Wawa, Mainland Pointe in review
Officials discuss requested waivers, architect drawings
Plans for a new Wawa in Harleysville do not include parking spaces for large delivery trucks.
“If you put the truck parking there, they kind of sit there, so they’re intentionally not including that,” Rick Mast, the engineer for the plans, said at the Feb. 6 Lower Salford Township Board of Supervisors meeting.
The interior layout of the convenience store will be similar to the Wawa at Route 309 and Unionville Pike in Hatfield, and, similar to that one, the planned Harleysville one will not have a rear entrance open to the public, board member Chris Canavan said.
The store and accompanying 12 fuel dispensers are planned for the corner of Sumneytown Pike
(Route 63) and an extension to Quarry Road that will be built as part of the Mainland Pointe development.
The Feb. 6 meeting included discussion of requested waivers and architectural drawings for Mainland Pointe and the Wawa. Preliminary approval of each was given last year. The plans are now being reviewed for final approval. No vote was taken at the Feb. 6 meeting.
A traffic light will be added at Sumneytown Pike and Quarry Road for the development.
The Mainland Pointe plans include 18 singlefamily homes, five 12-unit apartment buildings for a total of 60 apartments and commercial buildings. It’s not yet known what businesses will be in any of the commercial buildings other than the Wawa, Mast
said. The 39 homes built on Buckingham Circle around 2000 are also technically part of the development, although that part of the project was done by a different developer.
The single homes and apartment buildings will be constructed with similar materials, Mast said.
The Lofts at Mainland Pointe will be two-story
apartment buildings with lofts, he said. One of the five apartment buildings will be slightly larger than the other four in order to have room for some units that meet the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) requirements, he said.
“It looks identical,” Mast said of the slightly larger building. “Like I said, you wouldn’t really know the difference by looking at it.”
In answer to a resident’s question, Mast said the ballpark estimate is that the apartments will rent for $1,500 a month and that the single-family homes could sell for $400,000 to $425,000 or possibly a little more.
There will be three different basic models for the single-family homes, with the lot on which the home is built determining the model to be built there, he said.
“There’s not a huge difference between the units. They’re slightly sized differently,” he said.
In a separate matter at the meeting, Mast outlined plans to convert a twostory house on the I.T. Landes Co. property into office space for the company. The Landes property neighbors Mainland Pointe.
Another house on the Landes property was previously converted to offices, although most people driving by probably don’t realize the house is now used for offices, Mast said. That house is on the other side of the driveway from the one currently proposed to be converted, he said.
“What we’re requesting is basically the same thing as we did on the other side, convert it much the same way,” Mast said. “There’s no exterior changes proposed other than what’s required at the rear to accommodate accessibility.”
Sidewalk will have to be added and could be done when Mainland Pointe puts in its Sumneytown Pike sidewalk, the board said.
The Landes sidewalk could have been required in 2001 when other development took place there but was deferred at that time, Michele Fountain, Lower Salford’s engineer, said.