375 homes for Forty Foot Road site
Proposed age-restricted community could also clean up open space
A new development adding several hundred homes on Forty Foot Road is now on the drawing board, and could help Hatfield Township clean up a messy map nearby.
Township officials got their first public look last week at the proposed “Reserve at Hatfield,” a project that developer Pulte Homes said could bring hundreds of new taxpayers to the area.
“We’re proud of the communities that we build. We want our community to be a neighborhood, and an asset to Hatfield,” said Rob Holmes, vice president of Land Planning and Development with Pulte.
Holmes, land planner John Kennedy, and attorney Joe Kuhls showed an early version of plans to build a complex of 375 total units, restricted to residents 55 and older, in a mix of singles, twins and townhouses, on a 96acre parcel east of Forty Foot Road and north of Welsh Road, just north of the Ralph’s Corner shopping center.
“This plan shows 375 units. That works out to be a little over four units to the acre — in the proposed ordinance, we have 4.25 units per acre,” said Kennedy.
“I’d really encourage you to go look at the Reserve at Gwynedd: that is higher, 4.8 units per acre,” he said referring to a similar community by Pulte in Lower Gwynedd.
Of the 96 ares, roughly 35 acres would be used as open space, largely in landscape buffering on the Forty Foot Road side of the property. The single family houses would be clustered along Forty Foot and on the north side of the property near McArthur Drive, Kennedy told the board, with the twins in the center to provide a buffer from the townhouses.
“We also have a series of trails that would traverse throughout the community, and then we’re
also including some trails which would be open to the public at large,” Kennedy said.
One trail connection would run roughly north to south from McArthur Drive to the Ralph’s Corner shopping center, and Kennedy said he hoped residents to the north could use it to get to the center without their vehicles.
“What that would do is allow, not only the residents of this community, but the residents of the McArthur drive community, to be able to potentially walk to the Applebee’s, and not have to get into their car and drive,” he said.
“In my opinion, as a planner, that would be a real boon for those neighbors, to have at least the option of being able to walk or take a bike,” Kennedy said.
The property is currently split roughly 50/50 between residential and light industrial zoning, Kennedy and Kuhls said, so the applicant is asking the commissioners to consider changing the entire property to a residential multi-family elderly district, with a new category
called “active adult community” which would allow the complex.
In early talks with neighbors, Kuhls said, “there was no upset over the possibility of eliminating industrial use on that parcel.”
The project could also help the township clean up an issue that has been outstanding since the early decades of the 20th century, Kuhls told the board. As part of the project, Pulte has reached sale agreements with the owner of the 96-acre parcel, and another resident, to consolidate several dozen “movie lots” of smaller properties adjacent to the site. Those properties are called “movie lots” because they were given away by movie theaters in the 1920s and ‘30s, Kuhls said, but many were too small for any development.
“They used to give them away as marketing schemes. You’d go to the drive-in, and win a free piece of property up in the country, and it was only when you came out to visit the piece of property that you just won, that you realized you’d need to buy three more in order to build a house,” Kuhls said.
Over the years those properties went to tax sale as the original owners neglected or forgot about them, and since
talks on this project began last year, Pulte has pieced together agreements of sale that could combine as much as 12 acres of movie lots into one property that could then be donated to the township.
“I would assume, as we work through the process, the township is going to decide they want as large a contiguous parcel as possible. And that’s certainly what we’re willing to give you,” Kuhls said.
Kuhls, Kennedy and Holmes said their concept presentation on Aug. 22 was meant to get consensus from the commissioners on whether the planning for the process can move ahead, and the applicant can seek formal review letters from township staff and consultants to be addressed at future meetings. Township Manager Aaron Bibro and solicitor Christen Pionzio said they both could begin that process over the next 30 days, and have review letters ready for further discussion by the commissioners’ Oct. 10 meeting.
Commissioner Larry Hughes said he wanted residents on McArthur Drive to know that this development could be residents’ only chance to ask that their roadway be connected to Forty Foot.
“This is your only chance to speak up and say you need a connection there. Once this is done, nothing’s going to happen there,” Hughes said.
Resident Dan Reavy of McArthur said he has lived there for more than two decades, and he and neighbors there prefer that the road stay unconnected, and are awaiting a full traffic study from the developer.
“Personally, my feeling is that I don’t want any more traffic in our neighborhood,” Reavy said, and added that Pulte representatives have been “open, honest, and transparent throughout this entire process.”
Board President Tom Zipfel said the plan presentation on Aug. 22 was only the start of a lengthy process of requesting, gathering feedback, then ruling on the rezone request, before any land development plans are discussed and finalized.
“What’s being requested is not that we approve anything. It’s that we give them an opportunity to present what, I assume, will be somewhat similar to what we’ve seen tonight: a presentation for our consideration,” Zipfel said.
That presentation will
be made during the board’s Oct. 10 meeting, and the board next meets on Sept. 12, both at 7:30 p.m. at the township administration building, 1950 School Road.