26-mile plan would complete Dayton-Cincy metroplex

Critics claim lack of affordable housing in Warren County.

Regional home-building and development groups object to the latest plan for development of 26 square miles along Interstate 75, some of the last interstate land still available for development between Cincinnati and Dayton.

“We’ve been talking about Dayton and Cincinnati are going to be a metroplex. In the next 10 years, that is going to happen,” Steve Feldmann, governmental affairs director for the Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati, said.

The Gateway West plan is a blueprint for how the land — much of it still farm fields between Monroe and Middletown and mostly east of I-75 — should be altered over the next 30 years.

Feldmann and a representative of the Ohio Valley Development Council objected on several grounds, including concerns about whether enough room was left for affordable housing.

“Warren County already has an affordability issue,” Feldmann said. “It takes a very highly desirable area and it exacerbates the problem.”

Despite Feldmann’s objections, the Warren County Regional Planning Commission unanimously approved the Gateway West Plan last month, which sent the plan to the county Board of Commissioners.

Gateway West calls for design standards like those already planned for Union Village, a 1,400-acre new urbanist community where people walk or ride a bike between home and work.

“Very few people want to live like this,” Feldmann said. “This goes toward the wealthy.”

Added costs to live in such a community can tack as much as $20,000 onto the cost of a new home, according to Ben Taylor of Drees Homes and the Ohio Valley Development Council.

In addition, Taylor asked that home builders be included as architectural review boards are formed and standards are created for the rest of the area, in order to prevent problems that could delay development.

“Long fights ensue over operable shutters and things like that,” he said.

Bob Ware, senior planner in Warren County, said there was ample room for affordable housing in Union Village and other parts of the plan area.

“I would caution at getting too overly alarmed at the idea that this is going to exclude or not include the middle market,” he said. “I don’t think it’s meant to be exclusive in any way.”

Other members of the planning group said the interests of developers and home builders were only one of multiple factors taken into account in planning the the land’s future uses.

“We are now in the process of creating a legacy,” said Joe Yurasek, a Turtlecreek Twp. resident.

Warren County’s Gateway West

Most of the land in the plan is east of I-75, in Turtlecreek Twp., although some land lays in Monroe and Middletown, and a sliver is west of the interstate.

The plan, the result of two years of work, envisions Ohio 63 and Union Road as commercial corridors with as many as four to eight mixed-use buildings per acre in employment centers. Development density in other parts of the area is limited by available water and sewer service.

The plan also calls for creation of as many as four economic development districts that would tax workers, rather than residents or property owners, to offset development and maintenance costs. One of the districts would be set up around a new I-75 interchange at Greentree Road between Ohio 63 and Ohio 122 interchanges.

The Union Road corridor would run north from Ohio 63 and the racino north to the Atrium Medical Center and Middletown’s Renaissance District. A new fire station would be built near Union and Greentree, and the need for a new library studied.

The plan is also designed to prevent the development of strip shopping centers. It anticipates a network of bike and pedestrian trails to connect Turtlecreek Twp. and Lebanon.

Property taxes from the racino development are to help fund road and infrastructure work. The plan calls for the use of tax incremental financing and the pursuit of other public funding to cover costs.

Latest version

Opposition to the previous effort, known as the I-75 Area Plan, sent planners back to the drawing board, but the Gateway West Plan had gone forward with little criticism until the Feb. 10 hearing.

In response to the criticism of the last plan from Springboro and Franklin, a section of Franklin Twp. was removed from the plan area.

Barry Conway, city engineer in Franklin, was among those who cast a vote resulting in the unanimous approval by the planning commission, sending the plan for final scrutiny by the county commissioners.

Springboro City Manager Chris Thompson declined to comment on the new plan, expected to be submitted to the commissioners without any changes responding to the latest critics.

“We do not anticipate making any changes to the plan unless the commissioners think it is necessary,” Matt Obringer, the planner heading the process, said in an email.

On Tuesday, a date is to be set for presentation to the commissioners.

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