Image courtesy of Rouse Chamberlain Homes
The 13.87 acres would need to be rezoned to accommodate the project.
The Whitpain Township Board of Supervisors heard a presentation on a request for re-zoning property along Skippack Pike in its most recent meeting. Rouse Chamberlain aims to build on a 13.87-acre piece of land.
Kilkenny Law’s John F. Walko, representing the Rouse Chamberlain team presented to the board and public at the Aug. 6 supervisors’ meeting. Rouse Chamberlain Homes is a Exton-based homebuilder planning to build at 1730 Skippack Pike, in Whitpain Township.
The land is currently split-zoned for R-2 and R-1 use, which is residential in nature. The homebuilders have planned to put 34 carriage homes on the property, that Walko said would present a “positive fiscal” change for the township.
“This plan we are presenting you with is good for the township,” he said. “It’s good for the community, particularly those that travel on Skippack Pike and the 400-plus residents of the Whitpain Hills Association that need to come and go through Skippack Pike to enter and exit.”
Walko called the project “years in the making,” as the Rouse Chamberlain organization has been creating plans for quite some time. Jon Penders, the president of Rouse Chamberlain Ltd. assisted in presenting the regional homebuilder’s plan.
“The property was historically operated as a nursery and landscaping business,” said Penders, who also noted the company has built over 3,000 homes in the region over the past 40 years in a four-county, Greater Philadelphia area. “There are two existing structures plus some legacy plantings, in and around the weeds out there.”
Penders said that there is an existing merchandise center located east of Meehan Boulevard. To its west side, is what Penders called “an older structure that dates back to the late 1800s.”
“It’s been in a severely declining state for quite some time,” he said. “It would be slated for demolition under this particular proposal.”
Image courtesy of Google StreetViewPenders said, in other history of the property, an assisted living builder had approached the township in 2017 for a “many-hundred unit development on the site,” though that application had nothing to do with Rouse Chamberlain.
“That was deemed at the time to be too intense of a use for the subject property,” said Penders. He added that, around 2019, the Rouse Chamberlain Homes developers began to review the space. He said that, after main months, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) would not agree to a traffic light at that location, for a potential 54-home project, so the developers decided to step back at that time.
Penders said that PennDOT would not consider a light unless there were “closer to 300” units in the location. Rouse Chamberlain planners went back to the drawing board to look at other ways a housing development in that location might include traffic improvements to Skippack Pike.
Penders said the team has met with Whitpain Hills HOA to discuss a potential development.
Greg Richardson, a traffic engineer with Oaks-based TPD, said that extensive coordination with PennDOT and the township in the past has resulted in an education in traffic light parameters. The state’s “thresholds” will not permit a light at this intersection, despite what Richardson said “the difficulty on Skippack Pike of exiting and entering a driveway along that corridor.”
Working with Whitpain Township’s traffic consultant, Bowman, as well as PennDOT, the developers came up with safe alternatives, according to Richardson.
“We came up with a plan where they recommended that we shift the existing Meehan Boulevard approximately 100 feet to the west,” said Richardson. “The reason for that is, certainly with a signal we were going to line that up with Hillcrest Court, and then you’d install a signal with left-turn lanes.”
However, with a traffic signal being denied by PennDOT, the developers are now recommending a center-turn lane in this space.
“That will not only benefit this residential development, but the existing Whitpain Hills development,” said Richardson. Those with driveways in that development said they struggle with entry and exit from their homes.
“It will be striped as a center-turn lane,” explained the traffic engineer. “It won’t a single, left-turn lane into our driveway. It’ll be a common area, so anybody that wants to turn left into Fieldcrest, will have, what we call, a safe haven.”
Additional, Richardson later explained, a deceleration lane, for those seeking to turn right into Meehan Boulevard, should add additional safety to traffic in the area, as presently the only option is to use the shoulder of the roadway.
Centre Square Montessori Schoolhouse and Academy, just to the west of the proposed development, would also benefit from the center lane’s use.
Civil Engineer Dane Moyer on the project said that there will be two-and-a-half homes per acre in this proposed development included along two cul-de-sac roadways.
A “significant set-back off of Skippack Pike,” as well as perimeter setbacks around all edges and stormwater space accounts for the remainder of the land’s acreage. Homes will be approximately 35 feet apart. He said, while township officials had asked for narrow lanes, the design calls for a wider south end of Meehan, to provide for around 16 parallel parking spaces. Each driveway includes two spaces per home for parking, as well.
The plan calls for sidewalk installations throughout, including both sides of the already-existing Meehan Boulevard, Route 73, and both proposed new cul-de-sacs. The builder plans, also, Moyer said, to “enhance” existing vegetation to increase the buffer around existing plant life already in place.
R3 design districts, smaller than this parcel being discussed, according to Walko, which means no rewriting of ordinances would be required. Instead, the township would simply be rezoning the space as R3, and not the R1 and R2 it currently is designated as today.
Image courtesy of Rouse Chamberlain Homes“The township expenditure of 75 persons times what the township spends per person, about $465,” explained Babbitt. “Expenditures are about $35,000 for the townhomes.” He said an additional nearly $31,000 would be the cost of residents in the single-family homes.
Real estate tax revenue and income tax, the biggest single-revenue source in Whitpain Township, from the proposed new residents totals, according to Babbitt, to be about $83,000 annually for the townhomes and about $50,000 for the single family detached homes.
“The net revenue shows about $48,000 of surplus money each and every year for the proposed townhomes, and only about $19,000 of surplus revenue for the single-family detached option.”
Babbitt said that the impact on the school district, Wissahickon, would be minor, with only a projected five students coming from the townhomes and 15 from the single-family homes.
“That gives us a significant disparity in terms of annual school district expenditures,” he said. “Between about $135,000 and $368,000”
Babbitt said that, when totaled out, the development would bring around “more than a quarter million dollars each and every year for the school district.”
The annual net combined impact of the townhomes and the single-family units came out to earn an additional $302,846 each year for the community (a combined calculation between the Whitpain Township and Wissahickon School District).
“It’s good news for the township, and better news for the school district,” said Babbitt.
Once the decision is left to the supervisors, it would be only an “informal nod of approval,” as Walko called it, “to inform your staff that they know that it is worth their time to work with us” on proposed rezoning.
The project would first need zoning hearing board approval to rezone the space into an R3 zone. They would then be back to the township for conditional use hearings, and then land development, in the process to make their proposal a reality.
Supervisor Kimberly Koch, who is also vice-chair of the board, asked if PennDOT had weighed in on the proposed center-turning lane. The developers said that, until a permit is in-hand, it cannot be official, but that the state offers as “scoping meeting process” to ballpark solutions.
“This is what they’d [PennDOT] like to see in lieu of a traffic signal,” said Richardson, who noted that township’s traffic consultant also gave an unofficial thumbs up to the concept. Traffic studies and highway occupancy calculations will have to be done as part of a formal application with the state.
Koch also asked if, within the plans, any affordable housing would be considered. Penders said the currently designed carriage housing would be sold between $700 to $800,000 range, per the current market in Whitpain, would not be considered “affordable.”
“This specific plan does not have that,” said Penders, noting that the required subsidies would be far too great for consideration. He also answered Koch’s question about the Whitpain Hills HOA reception to the idea as “generally supportive.” The team met with the board of the HOA in June.
The topics of traffic and stormwater impact on Whitpain Hills, Penders said, came up in the public meetings with surrounding residents, but added that these were topics to be addressed “through the land development process.”
Supervisor Chairman Scott Badami asked how the developers counted 34, three-bedroom townhome units as only producing an estimated five children being added to the school district.
In addition to noting the estimate includes “five public school kids,” the development team said that a Rutgers-based study was used for the estimated impacts, adding that single-family detached dwellings tend to produce far more public school-attending children than townhomes.
Badami also asked about the project’s timeline, to which Penders replied he forecasts a 2027 groundbreaking, with three years of build-out from that time. The developers also clarified that “R3-B” is the likely zoning more specifically that they’d be seeking for the property. Current zoning includes both an R3-A and R3-B version of ordinances. Walko said that the R3-B zoning is more often applied to smaller properties, with a five-acre minimum, where R3-A uses ten. It was the 34-unit design that would fit into R3-B zoning regulations. Walko added that the team would work with the township’s solicitor and ZHB to determine if that speculation is correct.
Kenneth Corti, chairman of the Whitpain Township Planning Commission, asked what warning drivers traveling on Skippack Pike might have regarding the proposed center-turn lane. Richardson said that PennDOT requires such signage and that they would be included.
John F. O’Harra, who also serves as a planning commission board member, asked why the move of Meehan Boulevard was helpful.
“It gives us more separation between Meehan Boulevard and Fieldcrest,” said Richardson. If someone wants to turn left into Meehan and another aims to turn left into Fieldcrest, it would create an interlocking problem, and a lack of “stacking” space, for cars to await a turn to move around the turning vehicles.
Doug Thomas, of 1795 Skippack Pike, was the first member of the public to ask questions. Thomas lives across from St. John’s but is also the owner, along with his wife, of the Montessori School in the same vicinity.
“We’re very much interested in what is going on with the property,” said Thomas. “I love the idea of having it developed, and I love the idea of the open space in the front. I would also love to see you extend that center-turn lane 50 feet to the west.”
Thomas said he would appreciate the extension to allow for additional stacking for those coming into his school in the mornings. He otherwise said he was in favor of the Rouse Chamberlain plans.
Glenn Palmer, of 1692 Skippack Pike, who said he’s lived in the same home 47 years, had concerns on the project. Of his worries is a 100-foot-deep well, which was previously put in by the nursery.
He said very specialized care would be required to handle the well fill-in, as it would need to meet state and federal regulations, as he had been through the process before on his own land.
“I don’t want my family drinking fertilizer and weed killers,” said Palmer, who also has a well for his own property. “I’m really concerned about this well, that it is capped off to the standards of the federal government and the state.”
Additionally, Palmer said that his long and narrow property located immediately east of the proposed development, is difficult to manage as the previous owners of the nursery had abandoned the sticks, trees, and plants along the border between them.
“There’s piles of dead trees, branches, all kind of things in there,” said Palmer. “That needs to be addressed.” He said the property’s vegetation, which abuts his own, looks like “a Vietnam jungle.”
A pile of dirt is also on the land, from a previous dumping, he said, which has been there since the 80s is 12- to 15-feet high. Due to its location, Palmer was forced to add specialized draining for his land, which he also was concerned might be filled in or damaged during the installation of this proposed development.
The 74-year-old resident said he didn’t want too many trees put in near his own property, as he feared the maintenance involved.
“I don’t want to be out there having a heart attack cleaning up somebody else’s leaves,” said Palmer, who added that he had mowed that space, which is currently open lawn, for quite some time. He also had concerns as many apartment renters already use some of the green space for their dogs to relieve themselves.
Palmer added also that the walnut trees along the property line cause an excess of squirrels in the area, one of which, he said, put a walnut in his daughter-in-law’s vehicle, causing $800 in damages. He said, himself alone, he’s removed 22 squirrels via traps from his land.
“And now there’s about 11 back,” he said. “I’d like to see all that [walnut trees] get knock down and fixed up right.”
To address his issues, Palmer said he suggested the developer’s reach out to him and his wife. He provided them with a paper with their contact information, as well as one for the township’s code enforcement staff.
“Come over to my house, and let’s walk through it and talk like men, and I can show you what I’m dealing with,” said Palmer. “Once you see it, I think you’ll think I’m very reasonable.”
Walko said most all of the items Palmer mentioned would be addressed in the planning stages, if not by required outside regulations, than by the township.
Other neighbors of the proposed development worried about exit opportunities for the land-locked Whitpain Hills, should there be an emergency such as a train derailment (as the rail lines run at least two freight trains daily nearby), while still more had concerns about additional traffic and vehicle visibility in the area.
The developers noted that, with many steps remaining in the process, they were confident in project managers to address all of the concerns properly.
