Apartment plan riles neighbors
Proposal for 402 units at Rts. 309-22 intersection incites area residents
Damara Ritchey isn’t surprised that ParkView Inn, a hotel just outside her quiet South Whitehall Township neighborhood between Route 309 and the Springhouse Middle School, is being pitched for redevelopment.
But the expectant mother, who recently moved back to the Lehigh Valley with her family to escape the chaos and congestion of South Jersey, doesn’t understand why developers are seeking to put 402 apartments on the 23-acre tract.
“The big reason we moved from the Philly area was to get away from all of this,” Ritchey said Thursday in the home of friend and neighbor Kelly Harm. “It feels like it’s followed us here.”
The women are part of a core group of South Whitehall residents raising what they say are
major concerns about plans to transform the largely vacant hotel at 1151 Bulldog Drive into a dense cluster of apartment buildings.
Property owner Nick Bizati and E&B Hotel Partnership LP will go before the South Whitehall Zoning Hearing Board on Wednesday. The 7:30 p.m. meeting is being held in the Springhouse Middle School in anticipation of a large turnout, and police are expected to be in attendance following a plea from the chairman of the township commissioners.
The preliminary development plan submitted with the zoning appeal calls for four, four-story apartment buildings with 78 units each; six, three-story apartment buildings with 24 units each; and 24, three-story “direct entry” townhouse-style apartments.
In addition to the apartment buildings, the property would include a clubhouse, a maintenance garage and six garage buildings for residents. The plan calls for 707 parking spaces, which is less than would normally be required for a mixed-use proposal in the highway-commercial zoning district.
The developer is seeking variances to allow for standalone residential development on the site as well as permission to exceed the zoning law’s height limits and parking requirements.
Neighbors say the kind of development possible under a highway commercial zoning designation is easier to stomach than the density being proposed for the Park View Apartments project. In late August, residents attended a meeting with the developer to learn more about the proposal and voice concerns.
Harm said she and other residents who attended the meeting do not believe their concerns were addressed by the developer. Bizati could not be reached for comment.
Determined that their voices be heard, residents have been circulating a petition to oppose the zoning variances. The petition has garnered more than 60 signatures from the neighborhood, and Harm said she hopes this will serve as a clear message to the zoners that residents nearest the development have serious fears about how it will affect congestion and traffic safety.
David Burke, a longtime South Whitehall resident among the concerned neighbors, has been skeptical of a lot of recent township development. Burke is among those who’ve been closely following the Ridge Farm project, a 780-unit mixed-use proposal that’s a 3-mile drive east of the Park View project. The Ridge Farm project is under scrutiny for the traffic it would add to already crowded roads in the township and is awaiting a Planning Commission recommendation on conditional uses being sought by developer Kay Builders.
Burke said he understands that residents cannot halt a development from moving forward, especially when the applicant is acting within the parameters of a site’s zoning laws.
But that’s just the problem with this scenario, he said. The plans for the project rely on significant zoning law adjustments, which Burke said don’t match up with the location.
Burke believes that if the developer was required to build within the zoning requirements, the matters worrying residents wouldn’t be an issue.
“I understand now that the township can’t stop a developer and buyer from moving forward with a proposal — we get that,” Burke said. “But under highway-commercial, whatever is built there is safe for the community. In this case, the number of units is just astounding.”
Like his neighbors, Burke’s most pressing concern is traffic. The apartments would be visible from Route 22 and Route 309, but access wouldn’t be so easy. It would be impossible to enter from Route 309 since it would be too close to the junction with Route 22. That means traffic will be forced onto quiet Bulldog Drive and residential Crackersport Road.
“The area is, what I like to call, exit-challenged,” Burke said of the property. “It’s stuck in that corner and there’s no good way to get out of it.”
Opponents to the development predict that tenants would cut through neighborhood roads, which are dotted with playgrounds and bus stops, in an effort to avoid what would likely be a traffic headache each rush hour.
Middle school-aged children in the neighborhood typically walk to Springhouse Middle School, Harm said. She’s already seen more traffic on the roads during peak hours as the township experiences a wave of new development.
“With the traffic that currently exists, people are whizzing by,” Harm said of the bus stop at Parkland Drive. “With this development, it’s hard to imagine it not becoming a main thoroughfare.”
The hotel itself has weathered its own share of issues in the township. Most recently in 2017, while operating as an Econo Lodge, the hotel was under pressure by township officials to evict the long-term tenants whose monthslong stays were a violation of municipal code for the operation.
A drug-related shooting in the parking lot of the hotel in July 2017 brought exasperated residents to township meetings.
A bullet from the incident hit the nearby Lehigh Valley Home and Garden Center.
Harm said neighbors understand the owners’ desire to transform the property. “The current zoning should matter,” she said. “There are so many reasons why it’s highway-commercial and not residential in that area. We’re not opposed to development of that land, but want to see it happen in a way that’s in accordance with the zoning laws and in a way that makes the community better.”