A SEPTA train pulls into the Pennbrook station on the border of Upper Gwynedd and Lansdale on Tuesday, June 14 2022. Photo by Dan Sokil | The Reporter.
Developer could make the case to council in March
A zoning change needed for a planned apartment complex near the Pennbrook SEPTA station has cleared a first hurdle.
Council voted unanimously last week to schedule a hearing date for a proposed change to the town’s transit-oriented development code.
“You are allowing staff, including myself, to begin the process — so you can go down the path, if you choose, to want to approve it,” said borough solicitor Patrick Hitchens.
In early February council’s code committee first saw a draft of plans by developer W.B. Homes to redevelop a six-acre parking lot at 1180 Church Road, into a proposed complex of 74 single-family attached homes, a plan first pitched to the town’s planning commission last April. The property currently falls within the town’s industrial zoning with the transit overlay atop, which borough staff have said currently allows a mix of uses but requires a maximum 20 acre lot size to do so.
Draft plans provided by W.B. show the location of the site, between a Homewood Suites hotel and the Pennbrook SEPTA station, and just a few steps away from a long-discussed site on Pennbrook Parkway where a different developer has drawn years of public comment from residents both backing and battling a plan for new housing there that secured final approvals last summer, amid challenges from residents that the project used “spot zoning” approved for that alone.
During the Feb. 18 council meeting, code committee chairwoman Rafia Razzak made a motion asking staff to prepare and advertise a public hearing on an amendment to the town’s current transit-oriented design overlay district, “to revise the minimum width requirement for single family attached dwellings and establish standards for small parcel Transit-Oriented Development.”
Resident Dominic Frascella said he thought such a project should include road safety improvements such as curb bump-outs, raised crosswalks, speed humps, and no-parking zones near corners required during the approval process to forestall any safety concerns after, and asked if the draft code would remove any requirement for commercial uses to be part of the development.
“Without mixed use, without walkability and without meaningful transit integration, they become single use, auto-dependent housing, not TOD,” he said.
Councilman BJ Breish asked if those concerns about the uses on the site, and whether commercial uses would be removed, would be addressed during the hearing.
“Is there still going to be an opportunity to have that conversation, during this public meeting? And more discussion? I’d be curious if anybody has more information on that, as to why that was recommended? Is that the developer’s request? Is there a reason we’re doing it?”
Borough Public Works Director Jason Van Dame answered that he and staff are still working with the developer to finalize a draft of that code for council and the public to consider, and said a draft would be publicly posted before that hearing.
“We are working on the language of that amendment, to see how we can lock that in: that there are the components of a TOD, existing, in order to operate that small parcel,” he said.
“I understand the concerns of it: it doesn’t work if the retail and commercial stuff goes away. So that will all be part of the conversation,” Van Dame said.
Hitchens added that code changes can be proposed by council, the planning commission, residents, or property owners and developers, and said the state’s borough code requires any such code change be publicly advertised and discussed before a vote, but the vote does not automatically occur.
“In this instance, as I understand it, it came from a property owner who’s requesting a zoning change. That is not an uncommon thing,” he said.
During that hearing, residents and council members can ask questions of the developer about the uses they intend for the site, and choose to take action based on that feedback.
“If you don’t like the way (the code change) is currently written, you can say ‘We’re not going to vote on this tonight, we’re going to make an amendment.’ All you have to do is advertise it again, and hold another public hearing,” Hitchens said.
“You are not bound, just because you advertise it, to have to adopt it. You’re not stuck with it. You can still make changes,” he said.
Breish then asked to confirm that a vote on Feb. 18 would only begin the process by scheduling the hearing, and Hitchens confirmed that was the timeline. The attorney said his cost to “basically copy and paste” the draft publicly and to run the legal ad would be minimal, and the town’s land planner would vet the draft code change submitted by the developer.
“If you wanted to, you could ask the developer if he would agree to reimburse the town for any legal fees. That’s certainly something staff can bring up,” he said.
“To be clear: just because they paid for it, does not obligate you to have to approve it,” Hitchens said.
Council then voted unanimously to direct staff to schedule the hearing.
Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 8:30 p.m. on March 4 and the code committee next meets at 7:30 p.m. that night, both at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.
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