Paving firm buys W. Carrollton site

Company had sought mining rights earlier on 82 acres of farmland.

An 82-acre piece of farmland inside the West Carrollton city limits that was previously denied zoning to allow mining operations has been acquired by Barrett Paving Materials.

The company — whose Dayton presence is based at 2589 Needmore Road — paid $1.5 million for the land just south of Farmersville-West Carrollton Road from Hewitt Farms LLC.

Barrett — which produces, sells, and delivers crushed stone, sand and gravel products in Ohio and Indiana — has seen the land as a potential mining source and unsuccessfully sought to change the property’s zoning to allow mining three years ago.

Barrett already has a couple of mining operations in that area, near the closed River Bend golf course, said Brad Townsend, West Carrollton city manager. The business has mined that site for several years, he said.

Current zoning for the just-purchased land does not permit mining, so the company would have to go to the West Carrollton Planning Commission to change the zoning.

The planning commission would hold a public hearing on the issue, Townsend said.

If t he c ommission approved a rezoning request, the matter would then go to the City Council, which would have its own public hearing.

“If and when they apply, we’ll take it through the appropriate process,” Townsend said.

Phone and email messages were left with the company at its Needmore Road loca- tion and its Roseland, N.J., corporate headquarters.

In 2015, West Carrollton planners recommended against the company’s request to use that land, located west of the Great Miami River, as a mining source.

Planners in 2015 said the zoning change for the land near the Miami Twp. border from M-2 manufacturing district to M-3 rural manufac- turing district was inconsistent with the city’s compre- hensive plan.

“It’s staff ’s position that developing the (land) for residential or other mixed use is of much greater ben- efit to the community than what would be reclaimed after the mining operation,” city staffers said at the time.

Townsend on Friday said he had not been aware that Barrett had purchased the land.

“They have filed nothing with us,” he said.

The city has a development moratorium on the land, a moratorium that will expire in November, on that piece of property and adjoining properties, Townsend said.

After the moratorium expires, Barrett would be free to submit a proposal for the site. But the city manager said the company has not communicated its plans to him.

Townsend declined to say whether he thought there might be public opposition to a new rezoning request.

Barrett mines in West Carrollton and elsewhere. In early 2017, the business won a conditional use permit for expanding a mineral extraction site on South Davis Road in Union Twp., Miami County.

The business sought the permit to expand the site by 10 acres to the east into what is now a wooded area.

An appeals board in Miami County approved the original conditional-use permit for the operation in 1992.