But legal challenges continue, with Clark-Shawnee schools seeking a motion for summary judgment, challenging some of the process of how the development was approved.
Developers’ update
Borror President and 40 Partners LLC representative Jeff Fontaine said the Melody Parks project — along U.S. Route 40 east of Bird Road, less than two miles west of Interstate 70 — is representative of the job and business growth in the region, and could contribute to more of that.
“There’s a lot of triangulation that’s happening of market demand for jobs, which people want to live in a relatively cost-efficient area for them to have amenities around them, being city centers that have good school districts, that have good amenities as a city,” Fontaine said. “What we’re seeing is that a lot of people are choosing Springfield to live there.”
Retail and commercial spaces for grocery stores, banks, fast food and other establishments are also planned, as well as an “open green space with walking path connectivity,” according to the development’s website.
Fontaine said developers have seen interest from several local groups to be part of the development. He said he sees opportunities to introduce brands that my have previously passed on Springfield due to shrinking population, but with recent growth and national attention to the city, businesses may look at it differently.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
The project, named for the former Melody Cruise-In Theatre that was at the site, is being co-developed by Borror and Dillin Corp. The Greater Springfield Partnership and its Community Improvement Corporation are working with the businesses in a limited partnership called 40 Partners LLC.
The CIC owns around 200 of the 400 acres planned for the project and is selling those to 40 Partners as builders contract for residential lots, GSP said previously.
Developers hope to attract current Springfield residents, as well as buyers from Columbus and Dayton, and smaller nearby cities like Urbana and Xenia. They also anticipate regional economic growth that will bring job seekers to the area to purchase at the site, specifically pointing to Intel’s $28 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant in Licking County.
“It will draw construction workers and suppliers from all over Ohio, including the Dayton-Springfield-Butler County area. For Springfield, this could mean increased demand for housing, services, and support industries as workers and their families move to the area,” developers said. “The project is also likely to attract additional new businesses to Ohio to support Intel’s supply chain, further boosting the local economy.”
Fontaine said builders will put up spec homes — move-in ready houses built before being purchased — in anticipation of high demand around springtime.
“It’s not a common practice in the home building business anymore just because there’s a lot of risk tied to it, and that’s kind of the bullishness we have with the market in believing in what the pent-up housing demand is in the Springfield market that those homes are going to have momentum in the next, call it three to six months, where we’re going to have a lot of velocity coming at us for home sales,” Fontaine said.
The city has shown it is pro-development and pro-growth and been an effective partner, Fontaine said, and with multiple housing developments popping up in the last 18 months, though staff has been strained, they have worked to solve problems in real-time.
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
School concerns, lawsuits
The project has seen controversy, with Springfield Twp. trustees and the Clark-Shawnee Local School District expressing concerns that the development will result in hundreds of additional students to the school district without more funding.
Developers spoke with Clark-Shawnee early on, sharing that the build-out process will be “very elongated,” so there is not likely to be a large increase all at once, Fontaine said.
“This is going to be five, seven, 10 years for this to be really having a major impact and even then it’s a multiple phase, and as people age in and out of school-age children, it’s hard to say this is the exact number (of students),” Fontaine said.
Clark-Shawnee has filed two legal challenges, arguing oversight actions by Clark County government to remove members of the CEDA Regional Planning Commission retroactively and set aside a vote against part of the Melody Parks project were improper. It also argues one of the CEDA board members did not live in the district she represents at the time.
The first lawsuit follows an Oct. 5, 2023 meeting, in which CEDA board members voted down allocating a plot of land for Melody Parks 4-3. Then-chairperson Dan Kelly said at the time that he was unhappy that the Springfield Division of Police had not yet officially approved the project, though City Manager Bryan Heck said that Police Chief Allison Elliott approved of it despite the lack of official paperwork being submitted at the time.
When Clark County Development Director J. Alex Dietz asked the board to cite a section of code as the reason for the denial, Kelly said, “We all know why we voted no; now we can sit here and make up something if you want us to make up something for the sake of paperwork.”
The votes of Kelly and two other board members were declared null at a Nov. 8, 2023 emergency meeting, with Dietz saying that prior to the October vote, three board members had automatically vacated their seats due to missing three of six consecutive meetings. This brought the vote to 2-2, and the plat of land was approved by default when no further action was taken, Dietz said.
In a motion for summary judgment, Clark-Shawnee cites a text Heck sent to Fontaine, saying they “have a path on the invalid votes,” with a special meeting to be held to approve amended minutes reflecting a 3-1 vote in favor of the plat.
Clark-Shawnee is seeking a summary judgment from the court in its favor, saying in court documents that the board violated public meetings law by failing to “promptly prepare, file, and maintain meeting minutes” of the Nov. 8 meeting, as well as deliberating on and taking formal action on official business outside of a public meeting.
The CEDA board argues in filings that the Nov. 8 meeting was not an official meeting because there was no quorum, so no minutes were required. It says it was a public conversation instead and no formal action was taken.
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