Staff seek feedback on possible Sumneytown Pike overlay area
Several projects moving through the approval process have prompted Upper Gwynedd officials to begin talks on a big-picture project that could change the look of part of Sumneytown Pike.
An overlay district meant to make certain types of development easier could be a solution, and Planning and Zoning Officer E. Van Rieker outlined the possibilities at a recent commissioners meeting.
“There has been an interest over the last four or five months, by applicants or owners of properties, to come in with a proposed development for tracts that are sort of smaller than we’re used to seeing, in the two- or three-acre range, along Sumneytown Pike,” Rieker said.
“The current zoning along Sumneytown Pike in that area is mixed: it goes from residential-2 to residential-1 to institutional, back to R-2,” he said.
As he spoke to the commissioners during their Feb. 20 workshop meeting, Rieker showed the township’s color-coded zoning map, where a total of 10 different zoning types can be found on a stretch of two blocks of Sumneytown. Start-
ing at Allentown Road, the northeast side of the intersection of Allentown and Sumneytown is currently zoned R-1 residential, and the west side of Allentown is zoned for institutional use. The light industrial zoning for Merck facilities on the south side of Sumneytown east of Broad Street meets the commercial district on three of the four corners of that intersection, an office center district on the northwest corner, and R-3 residential zoning along Samantha Court on the south side. R-2 residential zoning surrounds a smaller area of garden apartment zoning at the Willowyck Apartments complex, and west of Willowyck a stretch of townhouse residential zoning encompasses the Gwynedale development, before a shopping center district includes the North Penn marketplace.
“The thinking was that no one solution is going to accomplish everything. We don’t want to pick winners and losers along these properties,” Rieker said.
One project that has been discussed with township planners would create a mini-storage facility on a parcel that’s currently zoned for institutional use, just west of the north side of the intersection of Sumneytown Pike and Allentown Road. Only part of that total property would be developed under the proposal, Rieker told the board, leaving about two acres free for other uses, but limited in what could be approved.
Adjacent to that property and just to the west is a property currently zoned for residential with two old houses, Rieker told the board, where local developer W. B. Homes is proposing an apartment building with roughly two dozen units.
Could those two, and others along that corridor, be combined into one overlay spelling out a common set of criteria for each? No dimensions or criteria for the overlay area have been proposed yet, Rieker said, but staff already have an idea of what they’d like to see there.
“The overlay would be low traffic volume, low profile, mixed use opportunities along Sumneytown Pike. We might call it the ‘Sumneytown Pike Overlay,’ or ‘infill overlay’ or ‘traffic management overlay,’” Rieker said.
“It would posit different types of uses: not commercial, and in this two cases not office, not business, but more of a mixture of different types of uses,” he said.
The small storage facility proposed for the corner of Allentown and Sumneytown would likely be two parallel buildings of size and configuration similar to another storage facility just east on Sumneytown Pike past West Point Pike,
“The first proposal is for a very benign, mini-storage use, not permitted in the industrial zone presently,” Rieker said.
“Is this a use we have interest in? Low volume, they claim they’ll satisfy a market...we asked them to do something more upscale, with attractive landscaping, attractive signage. Anything we do for the Sumneytown Pike overlay would require an attractive streetscape, landscape improvements, sidewalk improvements if they don’t exist,” he said.
The W.B. Homes proposal would be just west of that proposed storage facility, and would feature two two-story buildings of roughly a dozen apartments each, with trees on all sides to provide buffering between the new apartments and the adjacent uses. No formal plan has been submitted yet, Rieker told the board, but the overlay could be written to encourage such projects, while guaranteeing they still require conditional use approval from the board.
“We can come back to you in a month or two with a draft of how it might work, with optional uses: generally low-profile, low traffic volume types of uses that would fit in that corridor,” Rieker said.
He and solicitor David Onorato said they’ll begin formulating a draft of the proposed overlay with feedback from staff and the township’s internal plan review committee, and bring it back to the commissioners for their input in future meetings.
“We’ll start the process by giving you our thoughts on what we think are appropriate uses, and what we think the area should be,” Onorato said.
The mix of residential, commercial, and institutional uses such as schools make that area a particular challenge, Rieker said, but also an opportunity.
“Sumneytown Pike is an interesting highway. It’s a major highway, opposite Merck, the largest employer perhaps in the county. It has some design issues of its own, including traffic management, neighboring residential uses,” Rieker said.
“We want to continue the streetscape. We want everybody to adopt a similar sort of design. We can do that with an overlay,” he said.
A third project has also been proposed on Sumneytown Pike, in an area that could also fall within the overlay: the owner of 878 Sumneytown Pike, currently a residential property on the south side of Sumneytown between Broad Street and Supplee Road, just east of Kristen Circle, has proposed a new twostory building that would be used as both office space and residential.
Current drafts of that plan show four internal office spaces, one of which would be used as a chiropractor’s practice, and an apartment for the owner to live in on the second floor. Rieker said staff have expressed that they would rather see limited office uses than medical, so no high traffic user like a dentist could move in.
“We don’t see this as an overlay. We see this as a trip to the zoning hearing board,” Rieker said.
Once the plans are finalized, the township’s zoning hearing board could hold a formal hearing on that project in April or May, and if an approval is granted by that body the commissioners could then see the latest version of those plans, he said.
Commissioner Tom Duffy said he was concerned about the possible traffic impact of four offices on that property, and commissioner Jim Santi said he had questions about the buffering that would screen headlights of cars parking there from nearby neighbors. Rieker said those detailed questions would be addressed during the land development process, if the project makes it past the zoning board.
Upper Gwynedd’s commissioners next meet at 7 p.m. on March 20 at the township administration building, 1 Parkside Place. For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.UpperGwynedd.org.