Wawa hearing delayed as pols blast proposal
RIDLEY TOWNSHIP » A zoning hearing on a proposed new Wawa with a gasoline station and convenience store in the 800 block of West MacDade Boulevard in the Milmont Park section of the township has been continued to Sept. 13, according to township Code Enforcement Officer John Ward. The hearing was to have taken place Wednesday night and the continuance is at the request of representatives for Wawa. The zoning relief application lists 19 variances to the zoning code.
If zoning variances are approved and the project would proceed, it would be the sixth Wawa in the township and the fifth along the MacDade Boulevard corridor, including the one on Morton Avenue that is just a block south of MacDade.
The building site is along MacDade, bounded by Forrest Avenue, Reese Street and Buchanan Avenue. The site is zoned C-1 Neighborhood Commercial and BResidential. The zoning hearing application lists 19 variances from the township zoning ordinance.
Board of Commissioners President Bob Willert said the board has the same concerns about the project as many of the residents in the neighborhood, including increased traffic, too small a site and the fact that the site abuts a residential neighborhood.
“We don’t think it is a good site for a Wawa,” Willert said. “We are opposed to it and we expressed our concerns to the attorney.”
Mark Damico is the attorney representing HRES Ridley LLC, the applicant for the proposed Wawa.
“It’s more of a scheduling thing,” Damico said of the continuance request, “getting our witnesses lined up and talking to the neighbors.”
Jacquie Jrolf and her husband Joe Borghi live on Buchanan Street, with their house facing Reese Street.
“We’re right in ground zero,” Borghi commented.
In an email to the Daily Times, Jrolf expressed several concerns about the proposed Wawa, but said her biggest concern is regarding the 19th variance listed on the application that states the applicant requests any other relief deemed to be required in order to permit the proposed Wawa food market with accessory gasoline sales, as depicted on the July 17 plan submitted with the application.
“The vague and general nature of (the) request is most upsetting,” Jrolf stated. “It seems to me to be (an) unlimited number of wishes.”
Jrolf also said there is the potential for contamination to the soil and water supply from a leak in the underground gasoline storage tanks that would be in close proximity to homes in the neighborhood. And she described what she thinks it would be like living across the street from the proposed business.
“... A Super Wawa store with gas pumps would be constructed just a few yards away from our home, right across the street. Twentyfour hours of a large, brightly lit canopy and multiple illuminated signs, large trucks loading and unloading products, dumpsters being filled and emptied ... fuel being pumped by people slamming car doors 24 hour a day, just feet from our bedroom, on a property zoned residential. It would be surrounded by other homes with families and children,” she wrote.