Board agrees to finish Sanatoga Interchange study

Progress continues to be made on a project aimed at improving the Route 422 on and off ramps at the Philadelphia Premium Outlets thanks to a move made recently by Limerick Township officials.

The $8.5 million total project, a cooperative effort between Limerick and Lower Pottsgrove townships, has been in the works for over five years and is being broken into two phases. The first phase is a $3 million improvement of the westbound on ramp. The second phase is an estimated $5.5million improvement of the eastbound off ramp.

The Limerick Township Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed last week to finish a study explaining why improvements are needed at the westbound ramp.

The majority of the study has already been completed with funding from the O’Neill Organization, which developed the Costco site, according to Limerick Township. The study had been sitting dormant for a few years waiting for the outcome a $2.1 million state multi-modal transpor- tation grant application, awarded last July. The township’s plan is to pick up the study and complete the final details which will require extensive meetings and planning with PennDOT. This work is noted to be about $75,000 and is expected to be completed around September of this year, according to the township.

Once the study is approved, design work can begin. The east- bound off ramp phase of the project has been put on hold for now, according to Township Manager Dan Kerr.

“We are not doing the eastbound off ramp right now,” he said. “We’re going to work on that in the future.”

Required by federal law, the access point study will explain the problem with the current lay-

out of the westbound entrance at the Philadelphia Premium Outlets off Evergreen and Lightcap roads. Westbound traffic leaving the outlets must make a left turn across oncoming traffic to get onto Route 422. That left-turning traffic stacks up on the bridge over the highway and can block eastbound traffic from exiting Route 422 and making the left onto Evergreen Road.

The interchange project has been in the works for over five years, Kerr said. The goal is to add capacity and safety improvements for traffic headed to the Philadelphia Premium Outlets located in Limerick along the township line with Lower Pottsgrove. Plans also include a massive residential, hotel and office development called Sanatoga Green.

The two-phase project includes improvements to a westbound on ramp and eastbound off ramp. In July, after an effort that took about two years, Limerick received $2.1 million from the state through the multimodal transportation projects fund grant program. Both townships agreed to post the $900,000 match to complete the westbound ramp, estimated at approximately $3 million.

The estimated $5.5 million cost on that project, and the fact that it requires more digging into a hillside and is not entirely within PennDOT rights of way, as is the westbound side, are reasons for the longer timeline, Lower Pottsgrove Township Manager Ed Wagner said previously. That and it’s more expensive.

The westbound work is made more necessary by the proposal to build a development on 51 acres on the north side of Evergreen Road, in Lower Pottsgrove, that includes 508 housing units, a 100-room hotel and office space.

The state grant and likely approval for the interchange project means that Sanatoga Green mixed use development can continue to move forward.