How do you evaluate a 27-acre site for a mixed-use community campus?

What does it mean to evaluate a 27-acre site?

A 27-acre site is large enough to support multiple buildings, multiple uses, and phased development — but it's also large enough to hide expensive problems. A site that size in an urbanized area is almost always a former industrial, agricultural, or institutional property with conditions that affect what you can build and what it will cost.

nSCALE evaluated a 27-acre site in Trotwood, Ohio (Montgomery County) for the Maranatha Life Campus, a faith-anchored mixed-use development for Maranatha Community Development Corp. The work completed to date is a partial feasibility study and a masterplan — not a full feasibility study, which the project has not yet funded. That distinction matters, and we'll come back to it.

The evaluation tested four conditions in parallel, not in sequence.

What are the four conditions you test simultaneously?

1. Zoning and entitlement — what does the jurisdiction allow, and what approvals are needed?
2. Environmental and site conditions — what's in the ground, and what will it cost to fix?
3. Utility and infrastructure capacity — is there water, sewer, power, and road access for the program?
4. Market and community need — does the community need what you want to build, and will it be used?

Testing these in parallel matters because they interact. A site with great zoning but a major environmental remediation cost may not be viable. A site with clean soil but no sewer capacity may require a six-figure utility extension.

On environmental cost, the widely repeated figures are usually far too high. An analysis of the full 25-year history of EPA's ACRES brownfields database puts the median cleanup cost at roughly $158,000 in urban areas and $14,000 in rural areas, normalized to 2020 dollars (Community Lattice, Understanding Brownfields Cleanup Costs — a consultancy's analysis of EPA data, not an EPA publication). Medians hide a long tail, which is exactly why the assessment comes before the commitment.

How do you test zoning on a 27-acre site?

Zoning on a large site is more complex than on a single parcel. The site may span multiple zoning districts, have overlay districts, or be in a planned unit development (PUD) area. The questions a scoping-level zoning review has to answer look like this:

On the Maranatha site, the answers established that the zoning did not permit everything the client envisioned by right, but that a conditional use permit path existed for the uses that mattered most. That is a common and workable outcome — and knowing it early is what lets a masterplan be drawn against reality rather than against hope.

How do you test environmental conditions?

Environmental testing on a large site starts with a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA), which is a records-based review of the site's history. If the Phase I identifies recognized environmental conditions (RECs), a Phase II ESA with soil and groundwater sampling is required.

The cost ranges below are nSCALE's own market experience, not published data. Pricing varies widely by region, site size, and consultant.

One technical point that catches sponsors out: under ASTM E1527-21, a Phase I ESA is presumed viable when conducted within 180 days prior to acquisition, and can be extended to one year if five components are updated — interviews, the lien search, the government records review, the visual inspection, and the environmental professional's declaration. Past one year, a completely new Phase I is generally required. If your due diligence period stretches, budget for the update.

How do you test utility and infrastructure capacity?

Utility capacity is the most overlooked evaluation criterion, and it's the one that kills the most projects. A 27-acre site with a substantial residential program needs water and sewer capacity that many rural or suburban sites don't have.

nSCALE tests utility capacity by requesting service availability letters from the local water and sewer providers. These letters state whether the provider has capacity to serve the proposed development and what, if any, extensions or upgrades are required. A sewer extension of several hundred linear feet is a six-figure line item, and it is the kind of cost that has to appear in a masterplan-stage budget rather than surfacing during design.

The underlying pressure on utilities is real and documented. EPA's seventh Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment puts the 20-year national drinking water infrastructure need at $625 billion (EPA, September 2023). Utilities carrying that kind of backlog are not eager to absorb the cost of serving new development, which is why the extension cost usually lands on the project.

How do you test market and community need?

Market testing for a community campus is different from market testing for a market-rate project. The question is not "will someone pay for this?" but "does the community need this, and will it be used?"

nSCALE tests community need through:

1. Demographic analysis — what does the community look like, and what does it need?
2. Service gap analysis — what services are missing in the area?
3. Stakeholder interviews — what does the community actually want?
4. Comparable project analysis — what has worked in similar communities?

Trotwood's population is 23,041, with a median household income of $50,113 — roughly 70% of Ohio's median of $71,389 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020–2024 ACS 5-Year Estimates). The community needs affordable housing, community facilities, and workforce training — exactly what Maranatha's program provides.

What comes out of the evaluation — and what doesn't?

This is where it is worth being precise, because the distinction is the whole point of a tiered approach.

What the Maranatha work produced is a partial feasibility study and a masterplan: a tested understanding of what the site allows, a program shaped to fit it, and a physical plan the client can show a board, a congregation, and a funder. That is enough to align stakeholders and to start raising money.

What it does not produce is a financeable package. A full feasibility study — verified construction cost estimates, a complete pro forma, a market and demand assessment, a sources-and-uses statement, and a capital stack — has not been completed on this project, because it has not yet been funded. Until it is, no lender or tax-credit investor can underwrite the campus.

That sequence is normal and it is not a failure. Most community projects live in exactly this gap: a real plan, real community support, and no money yet for the technical work that converts a plan into a project. Naming the gap honestly is more useful to a board than pretending it isn't there.

A scoping-level evaluation on a site this size costs $6,000–$8,000 and takes 3–4 weeks. It's the cheapest way to find out whether a 27-acre dream can become a 27-acre project — and what it will take to finish the homework.