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| Retirement planners say Ridges
protest is jumping the gun |
| 2003-07-28 |
| By Jim Phillips |
| Athens NEWS Senior Writer |
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Local
activist Chad Kister is organizing an effort to fight
development of a retirement community on Ohio University
land.
An organizer of the retirement project,
however, suggested that Kister's protest is premature at
best.
"He's so off base," said Margaret Topping
of Athens, one of a group of local residents who are
trying to create the retirement community. Topping noted
that while OU has suggested it might provide property
for the project on inexpensive terms, the group is
nowhere near having a definite site.
Since The
Athens NEWS reported on the plans in June, she said,
"Basically, nothing has changed since then. We do not
have title or leasehold on any land. We do not have a
site picked out."
OU spokesperson Jack Jeffreys
confirmed that OU is open to the idea of leasing land at
a nominal sum for the proposed retirement development.
OU President Robert Glidden has reportedly informed the
group by letter that OU would charge rent of $1 a year
if the project goes on university property.
The
sites that have been mentioned as possibilities are
sections of land along Dairy Lane on OU's Ridges
property and land along the Hocking River west of the
medical complex that includes O'Bleness Memorial
Hospital.
In a letter to the editor submitted to
The NEWS, Kister interpreted all this to mean that OU
"has considered offering the Ridges to developers for
$1," which he labels in the letter "ecological and
economical insanity."
Kister said Saturday that
he considers it "quite absurd" to allow development on
The Ridges, especially for such a cheap price. He noted
that the OU Ecology and Energy Conservation Committee,
which in the mid-1990s developed a land use plan for the
700-acre-plus Ridges property, recommended allowing no
new development on the site outside the areas that
already have buildings. OU took over the former Athens
Mental Health Center and its surrounding lands from the
Ohio Department of Mental Health in the late 1980s, as
those operations were being phased out and moved to a
new location in the flats along the Hocking
River.
"The OU Ecology Committee has already been
through this in great detail," Kister argued. He added
that he wouldn't object to further use of existing
buildings, but that the retirement center project will
require new construction along Dairy Lane, which he
thinks should retain any green space it now
has.
The OU committee that adopted the land use
plan was split, with a minority of members supporting
use of The Ridges for development. The final vote was
8-4. And OU's administration always has made clear that
they consider the plan advisory and not a set of
mandatory guidelines.
Kister, however, said he
believes OU should stick to the plan. "I think it's very
important that they follow the guidelines of the ecology
committee," he said.
Topping said there is strong
support for a residential retirement community in
Athens. "People are calling me all the time, because
they need it or want it here," she said.
For the
past decade and more, a group of Athens residents, aided
by OU, has been working toward development of a
retirement community. At one time, they considered the
site currently occupied by the University Courtyard
student apartment project, across the Hocking River from
OU's Peden Stadium, and later they considered a large
piece of land on the other side of Athens, which is now
the site of the planned University Estates housing and
commercial development.
OU has cooperated in the
process as a strategy for keeping retiring faculty and
staff in Athens. They otherwise might go elsewhere
because of the lack of retirement housing in the local
area.
During the 1990s, OU purchased a handful of
residential properties along Dairy Lane. Jeffreys of the
university said that because the properties were
contiguous to OU land, "it makes sense to purchase those
properties, for purposes such as access to Dairy Lane
and utility access."
OU held a public hearing in
2000 to seek input on future use of the Ridges to help
with an update of the university's "master plan" dating
from 1996. Most of that discussion focused on renovation
to existing Ridges buildings on its central 22 acres. At
the time John Kotowski, OU director of facilities
planning, said OU had "no definite plans" for
development on the remaining 750 acres.
Kister,
who has been speaking out about The Ridges since before
the land use plan was developed, has now dusted off his
"Campaign to Protect The Ridges," and has scheduled a
meeting for Wednesday (see letter to the
editor).
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