CENTERBURG – Village officials and Knox County leaders met Sept. 5 in Centerburg’s Town Hall to discuss the community’s future.
Specifically, Mayor Dave Beck and Village Administrator Joe Hardin met with Jeffry Harris, President of the Knox County Area Development Foundation, and Lisa Lloyd, Program Manager for the Community Foundation of Mount Vernon and Knox County.
Harris and Lloyd came to Beck and Hardin to discuss the potential launch of a county-wide initiative in which the Community Foundation would sponsor comprehensive downtown revitalization plans for each of the county’s villages.
This proactive measure was prompted by recent media reports, Harris said, which quoted Beck as saying the village needed to conduct research to understand how to revitalize its downtown, identify new tax revenue and prepare for future development, given the expansion likely to occur North of Columbus in the near future.
The Area Development Foundation’s plan is to hire a vice president, which would “help us shephard these downtown studies through completion, so that the villages have a good plan on the shelf,” Harris said.
The hiring of this vice president was made possible through increased financial support from the Community Foundation and Knox County Commissioners, announced in February, which also allowed the ADF to hire an administrative support staff member earlier this year.
“Part of the vice president’s roles and responsibilities will be to help the communities that get downtown studies conducted, to help them understand how to read and implement the study,” said Harris, who noted that there are no trained, professional economic planners currently on staff at the county level.
Harris said he is currently conducting interviews for the vice president position and hopes to have it filled by early October. Along with being a willing listener and learner, Harris said he expects the vice president to have residential and commercial real estate expertise.
In a time where future growth is expected, Harris envisions the vice president as someone who can help village officials “understand existing conditions in their community – threats and opportunities available to them – and then how to implement a downtown study once it’s been written.”
Harris said Beck and Hardin seemed receptive to the idea of a study and future correspondence with an ADF vice president. He said Beck also wanted to include neighboring Hilliar Township in the study, as the township currently shares a comprehensive plan with Centerburg. Village officials could not be reached for comment for this story.
This proactive thinking by local officials comes on the heels of a discussion at a July Centerburg Village Council meeting, during which council discussed future expansion in Delaware County due to the pending creation of a multi-billion dollar amusement park. The park is expected to be 40 percent complete by December 2019, the Columbus Business Journal reported. It will be located 20 minutes from Centerburg.
Councilman Tom Stewart warned in the meeting that developers will be eager to exploit Centerburg’s affordability and proximity to the new development.
“A developer is going to look for a better, cheaper place to do it, and we’re that better, cheaper place right now,” Stewart said. “So we need to be prepared for that.”
Beck suggested the village update its comprehensive plan in order to prepare for a potential population boom.
In the same meeting, councilwoman Saundra Dove brought up the need for Centerburg to begin funding downtown revitalization efforts. Doing so could benefit local businesses, she said, given the increased traffic that will likely pass through the village in the near future.
Harris said he has already seen signs of increased development in Sunbury, which sits 10 miles west of Centerburg. Sunbury neighbors the expected site of the Planet Oasis amusement park, which will be located next to Tanger Outlet Mall at the intersection of I-71 and Routes 36/37 in Berkshire Township.
Centerburg would be the “next town out,” Harris explained, as developers will look for the closest, cheapest land to grab as expansion continues North of Columbus. He said developers typically have success with this method because small communities often welcome the tax revenue that comes with new businesses.
“You start to see Sunbury really start to take off in terms of the single-family homes that are being developed along Route 3, and a lot of the land being purchased along Route 36,” Harris said. “It’s not a huge jump in logic to then suggest that Centerburg is the ‘next town out,’ so to speak. It’s very much in the crosshairs.”
Along with proposing planning services for Centerburg and the rest of Knox County’s villages, the ADF is also encouraging county commissioners to consider funding a membership for Knox County in the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission. This would provide the county additional planning resources to prepare for expansion, Harris told commissioners last week. The commissioners will meet with MORPC representatives on Thursday to discuss potential membership.
After a productive initial meeting with Centerburg officials last week, Harris said the next step in the process is for Beck and Hardin to communicate with Hilliar Township officials on the idea while he continues to interview ADF vice president candidates.
Harris believes county-sponsored planning could be beneficial to Centerburg, both down the road and in the immediate future. He believes a plan for the village could help alleviate fears about what might happen when expansion heads for Knox County’s south end.
“I will tell you that in my career experience, the best way to deal with fear and concern is with education and with awareness,” Harris said. “Right now, folks in Centerburg, perhaps, are just saying, ‘Well, we think we’re going to grow but we don’t know where and how much.’ So what this downtown study could do is start to set some of the boundaries about, well, based on data and understanding, you may grow like this, you may see this many people.
“It puts some meat on the bones of just general community concerns about, ‘Well, if we’re growing, how big? Where are we going? How are we going to do it?’ The plan starts to lay out that blueprint for them.”
