By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Wood Bridge business park on the east side of Bowling Green is on course to grow by another 40.6 acres. But city officials are trying to ensure that neighbors don’t suffer growing pains from the expansion.
The Bowling Green Planning Commission voted Wednesday evening to recommend City Council annex the property and change the acreage to business park zoning. The planning meeting was conducted online, due to the stay at home order due to the coronavirus.
The property to be annexed sits on the southwest corner of Carter Road and East Poe Road. The city did not seek the property, but rather was approached by the Ross family who owned the acreage.
“It was a welcome opportunity for economic development,” City Planning Director Heather Sayler said. “We’d love to annex that to expand Wood Bridge Business Park.
The city paid $1 million for the acreage.
Prior to that purchase the city had parcels of five and 10 acres for smaller customers, but nothing this large in the business park.
“This would give us the potential to have a really large property,” for prospective industries, Brian O’Connell, director of the city’s public utilities, said last year.
The land purchase would also allow for a road from the industrial park eastward to Carter Road. Currently, the only entrance to the business park is from Dunbridge Road.
But one neighbor of the business park wrote of her concerns about the expansion – based on her experience with an industry in the current Wood Bridge park.
Lesley Riker, who owns two homes and a farm business along East Poe Road, near the planned expansion, voiced her concerns in a letter to the planning commission.
“I have many concerns,” said Riker, who has come to city officials before with complaints about the business park.
“We built our homes in the country for a reason,” she said.
Her complaints were directed toward the Vehtek company, which is an “eyesore,” she said. The company has racks stacked up high outside the plant, lighting that shines into a neighboring home, and has killed trees planted as a buffer between the plant and its neighbors.
“Neighbors suffer from the city’s poor planning,” Riker said.
She asked that in the future, new industrial neighbors be required to direct outdoor lighting downward, not be allowed outdoor storage, and be required to plant trees as buffers.
“The city understands the issues with Vehtek,” Sayler said.
Sayler assured that the city plans to handle future properties differently.
“We’re very concerned about buffering as we go forward,” she said, noting that changes can be made as the city updates its zoning.
Planning commission member Erica Sleek expressed her concerns about the ongoing issues with Vehtek.
“It seems like it’s been going on for quite a while,” she said. It’s understandable that Riker has concerns about future development, Sleek added.
But Sayler said the city has learned lessons from the problems with Vehtek.
“We’re trying to look for stronger tools for enforcement,” she said.
Planning Commission chairperson Jeff Betts suggested that a City Council member take it on as a project to reach out to Vehtek and respond to Riker’s concerns.
“It really does seem like they’re taking advantage of the city,” Betts said of Vehtek. When the company wanted to expand recently, the city “bent over backwards” to get the required power to the plant, he said.
Last July, Riker went to the Bowling Green Zoning Board of Appeals to show photos of the view from her mother-in-law’s home across from the Vehtek plant. The racks were stacked up 40 feet high along Poe Ditch.
“I’m looking at that everyday,” Riker said at that meeting.
When the industrial park was first conceived, she said city officials promised to plant a screening of trees even before the businesses built. The majority of the trees that were planted along Vehtek’s northern edge have been killed by the racks pushing up against them, Riker said.
Sue Clark, executive director of Bowling Green Economic Development, has also tried to get Vehtek officials to clean up the site.
Clark told the Zoning Board of Appeals that a covenant for Wood Bridge Industrial Park does not allow outside storage. But the city currently has no rules barring outside storage at industrial sites, according to Sayler. So there is nothing the planning office can do about the towering racks until it overhauls its zoning code.
After being asked repeatedly by city officials to reduce the outside rack storage and improve parking availability for its more than 750 employees, Vehtek purchased a small property to the west of its plant for expansion of parking.
The only official who has been able to make headway with the company is Fire Chief Bill Moorman, who worked with the plant management to improve safety on the site by getting rid of some racking, and by moving the parking away from the building so fire emergency vehicles can get close to the building when responding.
