MCCF Completes Sale of Former Leasure Family Farm

ZANESVILLE, OH – The Muskingum County Community Foundation recently completed the sale of the former Leasure Family Farm.

The 74.5 square acres of property, located at 3870 Frazeysburg Road, was sold to Steve Layman, who is an experienced residential developer from Newark.

Brian Wagner, the CEO of MCCF, said the goal of the property is to be developed into housing for area residents.

“The City of Zanesville did a housing study along with the county a few years ago and realized there was a need for market rate housing,” Wagner explained. “The vision of the Foundation along with what Mr. Layman is looking at, would be to develop market rate housing on that site. So phase one of the project should yield about 80 market houses with curbs, streets, sidewalks, street lighting and other nice amenities.”

Wagner says the Leasure Family Farm property was left to the Foundation as a part of Mrs. Leasure’s estate, with the idea for it to be used later on for community development projects.

He said the proceeds from the sale will be going into the Leasure Family Fund at the Foundation.

“Those dollars will be used to support unrestricted gifting, as deemed by the board of trustees from the Foundation, which means really, monies that can be used for any project that the Foundation thinks are worthy to improve our community,” Wagner said. “Really, it’s a win, win, win. The Leasure Family was able to gift us this property to use it as they see, or wanted to see it used, also then the City and the County will be seeing growth and opportunity for housing, and then the Foundation will be able to use the proceeds from the dollars to support all sorts of different projects and programs.”

There is no word yet on when Phase One of the former Leasure Family Farm project will begin.