May 12, 2005

By Lauren Heaton

During a meeting with the Friends of Glen Helen/Hyde on Saturday, developer Mark Bertke said repeatedly that he would not build on, dig up or alter the five-acre parcel that Antioch sold, along with Birch III, to his development company, Purple Sage.

During the meeting, members of the Friends of Glen/Hyde, a group of villagers concerned about the sale of the 5.11-acre parcel along Hyde Road, expressed distrust and anger toward Antioch College for selling a piece of Glen Helen.

The college acquired the five-acre property in 1964, when the Vernay Foundation donated $30,000 for the purchase of the parcel along with a 20.89-acre tract south of Hyde Road. The land, situated in Miami Township, had a conservation easement placed on it that year, and it was incorporated into the Glen.

“Antioch has compromised the trust of alumni, community members and others, which has cost them more in donations than they could have possibly received from the land,” said Sam Young, chairman of Friends of Glen and a neighbor of Birch III, a 21-acre property slated to be developed with housing. “We are not opposed to development in Yellow Springs, but we are opposed to the use of the 5.11-acre plot.”

Though no representatives from the college attended Saturday’s meeting, Don Tecklenburg, the Antioch University vice chancellor, said on Monday that a year ago the Antioch Board of Trustees agreed to sell the five acres. The board’s decision was based on a recommendation from Bob Whyte, the executive director of the Glen Helen Ecology Institute, and the GHEI board of advisors, Tecklenburg said.

Tecklenburg said that the five-acre parcel is not contiguous with the Glen and it is surrounded by residential properties. Given Antioch’s limited personnel and financial resources it “makes no sense to continue managing it as part of the Glen,” he said.

In addition, Antioch has committed $10,000 from the $530,000 sale of Birch III to use in the Glen, he said.

“The money we made on the sale is more valuable to the Glen than the land itself,” Tecklenburg said. “This piece is absolutely nothing like the rest of the Glen.”

Antioch also maintains that the sale of the land for what Tecklenburg called middle-income housing was what many people in Yellow Springs wanted. By taking the highest bid for the property, the college also met its fiduciary responsibility, which is “paramount” at this time, he said.

Many at Saturday’s meeting expressed concern about the precedent Antioch is setting by selling a piece of the Glen. The community views the Glen “sacrosanct,” Young said, and it should remain intact in perpetuity.

But Tecklenburg said that no other part of the Glen was comparable to the five-acre parcel. The 21 acres included with the Vernay Foundation’s 1964 donation, for example, is contiguous with the Glen and is not intended to be sold, he said.

In addition, the five acres were sold with an easement that would prevent development there in the future, he said.

When Purple Sage presented a preliminary plat design for Birch III to the Village Planning Commission in March, the company’s owners, Bertke and Doug Eastham, proposed building a retention basin on the five-acre parcel to catch excess stormwater runoff from the development’s 40 homes. Opposition from neighbors and other community members combined with legal questions about what kind of construction the easement would allow led the developers to relocate the detention basin onto Birch III, at least until the legality of the basin could be resolved.

On Monday, Planning Commission held a second public hearing on the first phase of the development’s final plat design, which includes 35 lots on Birch III. Commission members agreed they needed more time to discuss the plan and scheduled a special meeting on May 26, when they are expected to vote on the application.

The development’s second phase, which includes the detention basin and five more lots, will be presented to the Planning Commission within 11 months of the passage of the first phase.

Bertke’s assertion on Saturday that he does not intend to disturb the five-acre parcel was the first public statement he has made saying that Purple Sage would not use the land. The statement led those at Saturday’s meeting to ask why Antioch sold the property and what the developers plan to do with it now.

Bertke said the land was already included in the Birch III contract and there was no need to renegotiate with Antioch. But he said that Purple Sage is open to proposals from the community on the best use of the land, which is consistent with a statement Eastham made to the News in March that he had intended to eventually donate the land back to Antioch.

But several people during the meeting suggested that Purple Sage consider turning the land over to either the Riding Centre, which maintained bridle trails on the parcel in the 1960s, or the Glen Helen Association, a fundraising organization independent of Antioch College.

Miami Township Zoning Inspector Richard Zopf said the fact that Antioch sold the land indicates that the college does not have the means to manage the property.

“What’s ultimately on people’s minds is the Glen is not as well-protected as we thought it was,” he said. “There are obviously large parts of Glen Helen that the college doesn’t feel it’s responsible for.”

Tecklenburg said that if the developer were to offer the five-acre property back to the college or the Glen, “we would have to consider if we want it or not.”

One of the holders of the easement on the disputed parcel, Jean McCally-Tebay, said in a phone interview from her home in Florida that she is committed to maintaining the integrity of the easement, which in her opinion prohibits a retention basin. But she said she is more interested in reaching an agreement that satisfies everyone rather than placing blame, even if that means the developers use the land as a retention pond.

“If the developers could do a pond that had no structures or anything and then reinstate the bridle trails, I don’t know about anyone else, but I could live with that,” she said.