Lower Macungie OKs two warehouses
Buildings will go up on 105 acres along Congdon Hill Road.
Lower Macungie Township Commissioners Thursday gave the go-ahead to two warehouses that are the next phase in Spring Creek Properties on Congdon Hill Road.
The warehouses are being developed by Liberty Property Trust, based in Malvern. The larger one is a proposed 1,088,000-square-foot structure on 71 acres, and the smaller is a 271,080-squarefoot building on 34 acres.
The structures will be neighbors of an existing facility at 8620 Congdon Hill Drive on 77 acres, also built by Liberty Property Trust. It is leased to Ryder Logistics.
Four commissioners approved Liberty’s final plans, with Commissioner Douglas Brown abstaining because the plans were prepared by the engineering company he works for.
Jared Souders, senior project manager for Liberty, said the industrial developer expects site work to start in the spring, with completion of the construction in 2020.
Two more warehouses are proposed for the Spring Creek development. With them will come traffic improvements, Souders said. That includes a Sauerkraut Lane extension that should alleviate traffic congestion at the intersection of Spring Creek and Route 100, Souders said.
Liberty plans to work with the Wildlands Conservancy to do habitat restoration around the warehouse properties, he said.
Commissioners President Ronald W. Beitler said there was some confusion among residents who had heard the township removed warehouses as a use permitted by condition from two of the three zoning districts in which warehouses had been allowed.
The township did eliminate them as a conditional use from its industrial zoning district and its office, research, light industrial center zoning district, both of which are west of Route 100 and along Buckeye Road.
That leaves warehouses as a permitted use only in a courtordered zoning district designed specifically for the Spring Creek Properties warehouse complex, also known as Liberty Business Center II.
The permission for warehouses on land north of Alburtis was part of a 2013 settlement of a legal battle in which residents took the township commissioners to court over zoning changes the commissioners had said they approved to avert development of a quarry that Jaindl Land Co. had previously proposed.
Jaindl intervened in the legal case, which was heard by Lehigh County and state Commonwealth courts and by the township’s Zoning Hearing Board. In 2013, a Lehigh County Court judge approved the Jaindl Land Co. zoning settlement, allowing Lower Macungie to have a scaleddown version of Jaindl’s development of warehouses, homes and businesses.
That settlement ties the hands of the township commissioners as far as the Spring Creek warehouses go.
“We can’t deny these plans and we can’t change the zoning,” Beitler said. “It’s all according to the settlement agreement, which was negotiated by a prior board.”
After Thursday’s approval of Liberty’s new plans for two more warehouses, Souders made clear the lawsuit “predates Liberty’s involvement.”
Meanwhile, Sara Pandl, Lower Macungie director of planning, said the township is working with Liberty on traffic signage to better direct tractor-trailers into and out of the warehouse developments to cut down on trucks ending up on roads not meant for large rigs.
Margie Peterson is a freelance writer.