Work-from-home impact on offices will be key piece of Kettering land-use plan

The finished document also will focus on housing, and the job centers of Kettering Business Park, Miami Valley Research Park and the Wilmington Pike corridor, Kettering Assistant City Manager Bryan Chodkowski said.

It will be “a guidebook to how we approach planning and zoning, economic development, community redevelopment, for 15 years or so,” Chodkowski said.

“We are going to take a lot of time to look at those, because the environment, again, is changing around us,” he added. “So, think about … what COVID did for work-from-home. We’ve already felt that effect here at Kettering.

“How are we going to approach land use as it relates to recruiting and maintaining professional employment?” Chodkowski asked.

When MVRP and the business park were designed, “the idea was that they would be full of professional office space at some point in time. And now we know that that’s not necessarily going to be the case,” he said. “So, we still have to find a way to make sure that these land uses … are viable. We need a strategy to develop (this) land in an era where people are working from home.”

The plan “is going to help us decide what new uses, what different take on old uses … or conventional uses” Kettering will take “so that we can maintain a diverse tax base and ensure that our residents are not overburdened with additional taxes in the future,” Chodkowski said.

Meanwhile, residential development, or redevelopment, is “going to have a very strong presence in the document,” he added.

Attracting businesses, jobs and improving housing opportunities has been an emphasis of Kettering in recent years.

Last year, the city started a Community Reinvestment Area for homeowners in the Aragon-Oak Park neighborhood.

Now, the city plans to hire a business consultant to help it create a new land use plan to replace the one that Kettering City Manager Matt Greeson is more than 20 years old.

Contracting with a consultant, which is estimated to cost $150,000 — an amount recently approved by city council — is projected to be finalized around September, Chodkowski said.

Compiling the document, which will include public input sessions and a study of market trends, is expected to take about a year, he added.

In April, the city approved a strategic plan, which recommended updating land uses, Greeson said.

Land use changes approved by the city on a piecemeal basis in recent years include:

• Allowing housing and retail businesses in certain instances at Miami Valley Research Park.

• Switching Kettering’s zoning on East Dorothy Lane just west of Woodman Drive for land in front of Kroger to allow more flexible uses.

• Permitting apartments in the Wilmington business corridor on property near the Wilmington-Woodman split.

The growth with the Cornerstone project on and around Wilmington in Centerville will also factor into Kettering’s future retail and commercial uses, according to Chodkowski.

“This plan will help us make sure that the investments the city’s already made in improving Wilmington Pike, that we can effectively pivot our efforts and bring to fruition a good land use product that will be sustainable,” he said.