Marysville City Council is in the process of reviewing plans for the Marysville East Development on the city’s east side. The project will be developed in multiple phases. Council recently heard the first reading to annex and rezone the 351- acre Section One which will include single and multi-family housing, public common space and an innovation district. The 237.3-acre Section Two will be in front of Planning Commission later this month and likely be in front of council in January. There will likely be other annexation requests in the next year.
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Marysville City Council has started the process to approve a large-scale, master planned community on the city’s east side.
At its meeting Monday, council held a first reading on legislation to annex and rezone 351 acres – north of U.S. 33 on both sides of Watkins Road, between The Crossing at Watkins Glen Condominiums and Wildwood Lane.
The development would include five subsections including 36.35 acres for several hundred multi-family units, 14.17 acres for about 55 single-family units, a 251.3-acre innovation district with an anticipated 3.1 million square feet of building space, 14.45 acres of public common area and 1.14 acres for a regional pump station.
The rezoning would include a Planned Unit Development (PUD), which creates its own specific zoning text for the development.
“This is an attempt to master plan the east side,” Bart Barok, with Rockford Development Investments (RDI), told council Monday.
Barok said the legislation in front of council is for the first phase of the project, titled Marysville East. He explained there will likely be multiple other annexations and phases in the next year.
As part of the overall master plan, the New Albany Company will develop hundreds of acres as an innovation park and RDI will develop hundreds of acres as residential — single family, multi-family and townhomes. The entire project will be developed using the PUD design standards to create a cohesive look for the development.
Barok said the PUD design standards and open space allotment will exceed city standards.
“There will be an aesthetic component to our master plan that will be part of our success,” said Dick Roggenkamp, director of real estate for the New Albany Company.
City Planner Ashley Gaver has explained that while there is a PUD, the project will still need exterior and landscaping plan approval from the city’s Design Review Board and final plat approval from the Planning Commission.
Barok said the entire Marysville East development will have a community authority that will enforce standards and impose a fee on all land in the community — an additional 9.5 mills on industrial and commercial land and 4.5 to 5.5 mills on residential properties.
“This is probably the most significant financial tool we are considering,” Barok said.
He said the money raised by the community authority will be used to support police, fire, schools, parks and infrastructure with in that area of the city and county.
Barok said project leaders have met with school officials. He said the innovation park could be a game changer, in terms of revenue, for the district. He said the project will likely ask for a 15-year, 100% Tax Increment Financing (TIF) agreement to help pay for infrastructure in the area, though he said there would be a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) agreement with the school district.
Matt McQuade, a development consultant for the New Albany Company, said the project is not far enough along to make decisions about TIF or PILOT agreements.
Barok and representatives from the New Albany Company stressed that they do not have end users for the innovation district yet.
“I think you would have a mix of uses,” Roggenkamp said.
McQuade said that while no specific companies have been identified, the innovation park is targeting users in the data center, advanced computing, electric vehicle ecosystems, semiconductors, advanced energy and life sciences industries. He said the New Albany Company will seek “leaders in that space.”
Barok said “demand in central Ohio is huge” for space that caters to this type of user.
Development officials have said they are not looking to construct warehouses or retail in the development.
“We do not intend to build warehouses,” Barok said.
Officials have said the PUD does not specifically exclude warehouses only because many of the technology and research companies that would be interested in the park have some element that could be considered warehousing, but it would not look like the distribution or fulfillment center warehousing.
Barok and others have said the community authority fee creates “a competitive disadvantage” that will likely deter users who want to build warehouses or other uses that do not need the specific amenities of the Marysville East innovation park.
Officials said the innovation park could have only a few users that require large facilities or could have many smaller users. Barok said that without knowing the end user and their requirements, it is difficult to know exactly what the design of the park or the internal infrastructure will look like.
Barok said the developers will construct a bypass road around the Buxton Meadows neighborhood so residents do not need to compete with traffic from the innovation park and encourage that traffic to use Scottslawn Road to access U.S. 33.
The city’s Planning Commission was expected to hear discussion about annexation and rezoning of 237.3 acres for Marysville East Section 2, south of Section 1 at its meeting Tuesday. The application however was postponed due to a delay in the legal notice.
“In order to follow the correct procedural process for Planning Commission applications, legal notices are mailed to surrounding property owners of the parcel in consideration,” Gaver wrote in an email to the Journal-Tribune. “Per the City’s Zoning Code for a Planned Unit Development, it is required that legal notices are sent out 10 days before the hearing date. For the applications being heard at the December meeting, the legal notice for the meeting was mailed eight days prior to the meeting instead of the 10-day requirement.”
Planning commission will host a special meeting at 6 p.m., Dec. 20, at in Council Chambers for RDI to present Section 2, which would be an expansion of the innovation park.
Barok said the Section Three, which would be north of Section Two, will likely come through the planning commission for annexation and rezoning in the first half of next year. He said it will likely include single and multi-family housing as well as retail.
Barok said the money paid into the community authority by the innovation park tenants will make it financially feasible to create the housing in that area.
“But the innovation park must come first,” he said.
Barok added that the local housing market could “absorb” additional housing, “but it is not what the citizens of Marysville asking for.”
Residents from inside the city as well as from other parts of the county have expressed opposition to the project at a variety of council and Planning Commission meetings. Opponents have cited that it will create traffic concerns, that it does not fit the city comprehensive plan and that the city already has an innovation park that is nearly empty.
Roggenkamp said he believes it would be at least spring of 2025 before any ground could be turned on the development. Officials stress the plan will take 10 to 20 years to complete.
Roggenkamp has said it will be important to recruit partners and businesses to the innovation park that are also looking at the long term.
“We are looking for companies that are going to make the investment that they are going to be here in 30 years, that aren’t going to pick up and leave once a TIF expires,” Roggenkamp said.
Officials from the New Albany Company said they have been looking for opportunities to expand outside New Albany and liked the location, the existing infrastructure and the community appreciation for innovative manufacturing.
“We were looking for new opportunities and we didn’t need to look too far,” McQuade said.
He added, “This gives us an incredible opportunity and an incredible opportunity to so something special for the community.”