The Golden Gate Shopping Center in Mayfield Heights has long been home to a variety of stores, restaurants and service outlets.
Celebrating its' 50th anniversary this year, the 40 acre site fronts Mayfield road, just west of I-271.
Student Paul McElvey is one of thousands who come and go each day, most only casually noticing construction toward the rear of the center's parking lot.
But our inquiry was the first McElvey had heard of what's actually going on in this fenced area containing a backhoe, mounds of dirt, and a hole.
[Paul McElvey]
"Kinda strange - middle of where people are. Kinda disrupts the whole parking lot."
Drilling for gas isn't a well-publicized activity in Mayfield Heights, as Brian Gay learned. He's worked at the Golden Gate 30 years, and is now manager of the Conrad's Tire outlet - the business closest to the new gas well.
[Brian Gay]
"I didn't have any knowledge at all until a gentleman came in with some papers and said I should send them to corporate; and three or four days later, they were drilling."
Local resident Dan Coffey, who is in the Conrads waiting room while his car is serviced, doesn't like the idea of gas wells in the middle of town.
[Dan Coffey]
"They're just selling out for a buck here and there, that's what I think."
5 years ago, drilling projects like this would have been subject to much more local scrutiny.
That was before the state took control of regulating gas and oil drilling away from municipalities in 2004, and ceded it to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Since then, hundreds of wells have been drilled in Mayfield Heights, adjacent Gates Mills, and neighboring Chesterland, all of which sit atop a large pocket of gas classified by the state as Silurian-Devonian, or "Big Lime".
It's one of 8 types of gas fields in Ohio.
Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga Counties lead the state in gas drilling.
Here at the Golden Gate Shopping Center, the drilling began without any input from, or benefit to, the city of Mayfield Heights.
[Mayor Gregory Costabile]
"Because none of this is city property, the city has no gain whatsoever."
"The permitting process goes through the state of Ohio, and not the local municipalities."
That's Mayfield Heights Mayor Gregory Costabile. He says the issue of home rule - the rights of cities and towns to set their own laws and standards - is always a concern, and this is one more example of the state chipping away at those rights. He also worries about safety, recalling how one gas well in nearby Bainbridge caused a house explosion. He says the presence of moving cars near the Golden Gate Center well is cause for concern. But he believes adequate precautions are in place…
[Costabile]
"If something happened in Bainbridge, it seems like there's isolated reasons why that occurred that I would not foresee happening in Mayfield Heights."
Cement pylons and landscaping will protect the well from traffic mishaps. Forest City Enterprises will pocket a royalty that's typically about 12% of the natural gas produced. That sounded good to Mayor Costabile, and now the city government is getting in on the natural gas boom… with a well just a few blocks away, inside a city park.
[Mayor Costabile]
"We are now in the contract negotiation stage with the gas well company."
By building its own site, the city of Mayfield Heights is taking advantage of a chance to collect dollars without raising taxes, and looking toward what the mayor calls a potential half-million dollar payday, over the years of the well's operation.
[Mayor Costabile]
"The $$ that we receive from the royalties, we are going to put into recreation line item, are going right back into recreational activities in that park."
Other cities have done similarly - Seven Hills leases land to gas companies. Neighboring Independence has taken in a reported $130,000.
And further east, the Geauga County Historical Society hopes to ease its budget problems with a well recently drilled on the grounds of its Century Village Residents there have been highly critical of the move. In Mayfield Heights, resident Dan Coffey remains skeptical... that drilling wells is worth the extra revenue they provide.
[Dan Coffey]
"Once they do one, they'll put em all over. We're gonna look like Gates Mills, what've they got like 40 of em?"
Rick Jackson, 90.3.
