NORTH ROYALTON, Ohio — The Planning Commission has approved a five-home subdivision off the west side of Ridge Road just north of Boston Road.
Shawn Inks will construct the homes on a vacant 14.6-acre parcel that is narrow in front and wide in the back. A shared private driveway off Ridge Road will lead to the sublots in the rear of the site and end in a cul-de-sac.
Inks’ preliminary plan, which the commission approved in September, showed four homes on lots measuring about 7, 3½, 3 and 2½ acres.
The adjusted five-home plan, which the commission approved July 13, has one 6-acre lot, one 4-acre lot and three 2-acre lots.
Inks didn’t say at the July 13 commission meeting why he increased the number of homes in the subdivision. He didn’t return calls to answer that and other questions, including when he planned to start construction.
However, Inks did say that the homes in his latest plan will be smaller than those under the original proposal, so they will not increase stormwater runoff. He said the homes will measure about 3,000 or 4,000 square feet.
“Also, law requires that all increased levels of stormwater must be held onto the property being developed,” North Royalton Law Director Tom Kelly told cleveland.com. “(Inks and his engineer, David Engle of Makeever & Associates Inc. in Bucyrus) claim their calculations will make that happen.”
In his application to the commission, Inks said a detention basin on the site will take in stormwater, then discharge it along existing flow paths to the north.
Further, Engle told the commission July 13 that he and Inks are working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to replace wetlands that the development will disturb, either on the same site or elsewhere. One of the wetlands will remain in place.
Inks said he and his family members will take up all five homes in the subdivision.
According to the Cuyahoga County Fiscal Office website, Inks purchased the 14.6 acres in November 2020. The land is in the city’s rural residential district, where the aim is to minimize environmental disturbance and visual impact and preserve steep slopes, floodplains, streams and wetlands.
Only detached single-family homes are permitted in rural residential districts, although conditional uses — which require special city approval — can include horse farms, bed-and-breakfast inns, plant husbandry sites, private sports and recreation centers, and government buildings.
However, city code states that rural residential zoning requirements don’t apply to minor subdivisions of five or fewer sublots.
Engle said the five homes cannot tie into the Medina County sanitary sewer system, as originally planned, due to technical issues, so the homes will have septic tank systems.
Also, Kelly said Cleveland Division of Water doesn’t yet have water lines in that corner of North Royalton, so each of the five lots will have its own water wells, at least for now.
At the Sept. 8 Planning Commission meeting, former North Royalton school board member Barbara Zindroski said she was a member and representative of the South Cuyahoga Sportsmen’s Association on Ridge Road, just north of the proposed subdivision.
Zindroski said the 54-acre Sportsmen’s Association property is a registered tree farm overseen by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. She said the tree farm depends on stormwater runoff from the Inks subdivision site and was concerned that the development would interfere with and/or alter the existing water flow.
Zindroski asked the commission to require Inks to perform an environmental impact study for his subdivision.
At the July 13 commission meeting, Engle said the Inks development would not change the existing rainwater drainage paths toward the Sportsmen’s Association property.
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