Notes from my Knapsack 2-20-20

Notes from my Knapsack 2-20-20

Jeff Gill

 

Is Granville hard to do business in?
___

 

It's a long running debate that I'm not going to resolve here, even if they give me the whole darn paper to fill with arguments and counter-arguments.

 

Is Granville welcoming to business?

 

The standard rap on Our Fayre Village is that we are not. And as part of our civic structure in a volunteer role, I get to see some of the sausage being made, and even turn the crank from time to time. So while I can't resolve either the full question, or even definitively answer it, I do have some opinions of my own to add.

 

One way of defending Granville, both the village government and our entwined township trustee structure wrapped around us, is that what we are not is totally sold out to getting business at any cost. I think that's a perfectly fair thing to say, and it's also the most defensible of positions.

 

Most of us have been through fast growing areas, in Ohio and beyond, where there's clearly a huge amount of economic vitality and a minimal amount of zoning, planning, or even just good taste. A municipality can say to developers "come in and do whatever you want!" and frankly, it will probably work (up to a point).

 

You'll get long stretches of grey featureless and under-windowed concrete behemoths, used for factory or warehouse functions, and re-purposeable to pretty much nothing once the original use is done and gone. You'll get a gravel pit next to a subdivision of zero-lot-line cookie cutter homes on cautiously swooping non-linear streets for maximal utilization. And next to that, a [insert your worst nightmare here].

 

It's that last point, the one in brackets I'm letting you fill in yourself, that's where we turn to where the questions come in. Your worst nightmare is probably some other village resident's fondest hope. I've long heard of how Granville fears fast food chain intrusions and big box retail. So I know there are many who dread the idea of a drive-up window and arches of gold, but I know a fair number of younger people who have said in my earshot "I wish this town had a [insert your worst nightmare but their favorite burger joint here]."

 

That's one of the things we can't solve in a short essay, whether or not fast food is Satan's minion or an angelic arrival in our quondam paradise. But short of industrial-level retail with giant neon signs and a row of idling SUVs waiting for their order in a bag, are we doing as well as we can to facilitate, well, non-massive retail? Non-fast but good and sometimes even quickish food? Or is our desire to keep out one type of economic Canada geese (the ones that leave droppings everywhere) actually blocking the entry of another goose or two that might lay golden eggs? Does blocking chains in Granville mean we end up putting chains on any business storefront launch?

I do think sometimes prospective business interests protest too much. If you get used to places where they give away the farm and drop all the fences to let you roam where you will, even a little herding can feel like getting locked into the chute. Not saying "we'll do whatever you want" is not the same as saying "we're not going to let you do anything."

 

Having said that, I hope we can continue looking at our comprehensive plan, our codified ordinances, our internal processes in general, to make sure that we're making welcome and fully facilitating more economic actors on the stage that is our city. We're a small city and technically not even that, but a small city is what we're becoming in Granville.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he has served on the village Board of Zoning and Building Appeals for many years. Tell him how we can help build and be appealing in Granville at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.