Trustees' Plan To Bring Sewer Down Columbus Road: Southwest Licking Sewer District Is In; Granville Village Is Out
Analysis: Granville Township Trustees are seeking $1.2 million in state funds to lay a two-mile sewer line along Columbus Road, connecting the Pataskala-based Southwest Licking Community Water and Sewer District to the Owens Corning property. The proposal is sure to create a firestorm of controversy.
It is the Trustees’ latest effort to strip the Granville Village Council - perceived as anti-growth by Trustees - of any say over Township development decisions. The move, if successful, which is unlikely, would end a half century of cooperation between the Township and the Village.
With the pro-growth Southwest Licking sewer district at their disposal, the Trustees would be positioned to move forward developing the southern township - especially along Columbus Road - with retail stores, offices, homes and condos. A number of proposals have died in recent years because of lack of sewer and local opposition.
The Trustees’ plan is contained in the township’s application for a $5 million state grant to redevelop part of the 547-acre Owens Corning research facility on Columbus Road. (Click the image to view the grant application’s introductory pages.)
The Granville Press broke the story that the Trustees were seeking the $5 million grant and that meeting minutes showed the Township was considering bringing Pataskala sewer service deep into Granville Township. (Click here to read that story.) The Granville Sentinel then wrote a story that ignored the role of the Southwest Licking sewer district and said the grant application included a letter from the Village saying it was ready to provide sewer service. (Click here to read the Sentinel story.)
The Granville Press requested a copy of the grant application from the Township. The Township has now provided a copy and the entire plan can be viewed here.
The Granville Press obtained a copy from the Licking County Planning Commission. The application details the proposal to strip the Village of its role providing sewer to Owens Corning and give the job to the Southwest Licking sewer district.
Under Ohio law, Townships cannot operate water or sewer systems. Villages can. Since the 1950s, Granville Township has actively sought to keep the township rural by limiting access to water and sewer. Working in concert, the Village built an expensive, over sized utility system that could handle growth that grew organically around the Village center. The strategy worked. It has helped make Granville what it is today - a patch of old-fashioned America in the midst of a blur of Central Ohio sprawl.
In recent years, the Trustees became more supportive of development and began to chafe under the Village’s control of water and sewer.
Newly appointed Trustee Bill Habig, a real estate development consultant who moved to town shortly before his appointment, took the gloves off last year when he launched a secret effort to bring the Southwest Licking sewer district to River Road at the Village border. The effort to help a Columbus developer build a fast-food drive-through restaurant (banned under Village zoning law) is still this publication’s second most popular story. (Click here to read that story.)
That’s the background. Here’s Act Two.
Toledo-based Owens Corning has operated a research facility in Granville Township since the 1950s. Employment at the research facility has shrunk to one-third of its peak. The company now employs 370 people, plus 70 contractors, on the 547-acre property. Owens Corning paid $260,000 in property taxes last year - about 75% of which went to the Granville school system.
Owens Corning wants to develop this underused and valuable piece of real estate. According to the company, slopes and wetlands leave only half the acreage developable. In an interview for Granville’s new Comprehensive Plan, the company said it believed residential had to be part of the mix for redevelopment to work.
For several years, Granville Village, Granville Township and Owens Corning have discussed creating a special district - called a Joint Economic Development District, or JEDD - that would let the land get sewer service without becoming part of the Village. The talks did not bear fruit for a variety of reasons. For example, under Ohio law, JEDD’s cannot include residential property. The company also was concerned that the Village income tax - applied in a JEDD but shared with the Township (and the schools if the JEDD-writers are clever) - would apply to a share of Owens’ worldwide income.
The Village, Township and Owens have spent many years trying to get to the altar.
When sewer service was extended to the neighboring Kendal retirement community in 2003, the Village required that the sewer line be an over sized 12-inch pipe so it could serve sewer needs for the Owens redevelopment. Kendal uses only 10% of the sewer line’s capacity, but it (along with local taxpayers) paid the cost of building an extra-large sewer line. Kendal will be reimbursed $225,000 when Owens Corning connects to Village sewer - and nothing if it connects to Southwest Licking.
Here, at long last, is the Trustees secret plan, courtesy of the Licking County Planning Commission and the Ohio Public Records Law.
But, first, one more detour: Why on earth would Village Mayor Melissa Hartfield and Village Manager Don Holycross sign a letter of support for a grant application that hurts the Village in favor of Pataskala? (Click here to view that letter and click here to view all the other letters supporting the grant application.) Answer: The were snookered. Trustee Bill Habig never showed them the application. They trusted him.
Now the details.
The grant application’s preliminary cost estimate details how the money will be spent. (Click here to view that part of the grant request.)
The first line is the most important: $950,000 for "Connection to SWLCWD Sanitary Sewer System." The estimate also includes $298,500 for running the sewer line inside the property and paying for a lift station and manholes.
The total cost for sewers is $1,248,500. The estimate also includes an estimate for design and management fees, plus potential overruns, that bring the total cost estimate to $1,560,625.
The application’s narrative details how utilities will be provided.
Water. Granville will supply the water, as it does now:
"OC purchases potable water from the Village of Granville. The existing Village of Granville water treatment plan has a daily capacity of 2 mgd and an average daily use of about 750,000 gallons. In essence, this is more than ample capacity to supply 300,000 gallons per day to a new customer."
Sewer. Owens Corning has its own wastewater facility that it will continue to use for its operations. What about new development?
"Southwest Licking Community Water and Sewer District’s (SWLCWS) wastewater treatment plant will process the increased effluent from the new development planned for the project site….SWLCWS has an existing sanitary sewer line just over a mile from the OC site. The District has expressed interest in extending their lines northeast to the OC site and new development. Connection to the SWLCWS system would provide more than adequate capacity to serve any future demand new development might generate." (Click here to view the utility support/commitment letter.)
At this point, the grant application has contradictory information - and even a nod thrown the Village’s way. In the site profile, the application says sanitary sewer will be provided by the Southwest Licking sewer district or the Village of Granville. The length of the line will be either 9,500 feet (Southwest Licking) or on-site (Village, courtesy of Kendal). (Click here to view the site profile.)
Click here to view the grant’s complete site improvement plan.
It seems obvious that it’s foolish for the state to spend $1 million to bring a sewer line 9,500 feet to the property when a sewer line is already there. This is especially true because Granville’s sewer line and sewer system is better than Southwest Licking’s. The Granville line is 12 inches in diameter. That’s big enough to handle pretty much anything. The proposed Southwest Licking line would be 8 inches or 12 inches. (The application is contradictory.) An 8-inch line is cheaper and could support retail development and light residential along Columbus Road but would be hard-pressed to serve hotels, manufacturing or high density residential.
The Village sewer system has about the same surplus capacity as the Southwest Licking system. And the Village is better positioned to deliver the capacity. Southwest Licking has had serious management and technical problems over the years that are still being worked out. Southwest Licking is unlikely to want to stop at the Owens site. Dead-end sewers don’t work well. Southwest Licking will want to loop its line. Weaver Road, River Road and Highway 37 (heading back south to Interstate 70 and Pataskala) is a logical route. Sewers - and intense development - for the entire southern township is not a far-fetched progression.
The application’s site map shows a 7,000-foot, 12-inch sewer line coming down Columbus Road from the direction of Pataskala. (Click here to view the site map.) The Southwest Licking sewer district supplies service to the Paramount building at the edge of Granville Township. This toe into Granville Township was done in the 1990s - with Village concurrence - because it would have cost $2 million to run a Village sewer line to the property. Some feared at the time that this was a dangerous precedent, but the Township Trustees assured the public that Southwest Licking could not advance without Trustee consent and that the power would be used wisely.
The grant application has a large spreadsheet on the "Sources and Uses of Funds." It includes $950,000 to run an 8-inch sewer line extension to Owens Corning. The application is contradictory on the exact length and size of the Southwest Licking sewer line. The distance from the Paramount building to the Owens Corning driveway is 1.9 miles.
In addition to $1,248,500 for the Southwest Licking sewer extension, the Township requests state money for:
- Water improvements — $588,000
- Roads — $1,223,100
- Electric/gas/telecom — $830,000
- Demolishing five buildings — $665,000
- Design and management fees — $445,400
Owens Corning would match this grant with $5,233,200 of its own money. It would be spent on:
- Relocating to new facilities — $4,200,000
- Asbestos abatement — $200,000
- Cost overrun contingency — $478,460
- Design and management fees — $267,790
- Planning and feasibility study — $90,000
The Owens Corning redevelopment has the potential to be an outstanding project. But it already faces an uphill battle getting a Jobs Ready Site grant because it doesn’t score well in much of the program’s criteria. It’s not located in a high unemployment area of Ohio. It doesn’t have particularly good transportation access - no rail line on the property and no adjacent interstate. And the project is small. Only 73 acres are to be redeveloped in a program that favors 500 and 1,000-acre sites.
The Trustees’ plan to extend Pataskala sewer into Granville could be the most lethal blow to the grant application. Why would the state spend $1 million to provide a redundant sewer system? The score sheet for the grant requires broad support from the public and other governments. That’s why the Trustees needed a support letter from the Village.
By dragging the grant into a silly power play with the Village, the Township has likely doomed any chance Owens Corning has for getting the grant. But, at least we know why the Trustees wanted to keep it secret.
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See previous stories about the Township - Owens Corning grant:
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sewers and growth
nospin43023 seems to have some inside knowledge so I hope he’ll provide us with some specifics about his claims that the Village refused to provide sewer to OC on reasonable terms. I don’t remember hearing anything about this at all. If the Trustees have a problem with the Village, why don’t they say so and tell us what it is. Until then I have a few questions:
1) why keep bringing in SWL a secret? Nospin says it’s “no surprise.” Well it’s a big surprise to me. Has it been announced? Has it been in the Sentinel? i checked the township web site a moment ago on saw nothing.
2) why shouldn’t Owens annex to the village if it wants to do residential and have sewer and water? Newark Granville Road annexed in. So did other areas. maybe there’s a reason to make an exception but it needs to be explained.
3) has kendal been consulted? if SWL sewer costs them $225,000, as the article claims, i suspect they’ll be none to happy.
4) what does the comprehensive plan say? what does village council say? what do the trustees say?
5)does nospin reflect the Trustees view — and the implication of the article — that the Trustees no longer believe in keeping the the township rural? i live in the rural north township and have not abandoned the idea AT ALL, nor have my neighbors. are the trustees secretly going to bring Alexandria sewer to my neck of the woods and have nospin loyally blame it on the Village. Maybe it is time to build out the south township but was I asleep when that was decided?
6) where are wes and fred? if they want SWL to serve the township, they need to say so.
No Surprise
How long were we supposed to ignore the “800 Pound Gorilla in the Room?”
There is a massive highway project coming right through our town. We’ve known about it for 20 years. It’s always been on the radar screen. Now, it’s set for completion in 2009-10, and the village continues to think that hiding / obstructing / avoiding / stonewalling will be some form of salvation to what we all know and love about Granville.
Reality Bites.
We have been growing as a community since 1956 (an arbitrary date) and we have always found a way to work with the changes. Central Ohio is growing, and the Northeast quadrand of Franklin County has seen some signficant change over the years. It’s only natural that commerce seek out the next best location and western Licking County, including Granville is in the realm of possible.
Shouldn’t we be proactive and control what gets developed, and the means by which things change?
The village has had EVERY OPPORTUNITY to use their control of utilities to negotiate a deal we could all live with - but they continue to hold water and sewer over everyone’s head as if they are the only game in town… WELL GUESS WHAT? SW Licking has the capacity and the need to expand their services, so now the Village is going to have to put up or shut up.
I doubt anyone was “snookered” as claimed in your editorial. My guess is that four members of council decided to not enter into discussion with the Trustees, or Owens, or any other landowner unless annexation was part of the conversation. They drew the line in the sand, and got called on it.
Now what?
I don’t know what happens next, but I would imagine Village Council can come back to the table and recapture control of the situation if they are willing to negotiate without having annexation as a point of contention. There is much to be gained by extending utilities, both financially and ecologically. We should encourage and embrace the situation and work to CONTROL WHAT GETS BUILT, not who builds, or where things get built.
There’s a bigger picture here. We need to recognize that as soon as possible.