Court backs Bushkill on heliport

Judges say township acted correctly in denying application.

A Bushkill Township helicopter pilot lost another round in his fight to build a heliport on his 12-acre property when a Commonwealth Court panel sided Friday with the township board's decision to deny the application.

The three-judge panel, with President Judge May Hannah Leavitt dissenting, concluded that the board acted within its right to deny Francesco Lazzarini a conditional use application that would have enabled him to install a heliport outside his Seifert Road home for private use.

Lazzarini, a helicopter pilot and chief operating officer of HeliFlite, which runs chartered flights from Newark Liberty International Airport, argued that the heliport would meet conditions established in the township zoning ordinance, without having a negative effect on the community. He sued the Bushkill Township Board of Supervisors, which had denied his request partly because the supervisors found it would damage the character of the residential neighborhood.

A Northampton County judge upheld the board's decision in November 2017, triggering the appeal to Commonwealth Court.

Many of Lazzarini's neighbors opposed the application during a public hearing that went on for several months.

In her dissent, Leavitt noted that the main complaint centered around noise and that the township exempted helicopters from its noise ordinance.

The township permits private helipads as a conditional use in rural residential zones, which is what Lazzarini's property is in. They must be built on a minimum of 5 acres and set back at least 200 feet.

The township allowed another resident to build one in 2014 on a tract about six times larger than Lazzarini's.