To the Editor:
In all my years on council, I’ve never heard public discussion as distorted and inaccurate as that currently surrounding the ‘Heights. The refrain is that the city is coming to take and bulldoze homes.
The city is doing a Land Use Plan update. It serves as a vision for how Perrysburg should look over the next 10-20 years. It is a predecessor to zoning that groups land uses in appropriate locations, so that, for example, you don’t have glue factories next to homes. It is not a template for the city to gobble up land.
After the Steering Committee that had been reviewing the plan finished work, a dialogue between the city and some Heights representatives caused the administration to go back to the plan consultants to review the treatment of the Heights.
In the first iteration of the plan, the Heights was a focus area. The plan showed commercial development along Ohio 25, as exists now. The remainder of the Heights remained residential, as it is now.
The consultants’ drawings showed the Heights as an upscale, expensive suburban residential area with vast green space that would eliminate homes. Heights residents grew alarmed – understandably – that they were going to be displaced. In the very first council committee meeting to consider the plan, this vision was rejected.
Since then, discussion has been about how to provide a transition between the commercial uses on Route 25 to the residential neighborhood behind. The goal has been to provide a commercial strip on the frontage that could come as close in quality as possible to Levis Commons. The plan, as it has evolved, never impacted the vast majority of the Heights.
Some overheated and false chatter is on social media. I’ve chosen not to wade in that cesspool and thereby avoid the largely anonymous falsehoods.
In the last week, I have been deeply disappointed to read letters from Anita Sanchez-Serta, whom I have known for a long time and who is a Heights leader. She warned that the city is drafting a plan to bulldoze the Heights and replace it with commercial buildings.
She knows that’s not true.
No version of the plan called for the commercialization of the Heights.
The plan is attempting to have high quality commercial development along Route 25 fit harmoniously with the Heights. Discussion should be honest dialogue.
Tim McCarthy
Perrysburg Council
