District team makes case for high school zoning change
TOWAMENCIN >> Township officials have gotten a first look at plans for the future of the site of North Penn High School.
“When you want to do a renovation to a building the size of North Penn High School, it’s a major undertaking, and you don’t want to come back anytime soon,” said North Penn Superintendent Curt Dietrich.
“You want to do it right. We’re talking about what that might look like, and how we would be able to continue school because it would be a multi-year project,” he said.
Dietrich, district CFO Steve Skrocki, engineer Christopher Jensen and attorney Greg Heleniak outlined for the board the history of the high school site, the recent talks over the past several years on new uses there, and the reasons for a request to change the zoning on the sites containing the high school, the adjacent North Montco Technical Career Center, and the WNPV Radio site bought by the district in 2020.
Dietrich outlined how the current situation dates back to the late 1960s, when district leaders at the time decided a high school on Penn Street in Lansdale was too small, and were looking to expand. Two adjoining parcels where the high school now stands were bought from farmers, with part of one farmer’s property later developed into homes and more sold to the Hunt family, for what became the WNPV station complex, and one small house repurposed into a meeting space for a local 4-H club.
“Fast toward into the 1980s, and the 4-H folks felt they had outgrown their site,” Dietrich said, so that property was sold to the district and incorporated into the high school campus as athletic fields.
“During that time, it was zoned residential, and continued to be zoned as such, but used for school purposes,” he said.
“In terms of what we might do, we do know that the school, although it was brand new in 1971, that’s 50 years ago. And in 50 years’ time, it is in need of some refurbishing,” Dietrich said.
Staff and school board members have publicly discussed problems with the high school’s heating and cooling systems that date back to the late 1960s, lighting about the same age, “and just the learning environment: the learning spaces really need to have a refresh, and be brought into the 21st century,” Dietrich said.
The school board authorized in June the development of a master plan for the high school campus and WNPV property, and those discussions have included the possibility of creating a new ninthgrade center to move that grade closer to the high school.
“We do have some ninth-graders that would like to avail themselves of advanced classes. We do shuttle some students from our three middle schools to the high school, but it’s difficult, and they’re constrained by what classes happen to be available at the time we provide that transportation,” Dietrich said.
“Some have a series of classes that you really should be able to do starting in ninth grade, so that’s a big consideration, looking at what we might do there,” he said.
The board has also begun talks on creating a possible in-house clinic, likely on the WNPV site, and Skrocki said that idea was based on a similar facility in Lancaster-Lebanon and has been projected to save roughly $10 million in health care costs for district employees over the next decade.
“Obviously, we’re pretty intrigued by this,” he said.
Early projections are that roughly 4,300 employees and dependents currently on district health care plans could use the clinic, which could be operational as soon as mid-2022, Skrocki told the board. Staff plan to present details at the school board’s finance committee meeting on Sept. 8, and at that time could make a recommendation for the board to select a firm to operate the clinic, with the design of the building to follow.
The maps the team showed the township board provides some detail: On the WNPV property, just west of a onetime house that was recently occupied by the radio station, a small driveway could be added with access to Snyder Road, several parking spaces, and a small building for the clinic. That concept has been proposed in order to leave as much of the WNPV site free for future plans as possible, Skrocki said, but no decisions have yet been made by the board.
Engineer Christopher Jensen of T & M Associates added that the concept plan was drafted with the zoning request in mind: current codes require setbacks of 50 feet for the front, side, and rear yards in residential districts, but setbacks of 200, 100, and 200 for the front, side, and rear in the institutional district.
“Therefore, we see this as a net benefit to the surrounding neighborhoods, in terms of constraining development closer to the center of the parcel,” he said.
The change from residential zoning also allows several different uses on the site, and would match the current zoning of the Calvary Baptist Church site just southeast of the high school, Heleniak added.
“What the district is asking the township tonight, is to unify these educational parcels under a single zoning district, that being the institutional zoning district,” he said.
Showing an aerial photo of the high school campus, the consultants pointed out that the current zoning for the North Montco campus is R-175 residential, the western half of the high school including the recently-finished Crawford Stadium site, ballfields, and transportation center are also all R-175, as is much of the WNPV property, while the eastern portion of the site is zoned R-125 residential.
“Under the split zoning, as we’ve dealt with past projects on this campus, including the recent Crawford Stadium project, we were dealing with various regulations and zoning district requirements,” Heleniak said.
“Bringing this into conformity will provide consistent setbacks, which will be increased under the change in the district, a consistent impervious coverage ratio for the entire campus, and a clearly defined set of uses,” he said.
After the presentation from the district officials during a lengthy public hearing on the rezone request, supervisors’ Chairman Chuck Wilson asked for a motion from the board to adopt ordinance 21-08, amending the zoning map as requested.
“Hearing none, we will defer this matter to a future meeting,” he said.
Towamencin’s supervisors next meet at 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 11 at the township administration building, 1090 Troxel Road; for more information visit www.Towamencin.org.