Town Center project takes center stage, again
NEW HANOVER » As is so often the case these days at 2943 N. Charlotte St. when township officials get together to do the township’s business, discussion turns to development issues — the New Hanover Town Center in particular.
The Town Center project is proposed on 209 acres bounded by Swamp Pike in the north, Route 663 in the east and Township Line Road to the west.
It was first proposed in 2005, under zoning created just for the project which remains controversial to this day, and received a preliminary approval in 2007.
It has continued to be reviewed under the ordinances in place at the time of its submission. Since that time, 30 or more new township ordinances have been adopted that apply new standards to development projects.
The project calls for the construction of 779 dwelling units, some apartments, some townhouses and some single-family homes, along with 171,000 square feet of commercial space — at least as currently proposed.
Last month, Township Manager Jamie Gwynn reviewed for the supervisors all the ways in which the project has morphed over the years, the ups and downs of residential versus commercial, illustrating for the supervisors the maze that the township’s consultants must navigate in trying to give a meaningful review.
Now on eighth revision of the plan, the newest version lost eight acres of open. “The numbers keep changing,” Gwynn said.
Later plans have more units, less parking, less open space, Gwynn said at the Feb. 6 meeting, observations Supervisors Chairman Charles D. Garner Jr. echoed as the March 5 meeting came to a close.
Garner said during a meeting between the developer, township staff and consultants and two supervisors, one of whom was him, he raised a number of those concerns, which he also shared Thursday night.
“The original plan had more commercial and office square footage, but the plan we have now has more residential. I think New Hanover has enough residential,” Garner said.
“When I think of a town center, I think of an actual town center. What we have here is a bunch of big box stores surrounded by a lot of houses and a sea of parking,” Garner said.
He also said be believes Township Line Road “should be totally improved and upgraded” and added that given the problems New Hanover continues to have with stormwater, that he hopes R.P. Wynestone will agree to apply the current stormwater ordinance to the plan.”
He urged the township’s traffic, planning and engineering consultants “to identify big issues, big picture items, and bring them to our attention.”
As an example, Garner noted that rather than wait until the end of the process, that Montgomery County and PennDOT should be made aware now of the township’s traffic concerns on Route 73 and Routes 663, which are county and state roads respectively, so they can be taken into account when its time for the developer to pull road permits.
The project was in front of the supervisors March 6 for what had the potential to be a quick technical issue which, Township Solicitor Andrew Bellwoar suggested needed no action.
Bellwoar said he interpreted the municipalities planning code, which governs development, to mean an April 22 deadline for a decision was meaningless because the project is now under review by the township’s consultants.
Bellwoar also indicated that a meeting between the developer, staff and two supervisors had provided a framework to move forward.
But Marc Jonas, solicitor for the developer, continued the discussion and in what he said was an effort to be clear, proceeded to spark a conversation which turned argumentative which Jonas taking shots at Township Manager Jamie Gwynn.
“And this is where we start to go backwards,” Jonas said as Gwynn began to push for the developer, R.P. Wynestone, to develop the project in accord with current, more stringent ordinances, instead of those in place in 2005 when the application was first made.
“Every time he starts to act like a lawyer, he sets us back,” Jonas said, adding if Bellwoar continued to let Gwynn take this line of questioning “we’re going to end up in litigation.”
But at least two other township supervisors, Ross Snook and Kurt Zebrowski, said they too would like Wynestone to develop the property under current ordinances, something Jonas said would not happen. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. What’s ridiculous, said resident Ben Lanyon, is building 779 new homes in a town already bursting at the seams with housing.
“Since I moved to this township, I have not spoken with a single person who thinks its a good idea to build 700-plus new houses here,” Lanyon told the supervisors.
Garner did not disagree. “Looking back 15 years, the supervisors at the time may have welcomed developers, did favors for developers and it was easy to get projects through,” he said, adding, “and without that some of us might not live here.”
“At some point, someone sitting up here must have thought it was a good idea to put a town in the middle of this township,” said Garner. “And this is a big project and there are a lot of outstanding issues.”
This article first appeared as a post in The Digital Notebook blog.
“When I think of a town center, I think of an actual town center. What we have here is a bunch of big box stores surrounded by a lot of houses and a sea of parking.”
— Charles D. Garner Jr., New Hanover Supervisors chairman