Erlanger could soon receive a new corporate training office for McDonald’s, as the Kenton County Planning Commission has approved a zoning change for a vacant lot on Cave Run Road.
The commission approved the zoning change on Thursday. The property is located on the southwest side of Cave Run Road between Dixie Highway and Barkley Drive, near the Erlanger Lakes condo complex. The site is currently vacant and heavily wooded.
Erica Shadoin, who owns 19 McDonald’s restaurants throughout the tri-state, had asked the commission to OK a change in zoning on the site from a residential zone to a neighborhood commercial zone. The plan is to build a 10,241-square-foot corporate training center on the property with 62 parking spaces.
The project is in a very early phase, and the concept plan submitted on Thursday was simple compared to some of the other items on the meeting’s agenda. Shadoin did not attend the meeting on Thursday, and her outfit already has a corporate training facility in the city. Tim Oehler, Shadoin’s director of operations, said it would allow the enterprise to expand.
“We’d like to grow and have plenty of room to grow,” Oehler said.
Planning professionals from Kenton County Planning and Development Services pointed out that the concept plan lacked pedestrian connectivity and that any future permits for the site would need to remedy that problem.
Oehler said that only four people would work full-time out of the office, but the restaurants would hold large training events and corporate meetings at regular intervals, hence the large number of parking spaces.
Don Reilly, principal with Elegant Home Exterior, which is working with Shadoin to design the building, said that Shadoin would agree to any landscaping conditions issued by the planning commission.
“We are going to make the building cosmetically appealing to the neighborhood,” Reilly said.
Dan Shields of Arlinghaus Heating and Air Conditioning, which has an office nearby, said he appreciated a new business coming into the site but had concerns about traffic.
“What our concern would be is additional traffic patterns at Dixie Highway and Cave Run,” Shields said.
Vada Smith, who spoke on behalf of the Erlanger Lakes community, expressed similar concerns, as well as concerns about sewer and water overflow.
Reilly and Oehler held up a drawing of the building’s profile to assuage any worries about its height and said that the training and meetings would only occur once every few months. Thus, they argued that the parking lot and the roads would not be regularly crowded with traffic.
Brian Dunham, the planning commission’s chair, recommended that Smith bring the community’s concerns about runoff to Sanitation District 1, although he said that SD1’s established standards mandate that new construction not exacerbate any water control issues.
The planning commission eventually cast a unanimous vote in favor of the zoning change.