MIAMISBURG AUTO MALL MAY MOVE TO BYERS ROAD
City’s development plan creates opportunity for 38 vacant acres.
About 38 vacant acres in Miamisburg near multiple business corridors in the city and Miami Twp. now has stronger standards that officials say make it ripe for development.
The land that abuts Interstate 75 at the northwest intersection of Byers and Lyons Road — designated a special development district — is just west of the Dayton Mall and the township’s Ohio 741 business corridor.
It’s also south of Ohio 725 and north of the Byers business district that leads to the burgeoning Austin Boulevard interchange.
Matt Castrucci has said he wants to move his auto mall from Mall Park Drive in the city to the Byers/Lyons site, where he would have nearly double the space to move his four dealerships and used vehicle lots.
Calling any solid plans for the site “premature,” Miamisburg City Manager Keith Johnson he expects a developer to officially file paperwork on the land soon. Johnson noted a “couple of developers” have expressed interest in the site but did not name Castrucci.
“There will be a formal application from someone ... probably this summer,” Johnson said last week. “The user will take the
entire (38) acres.”
Castrucci last year told this news organization a rezoning would be needed before the dealerships could move. With Miamisburg City Coun- cil’s adoption last month of the North Byers Land Use Study, the two parcels long designated for office and com- mercial space, respectively, can be rezoned, Johnson said.
“In order to rezone it, you need a land-use plan that reflects the potential to rezone it,” he said. “So we’ve done the first step of that — the land-use plan.”
The 30-plus page study replaces a plan that was last amended in 1990, shortly before Dick Church Jr. was first elected to Miamisburg mayor, city records show.
“I think the legislation we adopted is the right legislation,” Church said. “Byers Road is one of our busiest cor- ridors for business. So I’m all for the action that was taken.”
The new plan outlines changes that take into account the growth at the Austin inter- change of I-75 and the Byers business corridor to the south, as well as changes around the Dayton Mall and plans for that area going forward.
“A big focus of it is design standards,” said Miamisburg Planner Ryan Homsi. “With the two vacant properties on the corner ... the prior plan called those other proper- ties office and the northern properties commercial. So, as long as you met our existing zoning standards, you could develop it as office or as commercial.
“But if you want to pursue the special development process to rezone pieces of it, it gives the ability to have more stringent design standards imposed to protect the character of that corridor.”
The plan also “addresses the site’s existing conditions, development history, surrounding development patterns and land uses, current development regulationsand plans that apply to the site and surrounding areas, and the implementation strategies for future development,” records show.
For example, the new North Byers plan cites “the importance of good, pedestrian scale developments as well as the pedestrian infrastructure” planned by Miami Twp. for the Lyons Road overpass of I-75 and part of Ohio 741 leading to the Dayton Mall.