A Dublin developer is asking to rezone more than 200 acres in the city of Delaware for a massive development that will include a to-be-determined number of residences and a school east of Troy Road.
The city of Delaware Planning Commission on March 4 unanimously approved rezoning 200.59 acres from Agricultural to Mixed-Use Planned Unit Development for a development called “Price Farms.” Now the rezoning heads to Delaware City Council, which will hold a first reading March 9 and a public hearing March 23.
The rezoning requests consists of five parcels that are primarily farmland between the Lantern Chase subdivision and the Lucy Ridge development on the north side of Merrick Boulevard. But the site’s developer, Corridor Development, plans to eventually extend the development north to Hills Miller Road in the future, according to a city staff report on the rezoning request.
More than 175 acres included in the rezoning request were officially annexed into the city by a 4-1 vote of Delaware City Council on Jan. 12.
The site also includes 31 acres of the 52-acre Corridor Development and Ryan Homes donated to Delaware City Schools on the east side of Tory Road for potential future school facilities.
Because of the scale and complexity of the site, Corridor Development has not identified the number of residences or the site’s development patterns. Bill Keethler, CEO and president of Corridor Development, told planning commission members the market will dictate how the site fully develops, and that he expects it will be 10 to 12 years before the site is completely built.
About 90 acres of the site cannot exceed a density of more than 4.8 units per acre, another 90 acres cannot exceed more than 8 units per acre, and only 20 acres closest to Troy Road can have up to 20 units per acre.
However, the site currently has limited sewer capacity, and according to a service agreement passed prior to the site’s annexation, the developer is limited to 319 dwelling units until expanded sanitary sewer infrastructure is built, the staff report states.
Keethler said it will take about three years to build 319 homes.
But the rezoning resolution does outline specific building types and uses that can development within the site. The majority of the land can develop with one- or two-family dwellings. Three- or four-family dwellings and cluster single-family dwellings, such as townhomes, will be permitted on two subareas that cover more than 87 acres of the 200-acre site.
The two subareas closest to Troy Road that cover about 51 acres – including 31 acres donated to Delaware schools – can develop with school facilities or certain types of multi-family housing. They could also develop with nursing homes, residential care facilities, religious places of worship or daycares if they get conditional approval.
The concept plan shows developers would extend multiple existing roads into the development. North Houk Road would be extended north to the Tory Township line, serving as the “central spine” for the development. The stubs of Silversmith Lane and Connaught Place in the Lantern Chase subdivision would both be extended east to create new intersections with North Houk Road. The Connaught Place extension would continue east to create a new intersection with Tory Road.
The road layout in the concept plan is purely conceptual, and the location of the roadways could change as the developer continues to plan the site, a planning and zoning staff member told the commission.
As the northern side of the city continues to develop, Delaware is extending Merrick Boulevard from Cambridge Road east to Troy Road. The city and Delaware County have long planned for an east-west thoroughfare in the area where Merrick Boulevard is today, as joint city and county plans going back to the 1960s reference building such a road.
Delaware County and eastern Columbus suburbs reporter Maria DeVito can be reached at mdevito@dispatch.com and @mariadevito13.dispatch.com on Bluesky and @MariaDeVito13 on X.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Delaware planners OK rezoning for future housing east of Troy Road
Reporting by Maria DeVito, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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