SPRINGBORO — Since moving into the planned community next to Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport, Antoinette Davies said she has worried about how close the airport is to the homes and businesses there.

“We always are concerned about this gas station and how close it is to the airport,” Davies said Thursday, April 1, while peering at the fatal crash site through a fence separating the airport’s south boundary from a gas station-store-auto repair-car wash complex.

The airport opened in 1957, decades before most of the homes and businesses were built around it. But Springboro Police Chief Jeff Kruithoff said he is confident enough safety measures have been put in place to protect residents.

Kruithoff said vacant land comprising a safety easement provides a buffer separating aviation from other uses in the booming area along the Warren-Montgomery county line.

“It shouldn’t be any problem,” Kruithoff said.

He said the buffer probably gave Tom Hausfeld enough room to avoid surrounding development before crashing short of the south end of the runway.

“I flew out of that airport about an hour before he did,” Kruithoff said.

Davies said she headed to the site from her home in Settlers Walk after her husband, Scott, called to tell her about the crash.

She and her family routinely watch planes as they fly over the development at Ohio 741 and Remick Boulevard, she said.

A shopping center, including a Dorothy Lane Market, sits across Remick from the gas station complex. More development is proposed nearby.

Just west of the airport, a regional government partnership is overseeing development of about 400 acres around the new Austin Pike Interchange to Interstate 75. Miller-Valentine Partners wants to develop 150 acres near the airport into banks, restaurants, office condos, high-tech research labs and airport administration buildings.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2261 or lbudd@DaytonDailyNews.com.