Township to buy High St. parcels
Plans call for construction of township complex on property
LOWER POTTSGROVE » Township commissioners are another step closer to purchasing the parcels they need on East High Street to begin planning a township complex there.
Thursday night, the board — minus Chairman Bruce Foltz and Steve Klotz, who resigned as vice chairman — voted unanimously to enter agreements to purchase 2270 E. High St. and 2272 E. High St.
The price for each property is $100,000 and collectively make up .57 acres, according to Township Manager Ed Wagner. The closing date on the purchase is set for March 26.
The property at 2270 is a duplex and the property at 2272 is a single family home.
The commissioners also voted to hire Zuber Realty to manage those two properties, and collect rent for a 6 percent commission on the rent, until a decision is made on how to develop the properties.
And there are more than two properties in play.
The commissioners have moved on three other properties — 2238 E. High St., 2258 E. High St. and 2255 Brown St. — putting the township in control of the corner of East High Street and South Pleasant View Road, all the way down to the corner of South Pleasant View Road and Brown Street.
Added together, the township will soon control more than 2 acres from corner to corner.
In December, a newly formed infrastructure committee recommended the purchase of the properties to the full board for use as a “township campus.”
Although that decision has not been formally made, Commissioner Earl Swavely Jr. said Thursday that it’s “safe to say” that is the township’s intent in buying the properties.
If so, it will go a long way toward satisfying a need Foltz has been identifying for years.
Foltz has been on the board of commissioners for 18 years and for almost all of them has argued the current township offices on Buchert Road, built in 1990, are too small to accommodate the needs of the
growing township.
The current building is 7,500 square feet and things, particularly downstairs at the police department, are becoming quite cramped.
Studies looked at expanding on the current building, but although the Buchert Road property is more than four acres, only about 1 acre of it is usable due to a stream that runs across the back of the property behind the police station, he said.
In 2014, developers approached the commissioners about building a Family Dollar store on that parcel, but the commissioners indicated they would not support a store like that in Sanatoga’s “village district.”
Foltz and Wagner both previously told Digital First Media said that if a township campus is built at the new location, they hope it will serve as an anchor and help drive further economic development at that end of the Sanatoga Village District.