Developer makes case for waivers
Topics include buffers, landscaping for Third and Walnut apartment
LANSDALE » Plans for a six-story apartment building on the corner of Third and Walnut streets have been revised again, and Lansdale officials look likely to be asked to approve several waivers for the project.
Developer Ross Ziegler and architect Mike Rosen presented the latest version of those plans Monday night, describing changes including a new fence next to a dog park meant to buffer the building from its next door neighbors on Third Street.
“In terms of both the fence and the dog park, we’d be open to discussions, certainly, to explore what would be more desirable, or how we can come up with solutions that might make more sense,” said Rosen.
“We really want to encourage the concept of pet ownership, and taking care of their pets. And we clearly have been sensitive to the neighbor issue, and we will deal with it,” he said.
The proposed Third and Walnut apartment building — termed “Walnut Crossing” on the plans — has been discussed since late 2015 by various borough boards and commissions, and in Febru-
ary the plans received formal relief from the borough zoning hearing board for the parking the developer is proposing on the ground floor and two underground floors below the building.
“Right now, we’re at 1.2 parking spots per unit. We feel that’s an excessive amount of parking, because of the fact that it’s a transit-oriented development, right adjacent to the train station,” said Rosen.
The current plans for the building show a total of 77 parking spaces to be built on the ground floor of the building, with a driveway entrance and exit onto Third Street, and a ramp running parallel to Church Alley to a first basement floor. On the first basement floor would be another 97 parking spaces, with stairway and elevator access to the floors above, and a second sub-basement floor would have an additional 25 spaces, bringing the total to 164 with room to grow on the second sub-basement.
“The rest will remain excavated but unfinished, left as raw space for now, and at a later time we’ll make a determination if it’s needed,” said Rosen.
The first floor above the ground floor would feature a mixture of single, studio, and double-bedroom apartments, in a C-shaped configuration surrounding a shared club, a courtyard, and a swimming pool, all of which would be on the Church Alley side of the property and elevated one floor from the rest of the neighborhood.
“We think the target market for these units are going to be a combination of millennials and baby boomers, who seek to like the amenities that are provided in a transit oriented type of development. They both like to be less dependent on their cars, and ride the train as much as possible,” said Rosen.
The second through sixth floors would feature largely the same mix of apartments, and the roof of the building would be covered with solar panels; Ziegler and Rosen said those solar systems would combine with rain water collection tanks to reduce its impact on outside resources as much as possible.
“The thing that needs to be said about this building, that’s different from most buildings we tend to do, is that our goal is to achieve net zero: to get this building to produce as much energy as it consumes, and to be as sustainable as possible,” Rosen said.
“There is no multi-family residential project in the country today that is net zero ready, and our effort to try to make this such has caught the attention” of state and national officials, including the federal Department of Energy, he said.
Waivers being requested from the planning commission include permission to replace street trees required by borough codes with trees elsewhere in the borough, and with landscaping in planters surrounding the building that would not be as tall but would have less impact on sidewalks.
“We’ve provided areas for planters, and we’ll say ‘We’ll landscape the hell out of those with whatever you think is appropriate.’ We just don’t think that tall trees are the right solution,” Rosen said.
Additional waivers would let the developer install a 6-foot-tall fence on the east side of the property, between a grassy area to be used as a dog park and the house next door. Rosen said the fence would likely provide better screening than a landscaped buffer, but could come within the 10-foot-wide buffer area there.
“As far as I see it, the critical piece of this is not that you don’t have space to provide your landscaped buffer. The critical piece of this is that you’re locating the building within the buffer,” said planning commission member Nate Burns.
Vira Katolik, who lives on Third Street just next to the proposed apartment building, said the northeast corner of the property where the building stretches into the buffer come near her garage, which has a second floor furnished room she uses, and said she thought the overall project was out of scale with the area.
“It seems very out of place, and inappropriate for our street. We’ve talked about noise, and traffic, and privacy, but it just doesn’t seem to make sense on that block of West Third Street,” she said.
Talks on the plans will continue at future planning commission meetings, the next of which is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 18 at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine St. or more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.Lansdale.org.