CORRECTION: The original version of this article contained some incorrect information about statements made at the meeting. The relevant lines have been corrected. –LINK nky editorial, Feb. 9, 2025
Kenton County residents packed multiple rooms at the government center in Covington Thursday night to speak out in opposition to the county’s site readiness initiative, which could lead to industrial development in the southern end of Kenton County.
It was the second meeting this week where residents expressed displeasure at the possibility.
A joint venture of the Kenton County Fiscal Court, Northern Kentucky Port Authority, and Kenton County Planning and Development Services, the site readiness initiative aims to catalog available land in the county ideal for industrial development.
The initiative is in a very early phase; it does not necessarily represent a set-in-stone plan of action. Rather, it establishes guideposts for county officials to assess the amount of developable industrial space in south Kenton County.
Still, residents were displeased with what the initiative might portend, and residents spoke for well over an hour about the threat of industrial incursion on historically rural communities in the affected areas.
“Why are we depriving our future generations – because that’s what it’s about, the future – why are we depriving them of the chance to get into agriculture, to get into any kind of land space,” said Celia Glaza, who comes from a long line of farmers in the area. “We need wide open spaces. So, yes, land is running out. Instead of taking away all of our land and putting up boxes of buildings, let’s invest in our future generations instead of the industry, so that they can grow and flourish, and we can pass down over 100 years worth of family tradition.”
The county’s planning around how to track industrial space and potential development space dates back to the 1990s, but the beginnings of what would become the site readiness initiative date back to the 2014 update of the county’s comprehensive plan and the formation of the South Kenton County Citizens Group.
Kenton County Judge/Executive Kris Knochelmann, as well as Kenton County Planning and Development Services Community Manager Josh Wice, both argued on Thursday that industrial land would bring better, more highly paid jobs to the county. Additionally, warehousing and distribution were already gobbling up much of the available land, potentially crowding out better jobs, the county argued.
“You could potentially have the southwest area of Kenton County along that [U.S. 25] corridor, you could have it depleted for manufacturing, without these conversations and without some of these efforts,” Wice told the commission and the audience.
The citizens group, in partnership with the University of Kentucky, were the first to begin surveying people about their attitudes toward development. More changes were made in the county’s 2020 comprehensive plan, which updated the recommended land use throughout the county.
The initiative’s modern form began to take shape late last year when planning and development services first presented an overview of the initiative to the Kenton County Fiscal Court.
Past development trends show that much of the county’s land is either already urbanized or undergoing suburbanization, and the worry is that the county would run out of land suitable for industrial use in the coming decades if nothing changes.
The initiative located two areas of focus in the southwest end of the county, which are relatively flat and undeveloped. They also have access to multimodal freight infrastructure due to their proximity to I-71/75, CSX railway and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
Focus Area 1 is located in the southwest of Kenton County, close to the Boone County border, US-25, KY-536 and a CSX railway. The area has a total acreage of 2,180 with a potential building coverage of approximately 22.38% of the land.
In order to unlock full development potential, Wice said expanding direct road access to I-71/75 and building out infrastructure for electric, gas, water and wastewater systems are crucial to future site development. The potential road expansion would become a sticking point among many residents later.
Focus Area 2 is located in west central Kenton County along the Boone and Grant County borders. It has direct access to US-25. The southern portion of the identified land provides the best area for long-term industrial development.
The county held a public meeting about the initiative at Piner Elementary on Tuesday, where Knochelmann presented an overview of the initiative and tried to assuage some of the residents’ worries. Firstly, he said that the county had zero plans of employing eminent domain, although he admitted that he could not speak for state agencies like the transportation cabinet. He also said that rezoning was not part of the initiative and that there were still large chunks of the focus areas that couldn’t be developed for manufacturing and other industries.
Resident concerns varied in the details, but many were concerned about losing the area’s rural character.
Others said they had not received county correspondence purportedly informing them of the changes. Some attributed this to having addresses in the unincorporated county or a lack of high-speed internet access.
Others expressed worries about environmental degradation or cast doubt on how fruitful high-tech industrial development would actually be in the face of growing automation. Others pointed out that many of the surveys on development in the past indicated the same thing they were all expressing now – people wanted things to be left alone.
Suzann Parker Leist, a member of the South Kenton County Citizens Group, addressed the commission to explain how it was that people’s voices may have gotten lost in the county’s planning process, at least for the 2020 comprehensive plan update.
She gave several reasons. Firstly, although surveys around 2020 were sent to residents on both sides of U.S. 25, the group did not recruit on the western side. The citizens group had to rely on data from earlier surveys for information on the western side. Moreover, she argued the communication methods of the county at the time either did not reach affected residents or, if they did, they did a poor job of grabbing their attention.
As a result, many ended up not attending public meetings on the issue. Finally, disruption wrought by the pandemic generally made it harder for people to participate in public life.
Notably, she said survey results were consistent.
“In research and meetings, residents have consistently and overwhelmingly said they wanted to retain and maintain a rural community in character and have a greater voice in planned development around them to do that because if we don’t, Kenton County will run out of family farms in 10 years,” Leist said.
She called upon the commission and county to consider this as they moved forward.
“I call on the fiscal court to make it right and take a pause and revisit the 2020 land use update with those affected residents at the table, as well as the [site readiness initiative] vision,” Leist said, “to help retain and protect their rural community through planning and not so much the absentee and investor landowners that we know are in the area because they have no family stake in our rural community,”
No formal action on the initiative was taken at the meeting, but Planning Commission Chair Brian Dunham said that people’s presence, even if they didn’t speak, made a powerful enough statement.
“Your presence here tonight, in and of itself, has made the impression,” Dunham said.
The county will hold a larger meeting like the one at Piner on Monday, Feb. 10 at Simon Kenton High School beginning at 6 p.m. County residents who could not attend this week’s meeting can attend as the seating capacity at Simon Kenton is considerably larger than Piner Elementary or the chambers at the government center.
Kenton Hornbeck contributed reporting to this story.