PulseJournal.com

LEBANON – Warren County officials want communities along Interstate 75 to help them stop residential growth along the highway to save remaining undeveloped land for new businesses.

More commercial development is needed to provide jobs and taxes that would pay for local government services for the residents who streamed into Warren and Butler counties for the past decade, county commissioners say. Warren County, with about 200,000 residents, has been the second-fastest growing county in Ohio for a decade and the population is expected to reach nearly 400,000.

For the past year, county commissioners have made economic development their priority, hiring a new staff to attract new businesses. Among the first results is a proposal to set aside all undeveloped land in a narrow corridor along I-75 for commercial, not residential development.

Most of the 3,000 acres in this stretch already are zoned for commercial uses by cities, including Springboro, Franklin, Middletown and Monroe.

However, Warren County officials have identified land zoned for agricultural or residential uses near the highway that they want preserved for potential business use.

They want — and need — the cooperation of other local governments because the Warren County government only controls planning and zoning in five townships across the county and only two, Franklin and Turtlecreek, are located along I-75. City and township officials make zoning decisions in the rest of the county.

"We need everybody at the table so we all can work together on the same vision rather than each local government approving things that don't fit into a master plan," said Warren County Commissioner Pat South.

Representatives from all three counties will meet at 8:30 a.m. today to begin describing how they want growth to occur on along a 17.5-mile stretch of I-75. This "growth'' corridor begins at the Austin Road interchange in Miami Twp. in Montgomery County and ends in West Chester Twp. near the I-75-Ohio 129 interchange in Butler County.

"We're in the preliminary stages of talking about how and what we collectively want to see this corridor look like,'' South said.

The work is so preliminary that not all of the local governments knew about today's meeting. Montgomery County's economic development manager Erik Collins, for example, said he only learned of the meeting on Tuesday and would not attend.

Also, Warren County planners prepared maps outlining areas along I-75 to be discussed but rough drafts do not show how all of the land is used or how it is zoned.

Still, Collins said developing a regional master plan for I-75 will ensure the Dayton-Cincinnati area grows together.

"It makes a lot of sense to work in an integrated fashion so we can do it the right way the first time, because once development starts it's hard to reverse,'' Collins said.

Among the development already underway is construction of a new Middletown Regional Hospital just east of I-75 in the stretch Warren County commissioners want to talk about. Their call for today's meeting comes four years after the commissioners joined residents and township trustees in opposing the hospital's plan to build farther south in an undeveloped area of Turtlecreek Twp. County commissioners then said the development and accompanying traffic would spoil the rural atmosphere.

Commissioners later agreed with the hospital administration's decision to locate at Ohio 122 near the Towne Mall and other commercial development.

Now Warren County officials say they recognize the undeveloped land along I-75 includes prime real estate for businesses.

"That was a wake-up call for me, that we need to have a plan for this corridor and what we want it to look like," South said.

Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4542 or tlatta@coxohio.com.