Notes from my Knapsack 11-3-22

Notes from my Knapsack 11-3-22
Jeff Gill

Developers gonna develop, it's what they do
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With all due respect to Taylor Swift or 3LW, I wrote a column two decades ago in reference to an infamous local character, saying among other things "developers are gonna develop, it's what they do."

That's why we call them that: developers. They want to develop properties and real estate and ideas, and they take risks, and I have some respect for them.

Wary respect.

Because developers gonna develop. Which means while they might go on at length about public spirited ideals and hopes for the community and all sorts of good intentions, when they get indignant if someone even suggests they're going to make money — millions, that is — from their idea, I get wary. It's based on hard experience. They aren't there to help support the comprehensive plan or even necessarily to improve the lives of everyone (some, maybe, themselves, definitely), they are developers. It's in the name.

Granville has long attracted the attention of developers, large and small. Small or large, they have something in common. They want to develop a parcel and make a bundle, and will wrap that bundle in a great deal of communitarian language, but it's all well and good as long as you remember developers gonna develop.

For over fifteen years I've been an appointive officeholder in Our Fayre Village, the last decade as chair of one of your official panels, and I'm here to tell you that there are few pieces of open land in the village that we haven't entertained proposals for and requests for variances to allow developers to push the edges of what our zoning and use guidelines call for.

And here's the main thing: for many of those open areas we have voted in favor of providing variances more than once, and they are still open. Financing is the final vote, if you will. Village residents vote on council and levies, council crafts a comprehensive plan and ordinances and sets up community panels like the Board of Zoning and Building Appeals or the Planning Commission, those formally empaneled citizens vote again . . . but if the bank won't float the loan, if the investors don't pony up, that last vote is crucial.

Sometimes developers, little local ones or larger regional entities, say the village is hostile to development. Frankly? I chuckle every time I hear that. I watch staff work overtime to help make a better presentation out of a scribbled request, I've presided over many outlandish expectations being dropped on our doorstep, and in general we've bent over backwards to make a proposal happen. We believe in allowing property owners to achieve maximum enjoyment of their holdings within minimum impact on neighbors, as defined by village ordinance and Ohio judicial standards.

What's going to change, though, is that the money is heading our way (has headed, is coming in hot and fast). And not-so-great ideas may not have that last check and balance of investor oversight weighing them down from floating off into la-la land.

Which means we all will have to be judicious, thoughtful, and mindful of what kind of community we are trying to create here. Developers? God bless them all: they're here to develop. Trust them to do that, whatever else they say. Building community is going to be a shared task.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been on a few municipal commissions over the years, and heard way too many developer presentation. Tell him what you're skeptical of at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.