Hilliard City Council has unanimously approved the transfer of 333 acres of city-owned and private land to Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks to expand Homestead Metro Park.
The land transfer is a massive expansion of the 44-acre park located at 4675 Cosgray Road in Hilliard, connecting it to hundreds of acres north of housing developments along Scioto Darby Creek Road. The park currently has a pond, a train station replica, a caboose, two pavilions and a ¾-mile paved trail.
Council voted 7-0 at its Sept. 28 regular meeting to transfer 69 acres of city-owned land directly to Metro Parks; to allow builder M/I Homes, the company behind the Hill Farm and Hill Farm II developments near Homestead Metro Park, to transfer some of its land to the park
system; and to enter into a memorandum of understanding with Metro Parks that will allow the park system to maintain and patrol certain trails. All three of these actions were included in a single ordinance.
Council previously voted in June to allow land developer Grand Communities to transfer around 35 acres of its land near Clover Groff Run, which is just southwest of Homestead Metro Park, to the Columbus-Franklin County park system.
Tim Moloney, executive director of Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks, previously said in a Sept. 15 social media videothat it would take the park system a couple of years to develop wetlands, trails and prairies on the new Homestead Metro Park land.
The new park land sits in the Big Darby Watershed, a 556-square-mile area around the Big Darby Creek, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the Midwest, according to the City of Hilliard. Several central Ohio communities, including Hilliard, agreed to the Big Darby Accord in 2006 to protect the watershed. A replacement for the 20-year-old cooperative agreement has been proposed, but not been voted on by all the member municipalities.
Reporter Nathan Hart can be reached at NHart@dispatch.com, @NathanRHart on X and nathanhart.dispatch.com on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Hilliard approves transfer of land to expand Homestead Metro Park
