By DAVE SCHULTZ
There were 110 housing starts in Wells County during 2022, far and away the most in a single year since 2010.
The number of urban housing starts was 70, which is more than the number of total starts in the past dozen years. There were 56 total housing starts in 2021 and 65 — the previous peak for the period — in 2020.
The numbers come from the annual report for 2022 presented to the members of the Wells County Area Plan Commission last week.
The number of total housing starts is rather astonishing, and Michael Lautzenheiser Jr., the executive director of the APC and the author of the report, even called it “unsustainable” when he discussed it with the APC’s membership.
Breaking down the urban housing starts, 43 were in Bluffton, 26 in Ossian, and one in Zanesville. Of the 40 rural homes, 25 were in the Northern Wells school district, seven were in Bluffton-Harrison, and eight were in Southern Wells.
There were also 17 commercial or industrial building permits granted during 2022, the report said.
The total estimated value of the construction in Wells County in 2022 was $118,473,480, the report said. Those totals in 2020 and 2021 were just under $60 million and just under 40 million.
“The ground laid by the approvals of multiple housing subdivisions in 2021 along with strong rural housing growth has led the charge for this year,” Lautzenheiser wrote in the report.
“2022 has been the year of the home start, led primarily by a single builder in two different subdivisions,” Lautzenheiser said in his conclusion to the report. “I believe this high number will be hard to obtain year after year depending on the speed of future sections of subdivision coming online and future projects that we do not know about yet getting through the approval process. Many things went down in 2022 which shows the financial investment was lopsided between development types. 2023 will be a year of preparing for the new crop of projects and looking at key improvements to make the process easier to complete for all parties.”
In an accompanying document, Lautzenheiser also set forth the APC’s Plan of Operations for 2023. In it, he said the commission would complete and implement the Vision 2035 revision of the county’s comprehensive plan and help the municipalities create their individual plans. Staff will also work on needed improvements to the Wells County zoning and subdivision control ordinances.
daves@news-banner.com
