Licking County's 500-Home Heath Hills Project Collapses, Fueling Ohio Annexation Law Fight

M/I Homes has walked away from a 500-home subdivision in Licking County after months of fighting over which school district would pay to educate the kids who moved in.

The builder withdrew its application for Heath Hills, a subdivision planned for land the city of Heath had annexed off Canyon Road, as first reported by WSYX/ABC6 Monday night. More than 500 single-family homes were planned on roughly 7,100-square-foot lots, with the developer also promising road work, parkland, and 17 acres set aside for a new school.

The problem was not the homes. It was where the kids in them would go to school. The land sits inside Heath's city limits, but it falls under Granville Exempted Village Schools, a separate district next door. That mismatch is legal under current Ohio law, but it meant Heath would collect the property taxes and Granville would absorb the students, with no guaranteed funding to match.

Granville Superintendent Jeff Brown told WOSU Public Media the district's enrollment could have jumped as much as 40%, adding roughly 840 students to a system that currently serves about 2,500. "I'm not sure how the vote would have occurred, but I think the facts are pretty clear that it would have been catastrophic for Granville Schools," Brown said, according to WSYX/ABC6. Heath Council President Tim Kelley said his job is to serve Heath's residents, not Granville's.

What does this mean for you? For Columbus-area builders and land investors, the collapse matters beyond Heath. It exposes a gap in Ohio annexation law that can turn a routine zoning fight into a district-versus-district standoff, and it is happening in a county absorbing serious growth pressure. Licking County Planning Director Carson Combs told WOSU the county has "some of the few remaining good sites with great access to the interstate," as builders push outward from Intel's chip project in New Albany looking for land. Warehouses, manufacturers, and subdivisions are all competing for the same open ground.

Granville's leaders say they have shifted from fighting Heath Hills itself to changing the law behind it. State Senators Tim Schaffer and Andrew Brenner introduced Senate Bill 173, which would automatically shift a newly annexed area into the annexing city's own school district, closing the mismatch that sank Heath Hills. The bill has sat in the Senate Education Committee for more than a year without a hearing. A companion idea, House Bill 113, would give county commissioners veto power over some annexations before they reach this point.

What should you watch next? Watch whether Senate Bill 173 finally gets a hearing now that a real project has failed because of the gap it targets. Until Ohio law changes, any developer eyeing annexed land near a county or district line — not just in Licking County, but anywhere on the edge of the Columbus metro — is taking on a risk that has nothing to do with zoning or market demand. Investors weighing land purchases in these outer-ring counties should check school district boundaries as carefully as zoning maps before they deploy capital. For more on how state and local policy is shaping growth around Columbus, see our local politics coverage.

The takeaway: a 500-home project died over a school boundary line, not a market problem, and that is a warning for anyone buying land on the edge of a growing county.

Sources: WSYX/ABC6, WOSU Public Media