Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee Angry About Poggemeyer's Work

The Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee is not pleased. The committee met last evening for three hours to review the “final draft” of the Comprehensive Plan Update. The Plan, generated by Poggemeyer Design Group is very late in arriving and contains many typos and errors. The maps that were finally delivered are often upside down on the page, contain inappropriate legends, have missing symbols, and show boundary lines that are simply wrong.

Councilperson Constance Barsky chairing the meeting, asked the committee to review the problems with the plan, saying, “a few items are trivial and a few are not trivial.”

Poggemeyer, a national planning and design firm, has a joint contract with both the Village of Granville and Granville Township to update our Comprehensive Plan. You can view the draft Comprehensive Plan here on Poggemeyer’s web site.
 

Of special concern to the committee was the plan’s obvious catering to the wishes of Owens Corning. The plan draft contains the following:

Foster development of new business park/employment center along Columbus Road/State Route 16.

The Owens Corning Research and Technology Center has been identified as having the potential to yield a JRS eligible site. Several of the recommended infrastructure improvements in this area are eligible activities under the JRS program.

Additionally, the OC site may be compatible with the Federal Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) grant program as well. These types of funding assistance will aide OC in developing this site to the benefit of all jurisdictions and stakeholders.

As a large portion of the OC site is undevelopable due to surface water bodies and wetlands, Granville Township should pursue use of it’s open space preservation funding to purchase this land. This may make the redevelopment of the site more feasible by providing a capital incentive to OC.

The Village and Township should work with OC to ensure that the OC access rights to SR161 are retained to ensure a future overpass to Newark Granville Road.

Develop cost estimates and consider authorization of preliminary engineering design for infrastructure improvements to the site to be better prepared to successfully promote this area as “shovel-ready”. Costs to extend utilities should be known before an industry expresses an interest in the property.

The committee could see no reason why township open space funds should be used to purchase land that can not be developed anyway. It seems like a gift to Owens.

The committee went through the plan draft carefully pointing out the dozens of typos and other errors to Village staff.

When asked who would make the corrections, Don Holycross the Village Manager said, while it was probably Poggemeyer’s responsibility, it would probably be easier for village staff to do the work.

Constance Barsky agreed saying that it would take far too long for Poggemeyer to do the corrections.

Councilperson Jackie O’Keefe said, “I don’t think they should be paid.” She said if this were a business, Poggemeyer wouldn’t be paid for this kind of work. Barsky agreed, saying that their work was far inferior to the promises they made when they were hired.

The draft contains many pictures and art work. Most of the pictures, however, where not taken in Granville, but appeared to be stock photographs of other places. The committee disliked the “tackiness” of the art work.

Members found it inappropriate that two logos of Owens Corning appeared within the plan as well as a logo of Metropolitan partners.

The committee also discussed the problem caused by the Township going forward with a public hearing when the draft plan is in such bad shape. It seems Trustee Bill Habig is determined to hold a public hearing on the current version of the plan. Habig was not present at the steering committee meeting. However, Jim Murr was present representing the Township.

At the end of the meeting, Don Holycross, commenting on the sloppiness of Poggemeyer’s draft, said, “I would never have let something like this leave my office.”

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See previous stories about Poggemeyer, Owens, the Township and the Village: