Talks ongoing between Andale Green developer, Lansdale officials

A new agreement is in the works with the developer working to complete the Andale Green complex of townhouses on Hancock Street.

Borough Manager John Ernst gave an update earlier this month on the progress of talks between the borough and the developer, over utility work and additional fees having to do with that project.

“Currently, the Andale Green project is planned for four different phases. Right now, phase two is

under construction,” Ernst said.

“Each phase is sold, individually, as they become available, so nobody is buying all four phases at once and doing the project,” he said.

Local developer Jim Moulton secured approvals for and began the project, and enlisted home builder Ryan Homes to do the construction of the first phase, which is done, the manager told Lansdale’s Administration and Finance committee on Sept. 5.

Ryan is currently completing the second phase, “and for all intents and purposes, we believe Ryan Homes will purchase phases three and four,” he said.

When the project began, Moulton was required to replace sanitary sewer lines running along Hancock Street from his development, just went of Line Street, west to Broad Street, and Ernst said costs for that sewer line work came in much higher than originally expected.

“They were not anticipating opening up the road and finding all of that line encased in concrete, so that their method of bursting the pipe with a new pipe being pushed through, went completely out the window,” he said.

“They spent a significant, large amount of money to not only help their project, but in many ways, help the borough with its own issue of flow” in that area, Ernst said.

Moulton has since turned the project over to a second developer, Ernst told the committee, and the developer has asked if the borough could consider providing a credit for sewer connection fees for the development, compared to the overrun costs of the sewer line work. The amount of the credit they have requested is roughly $125,000, Ernst said, which would be applied to phases three and four of the project.

“We’re saying to them, ‘Here’s our carrot: you build phase four, and we’re going to be interested in the credit. But if you can’t build phases three and four, then all bets are off, and you’ll have to give us the complete money for phase three,” Ernst said.

The developer has said the proposed $125,000 in credits would offset a large portion of the roughly $150,000 in sewer connection fees for the third phase of the project, according to the manager. Staff’s suggestion was to put the full amount in an escrow account, with the credit to be determined if and when the fourth phase is complete.

“No one from borough staff is endorsing this, or supporting it or not supporting it. We told the developer that we would present it (to council), and that’s what we’re doing,” Ernst said.

Councilman Leon Angelichio asked how much of the $125,000 credit was in comparison to the cost overruns for the utility work, and Ernst said the credits were roughly half of the overrun total. Angelichio also asked if any agreement could spell out a time limit for the developer to decide whether they would proceed with the final phase.

“I don’t want $150,000some sitting in an escrow account for years. I want to know that they have a drop dead date,” Angelichio said.

His reason for including strict time parameters would be to prevent a situation like development of the Madison Parking Lot, where plans were first proposed in 2011 but delays, revisions, and changes to the project pushed the formal start back to late 2017.

“I don’t want another delay like the (Madison) project, where we heard ‘It’s happening, it’s happening’ for five and a half years, and all of a sudden it moves forward,” Angelichio said.

Councilman Denton Burnell said he agreed with that attitude “in spirit,” but said it should be balanced against the developer’s doing utility upgrades the borough would have had to pay for, sooner or later, and would likely have paid more to do.

Design, contracting, and prevailing wage rates would have had to be paid by the borough, according to Ernst and Manager of Code Enforcement and Community Development Chris Kunkel — which Kunkel said gave the developer “a pretty big reduction” on the total price.

“In that spirit, I will agree we shouldn’t leave it open-ended. Maybe it’s not 365 days. Maybe it’s two years?” Burnell said.

Angelichio asked if the borough knew whether and how any environmental remediation would need to be done on the area of the site where phase four would be built, since part of the site falls on an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site list. Ernst said he would do more research and report back.

“This is where the $150,000 becomes relevant: EPA is unlikely to say ‘No.’ They’re likely to say, ‘Sure, but here’s the $300,000 of remediation you have to do to build it,” Burnell said.

Any updates will be announced and discussed through council’s administration and finance and public works committees, both of which next meet on Oct 3. Full council next meets at 7 p.m. on Sept. 19 at borough hall, 1 Vine St.; for more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.Lansdale.org or follow @LansdalePA on Twitter.