Present at the Monday, Oct. 21 regular Village Council meeting were, from left, Council members Trish Gustafson, Brian Housh, Carmen Brown, Gavin DeVore Leonard and Kevin Stokes, as well as Village Manager Johnnie Burns. (Video still)
Village Council rezones Morgan Fields to high-density residential
- Published: October 31, 2024
At the most recent Village Council meeting, Monday, Oct. 21, Council voted to rezone 3.6 school-district-owned acres — known locally as the Morgan soccer fields — from R-A, or low-density residential, to R-C, or high-density residential.
The move to rezone the land was the latest step in the year-long effort to one day erect a 50-unit, low-income housing development on the land — colloquially dubbed by Village and district bodies as the LIHTC, or low-income housing tax credit, project.
At Monday’s meeting, Council members were split on the vote to rezone Morgan Fields. Council members Kevin Stokes, Gavin DeVore Leonard and Brian Housh voted affirmatively; Trish Gustafson voted “no,” and Carmen Brown abstained.
While the ordinance before Council at Monday’s meeting solely regarded the zoning status of the land, discussion among Council members — as well as public comments from community members — leading up to the vote centered mostly on the feasibility and timeline of the LIHTC project as a whole.
“I am in support of this project, just not in support of the location,” Gustafson. “Staff has indicated that the timeline is seemingly impossible — we keep spending money and staff time when this doesn’t seem very likely.”
Village Manager Johnnie Burns later pointed out that the Village has thus far spent $18,938 in legal fees and feasibility studies for the LIHTC project — money that came from the Village’s affordable housing fund, which largely garners funds from taxes on transient guest lodgings in Yellow Springs.
In a memo to Council before Monday’s meeting, Brown preempted Gustafson’s concerns when she also referenced a challenging timeline still ahead. Notable among those challenges is the Village’s goal of purchasing the land from the school district by Dec. 1, and the eventual culmination of submitting a final tax credit application to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency by Sept. 18, 2025, that, if successful, would grant the developer — as well as future builders and investors in the project — $15 million in subsidies to construct the low-income development.
As Brown wrote in her memo, she believes that “it is not possible” to pursue the project at “this time.”
Housh and DeVore Leonard maintained their support for the project and advocated for continuing the municipal momentum, despite their colleagues’ concerns.
“The pros outweigh the cons,” DeVore Leonard said. “I understand the desire to not make a hard decision, but I still want to go forward.”
Before ultimately voting “yes,” on the rezoning ordinance, Council President Stokes suggested tabling the vote for a future meeting; his motion to do so was not seconded, and the decision to rezone remained before the group.
Later in the discussion, Stokes and Gustafson indicated that the ongoing efforts to move the LIHTC project forward may come at the expense of the school district substitute levy that is set to appear on the upcoming Nov. 5 ballot — a levy that, if passed, would combine and continue for 10 years annual revenue already being collected by two school levies passed previously.
“More and more residents are coming forward and are saying [the LIHTC project] is going to impact their vote on the school levy,” Gustafson. “I think that is an exceptional concern we need to take very seriously.”
Stokes later said: “I have no relationship with the school board, but if I were them, with this levy approaching, I would not be entangling myself with this at this time. So, while I am torn, we still have commitments to take this as far as we can.”
Upcoming LIHTC steps
With the Morgan Fields rezoned, a dozen dominoes have to fall at the right time in the right place between now and the Sept. 18, 2025, final low-income housing tax credit application.
Per a memo from Village staff penned prior to Monday’s Council meeting, the next step is finalizing and issuing out a request for proposals for a community housing development organization that, if chosen by the Village, would work alongside local affordable housing nonprofit YS Home, Inc. to apply for the subsides and eventually build the housing complex.
Once the request for proposals is finalized and issued, applicants will have until Nov. 22 to submit their proposal.
Happening now are the ongoing efforts to disencumber the Morgan Fields from their ties to financial stakeholders. More on those encumbrances can be read in previous issues of the News. The Village’s memo states that staff aims to have completed due diligence on the property and sufficiently unentangled it, with the goal of entering into a purchase-sale agreement with the school district by Nov. 4 — the date of the next Village Council meeting. The sale price of the soccer fields is still to be determined.
At the same time, the school board is looking for suitable replacement land for the soccer fields the district would sell to the Village. Per legislation the school board previously passed, the district can only sell the land if replacement soccer fields were secured.
According to Manager Burns, one local construction company quoted the Village around $400,000 to turn a 3.6-acre cornfield into a soccer field. Burns noted that this company — Fillmore Construction of Leesburg, Ohio — said they would charge an extra $75,000 to build roadway access to the proposed soccer field construction site.
By the end of November, the Village aims to enter into a purchase sale-agreement with a developer — one selected from a pool of applicants that responded to the request for proposals.
Jan. 3, 2025, is the deadline for the Village and developer to submit a pre-application to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, and the LIHTC proposal application deadline is Feb. 27.
The next Village Council meeting is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 4, at 6 p.m., in the John Bryan Community Center.
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