Developer says senior housing would be a boon
A developer wants to build age-restricted homes on this farm in the 400 block of Stony Run Road in East Vincent Township.
EAST VINCENT » A developer asking the township to change its zoning to make it easier to construct a 212-unit age-restricted home project on 66 acres off Stony Run Road painted a rosy picture of the project’s benefits during a three-hour hearing.
Conducted in-person and online, the Aug. 19 hearing was consumed largely by testimony from
Jon Benson of Artisan Construction, and the developers’ engineer, planner and financial analyst, who outlined what they see as the benefits of the project, called Stony Run at Kimberton.
Questions from residents were limited, due to the hour, and the township supervisors indicated they will continue to gather public input at their next meeting, Wednesday, Sept. 2, at 7 p.m.
No decision was made on Artisan’s request.
Benson said he has been working on the project for 18 months and it originally called for 400 units, but that was not looked on favorably either by the township, or by the Chester County Planning Commission.
As the plan stands now, the project would consist of 174 single homes, and 38 twins on 66 acres north of Bridge Street, now a working farm owned by Vernon Ruth and his family.
The project would also include a clubhouse as large as 6,000 square feet, pool, tennis and bocce courts, trails and a fenced dog park open to the public.
The project would be served by public water and sewer.
The interior roads would all be private roads. They, and the project’s stormwater facilities, would be maintained by the project’s homeowners association, said Benson.
The project would also preserve
the historic farmhouse and farm buildings on the site as part of a five-acre “estate,” Benson said.
The other 89.5 acres the developer owns owns on the south side of Bridge Street, which holds 80 percent of the whole site’s best farm soils, would be permanently preserved as open space “at no cost to the township,” Benson said.
That open space is also home to the property’s wetlands, and flood plain of Stony Run Creek.
The property would be preserved by a legal vehicle called TDR, which stands for transfer of development rights. It is the method recommended for land preservation and for encouraging age-restricted housing in the township’s comprehensive plan, which was adopted in 2018.
The township comprehensive plan also calls for simplifying how TDRs and age-restricted housing interact, but that has not happened yet, and Benson said he is proposing a rewrite of the zoning ordinance to accomplish that township goal.
The township’s ordinance
also allows for a 30 percent increase in density if age-restricted housing is built, said Benson.
Artisan’s traffic engineer, Frank Tabani, said his study indicates that because the residents are older and mostly retired, they are less likely to be on the roads during the morning and evening peak traffic times.
“The levels of service aren’t really meaningfully impacted by this development,” Tabani said of Stony Run Road’s intersection with West Bridge Street and Bethel Church Road; and the intersection of West Bridge Street and Ridge Road (Route 23).
It would, at most, add 2 seconds of waiting time at those intersections during peak driving times, he said.
David Babbitt provided a fiscal analysis of the project and concluded that the project would generate more in tax revenues than it would require in municipal services. “The annual revenue would be three times the annual expense,” Babbitt said.
The financial impact for the Owen J. Roberts School District would be even better,
Babbitt said. By sending no children to the district, and thus requiring no expenditures, the district would received the entire $.14 million in tax revenues free and clear.
The revenues, he said, would provide enough money to educate 70 students. “This is a huge windfall for the school district, I can’t emphasize that enough,” Babbitt said.
The project is also a windfall for the Ruth family, which owns the property.
Vernon Ruth and his wife Janet have farmed that land for 60 years.
“We raised a family of four when it was possible to make a livelihood on a farm,” he told the supervisors.
“But times have changed, with higher taxes and farm incomes not keeping pace,” he said. “Farming,” he said, “has become an expensive hobby.”
“We worked long hours and invested our money in costly equipment, not contributing to our retirement. Selling the farm is our retirement,” Ruth said.
Benson also addressed an online petition asking the township to deny Artisan’s
request to change the zoning.
He disputed many of the points, but it was difficult to hear online and it was not immediately clear which points were being refuted.
It was also impossible to hear, with any accuracy, the questions raised by residents speaking in person at the hearing.
The EVT Advocacy Group, which sponsored the petition, provided the following statement in response to the Aug. 19 hearing:
East Vincent was served up for intense development on Wednesday evening. The Board of Supervisors have an opportunity to protect the quiet, scenic, natural and agricultural resources of our township. It’s a 3-2-1 and gone situation.
Three people get to make this decision (the Board of Supervisors) for all of the 7,327 residents. The professional orientation of the three supervisors is financial and construction. Two of these Supervisors are appointed, not elected. And lastly, we have one chance to protect and defend our existing zoning, or change it for open season for
this developer and all future developers. Once it is gone, it is gone forever.
At the hearing, the developer spoke for almost three hours and admitted that he has worked with the township for 18 months. In contrast, the citizens got to see the plans and reports for the first time on Wednesday and got only 10 minutes to speak. During these questions and remarks, they were consistently cut off and were interrupted by both the township and the developer.
At stake here is a beloved “Century Farm,” a productive farm that contains soils of “statewide significance.” Mr. Benson’s response to protecting the farm was that he guaranteed that the soils would be sprinkled around the front lawns of his 212 homes.
The EVT Advocacy Group will continue to raise our collective voices to the township and it is our hope that our voices will be heard and considered thoughtfully before rendering a decision which will likely have lasting negative impacts for the residents of East Vincent.