Bainbridge, Aurora Form JEDD for Geauga Lake Area
After years of sometimes contentious negotiating, Bainbridge Township and the City of Aurora reached an agreement recently to form a Joint Economic Development District for the former Geauga Lake property.
After years of sometimes contentious negotiating, Bainbridge Township and the City of Aurora reached an agreement recently to form a Joint Economic Development District for the former Geauga Lake property.
The JEDD will help pave the way for development of the former amusement park’s 600 acres, which has been vacant since it closed in 2007.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Bainbridge Township Trustee Lorrie Sass Benza at their Sept. 28 meeting after attorney Dale Markowitz told them Aurora City Council unanimously passed an ordinance authorizing the JEDD.
“It’s been a long process, a long road,” said Trustee Jeff Markley, who served as Bainbridge Township’s point man during the years of negotiations. “We worked very hard to get something done, a project worthy of all the attention we put into it. It was a good team effort.”
Benza added, “The potential for economic impact on Bainbridge and Geauga County is huge.”
The Ohio Legislature established JEDDs during the 1990s to allow townships and adjacent cities to form an economic district that benefits both entities financially. The decision came after the City of Columbus began annexing township lands in adjacent Delaware County that were being developed for the Polaris Fashion Mall. Under a JEDD agreement, the city can collect income taxes, the township can collect property taxes and the income is shared as the property remains in the township.
During a phone interview Oct. 9, Markley said the lengthy process had been “complicated.”
“The township could not financially and physically obtain Geauga County sewers to that area of the township largely because of topography and connecting to the McFarland (sewer system) would be cost prohibitive, so we have to rely on the neighboring city,” Markley said. “That service area is Portage County and Aurora.”
Geauga Lake and Sea World Amusement parks both had their own package plants, but any residential or commercial development on that land would need to tap into city sewers, Markley explained.
Markley said negotiating the JEDD with Aurora took more than three years. About 350 acres of the 600-acre Geauga Lake property is in Bainbridge and has been rezoned from recreation to mixed use.
“We had no other options but to negotiate a JEDD with Aurora, which was very uncomfortable because Bainbridge is just a lowly township to them,” the trustee said. “Aurora had control and could withhold their end at any time.”
Under the JEDD agreement, the township and Aurora will share the income tax revenue, with 25 percent going to Bainbridge and the township will collect all the property tax and provide services and maintenance.
“Right now, all the property tax has been paid, but the property value has come down greatly because it is raw land and a Brownfield,” Markley said. “But that value will increase as the property is developed.”
Markley said the land has been purchased from Cedar Fair by locally-owned Industrial Commercial Properties, a developer who buys distressed properties and repurposes them.
He said their projects include the redevelopment of Randall Park Mall into an Amazon distribution center.
“Cedar Fair will not own any of Bainbridge anymore,” the trustee said.
Bainbridge’s portion of the property will be developed into a mixed use district, with big box stores, multi-family housing of three or four stories in height, retail, commercial, offices and restaurants, with a boardwalk around the lake and a nostalgia component celebrating the old amusement park.
Aurora’s portion will be single family homes developed by Pulte, Markley added.
“It’s a beautiful piece of property,” he said. “It will be active and lively, with wine bars, boardwalks and plenty for people to do. It will be repurposed in a good way.”
He said he expects development to begin sometime in 2021.
