A month after rejecting a new warehouse proposal that called for rezoning parts of its Rural Agricultural zoning district, Richland Township supervisors are considering another warehouse plan, this one in the township’s Planned Commercial district.
At their April 8 public meeting, supervisors conducted a Conditional Use Hearing for a 167,500-square-foot warehouse on a vacant site at West Pumping Station Road and O’Neill Drive. It would have driveways on each thoroughfare, with O’Neill serving as the truck (tractor trailer) entrance. It would be built out and occupied by an as-yet-unknown tenant by the end of the year.
The proposal calls for 27 loading docks and 26 trailer spaces, and 70 to 79 parking spaces understood to be for employees. The developer’s representatives presented traffic estimates per data models published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), covering both peak (rush) hours and rest-of-day periods.
Supervisors wanted to know if the particular data model used was applicable, or if another ITE model might turn out to be more so. No answer could be given with the tenant not yet identifiable, as is often the case with new development proposals.
Thus, supervisors asked that their solicitor’s preparation of his opinion on the conditional use, for presentation at the next supervisors’ meeting on May 13, include a condition that adjustments to the project would be needed as appropriate if the traffic estimate turned out to be more relevant to the other data model.
Township Engineer Mike Schwartz of Gilmore & Associates noted that traffic impact considerations were still in progress, while Solicitor Linc Treadwell noted that the developer still needed to go through their land development presentations, offering further opportunity for more specific review.
Conditional use approval for the project already had been recommended by the township planning commission at its March 19 meeting. In addition to the solicitor’s report, it was understood that land development approval might also be on the agenda for the May 13 supervisors’ meeting.
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