GROVE CITY — A charter amendment requiring a citywide vote on large industrial projects has qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot, the Franklin County Board of Elections confirmed, after backers turned in 1,581 valid signatures — above the 1,138 required.
Protect Grove City organizer Jen Belt, whose group formed to fight a roughly 300-acre data center proposed off Rensch Road, says the goal is to give residents a say before big projects move forward. "It's not blocking growth," she said.
Belt lives outside the city, so isn't a Grove City voter. At the city's May 4 council meeting, she gave her home address as being in Orient, in Pleasant Township — meaning she can't cast a ballot on the measure she's helping put before Grove City residents.
The amendment would also change how the city handles new development. Today, council can approve a big project on its own. Under the amendment, any rezoning, annexation, or development request would face a threshold test, and a project of 50 or more acres, more than 20 megawatts of peak power, or more than 500,000 gallons of water a day would be flagged "heavy industrial."
From there, no zoning or permit could follow until voters approved it at the ballot. The developer would fund that election, and a "no" would block a similar project for two years. Approved projects would face permanent noise, light and vibration limits, quarterly reporting and fines up to $500,000 a day.
Protect Grove City says the measure blocks nothing — big projects can still go forward; voters just get the final word. Existing businesses are grandfathered, though a future major expansion, at a site like Walmart's distribution center, would trigger its own vote. The group says the Mount Carmel hospital campus, though larger than 50 acres, is exempt as a medical facility.