The Bowling Green Planning Commission on Wednesday recommended approval of B-5 zoning for two East
Wooster properties, including a long-vacant building that has plans to be leased.
“We feel we’ve done a good job of getting the property owners to embrace the B-5 changes,” said Planning
Director Heather Sayler during the meeting.
The commission recommended that Bowling Green City Council approve zoning changes from B-2 General
Commercial to B-5 Transitional Central Business District for 510 and 516 E. Wooster St. The commission
voted unanimously; members Ryan Holley and Gary Hess were absent.
The B-5 zoning, implemented in 2013, among other uses allows for a property to have a business on the
ground floor of a structure and for residential space on succeeding floors, to a height of 30 feet.
Sayler noted that B-5 zoning also provides for more flexibility than the properties’ current B-2 zoning.
The 510 East Wooster property has been vacant for over a decade. Recently owned by Myles & Myles
Partnership, which began the application for the zoning change, it is now owned by Charles &
Kenneth Holdings Ltd.
The property, which has held a number of businesses over the decades, including a Burger Chef location
that was recalled by several commission and audience members at the meeting, most was recently Eclipse
Salon and Day Spa. That business was open a little over a week when the building burned on April 27,
2006, in an incident that was later determined to be arson. Until recently, the building’s exterior
boards facing East Wooster had featured a mural of faces painted onto it.
Sayler said that the current owners have plans to lease the building, and there are interested
prospective tenants.
Robert Spitler, an agent originally for Myles & Myles and now for Charles & Kenneth, said
at the meeting that the building could still be renovated, but he had no indication of what kind of
business might go in at the site.
“This property was the original property that was really the reason for the B-5 zoning,” Spitler said,
saying that city officials “recognized that there needed to be a new zoning classification for the
development of this whole area,” and noting that the “appearance of this property in recent times has
just been horrible.”
The 516 East Wooster address, formerly the site of Myles’ Pizza Pub, now houses Pizza Pub 516 and is
owned by Pizza Pub Property LLC.
Sayler said that despite the change in zoning, the owners have no other proposal for the property other
than the current business. She noted that the change to B-5 would make the property conforming regarding
parking and other issues. Under the current B-2 zoning, the property features some legal nonconforming
uses, she said.
“We think it’s great to have this flexible zoning that allows people to legal-use the property,” said
Sayler.
During the meeting, Sayler showed a map of the East Wooster corridor to Manville Street/Thurstin Avenue,
saying that nearly every parcel to the north of Wooster in that area has changed over to B-5, and that
the zoning changes for the 510 and 516 properties will help fill in the area east of the railroad
tracks.
“We’re excited again about filling in this piece for the B-5 zoning corridor,” she said, as the city
looks forward both short term and long term.
