WINFIELD TWP — The township board of supervisors voted during their monthly meeting on Thursday night, Feb. 26, to deny a conditional use request for a storage business to operate on a residential property on Bear Creek Road.

According to a findings of fact document, the township ultimately concluded the proposed storage business “... does not conform to the township’s zoning ordinance.”

The conditional use first came up at a meeting last month and drew a large crowd of residents who were nearly unanimous in expressing their opposition to allowing a storage business to operate in a residential area. Another large crowd showed up for Thursday night’s meeting, eager to see whether the township would approve or deny the conditional use, as the board could not come to a conclusion the previous month.

“I’m absolutely glad it was denied,” said Brian Brinker, who lives near where the storage facility would have gone.

The property, located in the 700 block of Bear Creek Road, is currently owned by Cristina Corigliano. As of last month’s meeting, she was in the process of selling it to Jamie Merryman and Corey Coll from Worthington, who were planning to turn the property into a storage facility with four separate 100-by-20-foot buildings.

During a public hearing held last month, township residents — many of whom live along Bear Creek Road — expressed concerns about how the business would affect the nearby wetlands and the nuisance it would cause to the surrounding area through traffic, lighting and potential break-ins.

Others warned that a potential approval risked jeopardizing the rural character of Winfield Township as a whole.

“It would have affected the aesthetics, the home values and so forth here,” Brinker said. “And there’s a lot of concern about the stormwater and so forth.”

According to the findings of fact document, Merryman and Coll proposed the storage facility as “light commercial” use, but the township decided that the proposed use did not fit the zoning ordinance’s definition of light commercial, which it defines as “small retain uses customarily incidental to residential uses.”

Trent Fox, who owns property across the street from where the storage facility would have been built, said he was the one who informed neighbors about the situation last month, leading to the large crowds at both meetings.

“One of the zoning board members approached me and said, ‘You’d better look into it,’” Fox said. “I went around and made them aware of the situation.”

“He contacted people and let them know what was going on and we all responded to it,” said Rich Kushkowski, who lives near the property. “He wanted to spread the word.”