Residents of Granville and Granville Township have the opportunity to help shape the future of the community during a comprehensive planning session on Tuesday, Sept. 16.
The open house will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Granville Intermediate School, 2025 Burg Street, and is being facilitated by the staff of Crossroads Community Planning of Columbus.
The plan they produce will be based on community input and feedback, and it is expected early in 2026, said Holly Mattei, president and founder of Crossroads Community Planning.
Using a process similar to that used by Granville Exempted Village School District during the past year to develop a facilities plan, the open house on Sept. 16 will allow residents to learn more about the development pressures on the village and township and possible ways to address them. Mattei said the school district’s facility plan is one of several existing plans that will help inform the final comprehensive plan.
“Think of this as a business plan that would guide a business,” said Kelsey Miller, a senior planner with Crossroads. “It will inform village council and township trustees, the planning and zoning boards and what policies need to be in place.”
Crossroads planners have been meeting with a working group of people who represent a cross section of the community to inform their initial work, which is to get a sense of the vision residents have for the future and develop some possible strategies to accomplish the collective goals of the village and township.
“It’s a continuation of what they did in 2023,” Mattei said. “They put together an internal plan utilizing mainly the village planner at the time. That was never adopted. So they asked us to take a look at what they already have and what might have changed – and a lot has changed.”
Intel’s construction of a $28 billion computer-chip manufacturing campus in western Licking County has been followed by a host of data centers and other development projects that have increased interest in housing and land to the east – some in the Granville community and its school district.
Among them is a 600-home development proposed by M/I Homes of Columbus for the Granville school district on farmland just south of Granville Township that the City of Heath annexed from Union Township.
| Read more: Granville school district residents weigh in on four proposed options for managing growth in the district
So the comprehensive plans and zoning regulations of neighboring communities will be considered when writing the Granville plan, Mattei said.
“We’re in the early stages of collecting community input,” she said. “Our first effort at collecting information from the community was to meet with the small working group. And now, this first community meeting will be somewhat educational – explaining what a comprehensive plan is and how it is different from zoning – and somewhat seeking feedback from those who attend the open house.”
Residents will have the opportunity to move among several stations, see maps with current conditions – including land that is protected by the township’s Open Space program – and offer thoughts about their priorities for the future.
| Read more: Granville Open Space program preserves green spaces, helps build firewall against rapid growth
They’ll see a vision statement prepared by the working group and have the opportunity to post comments on it using sticky notes, Miller said.
And they can visit the “aspirational station” to tell planners what they see as the strengths of the community, its opportunities and their aspirations.
They’ll see a station with draft goals crafted by using goals from the 2023 plan and “reimagining them if we needed to make changes, and we did make some changes,” Mattei said.
The last station will highlight maps of the village and township, showing protected spaces, critical resource areas such as floodplains, utilities and transportation corridors and schools and other public facilities.
Residents will have the opportunity to highlight their priorities by placing color-coded stickers on the maps.
“After we have this information and feedback, we will create a draft land-use plan,” Mattei said. “We’ll present that to the working group over the next two months, then draft recommendations to address township and village matters, and we’ll come back with a draft plan and ask for feedback.”
After another revision, the planners will submit the final draft to the village council and township trustees for their consideration.
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.