This is the second time Coalville, the Summit County seat, has been asked to annex part of Hoytsville, its unincorporated neighbor to the south.
Larry H. Miller Real Estate owns about 1,000 acres there, which it bought from families who couldn’t make as much money farming as they used to.
The developer had been working with Summit County to plan a phased and clustered, village-style development. This fall, it started talking to Coalville.
“It doesn't surprise me,” dairy farmer Mike Brown told KPCW. “I think they're just recognizing what we knew years ago, that it makes more sense to work with Colville than the county.”
The are Browns one of Hoytsville's three most significant farming families who sold to Larry H. Miller. But originally, Mike Brown and the dozens of other property owners applied for annexation in 2017.
“I believe it should happen with Coalville,” he said. “When we couldn't get it done, obviously, we went to our next best option.”
Hoytsville has never had consensus about growth and development. The area has previously voted against becoming a town.
That’s part of what Brown said went wrong seven years ago. Meeting minutes indicate Coalville expanded the proposed annexation to include other landowners that didn’t petition for it, beyond the scope of what Brown and others were asking for.
In 2018, Summit County created a new category of zoning to allow for “villages” in Hoytsville and other unincorporated communities. Only properties that applied for it would be included in the village boundary.
The following year, the Hoytsville families applied and began interviewing developers who could build what is now called the Cedar Crest Village.
Larry H. Miller and homebuilder Ivory Homes picked up the baton in 2022. But their efforts to plan Cedar Crest stalled at the planning commission level, before they reached the Summit County Council, in the middle of 2024.
Annexation discussions with the Coalville City Council, which started in October, bring the project full circle.
Larry H. Miller President Brad Holmes indicated at the latest discussion Dec. 9 that Coalville can work with the company on, essentially, a blank slate.
“Clearly, there's been a plan that's on public record now. But why start with that, when we have an ability to come in and listen to the council, listen to staff and then listen to residents,” Holmes told the city council.
Besides control over development, the primary benefit to annexation is tax revenue.
The city is already waiting on increased revenues from two previous annexations, which aren’t fully built.
One is the Red Hills subdivision, which is contiguous with some of Larry H. Miller’s Cedar Crest land.
The other is Wohali, a luxury resort across Interstate 80. Like the farmers in Hoytsville, it applied for annexation in 2017. Unlike them, it succeeded.
Larry H. Miller Real Estate hasn’t formally petitioned for annexation, but discussions are likely to continue in the new year.
City councilmembers want to talk about the scope of annexation, because not all of the developer’s land is contiguous.
