You can call it Butler-nati, CinDayton or simply ground zero for growth in our region. If you haven't been north of the I-275 beltway lately, cinch up your seatbelt. The sonic boom around Union Centre Boulevard is fast enough to cause whiplash.

A thousand acres of cow pastures and cornfields have turned into stores, offices and restaurants - and 2,000 acres are still wide open, sprouting signs that say, "Future site of ... "

"The next five years will be unlike any commercial development ever seen in Southwest Ohio," says Joseph Hinson, president of the Southeastern Butler County Chamber of Commerce. "We will have a central business district in West Chester, right on the interstate."

Playing Monopoly

That's another way of saying a new downtown.

A few things I didn't know:

• Butler County Regional Airport is now home to 24 corporate jets.

• Liberty Township, with housing growth to match West Chester Township's commercial explosion, is adding 1,000 people a year and could double the size of West Chester Township's 60,000.

• Hinson says there are 2.93 million people in the Cincinnati-Dayton corridor, and 97,000 vehicles pass West Chester Township every day on I-75. "Fifty-four percent of the U.S. population is within a 600-mile radius," he says.

As we drove past new schools, housing and commercial developments by Frontgate, Liz Claiborne and Marriott, it was easy to buy his Chamber of Commerce claim that, "by 2010, this is predicted to be in the top 10 of U.S. metropolitan areas."

A new campus for UC Physicians leased its entire building before the first gold ceremonial shovel broke ground.

"If you look at us like a board game, we have a lot of the pieces," Hinson says.

True. They have good, wide roads, access to freeways that point like spokes in every direction, lots of open farm land for new offices with free parking, an airport and Lakota Schools that ace state report cards.

It also looks like they have all the surveyors in the state, leaning over yellow tripods that stalk the fields like storks looking for a nest for a new shopping center.

They have everything the old city doesn't have.

Domino theory

Butler County is not raiding downtown, Hinson says. But how long will it be before one of the big blue chips tips the first downtown domino by moving to West Chester?

How long will it be before the cow pastures between Cincinnati and Dayton are all built up and the cities meld into one borderless metropolis of shopping, subdivisions and super office parks? Procter & Gamble already has one foot in the neighborhood.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Hinson.

And that made me wonder if old downtown is the Titanic, with residents scrambling for the lifeboats while the City Hall band plays "God Save the Queen City."

Welcome to Butlerdaytonati.

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.