Granville schools hosting meeting about growth as M/I Homes plans 540-home development

With the prospect of a developer building upward of 600 houses in the southernmost portion of the school district, Granville Exempted Village School District officials have been working on plans to manage anticipated enrollment growth.

They will discuss current enrollment, the projections for growth and the challenges ahead for the 2,600-student district during a public meeting at 7 p.m. Jan. 15 in the high school theater.

M/I Homes, of Columbus is proposing at least 540 houses, with the possibility of more, on about 225 acres just east of Grand Pointe Drive, according to Granville Superintendent Jeff Brown. He said the land, which is roughly between Ohio 37 on the west and just beyond Canyon Road on the east, is in the Granville school district but in the City of Heath, and the Heath zoning code allows for about five houses per acre.

The Granville Elementary and Intermediate schools are at 95% capacity now, Brown said.

“Any growth will challenge the district,” he said, adding that the district is growing even now. More than half of the lots and about 11 houses in the 67-home Willow Bend subdivision on River Road have been sold, bringing additional families to the district.

Granville schools have never seen a housing development the magnitude of the one being discussed for what has been farmland in Union Township. The last big development in the school district was Park Trails, which is 354 houses in the city of Newark.

“People think we have a seat at the table when it comes to managing the size and scope of such developments,” Brown said. “But we don’t, so getting information and updates can be challenging.”

District officials have talked with the developer and Heath officials about the possibility of the developer donating land for a new school building within the development, Brown said, and all have been open to that idea. A preliminary site plan indicates that about 14.5 acres could be available within the housing development for a school building.

M/I Homes has donated land for schools in some other developments in central Ohio, said Brown, who had experience managing rapid growth when he served as an administrator and interim superintendent at Olentangy Local Schools in Delaware County.

A study by Cooperative Strategies in 2022 projected an enrollment increase from the 2,535 students enrolled that year to well over 5,000 by 2050. The projection showed a steep rise in enrollment beginning in about 2025 — the same year that Intel was scheduled to begin operations at its new computer-chip manufacturing campus 10 miles west of Granville.

The Intel production date has been pushed back at least two years, and high interest rates and other factors resulted in a slower rate of growth than that study anticipated, Brown said.

But the Heath housing development will bring new challenges, he said. A strategic planning task force of community leaders and residents has been considering the long-term effects of development in the area, as well as possible ways to manage them.

“For two years, we’ve been going through the process of understanding the demographics and the potential growth — and how we would need to grow as a district,” Brown said. “We met with township trustees, the village manager, real estate agents and fiscal hawks from across the community. We had about 40 people on that strategic planning task force.”

The task force looked at enrollment projections, facility capacity analysis, and considered infrastructure such as where water and sewer lines run, because they are key to development.

The task force’s work shows “that Granville’s enrollment is poised to grow significantly in the next five to 10 years,” Brown said in a Dec. 18 memo to district families, which also said that “the district’s K-6 buildings are nearing or at capacity. Long term, additional facilities will be needed to meet increased enrollment.”

The task force will share details of its findings during the Jan. 15 public meeting.

The district also has hired Fanning Howey of Columbus to develop a master plan based on foundational work by the task force and additional input from the community, which will ramp up in January.

Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Granville schools preparing for growth as M/I Homes plans subdivision

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