A zoning request recommendation allowing single family homes has cleared the Kenton County Planning Commission, paving the way for such properties to come to the Central Riverfront Development, located at the site of the former IRS complex in Covington.
The Covington City Commission voted early last month to send the request to the planning commission for recommendation.
The rezoning would allow for both single-family detached homes and single-family lot line properties (houses on their own lots that butt up against the lots’ side property lines) at the development site. The measure will now return to the city commission for a final vote.
Kaitlin Bryan, Covington’s historic preservation manager and regulatory services manager, said the inclusion of lot line homes allows the site to integrate into the historic homes in the Mutter Gottes neighborhood.
When the city bought the property, they rezoned the area to include single-family homes. When the city revised its neighborhood development code in 2020, it moved the use category over but not the building type, necessitating the recommendation from the planning commission.
The current neighborhood development code does, in fact, include single-family homes in the Central Riverfront’s zoning category, but only attached homes (i.e., apartments, townhomes, condos, duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes) are included in the building type category. Moreover, the site’s master plan calls for single-family housing.
The city commission will vote on the zoning finalization in the coming weeks.