Miami Twp. trustees to decide on $600K welcome feature on I-675

Waterfall sign seen as waste by one trustee.

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By Lawrence Budd, Staff Writer Updated 9:26 AM Wednesday, January 25, 2012

MIAMI TWP. — An illuminated sign, sitting atop a cascading waterfall, will welcome westbound motorists on Interstate 675 to Miami Twp., if trustees approve a $600,000 plan linked to construction of a new Menards retail store south of the Dayton Mall.

Money from a special taxing district established around the mall would pay for the sign, waterfall, as well as a gazebo, walkway and pond that would be built behind the new $9 million store under construction at Lyons Road and Ohio 741.

“You can have a ditch that looks like a ditch or you can have an attractive water feature,” Trustee Mike Nolan said Tuesday during a discussion of bids on the project.

Nolan and Trustee Charles Lewis backed the entire project. While Trustee Deborah Preston agrees the township should build the sign but not the rest of the project, which she said is viewed by some as a waste of public dollars. “I’ve had tons of push back calls,” she said.

Instead, Preston said the township should spend the money to develop land at Kingsridge and Lyons Ridge drives, purchased as part of realignment of Lyons Ridge for either commercial or turn into a park.

The proposal follows suggestions from citizens to erect welcome signs at key entry ways into the 21-square-mile township. Nolan said the signs should express the township’s “progressiveness.”

“We want to grab their attention,” he said.

The work would coincide with expansion of a drainage retention pond behind the store, the township library, a bus terminal and township offices. Digging has already begun.

Chris Snyder, the township’s director of planning and zoning, said the project would be paid for with tax incremental financing — funds otherwise collected as taxes — on improvements to properties in a district around the mall.

Lewis said the entire plan “is a nice deal,” especially since the area will be transformed into a lake park. “It’s more than a sign.”

The trustees are expected to award bids for the sign, as well as the gazebo, walkways and “water features” behind the new Menards at their next meeting at 7 p.m., Feb. 7.

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