This story is part of Worthington Pulse's coverage of the July 20 City Council meeting. Start with the July 20 meeting recap.
Worthington City Council voted unanimously Monday night to rezone 20.4 acres of the Boundless campus at 445 East Granville Road, clearing the way for Elford Development to build 246 apartments and two single-family homes on the southeastern portion of the former Harding Hospital site. The 7-0 vote (Ordinance 19-2026) came after more than three hours of staff presentations, public testimony from roughly two dozen speakers, and council discussion. It closes out a review process that began more than a year ago.
The rezoning changes the property from S-1, the city's special district, to a Planned Unit Development (PUD). The Municipal Planning Commission recommended approval 4-1 at its June 25 meeting, with Vice Chair Foust dissenting.
What was approved, and what wasn't
City Manager Robyn Stewart opened the item by drawing a line between two questions that have often been discussed together. The rezoning, she said, "relates to whether the use of the land is appropriate at this location", while the developer's pending application for financial incentives, an application under the city's workforce housing tax abatement program, "is a later question that is not in front of City Council this evening". Monday's vote does not commit the city to any incentives.
The approval is also a preliminary plan. The project must return to the Planning Commission for final development plan approval covering lighting, landscaping, and architectural details, along with a subdivision of the property that staff said will include a no-disturbance zone along the Rush Run ravine.
The project
Planning and Building Director R. Lee Brown outlined the plan: 246 apartments across 15 buildings (60% one-bedroom, 30% two-bedroom, 10% three-bedroom), with two-story buildings and carriage houses nearest Colonial Hills, stepping up to seven three-story buildings farther into the site. Two single-family lots on Park Overlook Drive are designed to match the neighboring streetscape.
Key commitments in the PUD:
- Workforce housing: 74 units (30%) will be rented at 80% of area median income for a minimum of 10 years, spread across all unit sizes and finished identically to market-rate units.
- No through-traffic to Colonial Hills: Access is from East Granville Road (Route 161) only. The Indianola Avenue connection is emergency-only, blocked by bollards at both ends. For the first time, that restriction is written into the PUD text itself, which Brown said is "the legal thing that stops opening of that roadway". Changing it would require going back through the Planning Commission and council.
- Public path: An 11-foot shared-use path will run from Park Overlook through the site to the roundabout and on toward Route 161. It formalizes public access that has existed informally for years and follows the city's bike and pedestrian master plan.
- Parking: 325 spaces, exceeding the 246 the code requires.
- Trees and fees: 135 trees would be removed (staff said 88 are in poor condition) and 275 planted. The developer requested a waiver of the roughly $75,600 tree replacement fee, citing its investment in the path and in underground stormwater detention; the project also pays about $62,000 into the city's special parks fund.
Elford managing partner Mike Fitzpatrick said the company held seven meetings with neighborhood stakeholders over nine months and revised the plan repeatedly: lower roof pitches, a switch to a brick base, enclosed breezeways on the buildings facing Colonial Hills, an emergency access shifted away from a neighbor's driveway, and a fence along the railroad at the Ohio Railway Museum's request.
Dr. Patrick Maynard, president and CEO of I Am Boundless, said proceeds from the land sale will fund a new autism center on the west side of its campus, replacing a program currently housed in a building next to the railroad tracks that he called "very inappropriate" for the children it serves. He said Boundless recently added 40 staff in Worthington and expects 65 to 80 more, and that the organization's newly announced affiliation with another non-profit (Merakey USA — a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that in June agreed to become Boundless's parent organization while Boundless keeps its name, local board, and leadership) "will have no impact at all on this project".
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A divided public
Public comment ran well past an hour, and speakers split roughly evenly.
An officer of Colonial Hills Advocates Together (CHAT) reported the results of a mail ballot the group conducted across roughly 830 Colonial Hills households: of 531 ballots returned, 497 opposed the project and 34 supported it. Opponents pressed several arguments: that the effective density, about 22 units per acre on the 11.25 buildable acres, is out of scale with the neighborhood; that the traffic study relied on a single-day count and questionable modeling; that the site's trees, drainage, and the Rush Creek watershed need an independent ecological review; and that the city should wait for the 600 units proposed at the Crawford Hoying development on West Wilson Bridge Road before rezoning more land. Several asked council to table the ordinance outright.
Supporters, among them renters, a resident who works in homelessness services, and a representative of the Ohio Railway Museum (the project's longest-bordering neighbor), pointed to the region's housing shortage, the scarcity of options for seniors and young workers in Worthington, and the concessions already won by the neighborhood. One speaker noted that central Ohio needs 14,000 to 19,000 new homes a year to keep pace with job growth and has been building about half that.
Council's answers on wetlands, schools, and traffic
Before the vote, council members put the most common objections to staff:
- Wetlands: Director of Service and Engineering John Moorehead said the National Wetland Inventory shows no wetlands on the development site, and that federal Clean Water Act permitting, if needed, happens at the construction stage, not at zoning.
- Schools: Staff said Worthington Schools reviewed the proposal and concluded it was unlikely to cause enrollment challenges. Using the district's own multiplier of 0.21 students per apartment, the development would add about 52 students across all grade levels, roughly four per grade. The Heights at Worthington Place, with 193 units, currently houses 10 students.
- Traffic: Moorehead's earlier presentation (the study itself is covered in detail here) concluded the development adds 0.1 seconds of average delay at the Route 161/Proprietors Road intersection at peak hours, and that retiming the signal, which he said the city should do anyway, would improve the intersection from a level of service E to C.
Council members then explained their votes, several at personal length. Council Member Maria Ramirez, a Colonial Hills resident of nearly 24 years with a background in architecture and urban planning, said the cul-de-sac design reflects choices the neighborhood itself made: no vehicle connection, no visual connection, and single-family homes closing the Park Overlook edge. "We get the benefits, we don't have to deal with the traffic, and there's minimized change in our neighborhood", she said, comparing the proposal's density favorably to the Hartford on the Green's 28 units per acre. Council President Rachael Dorothy, also a Colonial Hills resident, described renting in the neighborhood's 1950s-era condo apartments after a divorce so her son could stay in his school.
President Pro Tem Rebecca Herman, after noting the "severe crisis of homelessness", housing unaffordability, and the demand at the Worthington Resource Pantry (all of which affect children and families in the community) addressed the opponents directly.
"I'm hearing you, and I've heard you, and I am listening. I just don't necessarily agree."
The roll call passed 7-0.
One loose end tied up
Later in the meeting, council formally corrected the Northeast Area Plan text that opponents had cited throughout the process. A sentence in the 2024 plan described the southern Boundless parcel as "low density residential," conflicting with the plan's maps, which showed it simply as residential. Brown said a resident flagged the discrepancy at the plan's July 2024 adoption meeting, a motion to fix it was made and seconded, "and it was never caught to change. The correction passed by voice vote.
What's next
- Elford returns to the Municipal Planning Commission with a final development plan and subdivision application.
- The workforce-housing tax abatement request comes to council separately at a future date.
- Council is in recess for August; its next regular meeting is September 8.
This is one of 2 Worthington Pulse stories from the July 20 meeting recap.