DELAWARE — Retired Delaware firefighter John Hall has spent the past 26 years living on, improving, farming and — most importantly — saving his land along the border of Delaware and Morrow counties.
Now, a proposed interstate connector could run through his front yard — jeopardizing a major financial asset of his retirement.
Hall was among more than 100 people who attended an open house hosted by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) on Thursday at the Delaware County Fairgrounds. The subject: a highly contentious connector proposed between U.S. Route 23 and Interstate 71.
Easels displaying maps, charts and timelines lined the main barn at the fairgrounds as ODOT representatives shared information and collected feedback from attendees.
The open house was hosted as part of Phase 2 of ODOT’s feasibility study, during which the agency is narrowing potential routes and evaluating whether the connector project should move forward.
ODOT has narrowed seven potential connector routes down to two. According to the agency, Phase 2 of the study will include:
- Preliminary engineering assessments
- Comprehensive data collection
- Traffic pattern studies
- Cost estimation
- Focused public engagement within the most promising general area
ODOT’s project website lists the goal of Phase 2 as identifying a “preferred alignment” for the connector, with the final feasibility study expected by October 2026.
ODOT plans two additional open houses later this month: March 10 in Morrow County and March 12 in Marion County.
Local landowners question the need
Hall attended the meeting alongside fellow retired Delaware firefighter and friend Robert Young, who detailed his misgivings about the project.
Young has been in Hall’s shoes: one of the original proposed routes previously cut through eight acres of his farm on Maloney Road, though that route has since been removed from consideration.
Hall and Young said they have a long list of concerns about the project — both personal and broader.
Young said he believes the connector would primarily benefit travelers passing through the region rather than residents of southern Delaware and Morrow counties.
“It has nothing to do with us, and I don’t think it’ll serve us at all. I think it’s for all the people up north,” Young said.
“There’s no on ramps, off ramps, nothing really for us. No one around here will use this road, this road is for people going from north to south.”
Hall said that even if the connector is meant to generate jobs, the lack of planned exits near the Delaware-Morrow county area limits its local benefit.
“There’s no way to get off,” Hall said. “They’re wasting our farmland to go across it for no real good reason.”
“The only reason is to get to Columbus 20 minutes earlier,” he added. “But you’ll sit in traffic once you’re there, too.”
Both men said they have read online that ODOT declined to study other potential areas because of historic preservation concerns. This bothered the former firefighters.
“My farm has been in my family since the Revolutionary War, but evidently that’s not historic,” Young said.
Hall said the area also contains sites with local historical and environmental significance — an old Native American mound cemetery and a protected screech owl area that either are in the two proposed routes’ way or neighbor them.
“There’s Elliott Cemetery right across from there, where the guy was a Revolutionary War veteran, he’s buried there,” he added while studying the map.
“There are so many historic things that they haven’t even looked at — local historic stuff.”
The financial side to possibly losing farmland
For some farmers, land functions as a retirement plan, Young said.
“I basically worked my whole life to buy my farm,” he said. “So when you make all these plans, you work your whole life to have this money, to have these things then to have it snatched away at the end [isn’t fair].”
Young said he purchased six acres connected to his property two years ago for $125,000.
When Young’s eight acres were in line with one of the earlier route proposals, he said he searched online for hours to find the dollar amount the state planned to offer him.
What he found shocked him.
The state planned to offer Young $66,000 for the eight-acre strip of land in the center of his property.
ROUGH MATH:
Based on the price of his recent purchase, rough math shows the land could be worth significantly more:
- $125,000 ÷ 6 acres = $20,833 per acre
- $20,833 × 8 acres = about $166,666
Delaware Source used the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, and found that figure would equal roughly $175,764 today.
Even in 2024, the offer would have been roughly $100,000 below that estimate, not accounting for a myriad of other financial factors.
“The funny part is I just found out that instead of taking the whole farm, they’re going to take whatever they want from it,” Hall chimed in, noting the affected portion of his pasture could be five to 10 acres.
“So I’m going to lose about half my pasture out front so they can do it,” he said. “Then I can sit on my porch, watch all the trucks go by and wave to them, I guess.”
ODOT explains the project’s why
ODOT Press Secretary Matt Bruning said the U.S. Route 23 corridor is operating at roughly 30 percent over capacity, and has experienced a high number of crashes.
“That is going to be addressed regardless what the outcome of this [connector] is,” he said.
“This [connector] is something that the Ohio General Assembly has asked us to look at and to evaluate and help them to potentially make an informed decision down the road about whether or not it should be built.”
Public feedback has been a key part of the study so far, Bruning said, with more than 600 comments submitted.
He described the responses as “a mixed bag.”
Among supporters of the project, Bruning said many people recognize the transportation challenges between northwest Ohio and central Ohio.
“There’s a lot of challenges on making that trip down 23,” he said. “A lot of congestion, a lot of crashes, a lot of safety concerns and congestion issues that we have to mitigate.”
One Delaware resident in attendance on Thursday said he could see potential benefits to the connector, pointing out that converting farmland to a highway could serve more people than building additional housing developments.
However, the resident declined to speak on the record with Delaware Source, citing potential backlash from friends who oppose the project.
Opponents, Bruning said, often focus on the personal impacts.
“Farmland that have been in families for multiple generations is being impacted,” Bruning said. “Areas being separated by a highway are concerns that we’ve heard.”
As ODOT progresses through Phase 2, the public’s opinion on this project will continue to be an important part of this process.
The connector’s future remains uncertain, but one thing appears clear: whatever the outcome, not everyone will be satisfied.
“They say 23 is so congested, but we’re not the ones who decided to develop 23 from end to end and side to side without any overpasses or anything,” Young said.
“That wasn’t our decision, but now we’re going to live with that decision.”
