Commercial development for Route 309 gains favor, but not approval, from planners
North Whitehall Township officials are fans of a new commercial development coming to the area, even if they tabled the project during a planning commission meeting on Wednesday.
“I like the project,” Chair Brian Horwith said during the meeting. “I think it’s a good addition to the community.”
The King’s Route 309 Business Park would be a 12-acre commercial development near the intersection of routes 873 and 309.
King’s Real Estate Management & Development seeks to construct a 6,000-square-foot Wawa convenience store, a two-story medical office building of about 30,000 square feet, a 6,800-square-foot automobile parts store, and a roughly 60,000-square-foot self-storage facility.
The developers would also make the nearby intersection into a roundabout.
Attorney Jerry Blecker, along with Chris Williams and Ryan Kern of Barry Isett and Associates, represented the developers Wednesday.
Williams said one change they made to the project before Wednesday was adding sidewalks from Schneck Road going into the site for increased connectivity. Another change was adding walls to the south side of a basin on the site to increase the stormwater area, which the developers did to meet DEP requirements.
Horwith called for tabling the project so that the developers could address the township’s feedback, particularly that the township’s ordinance doesn’t permit the walls that the developers are looking to build.
“I think we need to see the plan fixed,” he said.
Kern explained that something developers will have to get from PennDOT are three high-occupancy permits for improving Schneck Road, maintaining nearby sidewalks and installing storm sewers as part of the proposed roundabout. He said the developers are seeking a positive recommendation for applying for those permits from the township, and that the permits would be in the township’s name.
The primary obligation the township would have from these permits would be owning and maintaining the sewer systems.
Because the permits weren’t on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting, the planning commission didn’t give an official recommendation, but rather passed on advisory comments for the Board of Supervisors to consider.
The advisory comments they’d pass on would be that planners were “generally” in favor of the township becoming party to the high-occupancy permits, but had reservations about the township becoming responsible for the storm sewers, particularly for who becomes liable if the sewers fail.