By Jennifer Edwards
The Cincinnati Enquirer

DEERFIELD TWP. - Warren County commissioners took action Tuesday to slow residential growth by initiating an increase in lot sizes, but nothing is stopping a major Kroger shopping center planned for one of the county's most-congested areas.

Warren County mandates zoning for each of its townships except Deerfield, which took over its own zoning in 1997.

Last year, Deerfield Township leaders approved rezoning for the 84-acre center area that will hold a 70,000-square-foot Kroger store plus an additional 137,000-square-foot strip shopping center with gas pumps on the southwest corner of Mason-Montgomery and Socialville-Foster roads. Next week, the center will be before the regional planning commission for right-of-way and other routine approvals.

LOT SIZE CHANGED

On Tuesday, Warren County commissioners formally initiated a zoning change to require larger lots and more open space for subdivisions in the five townships where it controls zoning: Franklin, Turtlecreek, Union, Harlan and Washington. Changes proposed include requiring 25 percent of planned developments to be set aside as open space. Also, minimum lot sizes in R-1 residential zones - the most common zone - would grow from 14,000 square feet to half an acre (21,780 square feet) for areas with sewer access. Areas without sewers would require two-acre lots, up from æ acre. A newly created zone, R-1A, would allow the same minimum lot sizes as the former, R-1 zone, 14,000 square-feet with sewers and æ acre without. Public hearings will be held on the changes soon.

The project calls for out-lots including Gold Star Chili, McDonald's, Wendy's, another yet-to-be-named fast-food restaurant, a sit-down restaurant and a Peoples Community Bank, plans show.

The back portion of the project will have high-tech offices and light industrial uses. The Kroger store should break ground sometime this year and could open by late 2003 or early 2004, company officials said Tuesday.

The new store will be 2‡ miles from the existing, 66,500-square-foot one on Fields-Ertel Road that opened in fall 1987. Despite the two stores' proximity, Kroger officials said Tuesday they expect both to thrive and noted that two stores just under two miles apart in Western Hills have succeeded. "As the population growth moves, we certainly need to move with it," Kroger spokesman Art Wulfeck said. "Eventually, we would shut the (Fields-Ertel) store down but that won't be for 20 or 30 years."

Deerfield Towne Center is expected to be built three-quarters of a mile south of the new Kroger, on both the northwest and southwest corners of Mason-Montgomery and Irwin Simpson roads. That center is expected to resemble Rookwood Commons.

But Warren County leaders said they are concerned about more cars and commercial development in an area with one of the busiest intersections in the Tristate, Mason-Montgomery and Fields-Ertel roads. Mason-Montgomery at Fields-Ertel Road east off Interstate 71 carried 38,809 vehicles a day in 2000, the most recent count.

Deerfield Township Administrator Greg Horwedel contends officials had to approve the project. The township needs to use tax-increment financing in that area to pay to build a new road, Wilkens Boulevard, that will ease congestion at Mason-Montgomery and Fields-Ertel, he said.

Wilkens would run parallel to Mason-Montgomery to Socialville-Foster and nearly down to Fields-Ertel.

The county engineer's office is reviewing traffic plans and may require turn lanes.

But turn lanes are little consolation to residents like Marcia Sullivan, who eagerly moved to Landen 17 years ago but now calls Deerfield Township a "retail slum."

"We can't get anywhere from here. From 4 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday I can't go to my local Kroger unless I want to sit in traffic and it's walking distance away from my house," said Ms. Sullivan, 55.

Glen Brand, Midwest regional representative of the Sierra Club, called it"another example in a seemingly unending parade of sprawl projects. ... Obviously the Kroger a mile away is going to decline if not completely close, leaving the township with a white elephant and an eyesore."

The development that includes the new Kroger also will back up to 200 acres zoned residential that is about to be developed into homes off Socialville-Foster Road.

The first phase will bring 99 homes that will start selling at $250,000 and could begin construction as early as this spring, said Tim Hershner, Deerfield's community development director.

E-mail jedwards@enquirer.com