mrCharlie

Speaking of Granville restaurants and businesses... Granville will be getting TWO new restaurants on Main Street right by the bike trail, both from Chris Crader who owns Harvest Pizza. First will be The Station, opening in the old train station. Breakfast, lunch, dinner made from local ingredients, with a nice outdoor space. Right across the street, in the former Millennium Dance Academy, will be a Harvest Pizza. https://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/news/2022/03/04/harvest-pizzeria-cafe-coming-granvilles-main-street/6909126001/ Mai Chau/Three Tigers has opened in the old fire station. Expanded menu in way more space. Haven't made it there yet since the move, but I'm sure we will soon. https://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/news/2022/03/29/mai-chau-three-tigers-brewing-open-former-granville-fire-station/7127062001/ Really excited about more food options here in town (close to me too, I can see one of these buildings from my office!). I like too that this is starting to spread the "business district" out from just Broadway, which is how we ultimately end up with a bigger downtown and solve some of our parking constraints. One more - thanks to pending annexation along River Road and extension of sewer/water, Granville Veterinary Clinic has broken ground on a much larger, long-planned new facility between the coffee shop complex and the daycare. I was just there this week with my cat and meant to ask Dr Wagner what they have planned for the two current converted houses on South Main, but kitty wasn't cooperating... Either way, Granville's commercial district is expanding! https://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/news/local/granville/2021/03/22/granville-veterinarian-seeks-river-rd-annexation-shares-site-plan/4742677001/

All good, I think a lot of the points you make are spot-on, or at least represent the reputation Granville earned over the years. I like doing my part to change those perceptions, much as I know you do for Newark. It was annoyingly taken to extremes, but I'll give Granville some credit for resisting the lure of commercial sprawl that most communities have embraced. It's certainly protectionist (not sure if by design), but from what I can tell downtown has always been strong compared to most communities this size. We do happen to have a few extra vacancies around town at the moment for various reasons, but they probably won't be vacant for long. (The Donato's space might be open for a while since its huge, it apparently only closed because the building owner - ex Brews owner, I think - raised the rent to $13,000 per month and wanted a 5-year commitment.)

FWIW, the most vocal opposition I've seen against the River Road developments has been - ironically - from the Park Trails/Park Ridge people. The schools have noted they aren't in favor, but most of us here in the village pretty much realize there isn't much we could do about it anyway. It's only the Granville Schools/City of Newark people that Newark City Government has to listen to. Regarding the change in philosophy, it's worth noting that two of three candidates who won village council in 2021 made the need for Granville to switch to a smart-growth (versus anti-development) strategy their key campaign issues. The candidate who lost was a long-time incumbent who promised more of the same. The appetite for growth has been steadily increasing among those of us in the village in the twelve or so years I've lived here. Granville Village is also actively looking for a Planning Director and Assistant (since before the announcement, though I'm sure they knew it was coming) - so that's at least something. Most of the remaining opposition to any growth is from township residents - primarily old money families, and wealthy retirees who moved here to "live in the country". They don't want anything to change, but mostly don't want to pay more in taxes - as shown by active opposition to recent school levies. A lot those people seem to be on their way out of the area for one reason or another, and their influence is waining. My kid starts kindergarten here in Granville in the fall, so I'm definitely paying close attention to where things are going. I do have concerns (that reach beyond just growth issues) and am not sure if we'll stay here long term...but it also sounds like there is finally some acceptance of reality. I do think one thing that will help shift acceptance is knowing there will be enough demand for housing to fill/pay for any new schools that get built - a big concern with the River Rd developments was they were enough to need a new building, but not big enough to fill it or pay for it.

In no small part for the above reason I've been a Nikon guy since 1998 or so, when I switched from a Pentax K1000 to Nikon N90 (both 35mm) for my college photo classes. I've got a decent collection of lenses that I've added to over the years, but have upgraded DSLR (and even a couple of film) bodies many times. I currently have a Nikon D7100 body, which is a APS-C crop-sensor DSLR I've had probably 6-7 years. It works great and is a good compromise of small size and traditional full features, including manual controls. I mainly use it for product photos for work, important stuff like the kid being born, or vacation photos if we're going somewhere big. For better or worse, the vast majority of my photos anymore are with my iPhone X, simply because the bigger camera and lenses that make it special are annoying enough to drag around that I usually leave it at home (unless taking photos is the point). My next camera body will probably be a mirrorless Nikon of some kind since I do have that lock-in, assuming my current lenses still work. A friend showed me his mirrorless Sony, and I was pretty impressed with that as well. Sorry I can't be more specific than that with models and such, merely researching cameras for me always ends up being expensive :) If its at all practical, after doing a little research I would suggest seeking out a locally-owned camera shop that carries all or most of what you are considering. They are great at walking you through the options (and helping understand the basics) so you get what you need. Most importantly, based on my experience there is real value in simply handling the camera in person to get a real sense of how they feel in hand, how the controls work, how heavy the setup is, etc. I bought my D7100 at World of Photography in Columbus (Grandview Heights) and enjoyed working with them.

LOVE the alleyway covered into tables! Great as it would be too see that empty lot turned into additional outdoor space, it wouldn't surprise me if it ends up being leased parking for the residential lofts going in around the neighborhood. Realistically nobody is moving in there without a car, and most people would expect/prefer off street parking even if they have to pay for it.

The Eisner Center in Granville opened summer of 2019, but I believe it's oriented more towards the performing arts. The art space in Newark was (I think) more for visual arts. It was closed "temporarily" during the first lockdown and seems that it just kind of faded away. Not surprising, Denison has been really aggressive with their pandemic mitigation measures.

For the last year my wife was in grad school, I commuted from Athens to Marietta. Took a little over an hour, but at least there wasn't much traffic. It's worthwhile when the job is way better than what you find locally, but I would hate to have to do it for too long. I'd expect that applies for construction jobs where you go site to site anyway. Two years later when she was doing her postdoc, I got to make the daily drive from Pawtucket RI to Worcester MA. That was much worse...one dense metro to another with some open space in-between, bad roads, plenty of (aggressive) traffic, and weekly snowstorms in the winter dumping 1-2 feet at a time. I dealt with it again since that was expected to be short term until she was finished, but I actually kept the job and have been permanent WFH when we moved back to Ohio in ten years ago.

Newark. Seriously, there is a ton of very affordable older house stock in okay enough neighborhoods ripe to be rehabilitated. One would think someone in the trades could make that happen.

The TJ Evans trail is less than a block from my house (in Granville), and I love riding but hate dealing with cars. A network like this would be absolutely amazing. Not hard to see it getting done in New Albany given they have a pretty strong track record for connecting developments with trails, but I'm concerned there will be some very frustrating gaps that take virtually forever to fill in (if ever). It would be great if trail building was a requirement for the new developments that inevitably come as a result of Intel, Granville already has such a requirement.

Yeah, I feel like I read something about the fields behind Wal-Mart/Kroger having issues with flooding. It doesn't look like too much of it is actually (formally) floodplain, but standing water is itself a challenge. I've always had my fingers crossed a Menards would land there, I'm tired of driving to Reynoldburg when I'm working on the house. The valley on King across from the apartments looks to be mostly owned by the same holding company (IAG Holdings) that owns the giant estate off of Price Rd. Looks like they own a huge number of adjacent parcels from pretty much there, across Price, and up through where Welsh Hills branches off of Price (I'm way too lazy to figure out the acreage, but its clearly a LOT). A good bit of that is in Granville schools too. Assuming water/sewer are available form Newark, with the increasing demand for housing around here the only obstacle I can see stopping that from being the next Park Trails is the meh highway access. And the worst of that is already getting fixed with the roundabout at Country Club/Sharon Valley.

I'm normally less that thrilled with the incentives giveaways, but the transformational nature of this project makes this one actually feel like a really good investment. The real benefit will be everything that lands in Ohio over the next 30+ years because of the skilled/talented labor pool this state (hopefully) proves capable of providing.

I normally have mixed feelings on the sort of incentives Ohio (and so many other places) offer, mainly because of the race to the bottom these lead to. Plus the tendency of companies to follow the next offer once the initial incentives/obligations expire, or take the opportunity to look for a new handout (or long established companies to so the same). This feels different, and for once the incentives feel justified. This will be transformative for the region, in an industry with an actual future, and the investment so huge Intel isn't going to move it elsewhere once the incentives expire.

Not exactly a small community, but it very easy to see Newark/Heath landing a few of these kinds of suppliers. The space and workforce are certainly available with some great advantages for logistics. Maybe we can even find some related industry to locate here and take over the Basket.

I've been thinking on this branding, I think we can do better than Silicon Heartland. A few alternatives that come to mind: • Silicon Cornfield • Silicon Pasture • Silicon Farms • Silicon Escarpment or Silicon Plateau (the location is between the Berea and Allegheny Escarpments, identified as the Galion Glaciated Low Plateau)

Granville Village is the progressive part, especially the village proper. A few people who just won the village council race campaigned on the need for additional development and affordable housing in Granville. The township is very conservative with a lot of big money and long-time families - that is where a lot of the resistance to any kind of change comes from, along with fear of impact on the schools and the potential to need to pay more in school taxes. Now that development in the school district could easily come from the east, south, or west - and be totally out of the hands of existing school district residents - I think we're finally reaching the point where the inevitability is getting hard to ignore. Maybe I need to start making some noise at township trustee meetings...

Admittedly we don't drive through Johnstown all that often, but its still catches me by surprise seeing how nice their downtown actually is. Maybe this is the catalyst for finally getting my fellow Granville residents to accept the reality that development is coming, and maybe we should start planning for it so we have some say in what this area will look like in 20 years.

That's what makes this feel so different than most of these kinds of announcements - this region was doing just fine without something of this magnitude.

I share that concern, but my instinct is this is probably a lot more legit. Intel is an American company with a reputation to uphold, the products being produced are high-dollar, require skilled labor, and there is a very strong demand for this kind of facility to be built...somewhere. Per the article, the feds also intend to subsidize semiconductor production domestically for a number of reasons. The location also actually does make sense logically, and its not being presented by politicians as the savior that will bring high-paying jobs back some dying old industrial town. As hard as it is to believe, this does actually pass the smell test, at least for me. As for incentives, I have no doubt the state has been "generous" to say the least. If the commitment and followthrough on this project really are as big as is being reported, this might be one of those rare times I'm actually okay with it. Something this big is going to stick around for a long time, and it's an industry with a strong future. (That said, I'd personally like to see and end to the race-to-the-bottom incentives that are so common everywhere.)

This article has quite a bit more details and specifics - this really makes it sound like a done deal, and I really hope that the case. https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2022/01/intel-plans-massive-semiconductor-factory-in-ohio.html?outputType=amp Wondering what this will do to our property values here in Granville...?

I'm assuming this is so they can still impose an article limit on those of us who use private mode browsing (and constantly reset the cookie). Unless things have changed since, back when I subscribed I found it frustrating that Gannett treated the various papers as independent websites/subscriptions. I live in Granville so the Granville Sentinel/Newark Advocate is my local (Gannett) paper. If I want to keep up on metro news I'm also paying for the Dispatch. If I want to keep up on news from back home, I'm paying for the Enquirer too. There isn't a lot of local content in any of the papers, most of which is at least a day behind local TV stations and rarely any more detailed. Their websites are filled with tons of overlapping regional content, along with USA Today fluff which together make it hard to find anything unique or interesting in any one publication. It easier finding relevant local stories posted to their Facebook feeds, it bothers me to no end too say that. I want to support newspaper journalism (having worked at a newspaper many years back), but it isn't worth paying for three subscriptions (or really even one). That's further emphasized by a pricing model right up there with a cable company. It's impossible to tell what it will actually cost to subscribe after a few months, and you have to call to cancel.

That’s fair, FWIW though the particular candidate who said that is pretty unknown and doesn’t have a lot of support (going by signs anyway). Bryn Bird on the other hand is great, she was the first director of the Canal Market in Newark and heavily involved in its planning.

I've lived in Granville since 2011, it's always interesting seeing how things are perceived from the outside. There is a fair amount of disagreement here about what direction things should be headed in, especially between Village and Township residents. There is generally an expectation that new development should always contribute more to the community than it costs ("not all development is good development"), but a lot of disagreement about what exactly that means. The village is the "inclusive and welcoming" Granville, a LOT of us here in the village see the extreme lack of economic diversity within our schools as a big problem (my wife and I might not stay long term so our son gets a better rounded experience). There are a lot of people around here wishing for commercial development as long as its not at the expense of existing. A few first-time candidates for village council this year (both business owners) are campaigning on making it easier to do business in the village. Township residents tend to be more conservative and wealthy, and that's where the most vocal opposition to any sort of residential development comes from. The assumption made is that a big apartment complex or large moderately-priced single family subdivision would bring a lot of kids into the district, necessitating additional school buildings or generating less in taxes than it costs to educate the new kids. It's not so much that people don't want apartment-dwellers in the community (although there are a few I suspect might), it's that most of them see little upside in effectively subsiding apartments in the school district. I very much agree Granville as a whole needs to accept reality and plan for the future - accept that the highway has changed things, and accept that development is going to happen no matter what. Some of this is happening with the pro-business village council candidates (fingers crossed they win), a lot of us newer residents think nothing of just going to Columbus if we can't get what we want in town. It's mostly the township people who think they can do nothing and things will never change. There is little interest from township residents in taking steps like incorporation and having some say over development in the area, most citing all the "taxes and regulation" that would come along with being part of the village. Granville people might have spoken, but ultimately Newark listened to Park Trails/Park Ridge who they definitely are accountable to. Most of the organized opposition came from those neighborhoods (ironically), out of concerns of extra traffic and raising school taxes. It's REALLY unfortunate, but generally speaking most communities in Ohio tend to look out mostly for themselves. I doubt Heath much cared what impact approving the mall and other commercial development had on downtown Newark at the time, luckily that seems to be heading back in the right direction.

Commuter rail would certainly be fantastic, but (sadly) we've got some time to go before that becomes viable in metro Columbus. Either way, assuming the existing station would be reused nearly all of downtown Newark is an easy walk to hop on a train. Along with the current trends of things to do, cool lofts, etc happening down there, downtown Newark would be immensely appealing to younger people and empty nesters alike. Definitely lots of parallels between the two cities, for better or worse. We cut through Lancaster on the way to Athens pretty regularly (via 37/22/old 33) and downtown really seems to be coming alive in much the same way Newark is. I think Lancaster also benefited from not having a Granville or Heath next door to pull away wealth or development from the core city, and the (old) highway is better positioned and better integrated into the city than the fully separated highways in Newark.

(Sorry this is a bit long...) In my mind, Newark is a medium city by Ohio standards, and a small city by national standards. I was surprised when I moved to the area (having grown up in greater Cincinnati) how unexpectedly urban downtown Newark is, and I'm thrilled with everything happening down there. I've found Newark to be kind of a smaller-scale mirror of the development and growth trends found in the larger cities throughout Ohio. That in itself is actually pretty interesting from an urbanist perspective. The formerly prosperous, fairly dense downtown went through a few rough decades thanks to commercial sprawl in parasitic suburban municipalities. However, Heath is looking pretty tired/outdated these days, the trend of moving away from malls and chain retail really shows. Newark is doing a great job seizing the opportunity, and fortunately much of what made downtown Newark feel "authentic" seems to have been spared becoming a parking lot like so much of urban Ohio. The older, fairly dense, smaller single family residential neighborhoods within walking distance of downtown are what need the most work. There are also some "factory town" neighborhoods throughout the city along the same lines, within walking distance of a current of former industry. These neighborhoods have a long way to go before they are conventionally desirable places to live, but some are okay enough and most are quite affordable. There are some formerly wealthy areas with amazing bargain-priced houses (Hudson Ave, West Main, Granville St) in decent enough condition. The city is bisected by divided highways, which (like in much of Ohio) cut off the upper-middle class automobile and streetcar neighborhoods from to core, and pushed the growth further out. Some of these neighborhoods are rough but many are mostly fine, for an old house enthusiast there are some real gems hidden around town. Most of the recent residential development and wealth is in post-war "sprawl" suburbs, which at least are mostly within the City of Newark. There are some very cool mid-century or otherwise interesting houses in the neighborhood to the west of OSU-N, and the prices are great for what you are getting. Most of the current development is in the City of Newark/Granville Schools areas (Park Trails), the prices are quite high for new but otherwise meh houses thanks to the desirability of Granville schools. I like that Newark is traditionally a pretty blue-collar city, and hasn't fallen to nearly the extent that many industrial cities in Ohio have. I think that the "sprawl within" helped keep city finances and overall population pretty stable when most comparable cities in Ohio were rapidly declining, and now we're (hopefully) starting to come out the other side of the suburbanization trend. There are a lot of good things happening in Newark right now and a lot of potential to work with. With easy accessibility to metro Columbus, it isn't hard to see Newark becoming a bargain-priced bedroom community that still is fairly independent as a community. I think the biggest obstacle for getting to that point is getting the schools (especially at the High School level) to the level where families are comfortable relocating to the area. An Amtrak stop at the very cool train station (Pittsburg to Chicago?) could also drive desirability to live in the area, particularly near downtown and for those without kids. Newark also seems relatively ripe for an immigrant community to gain critical mass in a few of the dense/walkable/cheap neighborhoods, which would definitely drive growth and make the city more unique and interesting. I recall this being pretty common throughout southern New England, driving though Newark-size cities it wasn't uncommon for all the businesses signs to suddenly switch to Portuguese.

Interesting idea of population "inflation", since that that probably better conveys the "importance" a city of 900k would have had in 1950. On the other hand, it might be better not to reframe Cleveland as having fallen from 1.8M to 372k... (I kind of want to do the same sort of calculation for Cincinnati in the 1800's.)