam Hines, chairperson of the Munson Springs Steering Committee, shared the recommendation on behalf of the entire committee during Granville Village Council's Oct. 5 meeting.

“To date, the Munson Springs Steering Committee has come to an overall agreement that as to the matter of how much of the property should remain preserved, the upper zone should remain, in some capacity, preserved space at minimum,” he said.

The “upper zone” encompasses more than 30-acres of the entire site, which was previously pitched for a controversial mixed-use development. Hines said the upper portion of the property is unbuildable because of a steep hill that would make it difficult for construction. Plus, the site is of historical importance to Granville as well as pre-historic inhabitants of the area, he said.

Hines said the reason the committee was coming forward with the recommendation at this time was to allow the village to begin work or planning to address water runoff in the upper portion that is eroding the area. Hines added that the committee also wanted to gage council's demeanor on the recommendation to determine if the group should still work to a specific proposal for the upper portion. A recent session yielded ideas including a reclaimed vegetation preserve or specific green space uses such as butterfly fields, lavender farms, biological reserve or land lab.

“Even if it could be some sort of lightbuild park, maybe similar to Sugarloaf,” Hines said. “All of those could be evaluated by the committee if deemed that that portion truly should be the preserve at minimum.”

As for the lower portion, Hines said the committee isn't ready to make a recommendation.

“The Munson Springs Steering Committee feels strongly that the archeological study and review commissioned by the council needs to be finished for further decision and recommendation regarding that lower area,” he said.

The study is ongoing and was slated to wrap up Oct. 11, said Council Member Laura Mickelson, who was assigned to sit on the committee. Hines said the committee will then need time to analyze the results.

Mickelson said resident, pastor and local historian Jeff Gill shared that nowhere else in Ohio do we find layers of artifacts from 13,000 years ago to the pioneers who settled the village 200 years ago.

“We owe it to the history to do the survey, to let this process go through,” she said.

A mixed-use development called “Eaton Woods” was approved in 2018 for the Newark-granville Road property, located to the northeast of the Cherry Valley Road intersection. The development would have been built out in phases to include retail, residential and medical office use structures. The Southgate Corp. project was fraught with conflict and opposition from potential neighbors, and in 2020 the company announced it was no longer interested in developing the property.southgate offered to sell the land to the village, which approved the purchase in August 2021 for $3.25 million. Southgate then donated $500,000 toward development of the proposed “Munson Springs Nature Preserve & Historical Site.”

At the time of purchase, the village set up the steering committee and gave it up to 24 months to formulate and adopt a plan regarding any portion of the land not allotted to the preserve concept and rather for future sale or commercial development. The committee has meet 12 times over the last year to determine the best use of the property.

Village Manager Herb Koehler said after the meeting that village administration will bring forward legislation in the coming weeks to solidify the committee's recommendation to preserve the upper portion of the property. But an exact timeframe was not known. Koehler said the village will need to determine the exact number of acres within the preserve space, but he said it's about 35 acres.

From there, Koehler said the village will figure out improvements, such as trails, historical markers or a shelter house to install in the area to allow the public access to the area. He said he does not envision any paving at the site and the village will not clear any trees or plants.

“One of the first things we can do is put together a tree plan to reestablished the trees that the previous owner clear cut,” he said.

mdevito@gannett.com