Hello Worthington! The city has published the full draft of its new comprehensive plan, the document that will guide land use, development, streets, housing, and city spending priorities for the next 10 to 15 years. It is Worthington's first full comprehensive plan update since 2005, and it is the product of the two-year Worthington Together process. Roughly 2,000 people participated across its three public engagement rounds, a count the consulting team shared when the draft got its first full airing before City Council and the Municipal Planning Commission on July 6.
The draft runs 190 pages. This special edition walks through what is in it, with three companion articles that go deeper on the parts residents ask about most. Two dates matter first:
- Thursday, July 23 — City staff and the Municipal Planning Commission accept public comments on the draft plan. Check the city calendar for time and location.
- September 24 — The draft returns to the Municipal Planning Commission for further consideration, with a City Council public comment round and an adoption vote expected in the fall.
The full draft is available as a PDF from worthingtontogether.org, with supporting materials on the Community Review page. Page references below use the printed page numbers in that document, and each one links directly to its page of the PDF.
What the plan is, and what it isn't
The draft is organized around ten guiding principles and fifteen strategic priorities spread across five topic chapters: land use and character, economic vitality, mobility and connectivity, housing and neighborhoods, and environment and resiliency. The priorities are supported by 48 action items, a count the consultants gave council on July 6 (the draft document itself still shows a placeholder where that number goes).
Its centerpiece is a Future Land Use and Character Map that sorts the city into 13 character types, each defined by intended building scale, housing types, and how buildings meet the street. The plan is not a zoning map, does not mandate development on private property, and does not guarantee any recommendation gets built. It becomes the touchstone for evaluating development proposals, and the foundation for its own biggest recommendation: a full rewrite of the city's zoning code.
Why this plan reads differently than most
Worthington has been fully built out for nearly half a century. The draft states it plainly: planning here "is not about accommodating growth at the edges but about managing reinvestment, change, and quality within an established community" (p. 14). Only about 63 acres of undeveloped land remain in the entire city (p. 21).
That constraint drives everything else. The plan concentrates change in five mapped "opportunity areas" (Wilson Bridge, North High, Old Worthington, South High, and the Northeast Area) while designating the large majority of the city's residential neighborhoods to keep their existing character. The large-lot neighborhoods west of the Olentangy, for example, are described as an established pattern "not intended to change" (p. 26).
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Where change is planned: the five opportunity areas
The opportunity areas chapter names specific streets, sites, and building heights. Wilson Bridge is positioned as the city's "primary economic engine," with a core near the former mall site and I-270 where buildings of 6 to 10 stories are contemplated, the greatest height anywhere in the city. North High carries the plan's vision for the 1033 High Street property, including a "Tucker Creek Park and Preserve" concept, alongside an acknowledgment that the site's rezoning fight "remains subject to ongoing litigation." Old Worthington's direction is continuity. South High faces new pressure from Columbus's rezoning across the boundary line. The Northeast Area stays employment-first, with a specific commitment nearby residents will notice: no new vehicular connections to Indianola Avenue.
The financial tension between residential and commercial properties
Municipal income taxes provide about 72 percent of the city's revenue, and 93 percent of Worthington residents work outside the city. Because Ohio assesses income tax where a person works, not where they live, the draft concludes that residential land "does not pay its own way" (p. 54). A fiscal study commissioned for the plan found that every housing type costs the city more in services than it returns, while Class A office space nets roughly $54,000 per acre per year (pp. 56-57). Meanwhile the city's office stock is aging, with a 21.7 percent vacancy rate and less than 1 percent of it built in this century (p. 52). This math explains why the plan leans so consistently toward employment-focused redevelopment, and it is the root of the tension residents feel between preserving what Worthington is and paying for what it needs.
Housing: 2,000 units of demand, 1,300 as the target
The 2024 Housing Needs Assessment found demand for up to 2,000 units, nearly half of them needing to be affordable. The draft pairs that with two blunt constraints: the city does not have the land to build 2,000 units in the short term, and new construction under $200,000 is not financially feasible (p. 115). City Council set the working target of 1,300 units in December. The chapter directs larger multifamily projects to the five opportunity areas, and supports "missing middle" types (duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, and accessory dwelling units) more broadly, using design standards instead of density caps. Exactly where those types could appear is bounded by the land use map, and it is a fair question to raise on July 23.
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A 1971 zoning code gets a full rewrite
The single action with the most direct reach into every property in the city: the plan calls for a coordinated rewrite of the Planning and Zoning Code, which was originally adopted in 1971 and has only been amended piecemeal since (p. 39). A task force drawing from city staff, the Planning Commission, the Architectural Review Board, the Board of Zoning Appeals, and community representatives would audit the current code first. The rewrite's stated agenda includes standards for small-scale housing types "in appropriate locations," compatibility standards so infill construction fits the scale of its block, parking flexibility, and buffering where commercial redevelopment abuts neighborhoods (p. 42).
The plan also sets a rehabilitation-over-demolition preference for historic buildings, including those outside the formal Architectural Review District, and proposes a historic resources survey to document older structures citywide (pp. 40-41).
Streets: a design target for every road in the city
The mobility chapter replaces the 2005 Thoroughfare Plan with a new classification system: 13 street design profiles that specify lane widths, target speeds, sidewalks, bike accommodations, and crossings for every street in the city (pp. 82-98). Target design speeds run 25-35 mph, with most residential and Old Worthington streets at 25. Once adopted into city code, these profiles will drive right-of-way, setback, and access decisions citywide. Residents curious what the plan contemplates for their own street can find the profiles, with named examples, on printed pages 82-98 of the draft.
The chapter's safety analysis flags the intersections of High Street and Worthington-Galena Road, High Street and Wilson Bridge Road, and Schrock and Huntley Roads as the city's highest crash locations from 2019-2023 (p. 76). The plan folds safety improvements into routine repaving rather than standalone projects, endorses low-cost "quick build" pilots (paint, posts, temporary curb extensions) to test changes before committing to them (pp. 106-107), and maps sidewalk gaps concentrated in the southern and southeastern neighborhoods (p. 77).
Two forward-looking notes: High Street and the Route 161 corridor are flagged for higher-capacity transit preparation, "including potentially Bus Rapid Transit" (p. 110), and while the plan maps priority walking and biking corridors across most of the city, it explicitly defers the choice of what gets built on them (protected bike lanes, paths, or signed routes) to a future study (p. 104).
Trees, parks, and the Olentangy
The environment chapter's most concrete proposal: City Council would set a formal tree-canopy target for the city, reviewed every five years, with development standards to match, including a fee-in-lieu option for sites that cannot fit required canopy and a possible pre-removal approval requirement for "heritage trees" on private property (pp. 132-133). The plan also calls for the city's first coordinating sustainability plan with measurable targets (pp. 129-130); Worthington holds Platinum status in MORPC's Sustainable 2050 program, the region's highest tier, but has no unified plan behind its initiatives (p. 127).
The Parks and Recreation Master Plan, last updated in 2017, would be redone. The city's 255 acres across 14 parks exceeds national benchmarks, but park-access gaps sit along the North High corridor, eastern Worthington Estates, and the Northeast Area (p. 126). Public input pushed for more access to the Olentangy River and Rush Run: watercraft drop-ins, trail connections, and naturalized stream corridors (p. 126).
A draft with visible seams
This is a working draft, and the review process has already started reshaping it:
- There is no Implementation chapter yet. The table of contents promises one, but the document ends after the opportunity areas section (p. 184). The consultants described its intended contents to council on July 6: an annual progress report on the 48 action items and a prioritization matrix assigning timeframes and lead departments to each.
- West Worthington and Linworth are getting written in. The draft includes no opportunity area or dedicated treatment for the city's west side. Council flagged the omission on July 6, and staff and the consulting team committed to adding it before adoption.
- Some numbers are placeholders or disagree with each other. The Round 3 engagement section still reads "XX participants shared XX comments" (p. 11). The draft cites the city's tree canopy as both 26 percent (from a 2022 study, p. 126) and 38 percent (from a 2021 assessment, pp. 132-133), a gap that matters because the plan proposes building a regulatory canopy target from the 38 percent baseline. The city's population appears as both 14,804 and 14,200 (pp. 15-16).
Items like these are what the public review period exists to catch.
How to weigh in
- Read the draft, or just the chapters that touch your street, at worthingtontogether.org/community-review. The full PDF is here.
- Thursday, July 23 — City staff and the Municipal Planning Commission accept public comments on the draft plan. Check the city calendar for time and location.
- September 24 — The plan returns to the Municipal Planning Commission, with council public comment and an adoption vote expected in the fall.
Thanks for reading this special edition. The Pulse's ongoing coverage of the comprehensive plan process is collected under the Worthington Together tag.