Bowling Green’s front door for visitors is changing locations.

A zone change approved Thursday by the City-County Planning Commission of Warren County is the first step in a process to move the Bowling Green Area Convention & Visitors Bureau visitors center from Three Springs Road to Cemetery Road.

The commissioners voted 7-0 to approve rezoning 1.21 acres along Ewing Way, not far from the intersection of Cemetery Road and Lovers Lane, from single-family residential and highway business to strictly highway business.

That approval, which will become official in three weeks unless appealed to Warren Fiscal Court, paves the way for what CVB Executive Director Sherry Murphy says will be a better location and a larger structure for Bowling Green’s visitors center.

“We would like a more convenient location for our visitors center,” Murphy said Thursday. “Anyone traveling south on Interstate 65 has to go across four lanes of traffic to get to Three Springs Road.

“We really feel like exit 26 will be a good location for us. It’s not as commercial as the current location, and it’s more centrally located.”

Murphy hopes the better location will also lead to a more spacious building that can accommodate the needs of a growing CVB.

Built in 1981 as a restaurant, the current 3,000-square-foot visitors center is now home to a staff of six people and sits on a 0.5-acre lot.

“We need additional space,” Murphy said. “We’re bursting at the seams here. We have no office space left, and there’s no room to expand.”

A development plan submitted with the rezoning application indicates that the new visitors center could be nearly twice the size of the existing building. That plan calls for a structure “not to exceed 35 feet in height or 6,000 square feet.”

Although the rezoning was just a first step, Murphy said she would like to have the new visitors center built “in a year to 18 months.”

The CVB, financed primarily through the local lodging taxes collected at hotels, will sell the Three Springs Road property to help pay for the new construction.

“We’ve already had a few people inquire about the property,” Murphy said. “There should be a lot of interest in the high-traffic area of Three Springs Road.”

As for the relocation to another heavily traveled corridor into Bowling Green, Murphy said: “I think it’s going to be a good move for us.”

Another zone change approved at Thursday’s meeting will add commercial development along an already-busy Campbell Lane.

Developer Harshit Patel and property owner Alford Legacy LLC won unanimous approval for rezoning from multi-family residential and general business to highway business 5.16 acres at the southeast corner of Campbell Lane and Thoroughbred Drive, across the street from Bowling Green Junior High School.

Patel’s development plan calls for building a convenience store and fueling station along with a car wash and two other buildings to be used by future commercial tenants.

Chris Davenport, the attorney representing Patel, said the convenience store and fueling station would operate 24 hours a day but the other businesses would be limited to operating from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m.

Access to the development from Campbell Lane will be right-in and right-out only.

The rezoning will become official in three weeks unless appealed to the Bowling Green City Commission.