KETTERING — Kettering city leaders have come up with a new long-term plan for what they want their community to look like in 20 years.
Part of the plan involves bringing new life to older commercial properties.
News Center 7’s John Bedell spent part of his day looking at the five locations where the city wants to focus on redevelopment.
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Nick O’Donnell owns Dayton Brick Shop. “Foot traffic is very important to us.”
It’s the story of all things Lego lovers in Kettering’s Oak Creek Plaza.
“Because we moved here, we were able to bring in other businesses with the amount of foot traffic that we bring in with young families here to the store,” O’Donnell said.
The city is also looking to attract new businesses as part of an updated comprehensive plan city council approved last month.
Tom Robillard, City of Kettering Director of Planning and Development, said, “We are a redevelopment city. We’re no longer a development city. We just have very little land to develop on for new development.”
He said Kettering outlined commercial redevelopment strategies and five focus locations. Oak Creek Plaza is one of them.
The other four locations are Town and Country Shopping Center, including the intersections of Stroop and Marshall, Woodman and Dorothy, and the triangle property bordered by Stroop, Woodman, and Wilmington.
Robillard said that the property is disconnected from other retail and residential areas near it. The city wants to change that in JoJo Kim’s neighborhood.
“Anything that would benefit seniors mostly and kids on their bikes would really help us to go across from or to the stores and things like that,” Kim said.
The city also wants to find uses for underutilized land at the five locations, including Oak Creek Plaza.
“I’d love to see brick paver sidewalks and maybe some other small businesses toward the front of the parking lot,” O’Donnell said.
Robillard said one of the principles of the city’s new plan is focusing on placemaking. “Making it a place that people want to be,” he said. “Shop and hang out.”
According to Robillard, the next step is to engage with the property owners at all five of these sites, working with them to see what they can do together with the city and what other partners they might need to bring in to make things happen.
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