HISTORIC BUILDING MAY BE RAZED & REPLACED BY WALGREEN'S

by Michael Monks 

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An old Victorian mansion on Covington's Martin Luther King Boulevard faces the prospect of being razed. Plans for a new Walgreen's have emerged and the chain drugstore would assume the place of the former home and its acre lot. The property is owned by the Diocese of Covington whose landmark St. Mary's Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption sits directly across the street on Madison Avenue. Cincinnati-based Clarion Associates, a real estate consulting firm, submitted plans on behalf of the Diocese to the Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission for the proposed Walgreen's. The NKAPC staff recommendation is to oppose the design concept.

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Plans for the Walgreen's were first presented in April 2011 when Clarion met with representatives from the City of Covington and NKAPC for a pre-application meeting. They call for demolition of the historic home, construction of a 14,500 square foot Walgreen's, a parking lot for 45 cars, two curb cuts (for cars to enter parking area) with one on Madison and another on Wood Street, a drive-thru facility on the south side of the building, and a main entrance on the north side. Additionally, the plans call for a six-foot tall sign on Madison Avenue and an eleven-foot tall sign on MLK. 

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The proposed Walgreen's would require approval from the Covington Board of Adjustments to allow for packaged liquor sales, a variance allowing for fifty percent of the side-street frontage to be used for off-street parking, a variance to reduce the minimum building height from two stories to one, to allow the building to placed more than ten feet from the side property line, reduce the number of customer entrances from three to one, to allow for more than ten percent of the parking to be on the side of the building, and to reduce the five foot required setback from the curb on Madison to zero feet. 

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The Covington Urban Design Review Board would have to approve the proposed the drive-thru's location on the side of the building which would be visible from adjacent right-of-ways, access to the drive-thru from a connector street, and allowing off-street parking on a street corner. NKAPC concluded that the plans do not meet the minimum requirements of Covington zoning ordinances for the area including the prohibited use intermittent lighting (the plans call for a 23 square foot LED-powered readerboard). 

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The zoning changes design waivers requested on behalf of the Diocese will come before the Urban Design Review Board Monday afternoon at 4:00PM and is open to the public to listen or to comment. As the newly expanded MLK Blvd awaits redevelopment, an early project like this proposed Walgreen's could set a precedent for what follows on this vital road through Covington. A Walgreen's is already in operation one block north of this proposed location and much of the proposed design is similar in nature to that one.