Around 184 acres — highlighted here in green — west of Village limits along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road are likely going up for auction before the end of 2024, according to Tecumseh Land Trust Executive Director Michele Burns. The local conservation nonprofit is set to begin a fundraising campaign to purchase the land and place it under a protective conservation easement. (Map data courtesy of Tecumseh Land Trust)
Tecumseh Land Trust seeks protection on 184 acres
- Published: September 23, 2024
Swaths of farmland just beyond the western reaches of Village limits are likely going up for sale before the end of the year.
So said Michele Burns, executive director of local conservation nonprofit Tecumseh Land Trust, or TLT, at the Monday, Sept. 16, Village Council meeting.
After delivering her organization’s annual report, Burns told Council members that 184 acres along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road may soon go up for auction to the highest bidder — and that TLT intends to purchase that land or work with a buyer to protect it from future development.
Presently, all 184 acres are zoned agricultural and are outside the Village’s urban service boundary; in addition to crop fields, the land contains around 1,800 feet of the Jacoby Creek — a source for the village’s drinking water — as well 16 acres of wooded area.
The land is owned by David Welch, who just last month auctioned off two separate 20.6-acre tracts of land along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road, as well as two 19.9-acre tracts on West Jackson Road in Clark County. As Burns noted, those properties were sold at $14,000 per acre to parties that intend to resell the farms as well as land along the roadside frontage for single-family homes.
A similar fate may befall the other 184 acres should they go up for auction before the year’s end, Burns said at Monday’s Council meeting.
“There’s quite a potential for development here,” she said. “We don’t know what the outcome is going to be, but all options are on the table.”
By Burns’ estimates, and under the zoning provisions of Miami Township, 14–17 lots of 3–10 acres each could be carved out of the 184 acres, should they be purchased by a developer — an outcome Burns hopes to avoid. As she suggested, development of any quantity may lead to harmful runoff entering the Jacoby Creek, as well the “prime soil” underneath undergoing irrevocable harm.
By establishing conservation easements ahead of an auction — which Burns said could cost up to $1.5 million — the land would remain undeveloped in perpetuity.
To that end, Burns said TLT will soon launch a fundraising campaign, and some money has already been committed to the trust. As the News reported last month, the Miami Township Board of Trustees voted to commit $113,000 for the possible conservation of the 184 acres. Additionally, Burns said some local residents have already made individual donations to the cause.
Council will decide in upcoming meetings whether to commit money from the Village greenspace fund, which presently has more than $200,000 in it — money that hasn’t been touched in some time, and that the county auditor has recommended should be transferred into the Village’s general fund.
“If there was ever a time to have a greenspace fund, it’s now,” Burns beseeched Council. “TLT is happy to work with the Village in terms of making that fund acceptable to the auditor.”
This isn’t the first time TLT has asked for municipal support. Similar land preservation campaigns and villagewide efforts took place in 1999, when TLT and villagers raised $1.2 million to save the 940-acre Whitehall Farm from development, and again in 2017, when local nonprofit Community Solutions — later dubbed Agraria — bought 128 acres of the Arnovitz family farm for $655,000.
In addition to still holding conservation easements on those properties, TLT holds easements on 227 other properties — totaling over 37,000 acres and 62 miles of waterways — in Greene and Clark counties. Several thousand of those protected acres surround Yellow Springs, forming what is known as the village’s “greenbelt.”
Many more thousands of acres of farmland around the village have been identified as “priority areas” by the Village Comprehensive Land Use Plan. It reads, in part: “the Village should continue to support farmland preservation and conservation efforts, particularly in the northwest quadrants of Miami Township.”
The News will continue to follow TLT and the Village’s joint efforts to preserve the 184-acre Welch farm as more information is available. Additionally, the News will provide further coverage of the Monday, Sept. 16, Village Council meeting in next week’s paper. The next Village Council meeting is Monday, Oct. 7, at 6 p.m. in the John Bryan Community Center.
Contact: rdixon@ysnews.com
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