Persistence – 17 years of it – finally paid off. Developers of the proposed Riverview banquet facility and restaurant on the Route 202 Spur in Solebury Township got the unanimous approval of the board of supervisors on Thursday, May 20.
The board granted preliminary and conditional final plan approval for Pantera Realty LLC’s 10-acre project, which includes a 350-seat, three-story banquet facility, 269 parking spaces, use of an existing building as a bridal suite, and converting a barn into a two-level restaurant.
“This has been a marathon, not a sprint,” admitted board Chair Mark Baum Baicker.
Township Solicitor Mark Freed listed the project’s history, which includes: a dropped office park in 2004; the original banquet facility in 2013; the revised banquet plan in 2018; and now the conditional final plan in 2021.
The 2018 hold up, project attorney Marc Kaplin said, involved sewer and water approval, which the township planning commission was reluctant to approve. Those items have been worked out, and now DEP approval is awaited along with two other approvals, he added.
In other business, the supervisors unanimously agreed to take out two loans totaling $9.1 million as recommended by Jamie Schlesinger of PFM Financial Advisors.
The first is for $5 million at 1.25% interest from Penn Community Bank for financing open space projects. The second is for $4 million at 0.791% interest from Key Bank to refinance debt by locking in the lower interest rate.
Schlesinger estimated the transactions will save the township about $150,000.
“We did far better than we expected,” he said.
“It seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Baum Baicker noted.
“I hope not,” Schlesinger laughed, “because I have to do this for the rest of my (career).”
A hearing on an application by Samantha Cook of 6214 Sawmill Road for a conditional use approval was continued until June 15.
Cook wants approval to disturb 22 percent of productive agricultural soils on the property for construction of a single-family house, driveway and other improvements.
The supervisors said they needed more information about alternatives.
The board also:
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