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The Granville Historical Society Oral History Project 2001 - 2002
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34) Managing Development
Route 161 will
soon be four-lanes from Columbus to Granville, 2007.
The
Granville Sentinel
Pressures of Growth and Development(Candi Moore) Almost everything we do around here these days is centered around concerns about development and trying to keep the small town atmosphere and trying to keep our schools very good and at the same time meet the needs of the community. And everybody has a different opinion on how you do that. We’ve got a lot of pressures coming from development to the west of us in Columbus. It’s starting to head out this way. And Newark is growing and it’s heading this way. So there are a lot of pressures on this community.
Impact of Wealth (Carol Apacki) I think Granville is under siege. A lot of wealth has come in -- beautiful homes -- it’s not all bad. But the ability to have the diversity of economic groups is more and more difficult. People want to live here so they’re willing to pay top-dollar and we’re having a lot of new, big homes. And schools of course are faced with all the problems that come. So losing its diversity of people is going to be a challenge. We’ve never had racial diversity sadly but we certainly had a whole range of income levels. And I think that’s less and less true.
The Challenge of Getting the Right Businesses in the Right Places (Candi Moore) I think we’re doing a good job of managing growth generally, in terms of keeping our downtown strong, and trying to keep unique businesses that aren’t franchised types that you see in every town. We’ve done, I think, a pretty good job in trying to create neighborhoods. I think our one challenge is because of the way schools are financed right now, you need a little more business property to help your tax base. And it would be nice if we could build that up a little bit more -- direct where we want to have that and direct the kind of business we want to have. That’s the challenge -- to get the right kind of business in the right places, where they don’t detract from everything else. Maybe offices, medical facilities, high tech businesses.
Community Spirit Can Help Control Growth(Lew Mollica) It seems to me, there are going to be continuous changes in Granville’s future. Whether you want it or not, it’s going to happen. I would hope that our elected officials and the community as a whole would control those changes that do take place. And if there’s any community that can control its destiny, it’s this community and the people who live in it. I am constantly amazed at what these people do! If you go out to the high school and you see that athletic facility, that was paid for by the community. A group of people got together and said, “We want this.” And they did it! And when they started, I must admit, I thought, “It’ll never get off the ground.” And boy was I happy that I had to eat those words! And then when we had this problem relative to Park Trails development [ on the Keny property ]. My gosh, all these people that worked on that to keep that housing division out of there until we could establish some rules that would benefit this community. It was amazing! What other community would do something like that? Could do something like that? Had the time, the energy….so, I am constantly amazed by that and I hope that those kinds of people will continue to attempt to control what happens in this community.
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