Pump deal clears development’s path

Upper Macungie Township project calls for 528 new homes and apartments.

A 261-acre residential development will bring 528 new homes and apartments to Upper Macungie Township after officials settled a dispute over who will pay for a new sanitary sewer pump station.

The residential portion of the Lehigh Hills development, a project proposed in 2011 by the Jaindl Land Co. and KRE Upper Macungie Associates L.P., received the green light to move ahead as part of an agreement between the developers and Upper Macungie.

Jaindl and KRE sued the township in September 2017, alleging the township was holding their development plans hostage over a disagreement about the pump station upgrade.

The development is near the rear of the Weis grocery store along Route 100 and Glenlivet Drive in Fogelsville. The development includes 273 apartments, 230 single-family homes and 25 townhouses plus a total of 105 acres of open space for township recreation.

Township solicitor Andrew Schantz said the agreement, which is still awaiting approval from Lehigh County Judge Edward Reibman, calls for Jaindl, KRE and the township to share in the cost of constructing a new, larger Applewood pump station.

“The parties ultimately cooperated together and came to a solution that was neither a win-win or a lose-lose but was very truly a settlement,” Schantz said Wednesday.

The cost sharing percentages for the pump station have yet to be finalized, but township Manager Robert Ibach said the idea is for the developers to contribute funds to cover the larger pumps needed to account for the increase flow from the development.

Rough estimates show the development could add about 250 gallons a day to the already approximately 1,000 gallons a day handled at the Applewood station. Ibach said the new station should be finished within the next year to 18 months.

The supervisors signed off on the agreement at the Dec. 27 meeting. Plans for 22,600 square feet of retail space and restaurants on the site were not approved as part of the settlement, and the supervisors still must sign off on that part of the plan.

The township did not release a cost estimate for the project, but in the lawsuit, the developers claimed the township wanted $1.3 million from them to upgrade the station. Jaindl offered to chip in $650,000 as a compromise, but the township rejected that offer, according to the lawsuit.