More towns restricting warehouses
Pushback over truck traffic, damage to nature among reasons for change
In one corner of Lower Macungie Township sits a group of large industrial buildings, including Uline’s East Coast Distribution Center, a 930,000-squarefoot mega warehouse that opened in September.
Driving around the township, which features a mixture of suburban and rural areas, you may notice that these huge buildings are, for the most part, limited to the area around Spring Creek Road, just off Route 100.
As the number of warehouses has increased exponentially over the years in the Lehigh Valley, many residents have grown tired of the destruction of green space and the increased number of trucks tearing up the roads. In 2017 Lower Macungie started rewriting its zoning to greatly restrict where warehouses can be built.
It’s a trend that may be picking up steam in the Valley.
Recently, Lower Nazareth Township was the first of what will likely be a group of 10 municipalities in Northampton County to explicitly ban future construction of warehouses in its light industrial campus zoning district. The same week, neighboring Moore Township rejected two warehouses that would be built at Southmoore Golf Club.
Ron W. Beitler helped lead the fight against the buildings as a citizen, then as a member of Lower Macungie’s Board of Commissioners. He’s currently a Lehigh County commissioner and continues to fight for smart growth policies for a larger area.
“The writing has been on the wall for the Lehigh Valley for decades,” he said. “Of course we all know why: because we’re at the confluence of several major highways and I-78 was built in our geographic location, which is a blessing and a curse. We’re the storage closet of the Northeast.
“Communities are either prepared for this type of development and able to guide them to appropriate locations, which is directly off highway interchanges, or they’re going to come into places that’s going to wreak a lot of havoc.”
Under state law, municipalities must provide a place for every possible land use, though things like warehouses can be restricted to only one part of a township or borough. But if warehouses are allowed in a zoned area, there’s little township officials can do to stop a proposal.
Lower Macungie’s ability to restrict the warehouses to a corner of the township and keep them there turned out to be a sign of things to come. Lehigh Township in 2019 removed warehouses as a by-right use in the neighborhood and general commercial zoning districts and limited them only to the industrial zones by conditional use.
“We’re at the confluence of several major highways and I-78 was built in our geographic location, which is a blessing and a curse. We’re the storage closet of the Northeast.” — Ron W. Beitler, Lehigh County commissioner
“I think we did get ahead of the problem as much as we could,” Beitler said. “And I was very happy, of course, to see other communities like Lower Nazareth and Moore get on the ball as well.”
Warehouses already approved could still be built in the restricted areas, but there will be no more after that. Companies seeking warehouse space in Lower Nazareth in the future would have to look in areas zoned general industrial, which has limited space.
“That means we have our fair share,” township solicitor Gary Asteak said. “We have enough.”
‘Not inherently evil’
Lower Nazareth’s lead is expected to soon be followed by other members of the Nazareth Area Council of Governments.
Northampton County executive Lamont McClure applauded the township’s move and coordination between the local governments in the COG.
“Warehouses are not inherently evil,” McClure said. “Lots of good people have jobs in them, and the dignity of that work needs to be respected. But with that being said, we don’t need any more warehouses in Northampton County.
“And I think what these comprehensive plans that they’re doing regionally, either in the [Nazareth Council of Governments], or hopefully in the Slate Belt Council of Governments, are going to be able to properly zone where these developments should go. And they’ll be able to have their industrial zones, and that’s where they’ll be properly sited.”
The buildings, though, are still coming.
In its latest numbers, commercial real estate company CBRE reported that Northampton County had 48.2 million square feet of industrial building space with a 5% vacancy rate and 4.7 million square feet under construction in the fourth quarter of 2022. Net absorption — the sum of square feet occupied, minus the sum of vacant square feet — is 5.1 million square feet.
Lehigh County has 64.2 million square feet of space with a 2.1% vacancy rate and 569,865 square feet under construction. Net absorption was 1.9 million square feet.
“The plans are still coming in at a record rate for the development of new warehouses,” McClure said. “I can’t declare that we’ve turned a corner yet because that wouldn’t be borne out by the evidence. But you have the leadership with Lower Nazareth leading on this and the multimunicipal plan is leading on this with all those municipalities that are involved in that.”
McClure says that’s why the county spent $75,000 to develop a freight-based land use management guide.
“All of our municipalities can now look at their zoning, change their ordinances, and make sure these monstrosities are not being dropped into farmland and that they’re properly being sited in areas zoned industrial,” he said.
Warehouse or factory?
McClure said he’d like to see more manufacturing in those areas. Besides cutting down on truck traffic, those jobs are better-paying, he said.
Don Cunningham, president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp., said manufacturing has been on the rise in recent years and recently became the largest economic sector in the Valley.
“We’ve been exceeding national averages to the point where we’re in the top 50 in markets in the United States for making and producing goods, which is significant because we’re not that 50 in population in the United States,” Cunningham said. “So manufacturing has been on a tremendous growth cycle in the Lehigh Valley.”
Cunningham said that manufacturers also want nearby distribution centers, and those giant buildings people see growing out of the fields may all look like warehouses, but many are also being used for manufacturing.
He said smaller buildings of 300,000 square feet or less are generally used for manufacturing, while larger ones are used for distribution. For people who still picture factories resembling the former Bethlehem Steel works with smokestacks, times have changed.
“When people use the term ‘warehouse,’ it’s kind of a pejorative term, meaning a building we don’t want,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham gave the example of Martin Guitar, which has both a factory and distribution center in Northampton County.
“The process of making goods and producing goods is combined with storing goods and then moving goods to market,” he said. “So making and holding go hand in glove.
“Martin Guitar has two significant facilities: One is a production facility, and the newest one is a facility that’s climate-controlled to make sure the wood is properly treated and so forth, and to move goods from. And that goes for most products.
“There are very few producers of products that either don’t lease and/or own a facility for at least temporarily holding those products and then moving them to market. That’s the challenge with attempting to legislate out one use and allow for the other.”
Lack of land
A growing challenge for LVEDC, Cunningham said, is finding a plot of land for companies interested in locating to the Valley.
“I fully understand why people have an adverse reaction to industrial-building growth,” Cunningham said. “But on the other hand, our biggest challenge in continuing to grow manufacturing is lack of space, and facilities for it right in the Lehigh Valley.
“At any given time, I’d say over the ebb and flow over the last 12 to 18 months, we’re dealing with a backlog of anywhere from eight to 12 manufacturer producers that we’re trying to find locations that are in the market.”
Indeed, the supply of available land in the Lehigh Valley is becoming tighter.
Becky Bradley, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, said the signs are there as developers have been looking for land in neighboring Berks County, while those building in the Valley are seeking to erect taller structures or add on to current buildings.
CBRE believes the Valley has enough land for about 10 to 15 years of further development, though Bradley said changing consumer habits could slow the logistics industry even sooner.
Cunningham said developers in recent years received pushback when they started “going off the beaten path” to places such as Lowhill Township, which has been battling plans for three warehouses.
“That heightens the reaction to it,” he said.
In the meantime, Beitler said townships should work in the open when changing their zoning for warehouses and allow public input. It’s a lesson Lower Macungie learned in 2017.
“In Lower Macungie we always invested in a really good legal team and our zoning ordinances were tight in terms of the regulations,” he said. “There was one that was submitted around that time (in 2017). We ended up denying it, and we thought, you know, we had the legal basis to do it and that’s stuck.
Developers can appeal, and they often do.”
Beitler isn’t against development if it’s done in the right places, such as the area in Upper Macungie Township where I-78 meets Route 100.
McClure said municipalities are ready for a fight if developers push back. The one in Moore Township is expected to go to court.
“They have identified that this is where they want to be and they have the money to wait out long court fights,” McClure said. “But at the end of the day, the will of the people is so important. And the people of the Lehigh Valley are just sick and tired and, quite frankly, scared of the truck traffic.
“I think our folks in Northampton County, in the Lehigh Valley in general, are tired of the truck traffic, and they are speaking loudly and they’re going to support their local elected officials in changing these zoning laws. And once they do ... the warehouse and logistics industry is going to lose a lot of interest in us.”
Cunningham cautioned that simply eliminating all development of new warehouses could have adverse effects on economic growth in the Lehigh Valley. And not all projects are created equal, he added. Some companies will lease a building that will house manufacturing, storage and offices.
“I think the planning commission has put forward some good recommended ordinances where you look at the size of the building in a zone,” he said. “We fully support that approach.”
What you don’t want to do is completely eliminate the opportunity for any manufacturing or production growth.
“You can’t have it both ways,” he said.