New community will test market
Infrastructure, homes expected this summer on Union Village.
TURTLECREEK TWP., WARREN COUNTY — What experts are calling the region’s first large-scale planned new urbanism community, featuring a sports park, town center, commercial and retail development and ultimately 4,500 residences, is beginning to take shape on 1,400 acres between Dayton and Cincinnati.
Already, sewers and stormwater systems to underlie Union Village are well under way and the first homes should begin to appear early this summer across from the Otterbein retirement community’s main campus on Ohio 741 in Warren County.
Efforts to create an intergenerational community are halfway in place.
“This is something unlike anything else that is being offered in Cincinnati-Dayton right now,” said John Yung, senior project executive at Urban Fast Forward, a commercial real estate brokerage offering urban planning services from an office in Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood.
“This is basically a brand-new town between Monroe and Lebanon,” added Yung, who graduated from Lebanon High School.
Last week, developer Bob Turner, best known for the Habersham planned community in South Carolina, talked about his latest new urbanism project from an office overlooking the first phase of Union Village: 89 homes, four apartment buildings and a town center to feature Otterbein’s headquar- ters, restaurants and retail.
By early summer, Turner said some of about 30 homes to be completed this year should be under construc- merly of the Warren County tion, as well as the town cenRegional Planning Commister and grand entrance to sion, talked about features the community, across from including elevated porches 8 Marble Hall - an old build- feet deep, providing privacy ing dating back to when the for residents of homes, built area was a Shaker commuclose to the street. nity known as Union Village. The homes will be on nar-
The new Union Village is row lots with garages along expected to unfold over at alleys in the rear. least 30 years. A 200-acre greenway is
It is planned according to be preserved, as well as to new urbanism princismaller parks throughout ples: walkability, connec- the development. tivity, mixed use and diverNorton Commons near sity, mixed housing, qual- Louisville, Ky., is the closity architecture and urban est example of a develop- design, traditional neighborment comparable to Union hood structure, increased Village, according to Turner. density, green transporta- He also said Evans Farms, a tion, sustainability and qual- community planned north of ity of life. Columbus, could be similar.
Just south of the first phase Turner expressed confi- at the corner of Ohio 741 and dence the Dayton-Cincin- Ohio 63, a shopping cen- nati market would respond ter, anchored by a large to Union Village and green- supermarket “could hap- field new urbanism. pen sooner too,” Turner said. “They haven’t been given
Turner and project manthat opportunity,” he said. ager Matt Obringer, for- “We’re hoping the market will support it here.”
Colliers International’s Ohio research director, Loren DeFilippo, agreed Union Village was a unique regional example of new urbanism.
He pointed to similar “suburban town center” developments in places across the nation including Reston, Va., and Seaside, Fla.
He noted the location between Dayton and Cincinnati labor markets in growing, affluent Warren County.
“There is growing interest in live, work, play,” DeFilippo said in a telephone interview.
Is such a large development viable over 30 or more years at that location?
“I can’t give you a definitive if it’s going to be 100 percent successful,” DeFilippo said. “I think it will be a success.”
“It becomes its own little town,” DeFilippo said.