The Planning Commission next Monday will hear a new application for a grocery at the former Lines Orchid property at Walden.
Attorney John Anderson of LOP LLC earlier withdrew a request involving a large grocery.
The new request on over 15 acres is "to rezone from A-1 Agriculture Zone, R-1 Residential Zone, & C-1 General Commercial Zone to VC-1 Village Center Zone for a grocery store with fuel center and office/ retail building with adjacent public park space."
The staff of the Regional Planning Agency is recommending denial and approving rezoning on nine acres subject to a number of conditions.
Those are:
1. Amount of building area available for retail uses shall not exceed eighty percent (80%);
2. No more than one curb cut permitted onto Taft Hwy;
3. Minimum building frontage on any public right-of-way or designated internal private street shall be sixty percent (60%);
4. Maximum square footage of any one building shall not exceed twenty-thousand (20,000) square feet;
5. Publically accessible, centrally located open space shall be provided within the VC-1 zoned area;
6. Internal street network with an average block length not to exceed two-hundred (200) feet connecting the mix of uses, areas of parking, and civic spaces. The streets can be private. All designated streets should have curb and gutter, sidewalks and street trees. No parking other than on-street parking permitted between the designated streets and proposed buildings; and
7. A site plan shall be provided to and approved by the Regional Planning Agency before building permits are approved by Hamilton County, per Article 4 Sec E-2, indicating compliance with the conditions noted above.
The staff said, "The location of a Village Center at the intersection of Timesville Rd and Taft Hwy is consistent with the land use policy recommendation from the Walden Plateau Area Plan. The requested VC-1 Village Commercial Zone is the most appropriate zone tool for this location to implement the plan policy recommendations; however, staff believes that the scale of the proposed rezoning should be minimized in order to protect natural resources to the rear of the property. Additionally, the zone standards are dated and inadequate to ensure that the plan policy recommendations are implemented by the existing zone standards. The submitted conceptual site plan partially aligns with the plan recommendations through the incorporation of a more accessible green space, positioning of front outbuildings to complement the existing smaller buildings along Taft Hwy, the use of pedestrian lanes, sidewalks and pathways around the project perimeter and connecting the outbuildings with the main anchor building. However, staff’s overriding main concern is the large scale building and associated parking, and the lack of an internal street network with defined streets conflicts with the plan recommendations for “small to moderate scale buildings, landscaping, architectural detailing, preservation of tree cover and rural vistas, and compact site design with less emphasis on parking”. It should also be noted that the site plan is just a conceptual illustration of intent; ultimately the zone standards and any conditions would regulate the development outcome of this site.
"For the reasons noted above, staff is recommending a reduced VC-1 Zone area with the conditions."
The Planning Commission meets on Monday at 1 p.m. at the County Courthouse, fourth floor.