The Munson Springs Steering Committee presented its recommendations for the future use of Munson Springs – a 57-acre parcel of land on the eastern side of the village along Newark Granville Road – on Wednesday, Sept. 25, during the first of three public meetings on the committee’s report. About three dozen people attended the meeting to hear the report.
The top three recommendations, in no particular order, is to create a nature preserve; a public park with playing fields; or a community center, possibly with a pool, on the site. The committee considered the idea of a public park with a community pool at the request of the Granville Village Council.
And some drawings in the committee’s report show the possibility for combining iterations of all three top-tier recommendations, such as one that shows a preserve, or passive park, with a community center and a pool.
The committee explored but is not recommending turning the area into housing, a senior living facility, or a “specialty commercial development” – meaning retail gift shops, a farmers market, a specialty restaurant, or another “unique commercial space,” according to a report from the steering committee.
Keith Myers, a Granville resident who is also an urban planner and a member of the steering committee, said that a passive park with hiking trails on about 32 hilly acres on the north side of the property is part of all three top-tier recommendations.
And he said after the meeting that, if the council chose to designate the entire property as a nature preserve now, it would be a good way to hold the property in something close to its current status. In that scenario, he said, the council could reconsider the other options in the future – such as in a few years when council members have a clearer picture of how development in western Licking County is affecting Granville.
“My personal statement at the end of the meeting – me speaking for myself, not as a member of the committee – was to thank the council for buying the property,” Myers said on Thursday. “Because if you want to be a great town, you have to invest in yourself. And it’s important to distinguish between ‘an expense’ and ‘an investment.’
“This was an investment,” he said, adding that in his many years of working as an urban planner for communities across central Ohio, “my advice has always been to buy the land. If you want to control your destiny, you have to buy the land. That’s why the Granville Township Open Space Program (which preserves green spaces) and the purchase of the Bryn Du Mansion were so important to preserving the character of Granville.”
Myers said that the Granville community has a long history of working hard to preserve open spaces and its rural character.
“You can’t shape your destiny with zoning,” he said. “It’s a coarse tool.”
In 2021, the village of Granville purchased the parcel from the Southgate Development Company for $2.75 million. The village also received a $200,000 grant from the state of Ohio to help preserve part of the property.
Following the purchase, the Munson Springs Steering Committee was established, consisting of seven residents and two ex-officio members, Village Council Member Laura Mickelson and Granville Schools Superintendent Jeff Brown, who gathered public input to provide recommendations to the council on possible future uses of the site. The committee’s initial meeting took place on Dec. 2, 2021, and it continued meeting over 18 months, with a break during the summer of 2022.
In praising the council for buying the Munson Springs property, Myers said on Thursday that it fortuitously made the purchase shortly before Intel announced in 2022 that it would build a $28 billion computer-chip manufacturing campus in western Licking County – an announcement that has helped fuel higher land prices in the the county.
“The timing couldn’t have been better,” Myers said. “The property value doubled in a year.”
He also noted that if the Southgate proposal to build houses and shops on the land had happened, it would have required a roundabout on Newark Granville Road to handle the traffic into the site – a road construction project that would cost about $2 million today – a little less than Granville paid for the entire property.
“They are money ahead on all of this,” he said.
The steering committee conducted a thorough evaluation of the site’s historical and archaeological significance. The hilly northern section was determined to be unsuitable for development, while the flatter portion along Newark Granville Road – used for years as farmland – could undergo development.
The site bears signs of human activity dating back to 1805, when Granville’s first settlers camped there the night before reaching what is now known as the Four Corners in the center of downtown Granville.
“It was clear that the site had a long history that was relevant to Granville,” Myers said. “We felt like that needed to be recognized as we move forward.”
The steering committee’s report on the history of the site says that “the diagonal of Newark-Granville Road as the southern border of the tract was a so-called ‘buffalo trace’ already inscribed on the land before the first European settlers arrived in 1801, and was likely a mastodon trail before that.
“Native American occupation of the Raccoon Creek valley and the Welsh Hills uplands is seen archaeologically in every period from the Archaic to the Early Historic, the Middle Woodland Hopewell culture 2,000 years ago were the builders of the nearby Newark Earthworks, and other circles and enclosures known in the immediate vicinity,” the report says.
And it notes that upon the arrival of the original Granville settlers from Massachusetts in 1805, they camped on the lower portion of the Munson Springs tract.
“On that November evening, Jesse Munson told his son Augustine ‘buy all the land you can see’ which he did, later building a fine frame farmhouse which survives down the road, relocated, as the core of the Welsh Hills School,” the report says. “In 1808, outside a log tavern on the southern margin of the property, the first session of Licking County’s Common Pleas Court was held – the formal beginning of this county.”
The committee evaluated the development ideas based on a criteria that included community benefits, environmental benefits, historic preservation, whether the project would generate revenue for the community and the impact on schools, such as potential changes to the commercial tax revenue or student enrollment numbers.
Additional criteria included population density, building development, green space reduction and traffic. The committee also reviewed each option’s potential impact on the entrance to Granville from the east, traffic along Newark Granville Road, property and income taxes, and both present and future community needs.
“We used public money to buy this property, so we want to make sure that the public has input on what we do with it,” Mickelson said. “What are the greatest needs? What does the public want to see?”
The village will hold public hearings at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9, and Wednesday, Oct. 23, at the Granville Village Hall.
Donna Chang 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.