GALION — Galion City Council hosted public hearing to discuss the rezoning of four lots on Carter Drive in the area Arby’s and East of Chicago during its meeting Tuesday evening.
Grant Giltz from Five Galion Company LLC attended the meeting and spoke to council about rezoning the properties on Carter Drive from General Commercial (GC) to Residential Multi-family (RM) in order to put up new apartment complexes.
The lots have been marketed for 10 years as being GC, with no interested buyers.
Five Galion Company is looking to invest between 4.3-4.5 million dollars into the apartments, and they will be three stories tall and will feature both one- and two-bedroom apartments and enclosed garages for tenants’ cars. For the two bedrooms, the price to rent will be around $1,050 per month and $725 per month for the single bedroom apartments and will have a one-year lease.
Melissa Deems, a Galion citizen who lives in that area, voiced her concerns as to whether there will be enough people to rent those apartments.
“I guess I look at Galion as middle class, do we really have enough people to rent out 90 units at that price? I don’t see a lot of professionals living in Galion that can rent a unit at that cost.”
Council hopes that these buildings will attract employees who work in Galion but live elsewhere, college students returning home, and maybe retirees to move and live in Galion.
To begin, they are going to build 36 units, but hope to add more on in coming years to have 90 units.
The council suspended the rules and passed Ordinance 2019-28 dealing with the rezoning in an emergency clause to get this process moving.
The council also passed Ordinance 2019-29 to add a traffic light at the intersection of Brandt Road and Ohio 598 and add in turn lanes that will hopefully be done by the end of summer.