This story is part of Worthington Pulse's coverage of the July 6 joint City Council and Municipal Planning Commission session.
When Council Member Joy Dong looked at the five opportunity areas mapped out in Worthington's draft comprehensive plan, one part of the city was missing entirely. West Worthington and Linworth, the neighborhoods on the far side of the Olentangy River, had no dedicated section at all. Her colleagues largely agreed, and by the end of a wide-ranging discussion at the July 6 joint session with the Municipal Planning Commission, city staff and the plan's consultants had committed to writing one in before the document goes to a formal adoption vote.
A gap in the map
Dong raised the issue right after planning NEXT consultant Michael Curtis finished walking through the plan's five opportunity areas: Wilson Bridge, North High Street, South High Street, Old Worthington, and Forge Fields. None of them touch the city's west side. "I heard consistently that West Worthington often felt overlooked, and I feel that this plan kind of feeds into that bias a little bit," Dong said, noting the plan is meant to guide the city for the next 20 years. She said the city had received an email before the meeting about development pressure building near Linworth, and pointed to a sidewalk gap between West Wilson Bridge Road and Linworth (sidewalks the city doesn't even own) as an example of a connection that could tie west-side residents into the growing Wilson Bridge corridor and the bike path along Olentangy River Road.
City Manager Robyn Stewart said the omission wasn't really an oversight so much as a byproduct of how the plan's five opportunity areas got chosen in the first place: they came from wherever the first round of public engagement generated the most comments and energy. West Worthington isn't undefined in the plan: it already carries a designation on the plan's citywide land-use map called a "corridor transition area," which allows mixed use and office as the primary uses and residential as secondary, at building heights of one to four stories, Planning & Building Director Lee Brown later added. It just hadn't been developed into its own detailed opportunity area the way the other five had. Stewart said staff would take direction from council and the Planning Commission if they wanted a deeper look.
Dong pushed back on using public comment volume alone as the bar for what gets attention. "I do think we need to do our due diligence as city leaders to think a little bit further," she said, asking whether the area's absence from the record so far meant it wasn't a priority, or just that it hadn't been recognized as one yet.
Not everyone read the gap the same way
Council Member Glen Pratt offered the discussion's clearest dissent, though a narrow one. He said he wasn't troubled that West Worthington lacked its own opportunity area, since the neighborhood is already built out as residential and there isn't much land left to develop. But he drew a distinction: connectivity was a different story. "I heard a lot of comments during the campaign that they felt excluded, disconnected," he said, arguing the city should do what it can with sidewalks and other connections to make west-side residents feel more tied to the rest of Worthington.
Rebecca Hermann, Kathy Holcombe, Amy Lloyd, and Maria Ramirez each argued the area belonged in the document as more than a land-use footnote. Hermann noted the area "did just have a major fire out there" (a reference to the 2025 blaze that destroyed a Linworth strip mall) and said the plan should at least acknowledge, near its opening, that the area is part of Worthington's story. Holcombe said the neighborhood has felt overlooked for years: "There seems to be this dividing line as soon as you cross over the river that those people are not included, and they say it".
Lloyd argued the area has already seen real change worth planning around: a rebuilt UDF, a strip center on the site of a former Volvo dealership, and redevelopment potential at the site of the fire (the Linworth Center, now being renovated after the 2025 blaze). She also pointed east toward the BP station near where the old IGA grocery store used to sit, and to a proposal already before the city for roughly 500 housing units directly across from Brookside Estates near McVeigh Boulevard, plus reports of another 500-unit proposal nearby in the Dublin school district that she said she couldn't speak to in detail. More rooftops within walking distance, she said, "is very important to businesses" and changes what's viable along the corridor. Ramirez said she'd heard the same sense of disconnection directly from residents and cyclists, and tied it to the city's broader economic development goals: easier access into the city, she said, means people actually use its businesses.
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Fixing the entryways
The conversation broadened from Linworth specifically into how Worthington announces itself at its edges. Holcombe raised beautifying the Wilson Bridge Road bridge over Route 161 ("I have been on this for a long time"), and colleagues at the table backed the idea. One meeting participant took the point further, describing Worthington's entrances as underwhelming: arriving from the north means "coming down a nine-lane freeway next to McDonald's and Kroger," with little to mark the city's actual boundary. The same participant floated ideas like landscaped medians on High Street and distinctive paving at High Street and Route 161, treating the Route 161 bridge itself as a gateway landmark, while acknowledging it would mean more maintenance work for city crews. Consultant Jamie Greene agreed the plan should say more about how these arrival points are treated, calling architecture and street design more powerful than any welcome sign.
What gets added, and how
Returning to Linworth, Greene asked council directly whether the sentiment in the room was to put West Worthington on the same footing as the plan's other opportunity areas: its own named section with specific recommendations, not just a passing mention. Holcombe answered without hesitation: "I personally think so, because it is our city. And so we are leaving it out".
Brown explained why the area was set aside from the start: when the community committee originally sorted the city into opportunity areas, West Worthington had limited developable land and a jurisdictional patchwork (bordering two townships and the city of Columbus) that made it harder to treat like the other five. Both Brown and Greene were careful to note that adding the section wouldn't change the land use already shown on the public draft map; it would add detail on connectivity, streetscape, and economic development within a designation that's already been public.
That left the logistics. The Planning Commission is scheduled to take public comment on the draft July 23, and Greene questioned how much new work could be added without sending it back through the community committee process the other five opportunity areas went through. Stewart confirmed staff and the consulting team would draft language based on comments already collected plus what was said at the meeting, without a new round of community engagement. Council Member Pete Bucher said he was comfortable with that approach, noting the area isn't a large piece of the city and residents would still have the upcoming public hearings to weigh in. Dong offered to help close the data gap, recalling that she and possibly others had placed feedback stickies over the west side during the plan's earlier public mapping exercises and said she'd look for any usable data from those rounds.
If you have friends or colleagues that live in the area and want to have their voice heard, please forward them this article and encourage them to attend the July 23 meeting, where the planning commission will take public comment!
This is one of three Worthington Pulse stories from the July 6 meeting. Read the others:
- Worthington's 20-Year Comprehensive Plan Draft Heads to Public Hearings — Here's What It Recommends
- Wilson Bridge Corridor Could See 10-Story Buildings — And a Debate Over What Counts as "Historic"
Or start with the July 6 meeting recap.