CHILLY RECEPTION
Concerns raised over master plan for development in Linfield village
LIMERICK » Aspects of the update to the attempt to craft a master plan for development in Linfield village got a chilly reception from not only the township supervisors but even from some members of the committee charged with its creation.
Peter Simone from Simone Collins Landscape Architects, the consultant hired to help put the plan together, offered up a 69page presentation to the public at the supervisors’ March meeting and said the effort has so far taken two years to put together. Part of the reason for the delay was the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited public gatherings, but also “gave us more time to think about things.”
Although the historic village hasn’t changed much over the years, there has been an influx in suburban “sprawl” development on the land outside the village, said Simone.
That has resulted in more vehicles
and throughout the presentation and the public comments, complaints about traffic and the roads were dominant; that and “the elephant in the room” — what to encourage at the 190-acre former industrial site known to most as the Publicker site.
Last month, developer Tim Hendricks proposed a project that would re-make the Publicker site as a place with self-storage and warehouse uses.
“It will continue to be a negative for the village until it is redeveloped,” Simone said. More troubling is the fact that a marketing study showed potential uses that might be preferable — retail, office or even senior housing — are likely not economically viable, especially when considering the high “penalty costs” of cleaning up the site and making road improvements, which could climb as high as $30 million above the purchase price.
Demand for retail and office space likely has dropped even more since the study was done as the pandemic moved more people to “shopping from home and working from home,” Simone observed.
Simone said the traffic problem in Linfield is not so much one of volume, but of speed and that some of the worst offenders are residents, joking “we have met the enemy and it is us.” He said the township’s own traffic engineer’s study showed intersection service levels are good and would not get significantly worse if the Publicker site were developed with housing, possibly even
high-density housing.
But that idea got a cold response from the township supervisors, particularly after they listened to public comments, several from some of the committee’s own members.
“I think the two things we reached consensus. One is we wanted more outreach to the people of Linfield — (only 35 percent responded to a survey for the plan) — and two, that we didn’t want high-density public housing at Publicker,” said committee member Allie Susek.
“At no point did anyone on the committee recommend high-density housing at Publicker,” said committee member Bill DeGideo. “This plan comes before you with all of our names on it, but it doesn’t really feel like our input was included in this as a whole,” he said. “I don’t want to sell this to a developer as something the township wants.”
It doesn’t, said supervisors’ Chairman Ken Sperring Jr.
“Not one person on this board is in favor of highdensity housing anywhere,” Sperring said. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I’m not happy with this plan either,” said Supervisor Patrick Morroney, who had been on the committee and said he was “removed.” He said, “this feels like we’re taking things away from Linfield and we want to improve the quality of life in Linfield, not add more traffic to the roads.”
“I’m ticked, I’m beyond ticked,” said Leonard Miller, who said he owns the business where Mane Street Hair Studio is located on Main Street. Truck traffic from Bengal Paper makes the roads in the village unsafe, he said, adding “somebody’s going to get seriously hurt. It’s ridiculous.”
Several ideas for road and traffic flow improvements are included in the plan draft, including building new roads and making space for sidewalks and onstreet parking by making some of the roads one-way.
Simone’s presentation also stressed the fact that while “there is quite a lot of open space” in and around Linfield “you don’t have a major riverfront park and, to me, that’s a missed opportunity.”
The update calls for trying to create a riverfront park at the Publicker site and explores the possibility of transforming the Linfield Sports Park into a kind of village green.
That last idea fell flat with former supervisor Elaine DeWan, who is also a member of the plan’s committee and was on the board which purchased that park property. “I don’t want to see recreation activities taken out of Linfield,” she said.
Township Manager Dan Kerr and Simone both assured those in the audience, and watching online, that the idea behind the plan is to “give the township options.” Before the supervisors would re-zone anything, a much closer look
at the impacts would be examined, Kerr said.
“The roadways are the most important thing,” Simone said. “There would be no development until the township decides on plans for the roadways.”
Linfield resident Bridget
Lightcap said “why can’t Linfield be left alone as the little country village that it is. Why would we want to upgrade to all the fancy, Yuppy things you’re picturing
up there?”
“We will be revising the plan before we accept it and you will all be able to see what’s proposed before we do,” said Sperring.