Back to drawing board
Proposal would split former supermarket site into three smaller lots
Developers are going back to the drawing board with plans for the site of the former Giant and Genuardi’s supermarket on Sumneytown Pike in Upper Gwynedd.
The township planning commission voted unanimously Monday to approve a new subdivision plan, splitting the former supermarket site into three smaller lots, as requested by the developer.
“For us, it’s really simple at this time. We really haven’t gotten to the next phase. We’ve had some really early conversations with users, but until we had some clarity on what was physically going on with the lot, we couldn’t nail it down,” said Morgan Konstantinidis, vice president for development with Retail Sites LLC.
“We’re taking what’s there now, and just creating three different tax parcels,” she said.
The supermarket site has been a topic of conversation since early 2015, when the Giant at that location closed along
with several others across the area. In May 2016 a developer first showed plans for a Royal Farms fuel station, convenience store, and several retail buildings on the site instead, and after several iterations of that plan — with a small hotel added, then removed — in May 2017 township officials approved a plan with four small retail buildings surrounding the fuel station and store.
Last month, township officials said Royal Farms had withdrawn a wavier request for a canopy over the fuel pumps next to the convenience store, and on Monday night the township’s Planning Commission heard an alternative: Konstantinidis, engineer Jeffrey Beavan and attorney Ed Mullin presented plans to subdivide the roughly 4.5-acre parcel into three smaller sites of between 1.2 acres and 1.9 acres, and demolish the currently vacant supermarket building.
“At this point, it’s purely a subdivision. The current building, because it crosses the subdivision lines, that’s why it is proposed to be demolished,” Beavan said.
The first lot would contain the southwest corner of the parcel, running roughly 164 feet north and roughly 111 feet east from the corner. The second lot would contain the northern end of the site, with roughly 163 feet of frontage on Church Road and running roughly 366 feet east toward the rear of the site, and the third lot would be the remainder, roughly 431 feet deep and with roughly 104 feet of frontage on Sumneytown Pike.
“Right now, with the subdivision, no new access points are proposed, and basically you’d use the existing access points, and provide cross-access easements,” Beavan said.
Those easements would allow users from each of the three properties to cross over the other two to access the two streets, since township zoning rules allow only one use on each site.
“The township ordinance says you can only have one use on one lot, and with our 4.5-acre property, it doesn’t make sense to have one use” on the combined site, said Mullin.
The zoning on all three lots would remain commercial, and the township’s codes require a total width of Church Road that is roughly three feet wider than the current road, Beavan said, of roughly 26 feet wide compared to the 23 feet currently there, which the developer will defer until further plans are finalized.
“The lots do comply with the zoning requirements for lot area, lot width and depth, and as there are no buildings proposed, there’s no need for building setback requirements,” Beavan said.
Mullin said the previous development plans for that site included a payment of $174,000 from the property owner to the township, to cover the cost of road widening and other improvements at the nearby intersection of Church and Sumneytown. That payment will still be made, Mullin said, but after the next plans are finalized.
Planning commission member Gil Silverman raised a concern he said he’s heard from residents for at least the past year: on the northeast corner of the site, the property slopes quickly down toward a creek running through the property.
“There’s no fence, and that’s a safety issue. At that time, you said ‘We’ll take care of it, just to protect anybody who happens to wander in that corner, and might fall in,’” Silverman said. Mullin said he and the owners would look into fixing that issue immediately.
Attorney Jim Garrity represented the township during talks on the Royal Farms plans, and did so again Monday night as the new subdivision was discussed. Garrity asked about the building demolition and the payment for the road projects, and said he wanted attention on both topics before the talks reach the next step.
“This may come up again in front of the commissioners, but I just wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention,” Garrity said.
“We’ll be prepared,” Mullin replied.
Attorney David Brooman represented Merck during talks on a similar proposal for a planned Wawa fuel station and convenience store across the street over the summer, and said Monday night he and Merck had no questions on the subdivision as of now.
“The next step here is for us to now take the subdivision and decide how we best use that, with the people who have some interest in it,” Konstantinidis said, but declined to name any specific potential occupants.
“We’re trying to take some active steps to give the town something that looks better than what’s there now,” she said.
Upper Gwynedd’s commissioners next meet at 7 p.m. on Oct. 17 at the township administration building, 1 Parkside Place. For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.UpperGwynedd.org.