A new housing development is being proposed in Hilliard. If built, the development could directly impact the Big Darby Creek watershed.
The development, called Farm Hill II, is an extension of the current Hill Farm housing area, which is located around Gelderland Drive near Scioto Creek Darby Road. The new development will add 300 homes to the area, according to the City of Hilliard staff report. It would be located in the area of Elliott Road.
The city received notice on Feb. 19 that the City of Columbus would allocate an additional 1,331 sewer taps which could be applied to the development, according to the City of Hilliard website.
Dan Ralley, assistant city manager for the City of Hilliard, said the development will provide many different benefits to the Hilliard community.
“It obviously provides additional housing for the community, and that's not just a Hilliard benefit, but obviously is a concern around central Ohio in terms of the amount of available housing, but the long term benefit for us is the construction of additional shared use paths or trails the community can benefit from,” Ralley said.
If built, Ralley said the Hill Farm development will extend trails that will help non-motorized people in the community and would become part of park land moving forward.
“The Hill Farm development is actually an integral part of extending a trail from the Heritage Trail all the way over to Scioto Darby Road and then the open space. In this case, the Hill Farm proposal that's before City Council includes a large parcel that includes the headwaters of the Clover Groth,” Ralley said.
Additionally, Ralley said the creation of this development would help preserve open space in the area.
“We want to make sure that if there are stream corridors, that they are naturalized and put back in a state that would be much more appropriate and probably consistent with how they were before the surrounding property was used for farming, and that we ensure that there are buffer zones around those corridors as well, where development can't occur,” Ralley said.
Ralley said overall, the community reaction has been mostly positive, as is the case with most new developments.
“I think, overall, it’s been a pretty positive process, but none of these things are easy,” Ralley said. “The rezoning of property and going through the development process like this takes a lot of attention to detail and care for how things evolve, because this is the kind of development that's going to really be in practice being here forever within our community.”
Though some are looking forward to expanding housing in Hilliard, environmental advocates are cautious of what could happen to the long-existing Darby Creek watershed.
John Tetzloff, president of the Darby Creek Association, said the main thing advocates are asking for is new development to be within the guidelines of the Big Darby Accord and if not, then to amend the accord.
“Any kind of change in the development, either location or amounts, should be done within the Accord plan, meaning, right now. The plan doesn't allow for additional development in Hilliard. Our position is you would need to amend the plan to allow for that,” Tetzloff said.
Tetzloff believes the new number of houses being built should come out of a different city’s allotment of houses in order to be in line with the accord.
“The plan allows for 20,000 new units within western Franklin County and the watershed,” Tetzloff said. “Our position is that if additional houses are given to Hilliard, they need to come out of somebody else's housing allotment.”
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Scenic River Program is currently in the process of upgrading the scientific modeling of the area, Tetzloff said. He hopes the City of Columbus will wait on furthering the development until the process is completed despite the City of Columbus stating they will not wait.
“They've got a grant to run a more state-of-the-art model for not just the Darby watershed, but all of central Ohio,” Tetzloff said. “The idea being that jurisdictions can use the results to inform their planning. We’ve asked Columbus at least to wait on the results to have that tool available, and they have said they’re not going to wait.
Tetzloff said it comes down to the fact that any development being created can impact the watershed in various ways.
“The impacts of development are permanent,” Tetzloff said. “It's not like logging a forest where you can let the forest grow back. It's you're putting in hard infrastructure that is going to be there. So you want to be very careful.”
Ralley said zoning regulations are different in Hilliard, compared to other areas of the watershed and that the new development will be in the guideline of the city’s comprehensive plan.
“In most areas of the Darby, a residential development like this would be required to provide 50% of its acreage as open space, and in Hilliard, that requirement is actually 70% and so that zoning code change, I think really is designed to further many of the goals of the Darby Accord, [and] allows us to start to assemble open space as a green belt around the western side of Hilliard," Ralley said. "And that was something that was envisioned as part of our comprehensive plan update that was adopted in 2023.”
The approval for the subdivision will officially be voted on at the Hilliard City Council meeting on March 10.
