From the start, plans to transform the Barberton Brookside Golf Course in Norton into a $100 million housing development were controversial in the city of about 12,000 residents.
All the competing forces associated with modern American land development — developers versus existing homeowners, the clash between growth proponents and suburban lifestyle advocates, rising home prices fueled by exorbitant land costs, and an acute lack of affordable housing — assembled as plans for a 140-acre, 488-unit project solidified two years ago.
The pot has been simmering ever since, fueled by outraged residents and council members dissatisfied with the project’s path to approval despite little enthusiastic support in the community.
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But Brookside Greens flourishes in spite of the frustration bubbling around it. Construction proceeds and demand is high, and the development is well on its way to the planned 308 single-family homes and 180 apartments.
Buyers of the new homes are moving in where golfers once teed up, settling in among neighbors who are still teed off.
Depending on which side of the development you set the dinner table, the project is seen as a necessary addition that brings brand new, affordable homes or a landscape of scoured earth in a once bucolic setting.
Norton council member Charlotte Whipkey, never a fan of the project, said in a recent phone interview that the small yards don’t mix with the rest of the city. Packed together, she says, the new and planned homes remind her of rabbit hutches.
“It’s never going to be appealing,” the councilwoman said. “It looks like it’s an out-of-place monstrosity.”
But Brookside Greens developer Jason A. Friedman, president and CEO of Beachwood-based Addison Properties, sees things differently.
When the two-pronged project is completed, he believes, the new Norton neighborhood will become a widely — if not universally — accepted addition to the city.
“Certainly when there’s no more construction and all the landscaping is mature … and it’s a neighborhood people are enjoying — all of a sudden it’s not so bad,” he said Friday in a phone interview.
That scenario may come to pass, but it won’t change at least one aspect of the development: more homes on less land. Putting heftier houses on small lots has been a continuing trend in the U.S., in part a concession to higher costs related to development and construction, including land, building materials and the labor to put it all together. Increasingly, the big-home, little-land trend syncs with the appetite of homebuyers who don’t want to tend to an expansive yard or deal with the headaches of a fixer-upper, home sellers say.
A look at local and national data demonstrates the shift.
More:Residents fight development planned for Barberton Brookside Golf Course in Norton
In the 2020 census, Norton’s population was pegged at 11,591 residents in a city of 20.51 square miles — or 13,126.4 acres — producing a population density of about one person per 1.13 acres. Assuming a completed Brookside Greens conforms to the average Ohio household population size of 2.41, the development would build out with about 935 residents — a population density of about 0.15 acres per person.
A lot of factors — like a greater concentration of older adults and young families with fewer children than the Ohio average — could lower household size, affecting the number of residents living on top of the former Norton golf course. But even with a household size of one person per unit, there’d be only about 0.29 acres per person.
Nationally, as yard sizes shrink, the homes they surround have been growing for the last half-century.
According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, the average size of single-family homes built in the Midwest expanded nearly 50% from 1973 to 2021 — from 1,615 square feet in 1973 to 2,391 square feet in 2021. The trend reached a peak in 2014, at 2,574 square feet, as the U.S. economy recovered from the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. With mortgage rates at historic lows, home sizes grew. Since their high eight years ago, average home sizes have bounced up and down year after year.
Homes available from builder Ryan Homes in Brookside Greens range from about 1,440 square feet to about 2,200 square feet with the listed prices rising from about $260,000 to $310,000. The apartments envisioned in the second part of the project aren't currently in production, and will be constructed by another builder.
Much of the opposition to Brookside Greens arose from homeowners living near the former golf course. As they became aware of what was proposed, fears about traffic safety, home values, potential tax consequences and unsightly construction rose to a head.
In November 2020, as project plans moved through council, Shellhart Road resident Mike Ferris and other concerned residents filed a lawsuit to block the development, contending the planned “high-density, urban housing” conflicted with the city’s comprehensive plan, charter and ordinances.
The claims were dismissed three months later and the project moved forward. But Ferris said in a recent interview he’s still concerned about traffic woes emanating from the development as new residents wind their way through city streets.
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A recent experience with the construction crews didn’t nudge him toward a favorable review of the process. After Ferris made recent improvements to his driveway, including the addition of white gravel, the problems started.
“They dug up 10 feet of my driveway, and they put gray gravel down,” he said in phone interview. “The grass they planted is really bad. I am very disappointed in that.”
A follow-up complaint brought more gravel.
The view of lush, rolling greens is gone, of course, but Ferris said he’s hoping the developers will add a buffer of pine trees to the landscape. He’d like two stately oaks that haven’t been removed to remain.
He’s not holding his breath, however.
“My state is resigned,” he said. “I am resigned to it.”
Whipkey, too, said aesthetic matters have too often been ignored.
“All the trees came down, when they were saying we’re going to keep as many trees as possible,” she said.
But her biggest concern is with the appearance of the development once all the homes have been constructed.
"I understand they were going to put houses in there,” she said. “They didn’t have to be rabbit hutches. It should have been houses that fit into what Norton is really about.”
Norton administrator Robert Fowler said new development is necessary for Norton to thrive and help pay for city services. It’s a dilemma faced by many aging cities with shrinking amounts of developable land where the addition of new housing and business would help generate needed revenue.
At an estimated average cost of about $300,000 per home, Fowler said, each residence in the Brookside Greens will generate more than $4,000 a year in property taxes that fund city schools, police and fire. He’s aware of opponents to recent city developments like Brookside Greens, but just as Ferris is resigned to the housing development across the street, Fowler is resigned to the fact that not everyone can be pleased.
“They are not going to accept it, and there’s nothing I can do,” Fowler said in a recent interview. “They want homes on acre lots (and) half-acre lots. Well, that’s just not feasible financially.”
New homes in a development like Brookside Greens enable prospective residents who have been shut out by escalating home prices to live in the city, adding to the city’s income tax base and buying goods and services in Norton, he said.
“(Homes) are going over the asking price,” Fowler said. “People are desperate trying to get a house right now.”
Whipkey said she’s skeptical that new revenue will keep up with new demands on city services.
“You’ve got more houses, more people, more roads,” she said. “We have to take care of this. That’s more police, more fire (needed).”
Demand so far has been strong for homes in Brookside Green, Friedman said, with 35 homes — more than 10% of the 308 planned — sold.
It's unclear how rising interest rates will affect demand and sales, but several homes are already occupied as Norton's new neighborhood takes shape.
Katie and Ryan Hunter, among the new homeowners at Brookside Greens, wanted to remain in Norton, but were shut out by a red-hot housing market.
“When we were ready to quit renting, the development fell into place,” Katie Hunter said in a recent phone interview before she and her husband moved in. “It was the perfect location to stay close to family and the church we’re involved in. It made sense for us with how the housing market is now.”
Hunter works in Cleveland and said the development’s location near Interstate 77 was a plus other homes the couple looked at didn’t share.
“When we started looking at houses — everything is high right now,” she said. “These Ryan Homes are brand new. It’s a nice, blank slate.”
Sabrina and Zachary Zupancic originally looked at existing homes in Norton, but gravitated to Brookside Greens.
“We were looking (and) before we could could even put an offer in, we were noticing the homes were (selling) two days after being put on the market,” said Sabrina Zupancic. “We were like, ‘We are going to get a brand-new home.’ ”
With two young boys, Sabrina Zupancic said, the Norton school district and general safety concerns were key selling points in the decision-making process, she said.
“The bottom line is, we want our kids to grow up in a nice community and (not) have anything to worry about,” she said.
Zupancic said she was aware of grumbling on social media about the development, but believes the old Norton guard will eventually accept their new neighbors.
“I feel like a lot of families moving to the community are going to benefit the community even more,” she said. “We’re buying a home — (there aren’t) a lot of renters.”
Like it or hate it, Brookside Greens couldn’t have moved forward without a series of votes from an oft-divided council.
In April 2019, council passed an ordinance establishing so-called MUD — Mixed Use District — zoning that allowed for high-density housing under certain conditions. By May, the city’s planning commission was initiating a zone change for the golf course.
In September 2019, council approved MUD zoning for the course, followed by a TIF agreement in November 2020. TIF, or Tax Increment Financing, districts generally use property tax dollars to help fund development within a defined area, in this case, Brookside Greens. When they work well, they speed the development of necessities like road, sewer and water improvements.
Public hearings and votes on the development followed the TIF vote, and approval of the final plat came in February 2021.
Fowler said the MUD zoning that paved the way for Brookside Greens provides a great deal of flexibility for potential developers, but it requires a lot of oversight from council. For a controversial project, the process can be overwhelming.
“The preliminary site plan, the final site plan, preliminary plat, final plat,” he said. “Every time we approved one, the bandage (was) ripped off (again),” he said.
Despite council's repeated votes on the project, Whipkey said she never felt fully informed about what Brookside Greens would become. Questions she needed answered were sometimes slow to come, she said, and changes to the project caught her by surprise.
At first, though, she was a reluctant supporter because she believed senior housing would be a priority in the development. As she began to doubt older adults would be a major concern, she soured on the development.
“We did it basically for the senior complex,” she said. “All of a sudden, there wasn’t any senior complex.”
In the November 2021 election, Norton voters elected three new members to the city’s seven-member council. Amid continued concerns about MUD zoning and resident complaints about the Brookside Greens project, council voted on July 11 for a six-month moratorium on any new MUD agreements.
Days later, Norton Mayor Mike Zita vetoed the moratorium.
In a message to council on July 20, Zita wrote that a moratorium would have a negative effect on development in the city.
“I understand that some members of Council and the public are not happy with the development that is occurring at the former Barberton-Brookside Golf Course,” Zita wrote. “Nevertheless, Council approved every step of that development through a long and tortured procedural history. The project was discussed for months and years on the Council floor.”
Fowler said developers have taken note of the vote, and it has affected discussions on potential projects.
“At this point they see City Council as anti-business and no longer want to pursue the projects they were seeking,” he said. “I think their statements for the MUD (are) very concerning and the message they are sending may not be what they are trying to convey.”
Ferris, for one, remains bitter about his former ward councilman’s sanction of the project.
“I kept saying to him, ‘I don’t understand why you’re going along with this when your constituents don’t want it,’ ” he said. “Nobody that I talked to in this ward wanted this.”
Friedman said he established a good working relationship with the city as his only Summit County project moved through the approval process. His company also has developments ongoing in several Ohio counties.
But Norton, he said, stood out.
“It’s one of the best cities I’ve ever worked in,” he said.
If Whipkey had her way, though, Brookside Greens might be the last project in the city to ever receive MUD approval. At one point, she said, she was so disenchanted with the process that she considered resigning.
I don’t want the one that we’re stuck with,” she said. “Any development even close to this, I’m saying no to it.”
Alan Ashworth can be reached at 330-996-3859 or by email at aashworth@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @newsalanbeaconj or friend him on Facebook at Alan Newsman.