If it feels like you've read this story before, that's because you have. The Minerva Lake Golf Club is toast. Someone is buying the 18-hole course and filling it with homes. Everything inside that slice of land on the North Side is going to change. Maybe.

If it feels like you�ve read this story before, that�s because you have.

The Minerva Lake Golf Club is toast. Someone is buying the 18-hole course and filling it with homes. Everything inside that slice of land on the North Side is going to change.

Maybe.

�A lot of people have attempted to do something similar to what we�re proposing here,� said Jason Francis, director of land development for M/I Homes of Central Ohio.

For more than a decade, companies have proposed to develop the course, an 84-year-old village staple just southeast of Minerva Park where a school-age Jack Nicklaus once shot a 65. Each proposal has rattled neighbors, shaken the community and ultimately died.

The M/I bid, though, might be the one.

It comes a year after another proposal flopped and the golfers kept golfing. The new plan has fewer houses than the last one. It involves restoring a dam and donating acreage to a nearby school.

The developer, said lawyer Aaron Underhill, has been �trying to understand where previous proposals kind of went wrong.�

The last plan dissolved in the summer of 2014, when Fischer Homes was unable to reach an agreement with the village and backed out of its proposal to build 335 homes on about 100 acres. Residents rejoiced. The course stayed open.

But talks soon revved up again. Underhill said M/I and the village have been in discussions for most of the year on a 255-home development in the same location.

�This is significantly less (than the last proposal), which I think they like,� he said.

M/I�s proposal calls for 40 acres of open space, 14 of which would be dedicated to Westerville schools in exchange for property from the district for a road extension. It also would fix a crumbling dam on Minerva Park Lake, work that would be repaid through proceeds from tax-increment financing.

As the proposal stands, the new homes would each cost around $225,000. Construction would be phased in such a way that nine holes of golf would remain open through the end of 2016.

Jeff Groezinger, whose family owns the golf course, said the deal seems like a good one. He�s thought that before, though.

�I want to believe, but there�s only so many times you can get your hopes up and not have them work out,� he said.

But even the village mayor thinks this might be the development that finally goes through.

�I think it�s a much better proposal than we�ve had in the past from other developers,� Lynn Eisentrout said.

The entire deal, which involves contracts and annexation and rezoning, is still in negotiations. Minerva Park plans to hold a town meeting in January to go over the details with residents. The village has been protective of its golf course and critical of whatever replaces it, but Eisentrout said there�s ultimately no stopping development.

�It�s going to happen,� she said. �It�s completely inevitable. We know that.�

lkurtzman@dispatch.com

@LoriKurtzman