City of Springfield looks ahead to plans through 2022

As 2022 picks up momentum, so does the City of Springfield and plans for continuing to advance in the new year.

Overall, the City has faired well through the pandemic, and is in a strong position going into a new year where, hopefully, COVID-19 pandemic stresses will continue to ease.

“We were very blessed when you look at our neighboring communities,” says Logan Cobb, deputy city manager for the City of Springfield. “We were very fortune in so many ways … our financials are strong even despite a pandemic.”

Major announcements in technological advancements have been made in the past that will continue to have momentum in 2022, according to Tom Franzen, the City’s assistant city manager and director of economic development, with much of that focusing on additions and enhancements at AirparkOhio.

AirparkOhio is the City’s 190 acre industrial park connected to the Springfield Beckley Municipal Airport. The site is the third business park in Clark County to have received the State of Ohio’s Certified Site designation, which helps signal potential developers that the site is ready.

“We are excited to receive the certification, as it signals AirparkOhio’s readiness for development, which ensures an expedited construction process and accelerates a company’s speed to market,” Franzen says.

Within AirparkOhio:

• Esterline & Sons expects to complete the construction of its 54,000 square-foot facility on its 9-acre site by mid-2022. The company comprises about 60 full-time employees and produces goods for various markets, including aerospace, food, medical and more.
   
• Lone Mountain Aviation will lease 15 acres from the City to build new hangers and offices to house their Cirrus certified maintenance and repair operations. The facility also will support the business’s aircraft sales and provide aircraft owners with hanger storage options.
   
• Advanced Air Mobility Ecosystem hosted a showcase at the airport in late 2021 to highlight the advancements being built in Ohio, that look at the airport as the epicenter. The showcase attracted industry leaders from around the country, including representatives from NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Air Force, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and more. It featured public flights of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, which is the first of its kind in Ohio history, and highlighted future developments that include electric recharging equipment for both aircraft and ground vehicles. BETA Technologies, Joby Aviation, LIFT Aircraft and Kittyhawk all have assets at the airport – including flight simulators, aircraft testing, research and development that will continue advancing this year.
   
• SkyVision is a ground-based detect and avoid radar system that led to the FAA approving airspace to fly remotely-piloted aircraft beyond a person’s visual line of sight in a volume of aircraft ranges from 1,000 to 10,000 feet, within a 225-square-mile area over the Springfield Beckley Municipal Airport. This capability can lead to a wide variety of advancements and adaptations relating to the approved uses of remotely-piloted aircraft in the future.

Relating to infrastructure, City Hall Plaza will be getting a facelift in the future, Cobb says.

“We have some repairs that need to be made in our underground parking garage (under the Plaza),” she says. “It was going to be a major commitment for us, so if we will already be tearing up parts of the plaza and tearing up tile, we thought, ‘Let’s do more. Let’s rejuvenate the Plaza.’”

The plans will focus on improving placemaking by focusing on softening the aesthetic with updated landscaping, a water feature, and fixing damaged tiles with the goal of making the Plaza more inviting and less of a “sea of concrete,” Cobb says.

“We’re really excited about this project,” she says, adding that there will be some changes to the main entrances of City Hall.

Cobb estimates that the community will start to see visible changes in late 2022 or early 2023.

City infrastructure plans for 2022 also include continued momentum on South Limestone Street road reconstruction, toward the Interstate 70 interchange.

Cobb says the work will be completed in stages, with Stage 1 still in the planning process and Stage 2 plans to be submitted this summer.

Once plans are approved by the Ohio Department of Transportation, Cobb says she anticipates that late 2022 or early 2023 will allow the City to begin acquisitions of property along the roadway, which will provide space to add sidewalks and right-of-way areas.

“We certainly see the need for improvements on South Limestone Street,” Cobb says. “We want to make this a safer corridor because we see this as a premier gateway into our community.

“We want to make it safer for pedestrians, and we want to make it safer for motorists while fostering economic development in that region of the City. It’s certainly something that will increase walkability, increase lighting, and ultimately just make for a smoother drive along the gateway.”

A major housing focus for the city will also be with in the Southside of Springfield in the Engage Neighborhood, Cobb says. The City is planning to roll out a receivership program this year that will help get houses to a state of productive use before they become too far gone to repair and need to be demolished.

“Receivership would take these deteriorated and deteriorating houses into receivership so the receivers would be responsible for renovating and revitalizing the homes, making updates to make them livable and able to be sold back out into the community,” she says.