Board says CVS plan also needs to go to zoning board
LOWER SALFORD >> A proposed CVS drugstore with a drive-through on Sumneytown Pike meets the requirements for conditional use approval, but other parts of the plan will have to be resolved before the overall plan can move forward, the Lower Salford Township Board of Supervisors said in making its conditional use decision at the board’s July 3 meeting.
The plans, which were outlined at the board’s May 1 meeting, are for a new CVS to be built and an existing industrial building, which would be modified, to remain on the T-shaped nine acre property combining two tracts. There is also an existing house on the property. The CVS is an
allowed use in the zoning district, as is the home. The industrial use is a non-conforming use, but is allowed to remain.
Access to the industrial building is currently from Sumneytown Pike, but the new plan would add a separate driveway from Ruth Road for the industrial building and restrict the Sumneytown Pike driveway to right-in and right-outonly CVS traffic. The CVS would also have a driveway to the planned extension of Quarry Road.
More than one use is allowed in the residential office zoning district, in which the property is located.
The rules require that the CVS be on at least a five-acre property, board Chairman Doug Gifford said at the July 3 meeting.
“What we’ll wind up with if the application is approved is an over five-acre parcel, but it will have a non-conforming industrial building along with a CVS with a drive-through and there’s also, not as part of the application, but it’s shown as part of the plan, an industrial driveway on a residential property,” Gifford said. “I think where we get hung
up is we as a board cannot approve a zoning variance as part of the application.”
The variance request would have to be approved by the zoning hearing board, he said.
“The decision we’ve come up with would grant the conditional use for the CVS and for the drive-through subject to 13 conditions,” Gifford said. “The main ones of those are that the zoning relief that we feel is required will be obtained prior to this going into effect.”
The CVS plans meet the requirements, board member Chris Canavan said.
“However, because the property includes a nonconformity and they were changing some of those things with the non-conformity, one of them being the driveway going out to Ruth Road, which may be a good planning exercise, but is a problematic zoning issue for us,” he said, “we are conditioning the approval of the conditional use on them then going to the zoning hearing board to work through what we think are a series of zoning related issues.”
The plans to move the industrial building driveway off Sumneytown Pike improves traffic management at the site, Carl Weiner, the attorney for the plans, said at the May meeting.