Mentor's Comprehensive Plan Puts Residents' Top Demands — More Housing, Fewer Car Washes — to the Test

Mentor residents have spoken clearly about what they want for the city's future: more places to live and fewer car washes. Whether the city's comprehensive land-use plan update can deliver either remains an open question.

The Municipal Planning Commission reviewed the draft plan at a work session Sept. 3 in Council Chambers, the latest in a series of sessions held in July, August and September. The review process — built on more than 700 online survey responses, a public meeting in October 2025 and the city's 2024 Housing Study — has surfaced two resident priorities that now dominate the conversation about Mentor's development direction.

Car Washes Top the List of What Residents Want Less Of

Car washes were mentioned 147 times in survey responses about uses residents wanted to curb, making them the single most cited concern. Vape and smoke shops followed at 117 mentions, and chain restaurants also drew frequent objections.

The frustration tracks with real development pressure. Car washes are allowed by right in some Mentor zoning districts and require conditional-use approval in others. A 2025 public notice for a proposed car wash at 9361 Mentor Avenue noted that car washes in the B-2 General Business District require a Conditional Use Permit. City Council tabled a conditional-use permit for a proposed Clean Express Auto Wash at the former Boston Market site on Mentor Avenue in May 2025; the Planning Commission continued preliminary site-plan review that August.

Under the current code, each car wash proposal is decided case by case. The draft plan envisions moving key corridors, including Mentor Avenue and the area around Great Lakes Mall, away from auto-oriented uses and toward walkable mixed-use districts — but the plan itself does not rewrite the zoning code.

Housing Demand Meets a Documented Gap

On the other side of the ledger, residents called for more housing options. The city's 2024 Housing Study & Needs Analysis found that Mentor could need about 1,700 additional units over the following decade under one growth scenario, with the most severe affordability gap among households earning less than about $47,000. The study also identified a shortage of choices for young adults, workers and older residents seeking to downsize.

The draft plan recommends expanding the range of housing types to include apartments, condominiums, townhomes, single-family houses, four-unit buildings and accessory dwelling units. Its recommended strategies overlap with the 2024 study's call for workforce housing, rent-restricted workforce housing, and preservation and rehabilitation assistance for existing homes.

Great Lakes Mall figures prominently as a redevelopment opportunity. The draft proposes a mix of housing, businesses and other uses at the site, and raises the possibility of rezoning the mall area before a specific redevelopment proposal is submitted. As of 2026, the mall had 126 stores and six anchor tenants — four open, one vacant (the former Macy's) and one demolished. Demolition of the former Sears anchor building began in early 2026 and is expected to finish by year's end.

Other draft recommendations include reconsidering lot-size and frontage rules, reducing excess parking requirements, and encouraging buildings closer to streets with parking behind or beside them. In Old Village, the plan calls for zoning changes to encourage reinvestment while preserving historic character.

Residents also stressed neighborhood-scale businesses, safer pedestrian and bicycle travel, walkable shopping districts, more independent restaurants and shops, protection for parks and green space, and new uses for vacant or aging commercial properties.

Advisory, Not Binding — and That's the Rub

The central tension in the update is whether any of it will carry the force of law. Mentor describes the comprehensive plan as a framework and policy direction for land-use decisions — a statement of development policy, not a binding zoning code.

That framing is standard in Ohio. State law generally treats comprehensive plans as guides for zoning, does not define "comprehensive plan" in state code, and does not require every jurisdiction to adopt one. Mentor would need separate ordinance amendments or zoning-text and zoning-map changes to put the draft's recommendations into effect.

One complication: Mentor's City Charter requires voter approval for certain zoning changes, including some involving multifamily housing and smaller residential lots. The draft recommends reconsidering or removing those requirements because they can delay development decisions. Any such charter change would itself require voter approval.

The Municipal Planning Commission, chaired by John Crocker, reviews new industrial and commercial buildings, subdivisions, rezonings and conditional-use permits. The commission also includes Vice Chairman Geoffrey M. Varga, Secretary Richard R. Thiedemann, Patrick J. O'Donnell, John M. Perkovich, Richard M. Zaleski and George Hadden. Mentor City Council, which has seven members and operates under a council-manager form of government, would ultimately vote on plan adoption.

The city has not announced when the Planning Commission will vote on a recommendation to Council, when Council will vote on adoption, or what schedule of ordinance amendments would follow to convert the plan's recommendations into binding zoning changes. Mentor's previous comprehensive plan was adopted in April 2011.

Until those timelines materialize, the plan remains what Ohio law says it is: a guide. The 700-plus residents who weighed in are waiting to learn whether their priorities — fewer car washes, more housing — will be encoded in enforceable zoning or filed alongside the last plan's good intentions.