Impact of developments debated
Additional students, traffic a major concern
LOWER POTTSGROVE >> 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.
Monday night, 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 submissions 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 Monday night.
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.
The primary drivers behind this forecast are the 500-plus residential units in Sanatoga Green,
“We’ve never had his kind of influx of housing before. These numbers are conservative, and frankly they’re still twice what developers said.” David Nester, Pottsgrove Schools Business Manager
the 178-unit Spring Valley Farms at Pleasantview and Bliem roads — both in Lower Pottsgrove — and the 58-unit rental development off Moyer Road in Upper Pottsgrove.
But that number may be reduced as the result of recent considerations by the developer of Spring Valley Farms, Camburn told Nester.
Evidently, developer Brennan Marion of Homsher Hill LLC, has informed township officials of the possibility of the approved plans for the two- to four-bedroom homes there being abandoned in favor of twobedroom ranch homes marketed to buyers 50 years and older.
If carried out, that could significantly reduce if not completely eliminate the potential for numerous school-age children being generated by Spring Valley Farms.
“That would be greatly appreciated,” Nester said.
What impact that would have on the region’s traffic load, however, remains unclear.
Camburn said that as plans progress, for Sanatoga Green in particular, and are looked at in concert with another 25-acre commercial development adjacent to Sanatoga Green and now being marketed, the potential for an icnreased traffic load on the Sanatoga interchange off Route 422 is becoming worrisome.
“Between that and other developments in Limerick Township, we, and PennDOT, are starting to look at these traffic impacts on a regional basis,” said Camburn.
In addition to Sanatoga Green, which calls for more than 500 homes, a hotel and medical office space, Conshohocken-based Equity Retail Brokers is marketing the adjacent 25-acre site for possible uses that include a hotel, an anchor store and four independent PAD sites, usually occupied by drug stores or stand-along restaurants.
The marketing materials also identify three “mixed-use” buildings at the rear of the property which would seem to indicate some residential units.
Another proposed commercial property adjacent to the Turkey Hill at High Street and Rupert Road could also add to the already voluminous traffic under which that interchange labors thanks to the Phialdelphia Premium Outlets and the Costco just over the line in Limerick.
Limerick and Lower Pottsgrove have already cooperated in obtaining a grant to upgrade the northbound access to Route 422 and the southbound side may now need to be considered as well.
Similar concerns about large developments in New Hanover and Douglass townships, as well as Sanatoga Green, have already prompted the Pottstown Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Committee to engage the services of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission for a regional traffic study.
Last week, DVRPC personnel gave an overview of their plans for the traffic study, which could take two years to complete but would not cost any of the eight municipalities who comprise the regional planning group any money.
It is not immediately clear if that study would include the Route 422 Sanatoga interchange given that Limerick is not one of the eight municipalities part of the regional planning group, although Lower Pottsgrove is.