Impact of projects debated
Additional students, traffic major from developments are concerns
As major developments push toward construction, concerns about their impact on schools and traffic are evolving.
The largest and best known of these projects is Sanatoga Green, a 51-acre residential and office project off Evergreen Road that has Pottsgrove School officials worried about a wave of new students.
On May 1, engineer Chad Camburn told the township commissioners that the developers of that project, Castle Caldecott LLC, are pushing hard to move the development forward, filing five sub-
missions just in the past month.
“They’re being very cooperative, but they’re anxious,” said Camburn, who works for Bursich Assoc., the engineering firm hired by the township.
He said Sanatoga Green developers hope to be before the township planning commission May 15 seeking preliminary site plan approval.
“Maybe they will pause to take a breath after getting preliminary approval,” he said.
The number of townhomes in that project has dropped by a few to 147, Camburn said.
That may reduce the number of schoolage children the project sends to Pottsgrove school buildings, but not enough to alleviate district concerns.
David Nester, business manager for the Pottsgrove School District, delivered the latest demographic projections to the commissioners.
The study, unveiled in February, forecasts that the district could experience anywhere from 25 to 3,700 more students in the next 10 years.
However, the scenario the consultant hired by the board in November considers the most likely is an 8-percent increase in the next 10 years, which works out to 262 additional children.
Currently, Pottsgrove has about 3,265 students and an 8 percent increase would put the total student population at 3,527 in the 2026-27 school year.
Nester said the buildings most likely to see the greatest impact under this scenario are Lower Pottsgrove Elementary School (53 more students) and Pottsgrove Middle School, which would see 109 more.
“We’ve never had his kind of influx of housing before. These numbers are conservative, and frankly they’re still twice what developers said,” Nester told the board.