Granville Chamber of Commerce 2010

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Granville Poised for Future

In a community with a rich sense of history, Granville has much to look forward to through the coming decade.

2010 will see the completion of the State Route 161/16 expressway, connecting the Columbus outerbelt and airport to the very doorstep of Granville’s southern entrance. An already short drive to catch a flight to Washington or Dallas or New York will be as near for the village as many Ohioans drive to the grocery.

Granville and our surrounding countryside has long been an attractive residential option for downtown Columbus workers, going back to industrialist John Sutphin Jones in the 1920s, when he renovated what is now the Bryn Du Mansion, from a Civil War era stone farmhouse into the 1920’s showplace and now lovely meeting space owned by the Village of Granville. Today the circle of connection extends across central Ohio, and through Columbus International Airport, there is a growing number of area residents who actually work out-of-state, but choose to make a Granville address their home.

The Granville Area Chamber of Commerce, now with an office on Broadway in the historic core of the village, not only sees visitors from more than 30 states around the nation, but international guests dropping by as well. They’re drawn by academic involvements up on the Denison University campus, business interests with research and marketing offices nearby, or just tourists drawn to a beautiful place.

Unless you choose to first visit Granville through the Chamber’s website (which is also becoming more and more common as an initial impression for our visitors) you are likely to come north off of the expressway, on Main Street towards College Hill, with Denison’s Swasey Chapel perched high above you. Before you is displayed “the four corners” of the original 1805 public square now framed by the steeples of four churches.

That classic entranceway is steadily being enhanced by the planning efforts of the village and township in close co-operation, and the interested involvement of local businesspeople. The Main St. bridge over Raccoon Creek is now paralleled by a pedestrian/bicyclist bridge that adds one more link to our countywide “rails to trails” bikeway network. This was built through the combined efforts of village, township, and chamber support. Retail and office buildings appropriate to the architecture and atmosphere of the community are planned to add to the entrance experience into the village proper, and the River Road district on the southern edge of the village is proving to be a vital and busy addition to downtown development, while helping expand opportunities without adding density in too small an area.

When you walk the scenic streets of the village, you can’t miss the outline of what everyone calls “the college” in Granville, though it’s been Denison University since around the Civil War. Founded in 1831, the absorption of other higher educational institutions led to the term university, though there aren’t graduate programs at this four-year, undergraduate, private liberal arts college. As a residential campus, almost all of Denison University’s 2,100 students live “on the hill,” but they come down to the village not only for the buildings of the lower campus and the Fine Arts Quad of the college, they also come to shop, socialize, and participate in the life of the community.

Denison’s students, faculty, staff, and administration are deeply engaged in all aspects of life around this place. Seth Patton, Denison’s vice president for finance and management observes: “Granville's citizens are remarkably committed to their village. The number of people and amount of time involved in the development of the 2010 Comprehensive Plan are nothing short of amazing, and they speak volumes about the character of the community. Denison University has been fortunate to call such a desirable community its home for nearly 180 years.”

The connection to the community is so strong for students that one element of the new Granville Area Comprehensive Plan, moving to completion in 2010, calls for a “Come Home to Granville” outreach initiative. In the plans for smart growth and continued support of new business investment into the Granville area, alumni often think about returning to town, while other schools know their students can’t wait to move on.

One of the goals of the Comprehensive Plan is to “foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place.” With over two centuries of tradition from Welsh and New England settlers imprinted on the landscape and street names and civic institutions, it’s easy to take “a strong sense of place” for granted – but that’s exactly what community leaders are keeping in mind. They know that the unique qualities that make Granville stand out need tending and care just like the blossoms of the annual spring Daffodil Festival in the College Town House, or the maples that give the Granville Kiwanis their sap for syrup on the pancake breakfasts.

There’s still plenty of room in the village for innovation and new looks, as Monique Keegan showed with her reinvention of an old gas station at 446 E. Broadway into Enjoy Co. Her firm is a design and style business that regularly is found on the pages of national magazines, with a shop on east edge of village just before you look out across the Donald Ross designed Granville Golf Course.

”Timeless modern is a style that defines so much of what makes this village special,” Keegan notes, “not just history in the past but how what is old is still useful and beautiful in new circumstances.”


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COMMUNITY

When you walk along the snowy sidewalks of the first Saturday of December “Candlelight Walking Tour” hosted by the Granville Area Chamber of Commerce, the jingling of a horsedrawn carriage, harness covered with glowing blue light, creates a strong impression of a changeless, nearly timeless place. It can be hard to realize that this spot, where you cross the street to greet Santa Claus, will be the very place where, in a few months, you’ll be mopping your brow as you wait for cotton candy and a giant pretzel during a summer street fair.

Times change, and Granville stays constant by changing with them, but shaping each moment in a style unique to this four seasons village. Part of the secret of Granville is how we use public space for, well, public purposes – our most joyous celebrations are hidden in plain sight, intimate and personal while open to all, with enough side streets and nooks and crannies to give everyone a point of refuge from the hustle and bustle that’s still not far away.

If you drive around the village on a regular basis, you learn both back streets and the main drag pretty quickly, because the central stretch of Broadway through the village, as wide as its name implies for turning around ox-carts in the early 1800s, is often a stage and setting for civic events today.

In cold weather and warm, under bright fall skies or with spring rains, much of life in Granville is lived outside, or at least as much of it as Ohio weather lets us get away with. Sidewalk café seating, blues concerts, and farmer’s markets all enjoy the open air and yet intimate feel of time spent together outdoors.

Public spaces and community gatherings define Granville for what it is: a place where people get to know their neighbors, and still learn more about them as the years go by. A lawyer turns out to be a quilter, hanging new work during a street sale; an investment adviser is seen among a barbershop quartet singing at the community picnic (yet another event that spreads along the length of Broadway). We’re used to the village barber having been the fire chief and one of the volunteer firefighters winning Olympic medals, but there are authors and artists tucked in among the accountants and architects in Granville, where everything is exactly as it seems, only more so.

There may be some secrets tucked into the brick stretches of street and 1812 structures wrapped around the retail core of the village, but they tend to be the sort that reveal themselves to be even more than you had expected, rather than a sudden turnabout.