As part of the Worthington Together comprehensive planning process, three communities presented their experiences creating and maintaining distinctive places at the October 1, 2025 speaker series focused on quality of place.
Granville: Planning Since 1805
Herb Koehler, Village Manager of Granville, described how planning has been embedded in the community since its founding. "We were actually founded as a planned village in 1805. It's in the historic record, it's on our historic markers," Koehler explained.
The village of approximately 3,600 residents (excluding Denison University's 2,500 students) was modeled after Granville, Massachusetts, with a New England village design featuring small private yards, traditional architecture, mixed use at its core, centralized civic buildings, and communal life.
Koehler noted interesting demographics: one-third of residents are over 65, and another third are 18 or younger, with the remainder in between. This demographic profile will inform their upcoming comprehensive planning effort this winter.
The community enjoys a strong relationship with Denison University as a key partner, bringing diversity in people, thought, age, and backgrounds. Granville purchased and renovated the historic Bryn Du Mansion about 23 years ago, transforming it into a community event center.
"Planning is in our blood," Koehler emphasized, explaining how the founders' vision continues to guide decision-making for council, boards, commissions, and committees.
Franklin, Tennessee: Progressive Preservation
Kelly Dannenfelser, Assistant Director of Long Range Planning and Historic Preservation for Franklin, Tennessee, shared how her community has managed dramatic growth while preserving its historic character.
Founded in 1799, Franklin remained just under two square miles until the 1960s when growth began. The city has since expanded to 42 square miles and added approximately 20,000 people per decade for the past three decades—equivalent to adding an entire Worthington every ten years. Today, Franklin has 92,000 residents with a median household income of $115,000.
The city has earned recognition as Best Southern Town by Garden and Gun Magazine, All American City by the National Civic League, and most recently was listed first among the 11 best downtowns in the southern United States.
Franklin's intentional approach began in the late 1990s when Planning Director Bob Martin attended a conference in Seaside, Florida, and brought back new urbanism principles. This led to mobile workshops, educational efforts for planning commissioners and elected officials, and ultimately the 2004 land use plan defining character areas across the city.
"Franklin is very progressive in that way. It's a yes-and community," Dannenfelser explained. The community feels strongly connected to the historic public square, which creates pride and economic success. But planning allows for both preservation and new growth.
Franklin also preserves significant Civil War history, including the Battle of Franklin from 1864, with ongoing efforts to preserve and reclaim battlefield land. The largest privately held Confederate cemetery in the country is located in Franklin.
The city has seven historic districts and 18 city parks, including a former Tennessee walking horse farm now open to the public for photography and walks.
New developments like West Haven demonstrate Franklin's commitment to character in new places, featuring a variety of housing types from single-family homes to multiplexes centered around open space with a mixed-use town center designed for walkability.
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Hilliard: Transformation of a Suburban Community
Letty Schamp, City Engineer for Hilliard, presented how an outer-ring suburb has intentionally transformed itself from sprawling development into a community with distinctive character.
Like many suburbs, Hilliard experienced explosive growth after Interstate 270 was built, with population growing from about 15,000 when Letty started in 1997 to almost 40,000 today across approximately 15 square miles.
Originally built around John Hilliard's railroad station founded in 1853, the community had a small downtown called Old Hilliard that became central to its reinvention.
The transformation began with a new streetscape in 2009-2010, though that alone didn't revitalize downtown. The real catalyst came with controversial four-story apartment buildings with commercial on the first floor, approved around 2015. "Very controversial, but had it not been for this apartment complex, I'm not sure that we would have had some of the activity in our downtown," Schamp acknowledged.
Two roundabouts at key downtown intersections helped create a sense of place by dividing the five-lane arterial street from the intimate downtown. A brewery even named a beer "Hilliard Roundabouts Stout" in their honor.
During COVID, when the Crooked Can brewery opened in January 2020, the city closed Center Street to vehicular traffic to support businesses. The closure was so popular that last year they permanently closed the road, connecting seamlessly with the Heritage Rail Trail that runs into downtown.
Hilliard conducted a community survey about parks and recreation priorities, and the top three responses were "walking paths, trails and bike paths—basically the same thing," Letty noted with a smile. The community has worked intentionally to connect newer neighborhoods from the 1990s onward to the downtown core through trails.
Most recently, Hilliard opened a new community center with over two miles of trails connecting neighborhoods and commercial areas to the wellness campus.
The city switched to a council-manager form of government in 2020, and adopted the "Hilliard by Design" comprehensive plan about a year and a half ago, signaling increased consciousness about physical character and intentional planning.
Common Themes
Despite their different sizes, ages, and growth patterns, all three communities emphasized:
- Intentional planning as essential to creating quality places
- Community engagement as fundamental to establishing vision
- Flexibility within clear standards when working with developers
- Long-term thinking over immediate transactional opportunities
- Integration of multiple uses rather than single-use zoning
- Walkability and trails as highly valued amenities
- Streets designed for people, not just cars
- Authenticity and uniqueness as competitive advantages
The presentations provided Worthington with diverse models for maintaining and enhancing quality of place while managing growth and change.