Shown is a land use map developed by OHM Advisors and shown at Monday night’s Marysville Planning Commission meeting. The firm focused on the lined areas. Yellow denotes possible residential growth areas, green denotes commercial and blue denotes industrial.
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City of Marysville officials will soon have another tool they can use to steer development.
Jason Sudy and Conor Willis, of OHM Advisors, spoke to the Marysville Planning Commission Monday about a preliminary land use plan for the city.
“This is a tool for you,” Sudy said.
Willis said the underlying theme for the city’s comprehensive planning has been growth, and planning for it. The plan included a map laying out development opportunities, and areas in and around the city that officials should consider for residential, commercial and industrial growth.
To put the plan together, OHM Advisors looked to the past.
“We can look at how Marysville has grown in the past to really start to think about the things that worked, the things that didn’t,” Willis said.
The firm used Mill Valley as a reference point. It looked at the development and worked to predict what the city would look like if it developed similarly to Mill Valley, and what that footprint might be.
Willis said Mill Valley has about 2,000 homes at two or three units per acre. With that in mind, OHM produced low, medium and high predictions for growth.
Willis said at the low prediction, by 2040, the city would need “roughly one more Mill Valley.” The medium prediction would require two and a half Mill Valleys and a high prediction would require three and a half.
“That’s a lot of space,” Willis said. “Right now, there’s not a ton of space to think about that growth.”
Willis noted fewer people are moving into single-family homes today. That allows multi-family residential developments to take hold, minimizing the physical impact of new housing.
“The percentage of people buying single-family homes is steadily decreasing in relation to the other types of housing,” Sudy said.
Sudy said the firm’s thinking is that exclusively building more developments like Mill Valley would be a mistake. He said “it’s going to be a mixture” of apartments, houses and etc.
The map presented to the commission showed areas the city could expand into to bolster its available land for residential, commercial and industrial development. Major points include possible future residential growth in the Cook’s Point area and up Route 31, as well as in the southern portion of the city down London Avenue.
Commercial development is shown going farther down Route 36. Industrial growth, predictably, continues down Industrial Parkway.
Sudy noted he doesn’t think all of what the map shows should be developed, but it does serve as a tool for the city where area officials can foster growth.
Much of the plan was the result of feedback from residents at the August Uptown Friday Nights last year and a telephone questionnaire.
The results showed residents wanting development in the Uptown area. They also favored development that evokes small-town storefronts, rather than big-box stores. Walk-able retail with storefronts on the street scored high. Overall, much of the firm’s plan was centered on feeding into the Uptown area, making it the centerpiece of the city.
The plan includes altering existing retail spaces. OHM Advisors showed a mock-up plan that would turn the old Kroger shopping center into a more mixed-use development with housing and light retail.
“People are starting to be into the fact that there are underperforming retail centers, and there’s a lot of retail in Marysville, so how do we think about reimagining what those spaces can feature?” Willis said.
Residents also voted on their desired residential designs, with walk-able neighborhoods winning.
The map the firm presented shows possible spots the city can expand those residential areas to, as well as commercial and industrial.
Sudy told the commission to be wary of big-box retail. He said while it might be acceptable for one big-box company to come in and replace another, adding any new ones might be an unwise investment.
“In Central Ohio, we’re seeing that there are more failing big-box stores than there are succeeding big-box stores,” Sudy said. “Almost always it’s going to be a finite resource in your community.”
Commission member Brett Garrett noted Coleman’s Crossing isn’t fully developed. He asked what the city could put in the empty spaces.
Sudy said apartments would be the most obvious solution. He said that type of housing placed next to retail is seeing success. He said the city must be careful and try to get “decent multi-family in there.”
Commission chair Tim Schacht asked if OHM Advisors incorporated the city’s recent Parks and Recreation Master Plan into this new plan. He asked if the firm can look at ways to integrate more currently usable land for open space. Sudy said they intend to incorporate the recent push for regional trail connectivity into the plan.
“As far as actual preservation areas, we haven’t (looked into it), but we can,” he said.
The plan will be presented to city council later this month.