178-unit housing project receives preliminary OK
LOWER POTTSGROVE >> A 178-unit housing project in the northwest corner of town moved a step closer to final approval Monday with a unanimous vote of the board of commissioners.
The project is bordered by Bliem Road and North Pleasantview Road.
Spring Valley Farms, which is a re-imagining of a previously approved project, will donate 85 of the project’s 144 acres to the township as open space.
Township Solicitor Robert Brant told the commissioners that the final approval portion of the process will come in phases, but the preliminary approval granted
Monday will be the only vote on this stage.
The project will receive public sewer and water.
The commissioners vote came after a unanimous recommendation for preliminary approval fromthe township planning commission last month, an approval which came despite some questions about the impact the development may have.
According to a report in The Sanatoga Post last month, planning commission members questioned estimates that suggested the development would only add 73 children to Pottsgrove schools.
They also questioned estimates about the traffic impact the project’s residents will have on Bliem and Pruss Hill roads.
The only issue the commissioners had with the project, which is being pursued by developer Brennan Marion, had to do with the location of street trees, which the commissioners said they did not want planted in the right of way, close to the streets.
Engineer RolphGraf said the developers would put the trees elsewhere.
He also told the commissioners that the roads in the development will be private, meaning the township will not have to maintain or plow them.
That will be the responsibility of the homeowners association, Graf said, as will the enforcement of the 15 mile-per-hour speed limit.
Graf said homeowners associations “have come a long way” in recent years and they now have the power to cite homeowners who violate the speed limit and even levy fines.
Police Chief Michael Foltz said police will have jurisdiction for major crimes committed within the development, but not to enforce traffic laws.
The zoning over-lay district that is allowing the project to cluster its units, for a higher total, in exchange for donating open space was adopted last year after a lengthy public hearing at Ringing Hill Fire Company.
Located in the R-1 zoning district, which allows only one housing unit per acre, that option remains open for property owners there.
However those with tracts of 50 acres or more — of which Spring Valley is one of three— a higher-density of development can be sought in exchange for the dedication of open space under the overlay district.
Spring Valley is the first project to be undertaken using the zoning overlay.
But that’s not how it started.
The predecessor to the current configuration was first approved in 2005 and called for 178 four-bedroom homes with a price tag of $280,000.
But the collapse of the housing boomundermined that project and it never moved forward.