Fourteen Residents Give Comments to Planning Commission
Vol. IV, No. 61 - Residents talk about vape shops, data centers and marijuana
Fourteen people talked to the Troy Planning Commission during their public comment period last week about the new rulebook the city is writing for how land and buildings get used — called the Unified Development Code, or UDC. That’s a pretty substanital turnout for a meeting in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. The people who spoke included regular residents, a Realtor, a lawyer working for a developer, the Troy Development Council and Chamber of Commerce, and two city council members — Madison Hickman and Susan Westfall.
Data centers were the biggest worry by far. Out of the 14 speakers, at least nine brought up concerns about data centers, and their ideas ranged from “make the rules stricter” to “just ban them completely”. People also talked about tattoo shops, vape and tobacco stores, marijuana dispensary rules, gas station rules tied to a current building freeze, and some smaller technical issues about old buildings, granny flats, and historic building reviews.
The Big Data Center Argument
Most of the pushback on data centers wanted either tougher rules or a full ban. Katie Wagner, a local candidate for State Representative, asked the city to require a Planning Commission and City Council public hearing before any data center gets approved — she pointed to what happened in nearby Piqua as a warning. Two other residents both said the city should just ban data centers altogether, one pointing out the UDC already bans plenty of other things, so why not this too, and the other resident warning that big companies with deep pockets could drag the city into expensive court fights.
A downtown resident said she gathered about 400 signatures from people across the political spectrum who are against a data center coming to town and another downtown resident pointed out a mix-up in the rules — the UDC wants data centers to use renewable power on-site, but somewhere else it bans businesses from setting up renewable energy systems — and she wants clear rules on who pays if a data center hurts the environment or nearby home values. She mentioned a Gallup poll from March 2026 showing 71% of Americans don’t want AI data centers near their homes.
Two local residents wanted more answers about where the power would come from, whether water could get polluted, and whether the city would do a real environmental study and a third-ward resident asked point-blank if any company had already reached out to the city about building a data center, and said he didn’t buy the “we need to move fast” argument from economic development staff. The commission stated that no developer has come forward.
What Hickman and Westfall Said
Hickman gave the most detailed comments of the night. She wants a long-term moratorium on new data centers, saying they create far fewer jobs per acre than factories or warehouses, and Troy doesn’t have much industrial land left to gamble with. She brought up that Dayton and Washington Township have already paused or banned data centers, and that there’s a statewide effort collecting signatures to do the same. She also disagreed with two other parts of the draft rules: she thinks tattoo shops should be allowed to open on their own instead of only inside a barber or beauty shop, and she pointed out that Troy voters already said yes to legal marijuana, yet the new rules would ban dispensaries while still allowing nine vape and tobacco shops with barely any oversight — even though vaping is known to hurt kids’ health.
Westfall took the opposite side on a couple of things and leaned more toward being business-friendly. She said she’s fine with vape and tobacco shops standing on their own, arguing they’re different from marijuana because you can’t get impaired and drive from them. She also backed letting tattoo shops run as normal businesses under the right rules, and said the code should stop using the word “parlor” since it sounds old-fashioned. On top of that, she wants the approval process to move faster, saying staff — not the whole commission — should be able to sign off on small stuff, like picking a paint color for a historic building.
A Few Other Things Worth Knowing
Rebecca Simpson, a lawyer for Troy Station LLC, spoke up in favor of new gas station rules that would let smaller stores (down to 10,000 square feet instead of 50,000) qualify, as long as more than half the space sells groceries or food — she said a $3 million project and at least 15 jobs depend on this change. Paul Oberdorfer, from the Troy Development Council and Troy Chamber of Commerce, asked the commission to keep the rules predictable, fast, and flexible so Troy can compete for new businesses.
Other residents each brought up smaller technical worries — like a rule that gives owners only 180 days to keep an old, no-longer-allowed use going, limits on rebuilding a house that burned down and lost more than half its value, restrictions on renting out apartments above garages, and a suggestion that outside experts, not just the commission, should help decide what counts as historic. A west side residents asked the commission to look at what similar-sized cities have done with marijuana rules, roundabouts, and tattoo shops and base these decisions on hard data instead of just going with public opinion.
Overall, it was a helpful discussion about the direction the city may take in regulating new development in the community. It is clear that the Planning Commission wants to take these public comments into consideration as it indicated that the commission will have at least one more meeting on the draft Unified Development Code before it goes to City Council.
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