The Independence City Council unanimously approved a development agreement Monday that will allow for the expansion of Park 536, a cluster of industrial buildings along KY-536.
The move follows an annexation request from the land’s owners in February. The Council performed a first reading of an ordinance on March 2 that would enshrine the annexation into the city and performed another first reading of a zoning change for the property on Monday. A second reading and final vote on both the zoning change and the annexation will come before the City Council again next month.
The 96-acre annexation request got approval from the Kenton County Planning Commission in March. Park 536 currently consists of two occupied buildings and spaces for two more buildings. The expansion would enable the construction of three more, bringing the total number of buildings in the complex to seven.
Van Trust Real Estate out of Columbus, Ohio, is developing both the existing park and the expansion. The two existing buildings are occupied by Thermo Fisher, a private clinical research firm, and logistics firm DB Schenker, which was recently purchased by Danish transport conglomerate DSV. Van Trust hopes to break ground on a third building sometime later this year.
Anna Brown, a development manager with Van Trust, said the third building was developed on a speculative basis, i.e., without securing a tenant first. The new buildings will also be built on a speculative basis.
“As we do that Earth work for about a year, we’ll sit and market the site in conjunction with the building we have up, and certainly make every best attempt at putting a tenant in day one or building for a specific tenant,” Brown said.
Annexation refers to the process by which a property in an unincorporated area is absorbed into the boundaries of a city, thereby giving it access to city services and making it subject to city taxation. Annexations, including this one, are often consensual. The Kenton County Planning Commission had recommended rezoning the land from its current residential zone to a general industrial, or GI, zone.
The owners of the land, the Enid Mair Mason Revocable Trust, had sought an annexation agreement with the city on Feb. 11, according to documents submitted to the county.
The land itself is located on the south side of Mount Zion Road between Robert Spegal Road and Sigmon Lane. It’s mostly vacant, but the surrounding areas have both industrial and residential development. There are two ponds on the land, the larger of which the developers plan to keep and incorporate into the site’s water detention infrastructure.
Access onto the site, according to Van Trust’s development plan, would be from Robert Spegal Road to the east, which already serves as the primary access point for the existing Park 536 buildings. The largest building on the expansion site (labeled “Building 5” in the development plan) would span about 500,000 square feet. The other two buildings would span 306,000 square feet.
The complex would contain 1,004 normal parking spaces, 24 handicap spaces and 277 spaces for semi trucks.
The plan presented to the county was in its early stages of development, and the developers will need to obtain permits for various aspects of the work before they can begin building in earnest.
“The general goal was that this development agreement would essentially be the same as the development agreement that we have in place already, with the idea being that it would be one unified park with one unified concept,” said City Attorney Jack Gatlin.
“We’ve been working with Van Trust for several years now on Park 536, and we’ve worked with them on this next round,” Mayor Chris Reinersman said.
There was some discussion among the council members about signage, water detention and sidewalks. The development proposal has fewer sidewalks than those required by the city’s regulations, but the mayor didn’t think they’d be necessary, given that it wasn’t a residential development. The Council eventually agreed to waive the requirement.
Final votes on the zoning and annexation will take place next month. The development agreement will not officially take effect until those votes are cast.