Warehouse Plans Back On Planning Commission Agenda In Buckingham

BUCKINGHAM TOWNSHIP, PA — Plans for a 150,000-square-foot warehouse are back on the agenda at Wednesday night’s meeting of the Buckingham Township Planning Commission.

According to the agenda, the planners will consider recommending preliminary approval of development plans for a 30-dock warehouse, which is proposed on 58 acres in the PI-2 zoning district.

Once the planners make their recommendation, the plans will then be sent to the board of supervisors for consideration. The supervisors are not bound by the commission’s recommendation, but are required to be objective when considering a plan.

The planners last discussed the plans in February when the commission tabled a vote on preliminary plans for the proposed warehouse at the DiGirolamo Tract bordered by Cold Spring Creamery Road, Burnt House Hill Road and Progress Meadow Drive.

The warehouse is proposed to be located on the east side of the property on Progress Meadow Drive. The remaining part of the property fronting on Cold Spring Creamery Road would be placed in a conservation easement and would continue to be farmed.

At times during the February meeting, the discussion got emotional as residents spoke out against the land development plan, raising concern over traffic and noise from the 18-wheelers that would be rolling down their streets.

Since that meeting, the residents opposed to the warehouse proposal have organized under the name, “Stop the Warehouse,” and have retained legal counsel to fight the project.

A warehouse is a permitted use in the P1-2 Planned Industrial Zoning District. The applicant, however, is asking the township for a number of waivers including from the installation of bicycle and pedestrian paths on Cold Spring Creamery Road and from widening or reconstructing streets that are an inadequate width or condition to meet township requirements.

If the waivers are granted, the money the developer would have paid for the required improvements would be directed to another off-site improvement agreed upon by the township and the developer.

The project is being proposed by J.G. Petrucci Company of Asbury Park, New Jersey, which was represented at the meeting by land development attorney Ed Murphy, engineer Greg Glitzer from Gilmore and Associates and Matt Hammond, a consultant with Traffic Planning and Design.

According to Glitzer the building would set back 1,095 feet from Cold Spring Creamery Road and would include two parking areas - one for trucks on the west side of the building and one for employees and visitors on the east side.

All truck traffic would enter and exit the site from Stony Lane and a new 2,000-foot roadway that would be built between the warehouse and Stony Lane. Employees and visitors would enter the warehouse site from a separate entrance at Progress Meadow Drive.

Hammond said the truck traffic would enter and exit the site by using a right-hand-only turning movement onto Stony Lane and a left hand turning movement into the site. To access Route 611, the trucks would use Stony Lane, Landisville Road, Old Easton Road, and Research Way.

"We would be looking to force all the truck traffic out to that route, out to 611 providing signage and requiring the drivers accessing the facility to take that route back out to 611," said Hammond. "We feel that's the most appropriate and shortest route to get to 611 and not impact the larger residential areas."

Residents at the meeting weren't buying it. They said the truckers would use GPS, which they said will direct them down Cold Spring Creamery Road from Swamp Road (Route 313).

"They are going to come down Swamp, make a turn onto Cold Spring Creamery and then come down Stony," yelled out one woman. "Don't tell me their GPS is going to take them down by the Wawa. You tell me how that's going to work," she said.

"All of us - Church School Road, Cold Spring Creamery. We're all going to have to live with trucks all day long and all night long," another woman yelled out.

"There is no truck that is going to follow that route," said another resident.