- Crane Logistics Worldwide is seeking approval to rezone 15 acres off Aero Parkway to build a 770-space employee parking lot in Boone County.
- The proposal aims to relieve traffic congestion and parking shortages tied to shift changes at the neighboring Jabil industrial facility.
- After traffic-related conditions were added, a zone change committee recommended approval, sending the request to the Planning Commission for a Feb. 4 vote.
Crane Logistics Worldwide, a Florence-based supply chain company, is proposing to build a new parking lot off Aero Parkway in Boone County. In order to get the project underway, Crane needs the backing of the Boone County Planning Commission and Fiscal Court.
Specifically, Crane seeks to change the zoning designation of approximately 15 acres of land from Airport to Industrial One on the property’s eastern portion at 4805 Aero Parkway. The site is sandwiched between Zig Zag Road to its east and the Jabil industrial complex to its west. To its north lies the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
If the zone change is approved, Crane plans to develop a 770-space employee parking lot serving approximately 800 employees of a neighboring industrial business, Jabil. The site design includes shuttle stops and shelters, a sidewalk system throughout the parking lot, a detention pond in the southwest portion of the site, and relocation of the existing multi-use path.
Crane unveiled their proposal during a planning commission public hearing on Jan. 7.
Tanner Alley, a project engineer at Bayer Becker, told the planning commission that the parking lot is intended solely to alleviate Jabil’s parking issues.
“There’s two shift changes a day,” he said. “I want to say 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. and at that time, there is a significant issue created on Aero Parkway with traffic coming in and out, so this parking lot is to help alleviate that, to get folks off of Aero Parkway quicker, and then to alleviate some safety concerns that have been recognized out there as well.”
Following the presentation, some commission members expressed concerns about the parking lot’s potential connection to Zig Zag Road, including poor sight distance, road geometry and safety limitations, and potential impacts on nearby residential traffic.
“It’s just too narrow, it’s too windy, it’s too everything,” Planning Commission Chairman Charlie Rolfsen said during the hearing.
The applicant stated that they had prepared a traffic impact study and submitted it to Boone County and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, but they had not yet received feedback.
The next progress on the request was made during a Zone Change Committee meeting on Jan. 21. Since the hearing, Boone County Planner Steve Lilly told the committee that the applicant had prepared a traffic impact study to address concerns about traffic circulation and access.
“At the public hearing, there was a lot of discussion about the traffic and the flow of vehicles in and out of this development, and how that would work with this new parking lot,” Lilly said. “So the engineer (Bayer Becker) has provided a traffic impact study, which I’ve shared with the committee, and I’m just going to go over very quickly some of those recommendations from that study. So this is the updated plan reflective of those issues.”
The committee examined various proposed conditions linked to the zone change amendment, such as banning an access point from the parking lot to Zig Zag Road and imposing restrictions on parking lot use. One condition bars commercial vehicles, truck tractors, and semi-trailers from parking on the lot, limiting parking to passenger vehicles only.
Ultimately, the committee recommended approval of the applicant’s zone change request, moving it to be heard before the planning commission at their next meeting on Feb. 4.