Briarwood deal in place, but some township residents unhappy

by Sheldon Ocker

Annexing Briarwood’s 126 acres to Richfield Village is a done deal, enabling the village to build a sewer line along Route 303 that would connect to 130 proposed single-family houses to be constructed by Pulte Homes, the new owner of the property.

Richfield Township, which is losing the acreage, will benefit as the recipient of property taxes from the new homes, which will be priced between $475,000- $525,000, according to village Mayor Mike Wheeler. Richfield Village will benefit by collecting income tax revenue.

An apparent win-win situation. But not for everyone. Pulte plans to use Briarwood Road, off Route 303, as the connector to an access road that will run through a township neighborhood to the new development, now annexed to the village.

A suggested alternative to Briarwood Road, rejected by village officials and Pulte, was to use Sawbridge Drive, 400 hundred feet to the west, which would be less intrusive to the township neighborhood adjacent to the new subdivision.

Therese Schleiden lives at the junction of Briarwood and Whitethorn Circle, which might be described as ground zero, because the access road into the development will begin between her home and that of a neighbor.

“Why isn’t the village of Richfield sharing some of the traffic?’’ Schleiden said. “They’re getting all the benefits from the development, but they’re sending all the traffic on township roads, and they’re using a sewer easement behind my house [to build a road]. It’s devastating, because it’s splitting three properties apart.’’

The rough excavation of the roadbed has already begun.

“They took every single tree down,’’ Schleiden said. “The really sad thing is that I’m going to have a road on three sides of me, and I didn’t even find out about it until last year, when the surveyors were running around during the pandemic.

“I called the township, and they had just found out that the sewer easement was being turned into a road. We had no voice in this whatsoever, because it’s a Type 2 annexation.’’

Township officials have no power to alter the process.

“It’s not pretty,’’ said Jeff Shupe, a Richfield Township trustee. “That poor lady. They’ve torn out trees behind her house because they went to build a 50-foot [roadway] easement. We haven’t been included in this. We have no copy of the plans. The village stance is they don’t have to talk to us. ‘’

Traffic created by 130 homes and construction vehicles is the primary complaint of township residents in the immediate area.

“They want to dump all this traffic on us,’’ Shupe said. “There are 32 homes involved. They lose security and seclusion. With new 130 homes, probably two cars per household, that’s more than 200 additional cars. That’s the problem. We’re not against the annexation.’’

Schleiden has tried to find more information: “Last summer there was a meeting and Jeff Shupe asked, ‘Why did you decide to put a road on a sewer easement and [village Planning Director] Brian Frantz said, ‘because I decided.’‘’

When Schleiden asked Frantz the question privately, he told her it was because of riparian setbacks and interstate setbacks.

“We had a meeting last summer with Joe Paradise [from the Summit County Engineer’s office], and he emphatically said no, that is no reason,’’ she said. “They could build a road on the other side if they wanted to. I’m starting to believe it really was just a decision, a cheaper decision. What they’re doing is legal, but is it fair, is it kind?’’

Frantz said there are two reasons why Briarwood Rd. was chosen for ingress and egress over Sawbridge.

Drivers leaving the development and turning left from Sawbridge onto Rt. 303 have limited vision of cars traveling toward them because of a hill on Rt. 303 that obscures sight lines to the west.

“There is a hill when you turn left from Briarwood, too, but it’s not as bad,’’ Frantz said. “Briarwood is the superior situation. And by lowering 303 [by one or two feet] we can solve that problem.’’

Frantz said that Sawbridge would barely meet ODOT standards, but if Rt. 303 is lowered, it would ‘’far exceed ODOT specifications.’’

According to Frantz, Pulte Homes will pay for lowering Rt. 303 for a distance of 250 feet but might be reimbursed by the village, depending on other negotiated items between the village and the builder.

Frantz also cited environmental issues that work to the detriment of Sawbridge.

Schleiden voiced doubts about the ability of Briarwood Rd. to hold up to the pounding of additional vehicles.

“That’s a tar and chip road, so it doesn’t have the same kind of foundation as other roads,’’ she said. ”If anything happens to the road, how are safety vehicles going to get to 160 homes? It doesn’t seem like anyone is concerned about that, but if your husband or wife is having a heart attack, you’re going to be very concerned.’’

Wheeler is aware that some in the township have grievances.

“Township residents on Whitethorn are all complaining because they think this is going to interrupt their rural lifestyle,’’ said the mayor. ‘’But the way the subdivision is planned and set back, most of them won’t even know it’s there, in my opinion, because of the tree buffers. The fact is the trees are going to hide it.’’

For almost 40 years, Randy Kertesz searched for a way to monetize the 126 wooded acres to the west of the Briarwood development.

Sixty-six homes in the current subdivision lie within Richfield Village, six are in Richfield Township. The undeveloped acreage is part of the township, which rejected Kertesz’s plan to build 280 residential units in the 1980s. But Kertesz went to court and won a judgment allowing him to build 208 garden apartments and 72 single family houses.

Yet unless Kertesz was able to provide water and sewer service, it was a hollow victory. Fast forward to 2011, when the village helped bring Cleveland water to Briarwood. Kertesz had been providing water and sewer connections through his Water & Sewer LLC at monthly rates of $200 for water and $150 for sewer, reputed to be the highest rates in Ohio.

The sewage treatment plant sits on the banks of Furnace Run Creek and did not have the capacity to serve additional residents. Moreover, the Environmental Protection Agency would not approve any expansion.

But with the help of an $843,000 grant, Richfield Village is providing sewer hookups to the new Briarwood development, now that it has been annexed to the village. Wheeler estimates the total cost of the sewer project will be between $2 million and $3 million. It has not yet been put up for bids. ∞