Board to sell property to Toll Brothers
$4.6M deal clears way for townhome development
PHOENIXVILLE » With a 5-3 vote Monday night, the Phoenixville School Board voted to sell a 7.3acre property last used as a kindergarten center to a national builder that has announced plans to build about 80 townhomes there. The price was $4.6 million.
The vote came after all but one speaker at the meeting spoke against the move and after a petition opposing the sale and calling for a “working group” to come up with a better option, a petition that collected 800 signatures, was submitted to the board.
The three no votes came from
board members David Golberg, Ayisha Sereni and Vice President Scott Overland.
Voting yes were Board President Susan Turner and board members Jerry Weiss, Caitlyn Carminito, Michelle Schamis and Betsy Ruch. Victoria Walker was absent.
The absence mirrored the meeting two weeks ago when Turner’s absence was enough to convince the board that, they said, all board members should be present for a vote of this significance. Golberg, noting the board once again only had 8 members present Monday night, tried again to table the motion until all nine members are present, but only he and Sereni voted in favor of the delay.
Golberg then tried to introduce a new motion that the property be sold to the borough, rather than Toll Brothers, but procedure required the rest of the board agree to add that item to the agenda for a vote. That attempt got support only from Golberg, Sereni and Weiss.
Many of those who spoke to the board prior to the vote have spoken before at borough council and at school board meetings. Many are from the Phoenixville Green Team and had hoped to convince the school board to form some sort of partnership with a non-profit open space organization.
At Monday’s meeting, a new request emerged — the idea of creating a “working group.” The petition describes the idea as a task force of “school board and the borough of Phoenixville to build a partnership with community, non-profits, businesses and university organizations to work together. It is important that not only the school board and borough be involved, but also residents, students, environmental land trusts as well as all the business owners along 2nd Avenue.”
Although several board members said they had been working on the question of what to do with the school and property for years, Jane Dugdale told the board that many people in town, and even in the neighborhood, are unaware of the potential for the property to be developed. Those that are “are just beginning to understand” the potential impacts on traffic, taxes and quality of life in the quiet residential neighborhood, she said.
“Selling to developers for a high-density housing is more likely to raise taxes than lower them,” she said.
“Traffic impact alone from such development is especially worrisome,” Ginger Murphy told the board.
Dana Waldman talked about the environmental benefits of leaving the property undeveloped, noting in a town recent inundated by a flood that one inch of rain on forest produces 750 gallons of storm run-off, while the same inch on “impervious surface” produces more than 30 times that volume in “polluted run-off. We’re a river town, we have three creeks,” she said. Replacing forested open space with more impervious surface means “we’re all going to be underwater soon.”
Jim Coggins reminded some of the newly elected board members that their campaign materials cited concern about “the growth rate in the district” and promised to “expand partnership with the community and to collaborate and maintain healthy community engagement.”
He concluded that “there is less than 60 acres of open space left in the borough and you have 15 percent of it.”
Jeff Smith was the night’s only speaker to support the sale of the property to Toll Brothers. He noted that there is a housing shortage in the United States and that “Phoenixville is no exception.” Because of low supply, housing prices are rising and selling the property to allow more townhouses to be built will help to drive housing prices down, smith said.
Overland said the issue is more than just the property, it is also the building which he described as “asbestos laced” adding it would cost more than $1 million to remediate the building. Nevertheless, he said the school district should try to find developers who are more willing to work with the school board.
“I don’t trust anything Toll Brothers says unless its in writing,” Overland said.
“This property is under-valued. They are not talking about the intangibles like access to greenspace,” Sereni said. “We can’t (make a decision based on) administration and an operations manager who do not have expertise in evaluating unique properties,” says Serini. “This process is like an onion, we need to keep peeling off layers.”
To illustrate her point, Sereni held up a red onion she said she had purchased before the meeting at Produce Junction.
Weiss, who chairs the building and grounds committee that recommended the vote, responded to Sereni “my colleague has not seen the assessments, yet she knows they’re bad, which seems strange.” He said there have been three assessments and “I guess they were all done by idiots.”
“We’ve delayed this vote, by my count, four times,” said Weiss, adding that the money from the sale will offset the cost of the 2019 purchase of 30 acres of property off Hares Hill Road in East Pikeland for $3.6 million and construction of a new elementary school there.
“I honestly believe this is the best thing for the school district,” said Ruch, who was the last board member to speak before the vote. After the vote, many of the speakers took to the microphone again to express their disappointment.
“Obviously, we’re shocked and disappointed,” said Mark Connolly, treasurer of Phoenixville’s Green Team. He said the decision sets a bad example for Phoenixville’s school children about ignoring the obvious will of the people.
“People are trying to tell you what’s right, and you’re telling us we’re wrong,” said one speaker. “If you’re just going to over-rule us, what’s the point of having a meeting?”