Board approves site agreement
New plan for former Giant supermarket lot includes Royal Farms, removes proposed hotel and replaces it with smaller retail buildings
The newest version of plans for the site of the former Giant supermarket in Upper Gwynedd have been revealed, and include one big and several small differences from earlier versions.
“Basically, what we did was we traded a big, tall hotel for some little retail buildings,” said attorney Jim Garrity.
The former Giant site has been vacant since early 2015, and had previously housed a Genuardi’s supermarket before that chain was bought out by Giant in the early 2010s. In May 2016, Upper Gwynedd officials first heard and saw a draft of plans from developer Hartford Properties, which would build a four-story hotel, a retail building, and a Royal Farms
fuel station and convenience store on the site, located on the northeast side of the intersection of Sumneytown Pike and Church Road.
That plan has gone through several changes over the past year, Garrity said Monday night to the township commissioners, for whom he has been acting as special counsel for the Giant project. Because the initial plan would have required the property be subdivided into several smaller lots to allow single uses on each lot, the township and developer went back to the drawing board.
“The township said, ‘Hey, how about if we do a good plan, skip the subdivision lines, and have no hotel,’” Garrity said.
“We went back and forth, and finally they said, ‘We’ll give up the hotel if you let us do this,’” he said.
After submitting the original plan to the township zoning board last year, Garrity said, the zoning board approved the plan featuring the hotel, but with several conditions attached. The applicant appealed the conditions imposed by the zoning board, and since then, both sides reached a settlement agreement that was approved by the commissioners Monday.
“By virtue of this settlement agreement, neither party admits any wrongdoing whatsoever, neither by Hartford nor the township. The plan approved is generally as you see here: the hotel has gone away, to be replaced with four small retail buildings,” Garrity said.
The Royal Farms would be located near the southwest side of the lot, with fuel pumps below a canopy and separated by a driveway from a convenience store. On the northern side of the site, two new retail buildings would be built facing Sumneytown Pike and perpendicular to Church Road, and two other new retail buildings would be built on the east side of the property running perpendicular to Sumneytown and parallel to Church.
“Multiple uses on one lot will be permitted, so that the grossly arbitrary subdivision lines are not involved,” Garrity said.
No drive-throughs would be allowed on any of the retail buildings unless the zoning board grants their approval, and the fuel station use would be allowed as a special exception to the convenience store, and not as a permitted use. Uses allowed in the retail buildings could be restaurants, bakeries, candy or other food stores, laundromats, or any other uses not precluded by code, according to Garrity.
“Finally, but to some folks most importantly, they are required to record a deed of trust against this property, that says no hotel of any kind or nature whatsoever can ever be built on this property, no matter how many rooms, no matter how big or small, without your permission,” Garrity said to the board.
The stipulation agrement also states that the site would be accessed by a driveway entrance on Sumneytown Pike allowing only right turns in and out, and a second driveway entrance onto Church Road would be allowed only if the developer provides the township with a traffic study showing that is safe.
The frontages of the properties on Church and Sumneytown would both receive new landscaping, and a low brick wall indicating a welcome to the township would be built on that corner. Streetlights along the frontages would match the style of older decorative lights already in use in the township, while more modern lights would be allowed inside, and the size of the sign allowed to display the Royal Farms name and fuel prices has been reduced considerably from earlier versions.
“They wanted an unlimited number of directional signs (inside the property), which we did not agree to. That’s subject to your direction,” Garrity said, showing examples of signs with the Royal Farms logo and arrows indicating driving directions.
The developer has also agreed to make a payment of $147,000 to the township, which was originally called for in the agreement between the township and Genuardi’s and will be compensation for road improvements already done in that area. The earlier plan with the hotel will be withdrawn, and the appeal of the township zoning officer’s decision that multiple uses are not allowed on the site would also be withdrawn, Garrity said.
“Those three actions are all being withdrawn ‘with prejudice.’ That’s lawyer talk for ‘You can’t re-file later,’” he said.
The developers have also agreed that no outdoor vending would be allowed along or outside the Royal Farms building, and township Manager Len Perrone pointed out that a rendering showing an ice machine standing outside the proposed building was inaccurate.
“No outdoor stage or display of merchandise whatsoever: no propane tanks, no oil, no ice, no anything, just the store,” Garrity said. Renderings shown during the board meeting were also inaccurate as to the color of the Royal Farms building, which would be largely white with blue trim instead of the orange color it appeared in the rendering.
Garrity and commissioner Jim Santi said the timeline for further approvals is still to be determined, since the stipulation agreement had not been approved prior to Monday night’s board meeting. Once both sides approve, the agreement will become a public document and the land development process can begin, Santi and Garrity said.
In addition to unanimously approving the stipulation agreement with Hartford Properties, the commissioners also approved a time extension with Provco Pinegood, the developer who proposed plans last year to build a Wawa fuel station and convenience store on the opposite corner, the southwest side of Sumneytown Pike and Church Road. That project has now been granted a time extension to June 27 for further action, according to Santi.
Upper Gwynedd’s commissioners next meet at 7 p.m. on June 20 at the township administration building, 1 Parkside Place. For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.UpperGwynedd. org.