“What happens if Yellow Springs ever becomes a city?”

It’s a question that many villagers have asked over the decades as our local population has fluctuated, our small-town economy has become ever more service- and tourism-based and as new housing developments have cropped up.

Hometown hero Aamil Wagner, #59 and offensive tackle for Notre Dame brought out scores of Yellow Springers to watch him play in the College Football National Championship game against The Ohio State University on Monday, Jan. 20.

Should Woda Cooper successfully be awarded the $15 million in low-income housing tax credits from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency to build a low-income housing development, the district would have $689,000 to turn the Joneses’ cornfield into playable soccer fields.

“Climate migration is nothing new. The International Displacement Monitoring Centre estimates that an annual average of 21.5 million people were forcibly displaced each year by weather-related events — such as floods, storms, wildfires and droughts — between 2008 and 2016.”

At the center of the fraught discussion was the ongoing, intergovernmental initiative to build a 30- to 50-unit low-income housing development on the district-owned Morgan soccer fields.

In the coming months, lifelong villager and personal trainer Kyle Truitt is resolving to roll out more weekly fitness classes, train more local athletes, build his ever-growing clientele and, as always, keep his hometown healthy and moving — all this in a new space.

As was discussed at Monday’s Village Council meeting, one matter still stands in the way of Columbus-based development company Woda Cooper LLC applying for the $15 million in low-income tax credits: getting site control of the Morgan Fields from the school district.

All three tracts are zoned agricultural and are beyond Yellow Springs’ urban service boundary — that is, beyond the reach of municipal utilities. They are subject to the provisions of Miami Township’s zoning regulations, which require minimum lots of three acres and lot frontage of 300 continuous feet. 

2024’s top stories in Yellow Springs: Low-income housing dominates local discourse, new apartments coming to Antioch College, locals protest firing at Wellness Center, March homicide claims local life and village home raided for marijuana.

Several new businesses and organizations cropped up in Yellow Springs in 2024; several hit major milestones and others transitioned and expanded.