Following presentations from three Ohio communities, panelists engaged in detailed discussions about the challenges and strategies for creating and maintaining quality places, offering practical insights for Worthington's comprehensive planning process.
Planning Culture Makes the Difference
When asked about how planning enables quality of place, Kelly Dannenfelser of Franklin credited strong leadership from their first planning director, who introduced traditional neighborhood development and new urbanism principles to the community in the late 1990s.
"He knew he needed to educate the planning commissioners and the design professionals and the elected officials in this new way, which was really an old way that really stands the test of time—how to create places that matter with distinctive character," Dannenfelser explained.
This led to mobile workshops bringing home best practices, ultimately resulting in Franklin's 2004 land use plan with defined character areas and an urban growth boundary identifying what should be protected during development.
"It's a balance of preserving the past and the places that really matter, but allowing for new growth too," she noted. "Planning has always been the basis for planning for growth and community input."
Letty Schamp from Hilliard emphasized the practical importance: "If you don't plan for anything, you will get whatever the developer wants to give you, which typically is something that will generate as much revenue for the developer and may not necessarily give what you want as a community."
She stressed the importance of maps with specific lines: "No new trail is ever gonna be built if you don't put a line on a map." While this can make people uneasy, it's essential for ensuring important connections get made.
Shifting Street Design Philosophy
Schamp described a fundamental culture shift in how communities think about streets. "I think we have seen a huge culture shift of switching from designing our streets specifically for cars and to move cars efficiently through them, because if that's what you design for, that is what you will get."
She explained how the engineering concept of "level of service" grades streets on moving cars efficiently during peak hours, often resulting in overbuilt roads. "If we only build our streets to move cars during one hour of the day as efficiently as possible and give it a grade of like a B, that's actually horrible. You're overbuilding and you're gonna get higher speeds and more traffic."
"It hasn't been that long ago that an engineer making that statement would have been crazy talk," moderator Jamie Green observed.
"Crazy talk, right," Letty agreed, explaining that being intentional about who streets serve—people or cars—sometimes means accepting a couple hours of slow traffic in exchange for comfortable spaces the rest of the day.
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Navigating Conflict and Change
When asked about navigating conflict over quality of place initiatives, Letty shared a failed street art proposal. Her team proposed narrowing vehicle lanes and creating community-designed street art between the curb and lane on a road entering downtown. "Thinking that this would be like really, people would embrace it, and it was the complete opposite. Everybody hated it."
The lesson? "We work for the people of our community," she said, adding that the city killed the idea, though it might return elsewhere someday. "There's always gonna be resistance to change, right? So you sometimes just have to take it in baby steps and if you think you have a great idea and you realize that you don't, step back, pivot, and maybe it can emerge somewhere else."
Dannenfelser described resistance from developers when Franklin adopted detailed development standards. Developers couldn't simply reuse site plans from other communities—they had to get creative to meet the standards. "Now our common applicants, they're used to it, they know it, that's what they bring forward the first time. Occasionally there's an out of town developer that comes in that wants to use a generic plan and they just have to go through the process."
The Drive-Through Compromise
Herb Koehler of Granville shared how his community evolved its stance on chain restaurants and drive-throughs. In the 1990s, when some chain restaurants with drive-throughs entered Granville, "the public was not happy with that, so unhappy with it that they ran, basically ran the entire council out of office."
For decades afterward, Granville was known as "a town that doesn't do drive-throughs." But COVID and the Intel announcement changed the calculus. "Our council really saw that development was coming and we could either embrace it and make it ours or we could try to fight against it."
Working with a developer who had owned property for 10 years, they developed a compromise around "pickup windows" for online orders versus traditional drive-through windows. "We changed our code, we added definition, we added process in order to allow that to happen and now we have just a gorgeous small row of commercial business that includes a Chipotle."
"It has not brought with it the concerns that a lot of the community would have had. Lines of traffic, a lot of emissions, a lot of unsavory folks lingering around. It's really beautiful," Koehler noted.
Green highlighted the lesson: "You and your council were willing to stand the ground on what was important long term not what was the immediate sort of transaction that you could have had."
Economic Impact of Quality of Place
Dannenfelser reported that Williamson County, where Franklin is located, is home to over a quarter of 5,000 companies, with over 50 national and international corporate headquarters. Franklin ranks fifth in the US for net new business establishments post-pandemic.
"We've widely become a place that is recognized for outstanding quality of life and an attractive place to build a business and to raise a family," she explained. Franklin's land use plan "supports that economy and there is a flight to quality and an emphasis on live work and play all happening in the same place."
The changing trends show people meeting at parks in town centers and strolling to restaurants rather than meeting at specific restaurants. "Companies don't want to be in standalone office buildings where you must get in a car to drive to lunch somewhere. They really want to be part of something bigger."
Schamp described how Hilliard lost a major business to Grandview Yard "because their employees didn't wanna be in an office park anymore." This drove recognition that mixed-use developments are essential.
She explained Ohio's income tax structure: "Most of your property taxes goes to the schools, which is wonderful. But if you want trails, if you want amenities, if you want a plethora of things like parks community facilities, you have to have the income tax to be able to do that."
Hilliard has embraced tech-flex light manufacturing, including ADS pipe company's innovative R&D facility. "Every community has to figure out how can they bring in the businesses and the type of businesses that they want to be able to give them the opportunity to provide the amenities that their community wants."
Green summarized the broader trend: "We've done a terrific job of homogenizing our physical environment across the country and it turns out that the market preferences now are favoring places that have something unique, something authentic. So if you're gonna be competitive, whether it's attracting knowledge economy workers or empty nesters, the amenities and the quality of place have never been more important."
Working with Developers
When addressing the challenge of balancing developer and community desires, Schamp explained the fundamental dynamic: developers first consult staff, who offer guidance on what might be successful. However, she noted that developers ultimately control the decision, stating, "Ultimately, they're the owners of the land and they have a right to be heard for rezoning applications. So they can take our advice or not". Dannenfelser added that her team manages this balance by working with developers to reduce requests for modifications to design standards to the bare minimum the developer can accept.
Koehler emphasized that Granville's best relationships are with flexible developers. Some arrive with "fully baked" plans that may fit the space but not the code. The community works to build relationships helping developers understand local expectations.
Green noted that developers generally prefer clarity: "They have a speed to market, time is money kind of thing. And they wanna be in communities where what they deliver is lined up with what you want. They typically don't want to have to fight what you're doing and that's why I think planning and the standards are so important because it puts the staff in a much better position to have clear policy."
Final Advice for Worthington
Koehler advised: "Bend but don't break. You can't be all things to everybody." He noted how people often move to small towns seeking simpler life and specific amenities, then want to bring all the amenities from where they left. "We can bend it like in my Chipotle example, but once you start breaking it can get out of control."
Dannenfelser advised Worthington to strategically embrace change, noting, "Don't be afraid of some change, especially if you've got some areas that are probably not quite living up to their potential". She encouraged the community to "take it in baby steps" while cherishing existing assets like the downtown and Olentangy Trail. Dannenfelser also urged the city to consider more diverse housing choices beyond single-family homes, such as "lock and leaves," to accommodate residents who no longer want the maintenance of a large yard. These options would "augment" the community without detracting from its existing character.
Schamp countered the common fear that apartments generate significant traffic, explaining that often, the opposite is true: "Lots of times, if you build apartments around other things, you actually have less traffic". She clarified that the major traffic issues are typically caused by uses where everyone arrives simultaneously in a short period, such as schools during drop-off. Schamp concluded that the community should not be afraid of density, noting, "That's our experience in Hilliard is there's hesitancy about apartments, but they generally do not result in what everybody is fearful of"
Green concluded with a key lesson on intentionality, drawn from Franklin's success: "You can create things if you're intentional that people will care about sometime in the future, like you care about historic downtown". He challenged the notion that modern building cannot inspire love, stating, "That's not true". Instead, he stressed that a commitment to quality—through "planning and design standards and bending but not breaking"—is what matters in building a beloved environment.
The discussion demonstrated that while each community faces unique circumstances, common principles of intentionality, clear standards, flexibility within limits, and long-term thinking enable communities to maintain and enhance quality of place.