Friday, January 21, 2000
Union hopes to put on new face
Master plan forwarded to county agency
BY KRISTINA GOETZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
UNION — The city's development plan has crossed its first hurdle as officials try to finish it before the state builds a 3-mile, five-lane highway through town.
After two years of redrafting the document and much argument in the community over whether the city should fight the U.S. 42 bypass, city commissioners and Union Town Plan committee members came to a consensus Thursday night.
It's time to move the document to the Long-Range Planning Committee of the Boone County Planning Commission.
“The city will really become a different city if this plan comes about,” planning commission Director Kevin Costello said.
The newest version of the town plan includes a formal town center and incentives for developers and property owners to build in a well-designed way that will give Union a dis tinctive character.
“We're really trying to have a different flavor for this area,” said Dave Geohegan, director of planning services for the county planning commission.
The town center is designed to centralize commercial development so strip malls don't spread out across the city. Planners say it will be compact and offer a mixture of land uses so it will be possible to live and work in the same community.
The plan also will have strict design and sign requirements for developers. For example, signs for subdivisions would have to be monument style made of brick or stone. In the town center, though, easel-like sidewalk signs would be permitted.
The plan includes creating three new zones for the city of Union. They would spell out what types of businesses could locate in the commercial and office zones, and the town center.
The city had tried to persuade the state to build a split road rather than a five-lane highway. This concept, which the state rejected, would have allowed two northbound lanes and two southbound lanes with development in the middle.
The state plans to start construction on the road, which would bypass the city's main business district and split the town into east and west sides, in 2001.
Officials say it would run between the Union Village and Plantation Pointe subdivisions and the existing U.S. 42.
After the Long-Range Planning Committee reviews the plan, a series of workshops for the public will be held and, later, a public hearing.
Mr. Geohegan said it would be at least June or July before the plan could be approved by Boone County Fiscal Court.
Street deceit possibly criminal
Cincinnati teachers ready for strike vote
Council flips on lid over FWW
Sledder killed in park accident
Next winter challenge: Cold
Dressing warm important
Klan plans rally on square Saturday
Photo of lunar eclipse
Sex-ed compromise pleases no one
Taft totes political heft for schools plan
Area schools say dorm students ready for fires
Cincinnati wants to revive gun suit
City ban on drug offenders ruled illegal
Lebanon buyouts questioned
Off-duty firemen charged
Sabin Center expansion may shift east
Tristate's dominant HMOs evaluated
Audit faults ex-sheriff
Bid scandal bill in trouble
King events continue today
Mining in Boone probably inevitable
Queen City's moments to shine reflected in book
Still hope for fire-ravaged school
East side, west side: Couple copes with culture clash
GET TO IT
'Sopranos' shrink hints at season
Drugstore war may be settled
Four of five quintuplets breathing almost on own
Layover enough time to get baby medication
Lockland hires first full-time fire chief
Man wanted in theft case held in S.C.
Planned jail full in days?
Professor admits stealing telescope lens in 1981
Quake could hit Midwest in 15 years
Skirt Game indoors Saturday
Some want street named for golfer
Student, dad, charged in scuffle
Students remake part of history
TRISTATE DIGEST
Union hopes to put on new face
