KILBOURNE, Ohio — If the idea is to bring everyone to the table and that the table is where you find family; then this is where that table is made.
Here, in this town.
“We’re in Kilbourne, Ohio,” Josh Scheutzow said.
Scheutzow has called Kilbourne, Ohio, home the last two years. Before that, Columbus.
Fifteen years before that, Cleveland. His wood furniture business, “A Carpenter’s Son,” has continued to grow since it started six years ago. The business’s motto: We build pieces that bring people together.
And yes, yes it does.
Scheutzow, his wife and their four boys always wanted to live outside the city.
Kilbourne, for them, was the perfect place. It’s small with about 150 people living there. And with those people comes generations of character that can be seen by its aging infrastructure.
“There’s buildings that are falling in on themselves,” Scheutzow said. “90% of these buildings are unoccupied and have been for decades.”
When his family first moved to Kilbourne, all the town had to offer was a convenient store, which Scheutzow says calling it “convenient” was being generous.
Kilbourne, originally called Eden but was later changed to Kilbourne because an Eden already existed in northern Ohio, since the early 1800s. The 1860s brought a handful of stores like home goods and hardware.
But, small towns do what small towns tend to do and through the years the doors shut but the walls stood.
And then, an idea.
“It didn’t start as like we wanted to buy the whole town,” Scheutzow said.
An idea that Scheutzow says came from Garret Gandee and Nate Hatfield. The two men own an engineering firm in Westerville. They are also Scheutzow’s neighbors. And if they needed a sign, they got one.
“We saw a sign for an auction,” Hatfield said.
“It started as a puzzle to figure out,” Gandee said.
A puzzle with different pieces and buildings. The town was settling the estate of a man who had passed away.
“His name was Bruno,” Paul Clay said.
Clay is a historian for the area. His family has been in Kilbourne since 1836.
“It’s a first for me,” he said, of what Scheutzow and company are doing.
The Scheutzows, the Hatfields, the Gandees – four families in all – started buying properties. At first they thought of purchasing one or two for business fronts.
“We have 15 parcels with 10 buildings on them,” Scheutzow said.
If you think this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Have you ever heard of the show Schitt’s Creek? It’s about a family that buys a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, so have they.
“I’ve been told this now 1,000 times,” Gandee said, laughing.
The families haven’t bought a town, per se, but the idea is the same; buying land and buildings with big plans to make it more appealing.
“Is this the Schitt’s Creek of Ohio,” 10TV's Bryant Somerville asked.
“I can’t say for sure,” Scheutzow said with a chuckle.
What he can say is that this has been an undertaking.
“We quickly realized that the reason that nobody could run a business here is because there’s no infrastructure,” he said.
Scheutzow says issues he and his partners found were almost immediate. Many places had no sewage. Storm-water systems were bad. There were no parking lots and even things like gas and electric were tricky all thanks to zoning that was written in the early 1900s.
“It took us working hand-in-hand with the county engineers, with Delaware County, with our township commissioners to come out here and walk around and they’ve been very easy to work with,” Scheutzow said.
“This was actually a really unique project,” Bob Lamb said.
Lamb is the Delaware County economic development director. After the initial shock of such an ambitious goal wore off, he says the county was on board with backing the vision that was built and put in motion by the people.
“I think the impressive aspect of all this was how much effort Josh and his team put into just working with the local community to make it happen,” Lamb said.
Lamb says that vision financially, economically and socially worked for the county. So much so, the county allocated $250,000 in city development block money to help reposition infrastructure in the Kilbourne area.
“Currently, we have about $800,000 of our own money invested,” Scheutzow said.
A lot of money that, no doubt, comes with it a lot of worry and second guessing.
“We have that moment on a weekly basis, I would say,” Gandee said. “And [we] have since the very beginning.”
Getting over the doubt and the financial responsibility and the infrastructure woes lead to the hurdle of the people.
“I mean they were skeptical of us, as they should be,” Hatfield said, recognizing how strange it must have been for town outsiders to have such ambitious goals.
“We took our time with that process,” Gandee said.
Concerns that were thrown out were noise and traffic, which are things that new business would surely bring.
“I think some of those major concerns that people have is that this has been a quiet, abandoned town for decades,” Scheutzow said.
Scheutzow says in two years there were several town halls that allowed people to come in, hear ideas and share plans. Furthermore, the team would change plans based off of feedback they received.
Bob Ebright has lived in Kilbourne 25 years. His wife has lived here for 35 years.
“I mean, this was a ghost town,” he said.
At first, he admits he had his doubts about renovation. Now, he says he’s encouraged.
“I applaud them all the way, 100%,” Ebright said of the partners. “They’re doing a great job.”
The same goes for Ruthann Harrel. The town’s old bed and breakfast where riders on horseback would lay their head after a long day’s travel is where she used to live.
“And these were probably the best memories of my life in Kilbourne,” she said.
Her old home is now one of the buildings looking to be renovated. She remembers it; the sights and the smells. Memories reflected on every broken window, every inch of rust on a tin roof and every flake of paint that has fallen.
“These houses that they’ve got are so old. They’ve got a lot of work ahead of them to bring them back,” she said.
Still, though, she’s hopeful for the same feel of that same small town.
“I always remember the old Kilbourne, but it’s the way things are going now days and I think Kilbourne really appreciates what’s going on here,” Harrel said.
What’s going on here is not taking anything out, but putting back in what has already labeled Kilbourne as home for so many.
“This whole project is more than just owning and developing some buildings,” Scheutzow said. “We’re really trying to build a place that’s really special for the people that live here.”
Welcome to Kilbourne where the table is made and you are always welcome.