Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to get the meeting started. If we could all stand for the Pledge to the Flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call.

Rich Nuttall.

Here.

Tom Piacentino. Here. Peter Tantalla. Here. Amber, I'm present. Joe Antonelli. Here. Jacob Farman.

Here.

Jim Ennis.

Here.

Dominic Kundari. Here. Matthew Johnson. Here. And Jim Esposito.

All right. Before we go any further, if there's anybody in the audience, there was three cancellation cases tonight. 1417 Langhorne Newtown Road was canceled. 2710 Village Road was canceled. And 316 Tollgate was canceled. If there was anybody here on that, they won't be appearing tonight before the board. With that said, I would like to ask for the approval of last month's minutes. Did anyone on the board see any errors or omissions on the minutes? With that, I'll vote to approve last month's minutes. Motion?

Who's got the motion?

I'll do it. Pete with the motion, Joe with the second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, minutes have passed. Item three, CU number 26.1, application for conditional use approval for a paranormal circus event in the area of the Oxford Valley Mall parking lot from October 2nd to October 5th. The mall contains the address of 2300 East Lincoln Highway, Langhorne, PA, 19047. Contains tax map parcel 22057, 020-001, and is in the General Business Zoning District. There was 11 addresses notified. Is anybody here for the Paranormal Circus? You have the floor, sir.

I'm just here from the circus. I just wanted to see if you guys had any questions about it. A lot of people, sometimes boards have questions, sometimes they don't. So I'm just available in case.

You're here every year. We've heard them all. No, and I can get through this one quick. Is there anybody from the audience that wants to speak up about this case? Seeing none, I'll call for a vote to approve. And let me just get my paperwork here. Recommendation of approval for CU number 26-1, application proposing a four-day circus event. running from October 2nd to October 5th at an area of the Oxford Valley Mall parking lot containing address of 2300 Lincoln Highway. Langhorne PA and the Bucks County tax map parcel 22057020-001. Recommendation is based on the documents submitted with the application and the following. A, exhibits presented to the Middletown Township Planning Commission during their July 1st meeting. B, June 23rd, 2026 letter from Isaac E. Kessler, P.E. of Remington and Vernick Engineers They are Middletown Township's engineer. C, June 25th, 2026 letter from Matthew D. Johnston, PE of Pannoni Associates, Middletown Township traffic and transportation engineer. D, June 1st, 2026 letter from Allen Welsh, Middletown Township fire marshal. E, full compliance with the applicable requirements contained within section 500-2410 of the Middletown Township zoning ordinance. What's the matter, John? Oh, you're raising your hand. And finally, F, assurance that all necessary permits and approvals from Middletown Township will be obtained prior to the starting of the event. Motion to approve. Is there a motion to approve?

I'll make a motion.

All right. Is there a second? That's a first and a second. All right. I'll second. Amber's first. Tommy's second this time. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Good luck with your circus. Okay. Next. Application SL-LD26-6. Application for a lot line change at 76 Brown Street and Sumac Avenue in Langhorne, PA. Tax map parcels 22-021-072. and 22-012-079. Properties are located in the R2 residential zoning district and 33 addresses were notified. Ma'am, you have the floor.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Chelsea Jackman. I'm an attorney at Begley, Carl and Amandio. I'm here tonight on behalf of the applicants, Paul and Dana Auerbach, they're the property owners. Mr. Auerbach is standing over to my right in a green shirt. We're here tonight seeking a lot line change from parcel, there we go, 22-012-079 to be moved to take 20, excuse me, 16,583 square feet, which would result in lot line, excuse me, parcel number 22-1279 having 25,719 square feet. The parcels are in the R2 residential zoning district. There is an existing single family dwelling on 22-012-072 where Mr. Auerbach and his wife currently live. So it is at this time just a lot line change and again right here if I can get this pointer to work We're not moving here Right there and Copy of the plan if I can Go to the next slide. I'm sorry Madison. Would you be able to help me with that? Thank you so much as indicated on the plan right here. You can see this is the current and I'm really struggling with this pointer. This is the current lot line and what's indicated in red here is what we are proposing, which while both of the lots are regular shaped after the approval, hopeful approval of this lot line change, they will be more conforming. They will both be more equal in size. And again, at this time, no proposed construction. That's all.

Dominic, anything?

The one comment we do have in our review letter is just the waiver for the increase and decrease for the two lots. So the ordinance states that for a lot line change, a lot is not to increase or decrease by more than 20% of the existing lot area. So that would be a waiver that the applicant is requesting.

Thank you, Dominic.

Okay. Matthew? Nothing? Okay, let's go to the board. Amber, do you have any questions?

None at this time.

Joe? Okay. Jacob? None. Tommy?

Nothing.

Pete?

Just a quick question. I'm somewhat familiar with these lots, but what I'm not familiar with, is there a sewage service down here for, is it readily available for the, is this a one lot to two lot subdivision or one to three?

No, it's two lots, remaining two lots. We are just increasing the size, taking some of the larger parcel, adding it to the smaller parcel, and Dominic can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's- So it's a true revision?

Yes, correct. It's revising the line?

I don't want to say it's a revision as if to say fixing something. We're simply just adding some square footage to the one, but there is public sewer available to both lots.

Trash service back there? The truck goes back there already?

For the existing- Yes, thank you.

And so they, is your sewer a private service now? No. No, okay, all right. And frontage, Dominic, there's no frontage issues?

I believe all the zoning requirements are met, is that right?

Yeah, this whole configuration is non-conforming to the current zoning. Right. So what they're actually doing is bringing it somewhat more into conformance, but it's just an entirely non-conforming lot, as you can see with the way they can access.

So when you come back to ask for homes, another home or so?

Great question. At this time, there's no proposed construction on the lot, but when the time comes, as Mr. Ernest just said, we'll be a little bit closer to conforming than we are right now.

And you'll have to come back here. Exactly, of course. Okay.

Thank you. Jim, does this 20% waiver of the increase or decrease hurt us in any way?

Do you want to cover that? Dominic raised it in his letter about the potential of a waiver for the section that talks about the certain percentage of increase or decrease of the lots.

Go ahead, Dominic.

Sorry. I don't want to speak for the applicant if it's negative or positive, but the ordinance is pretty clear that a lot is not to, again, increase or decrease by 20% of that original lot area. We've done lot line changes and granted that waiver. Like Mr. Ennis said, we're actually bringing those lots closer to conforming, so it's not a waiver that we would be against by any means.

Okay.

Thank you.

Is there anybody from the public that wants to speak out or speak on behalf of this case? All right. Seeing as none, I'll ask for a recommendation of approval. Hopefully I got the right paperwork here. Yes, recommendation of approval for S-LD 26-6, application proposing a lot line change at 76 Brown Street and Sumac Ave, Langhorne, PA. Tax amount parcels 22-12-001 and 22-12-079, the property. Recommendation is based on a plan entitled Existing Features Lot Line Change Plan compromising one sheet and dated April 21st, 2025. Plan is prepared by Patrick Cavanaugh, PLS of the Cavanaugh Survey Services of Doylestown, PA. Recommendation is further based on compliance with the following. A, a June 23rd letter from Isaac E. Kessler, the PE of Remington and Vernick, engineers their Middletown Township's engineer. B, May 28th, 2026 letter from Matthew D. Johnston, PE of Pannoni Associates, Middletown Township's traffic and transportation engineer. C, May 21st, 2026 letter from the Bucks County Planning Commission. And D, a waiver from section 440-306A to allow lots to increase and decrease more than 20% of the original lot area. Recommendation of approval. Is there a second on the recommendation of approval?

I'll second it. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? You have it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay. Next. S slash LD26-3, a subdivision and land development application proposing the subdivision of an existing residential lot into three lots at 156 Clearview Avenue, Langhorne, PA, 19047. Two of the newly created lots will contain the construction of new single-family dwellings. The property contains a tax map parcel 22-013-136 and is in the R2 residential zoning district. 77 addresses were notified. Me again.

Chelsea Jackman again on behalf of Begley, Carlin, and Mandio and on behalf of the applicant. Behind me is the project engineer. This is John Richardson from DUMAC engineers. As you stated, we are here tonight seeking recommended approval for a 30,400 square foot area, which we are seeking to subdivide into three parcels. Lot one contains an existing single family dwelling. to be 10,000 square feet and lot two is proposed to be 10,000 square feet with a new single family dwelling and driveway. Lot three is proposed to be 10,399 square feet to contain a new single family detached dwelling as well as a driveway. We are in receipt just by way of the letters received on this matter. The Bucks County Planning Commission dated February 2nd, 2026. Pannoni's review dated June 25th, 2026. The Middletown Environmental Advisory Council dated February 27th of 2026. Remington and Burdick Engineers dated June 26th, 2026. AS WELL AS THE LETTER FROM ALLEN WELSH, THE TOWNSHIP OF MIDDLETOWN FIRE AND EMERGENCY SERVICES LETTER DATED JANUARY 27, 2026, TAKING CARE OF SOME GOOD NEWS. THE FIRE MARSHAL SAW NO ISSUES WITH THE PLAN AS SUBMITTED FROM THAT LETTER. With regards to this plan, the access contains primary frontage along the western side of South Clearview Avenue, approximately 200 feet south of Brownsville Road intersection. And there's coordination with the South Hazel Avenue, including partial widening, curb, and sidewalk waivers that we're requesting at this time. So this is all in the R2 residential district. The single-family detached dwellings. This is a buy right plan and I highlight that that there's public utilities And so we are seeking six waivers this evening before you All of the lots are complying as it relates to the performance standards and zoning requirements of the order set forth by the ordinances Again public water public sewer to serve all three lots so There are a number of issues, or I should say a number of comments that were made, and I can go through them line by line. I do understand that there are a number of neighbors here, obviously for the presentation following ours, but I think it probably serves time best to sort of head off some of the concerns in the beginning here that have been expressed via letters to the township. as well as communication with my clients and the neighbors. He has gone out to the property multiple times to speak with the individuals who would be his proposed neighbors to get their sort of feel for what's going on there and what their preferences would be. And so I want to start by saying there are some concerns that they have as it relates to that particular street. It is a narrow street. There are concerns as it relates to parking. that parking adding two more homes will make parking more difficult for the off-street parking to the new homes, but also there are a number of individuals who have numerous vehicles that park on that road. Additionally, there's concerns for construction traffic. And so these are all very important. They are all valid concerns that the neighbors have. I'd start just by submitting to the board that to the commission that this review and within the purview of the commission is whether or not they comply with ordinances and we comply with zoning. We are asking for six waivers as it relates to SALDO. And I would submit that the, for instance, the construction traffic is a temporary inconvenience that every single new development becomes an issue for the neighbors. And the preference of neighbors matters, but as it relates to a recommended approval, again, we're submitting something that's by right in this. So Mr. Schneider in particular has met with neighbors a number of times and we're gonna go through some of the waivers and some of them fed by the request of those neighbors and what they wanna see happen on that property. But as you all know, things like the construction traffic and what's gonna happen to the road There are bonds, there are requirements that the township puts into place to safeguard neighbors from issues that could arise from new construction. So with that, I'm going to turn it over for a little bit more of a detailed explanation of a plan by Mr. Richardson and a little bit more detailed outline of what the waivers are.

Good evening. As Chelsea said, we're proposing a three-lot subdivision where one house is existing, so it'll be two new homes, one on each Clearview and Hazel. We are proposing to provide stormwater management as part of the subdivision to manage the two new proposed homes. The form of stormwater management we're currently proposing are underground dry wells, so you don't see it on the surface. It's stored underground. It's not in the way or offensive to anyone. As part of the planning for this project, the owner slash applicant went around, talked to some of the neighbors, and especially on Hazel, it was a concern of the road width and parking. So we are proposing... I'll tell you what, I'm going to switch places. We're proposing road widening along Hazel in this area. And that's eight feet wide, which is typically what is required for a parallel spot. So we are providing some road widening to help alleviate the concerns and provide some additional parking on the street frontage there. We are, as previously stated, we are requesting several waivers. I'd be happy to run through those waivers if the board would so request.

Can I just jump in real quick? John, you indicated, and I tried to with this pointer that isn't behaving, that there would be a road widening. If you could just provide a little bit of detail, because I know this was a point of concern for the neighbors, why it only extends to the north component of the, of the subdivision as opposed to down here?

Sure. So the overall drainage in the area is from essentially the top of the sheet to the bottom of the sheet. That is the way the existing topography works. And the reason that we are only road widening to the north of the driveway is because It's not that much room, if you will, between the driveway and the southern property line. So you don't get that much benefit. But what it also alleviates or negates is the runoff from that road widening would encourage, if you will, to drain onto the neighboring property. So by not doing road widening south of the driveway, we're trying to keep the drainage out towards the road instead of widening in that section and allowing that to continue down to the neighbor's property. While we're talking about that corner there, there is existing bamboo in that corner, and as part of the project, we would eliminate that bamboo. In regard to the waivers, so the board would like me to go through the specifics. In regard to the waivers, I can go through the specifics if you so choose. So the first one is from Section 301A, and it's to allow the submission of a combined preliminary slash final plan. The ordinance requires a separate two-step process. This is not a large subdivision or anything, so we just, we're in an opinion that a separate submission is not required or necessary on this project, and the preliminary slash final will be adequate. Section 440.407.E.8 to allow grading within five feet of the property line and right-of-ways. Obviously, in regard to the right-of-ways, we have to grade within five feet of the right-of-way even to put in a driveway or anything or to do the road widening. But specifically, in regard to property lines, the issue is... The previous owner of the property had created a berm along here that extended almost essentially right to the property line. And that creates drainage issues currently, and it would create drainage issues for the proposed house. So in order to cut down that berm that the previous property owner had, we have to grade within five feet of that property line. That's really the only property line it affects. We are grading within five feet of the right-of-way lines in a general sense, but in terms of a neighboring individual property owner, it's only that one area that really is affected by that. The next waiver request is from Sections 509A and 510A, and it is to not require sidewalks or road widening along either road, and also to not require curbs along South Hazel. So Clearview currently has curbing. That is OK. But Hazel would, in theory, require curb, sidewalk, and road widening. We are providing the minor road widening that was previously discussed. But along Hazel, there's no sidewalks in the immediate facility, and there's no curbing. And same thing with along Clearview. There's no sidewalks in the immediate facility. And the final waiver request is from Section 507. It does not require streetlights. Generally speaking, I've found that in neighborhoods like this, a lot of neighbors don't like new streetlights. But if the board was of the mind to request us to put those streetlights in and not grant the waiver, the applicant would do that. Section 509A and 510A, that's curb, sidewalk, and road widening. And there's no sidewalk in the immediate vicinity.

We had issued a initial review letter when this project was first submitted with a number of comments. They have since addressed them to a point now where our remaining comments are essentially the waivers that they're requesting, curb, sidewalk, the road widening. And as the applicant's engineer stated, with the existing conditions out there the way they are now, generally we are usually okay with granting those waivers if the board so chooses. I did have a note to ask about the bamboo, so I appreciate you asking that or clarifying that, that that bamboo is being removed. But at this point, we have no further comments.

Okay. Matthew, nothing? Who did I start with first, Amber? Amber, you're up.

I have a couple questions. So in reading the letters from some of the neighbors that came in, it looks like there's concerns that the road is private and perhaps controlled by the HOA and needs approval to use it. Is that the case? And how does that work? And do you have that?

So I defer to the township's understanding of that road, but it is not controlled by any HOA. There's It's not dedicated. That would be something that the township would have to decide if they wanted to do, but there is no HOA maintaining that road. Right now, as I understand it, there is nobody maintaining that road.

Okay. And what, I saw a couple comments about them saying that they, the neighbors have restricted deeds, which I guess, I'm not really sure what they're referring to, and they want to know if this property is going to share the restrictions and the HOA. So I'm trying to figure out what that is about.

I'm not aware. I'm going to ask Mr. Ennis or Mr. Esposito.

I would ask the neighbors to send us what their deed restrictions are. Since this is not a dedicated road, it doesn't prevent people from driving on it. Everyone has an access easement to their property, so this property owner has the rights of access to get to the property through that roadway, whether it's private... No, I mean, I don't know what they're talking about with the deed restriction. I mean, if somebody can provide me a document, but we haven't seen anything that shows a deed restriction on anything like that.

40 feet here.

Thank you.

Do you have any other questions? No. Joe?

The only one I have is that one house that's on, what is that, S.H. Sergill Ave? Is it close to the property line, the corners, the way the angle is?

Mr. Attorney, are you referring to the one farthest to plan left, Hazel, South Hazel? Yes.

Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

And the question was what?

How close is that, what is that, is that the 10 foot from the property line?

Correct. In the district that we're in, 10 foot is the required setbacks, and that's what that lot is.

Okay. Any more questions? No, that's the only one I have.

So it looks like you're almost at maximum coverage on every one of these lots. So anybody who buys one of these houses, if they wanted to put a shed up, they would have to go through zoning and get an approval. That's how tight you are here. It's a 200 by 200 lot. You're trying to stuff three houses on it. Not stuff, pack in. I've never seen properties like this Triangled out like that where I mean you're you're making the minimum requirements by Less than an inch on some on some items Couple questions like Instead of did you ever think just putting two houses on here instead of packing it in like this? I mean it doesn't even look like it would conform with the neighborhood being stuffed in like this I mean does it always have to be about the dollar bill I

Well, Ms. Reynolds, actually, they did consider two lots, and were we to do that, we would have had required zoning relief to get that done. And so this, while it looks agreed, it is very, very dense, but the ordinance says this is allowed, and it complies in that matter. So while we can opine and sort of look at it and go, wow, that is really dense, it does comply with the Middletown Zoning Ordinance for this particular district.

So let's go beyond ordinance and just go by human beings. People living in the neighborhood, people seeing what they're seeing here. So put the ordinances away. I know you meet them all or else you wouldn't be here in front of us. But there's the other thing of like your neighbors and people that you're going to try and live next to for the next 30 years. There's no law that can write that. That's written by people that are not trying to stuff things in here. It's written, you know, I know you talked to you, we're going to work with the neighbors. And you know your comment about the construction traffic as part of everything? These people have been there for a long time, okay? And to disrupt their lives, you don't know how long the construction is going to take. You should be a little bit more receptive to them when it comes to that, because I don't want to hear trucks if somebody was building next to me at 6 o'clock in the morning. You know, so there's a whole... So some of the things that you say, yes, you're a lawyer. They're legal. But I live in this town, and that part doesn't matter to me. It's more like let's make good neighbors. Let's not have fights. You know what I mean? On that road repair, so let's get back to that. I rode down this street. I've seen it. It's tight. I had to turn into someone's driveway to get out of the street. So it is very tight. But there is the fact that the neighbors did spend money, which I know it's a paper street, correct, Jim? The neighbors spent money to blacktop it. They spent money to make their neighborhood better. Instead of having a gravel road, they put blacktop. And hypothetically, you'll come in here and do some construction and possibly screw that road up that they paid money for. Now, they did it at their own risk. I understand that. But let's get back to the good neighbor thing on if you have heavy trucks come in and you mess up the road, Are you going to fix it, or are you just going to be like, hey, you paved that on your own? Are we going lawyers here, or are we going neighbors here? That's the first thing I want to know, because I'm looking at a 200-by-200-foot lot with three houses that barely make anything, and the people who buy these houses, I'm looking at the lot three, and I just think, what if this neighbor wanted to put a pool in? Where would they put it?

They can't.

they would have to put a pool in where they tie it to the top of the roof of their car. They can't. I agree, they can't. If they wanted a shed. If they wanted fencing, I don't even know what that would look like. Looking at your setbacks and everything, even a fence guy might shake his head if he wanted to come in there and put a fence up. So I just want to know, is the builder here? Because I'm, you know, where's the builder at?

Walked up behind me.

Is that you, sir? You must have been reading my mind.

He's the applicant.

Oh, the applicant. So who's going to be building? That's the guy I want. I want to talk to the builder guy.

Am I allowed to speak?

Would it be okay if we address a couple of the comments before Mr. Snyder responds to questions on construction?

Go ahead. I just wanted to, because I know you were concerned about jamming the houses and the size of the lots, but these new lots basically match every lot that's around this house. They're all just about 10,000 square foot.

I know that. And the other lots are pretty squared off and not in triangles. I mean, they're tough. It's a tough look here for me. It's a tough look to see that, but What other questions do you have? I wanna know. You can.

And these are neighbors, other lots that are not in conformity. TO THE EXTENT THAT THERE ARE INDIVIDUALS.

THEY ALL LOOK SQUARE TO ME, MAYBE A COUPLE RECTANGLES. THEY'RE NOT TRIANGLES.

MR. NUTTLE, CAN I APPROACH WITH THE MICROPHONE FOR THE AUDIENCE AT HOME?

CHAIR? THIS IS RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET.

I JUST WANTED TO ASK IF I COULD HAND HIM THE MICROPHONE BECAUSE I KNOW THERE'S AN AUDIENCE AT HOME.

YOU CAN BRING THAT BACK AND SHOW IT OVER THERE. Say that again?

We did take that in consideration. Okay. That's why we brought this documentation with us.

All right, so let's get back to my other question of, you're the builder?

Correct.

So what happens if you mess up this road that they spent their hard-earned working money on to make the neighborhood look nice?

If I go through subdivision, what that's going to go through, we're going to have to provide financial securities for the road openings and everything, and you guys wouldn't release my escrow until you're satisfied with it. Yeah, I've done, Dominic knows me pretty well.

I've done many. That's correct. And it would also require an inspection escrow. So we would be on site to inspect the construction.

And these guys will make sure that I finish it, right, Dominic? To make sure that to spec whatever needs to be done to the road.

We would not recommend a release of the financial security until we were satisfied.

I mean, your one house is only 1,500 square foot. That's tight, too. Not that there's not other smaller ones around. I believe that might just be the foundation.

Today, actually, we traced every house via aerial in a two-block radius from here. And the average house in a two-block radius based on aerial, which is approximate, was 1,650 square feet. Flip over.

Existing how big is the existing dwelling?

That's for you know the square footage or bedrooms the existing dwelling is 1,332 square did you say 1,000 1,332 square foot footprint Okay, he's talking just the foundation right John when I say that so there's a second floor above that so just so we're all on the same page and That's like a 2,400 square foot, the existing house. It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and it has a second floor. So when he's talking square footage, he's just talking the foundation.

Okay. I didn't get an answer on the construction noise and all that, like being a good neighbor. Remember, we're not talking lawyer stuff here, we're talking people.

I mean, I've personally, I don't know if any neighbors are here, I've knocked on every door, asked for their concerns to see if I could be a good neighbor. Before we came, before you guys, I knocked on everyone's door and I asked them if there's anything I could do to place the house further to the left, further to the right. Do you want this driveway right here? I laid out the driveways where they're going. I literally showed neighborly not showed them a piece of paper, walked them over to the properties and explained to them every single aspect of what we're doing. And as, as retrospect to the, to the noise, I mean, if you guys want me to, I mean, I'm willing to have an eight o'clock start or whatever you guys would be.

The ordinance allows for the start time to be at seven o'clock, seven o'clock in the morning.

I'm willing to adjust that to be neighborly.

I'm going to, all right, Jacob, you're up. I've asked my questions.

Well, you asked all my questions, Mr. Chairman, so.

Tommy. A couple questions that I had that I wasn't sure about. How wide is the street now? Did you say eight feet? Hazel. I'm sorry, can you repeat that? How wide is the existing street?

It's about 19.8 feet wide.

19 feet wide? And you said you were planning on widening it along the frontage of the one So how wide is it gonna be there?

So as the owner slash applicant builders, as they walked around the neighborhood, the concern was the width of the road and parking. So what we're proposing is eight feet of widening to the north of the proposed driveway. The eight feet is enough to parallel park a car. Most parallel parking spots are eight feet wide. So you can, in theory, park cars along the road widening there. The reason that we didn't provide road widening to the south of the driveway is there's just not that much room there. You don't get that much benefit. And by generating, by converting the grass that there is to impervious surface, it would cause an increase in runoff to the neighbor to the south. So we were trying to avoid directing that impervious runoff directly towards the neighbor.

And that was one of the neighbor's concerns that he had down at the end when we talked to him about the road widening to try to redivert it so it wouldn't go to his property. We're understanding that there's a creek that's right at the dead end of the street that the two houses where the streets don't connect. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the site, but the site does dead end right in front of a creek and then it comes back down. Another another side and there's a creek that runs in between there So that's the reason why we did that is to redirect the water away from the man.

That is that the neighboring property Talk about the neighbor to the south or looking at it below it. Yes, so Is there a storm storm any kind of storm? I know it's a paper streets like that. There's a storm story No So you're going to be at, I know you're going to have to do rain, you know, runoff and all that. So what's the plan other than putting that water into the street where you're expanding the road? Just let it flow down the hill?

So what we are proposing is a underground stormwater management. Dry well right there So what that would do is I would capture some of the surface runoff and the house would be piped into that That would minimize the amount of runoff coming from our site Which you know the runoff at this point is a the total of all the runoff upstream of that point So by minimizing the runoff from our site. We're mitigating the runoff at the corner of the property line and Additionally the runoff currently kind of is para is basically essentially parallel to hazel, so we're collecting the runoff And in the event of a larger storm above which we discharge out of the dry well We're redirecting that out towards the road So we're actually redirecting some of that water from along the property line out to the road So it actually would minimize the amount of water getting to his property line Dominic does that work?

Yeah, they provided calculations for the stormwater management, the dry wells, to account for the added impervious that's being built on site.

Because two of the biggest things that we hear people come in front of us are, is obviously one is traffic, and two is runoff. So this is why I'm asking these questions now before we go any further as to how you're going to handle that, because The storms aren't getting any shorter. Even though we're in a drought, we still get two inches of rain at a time, it seems, anymore.

And I would point out.

I know you can't plan for, you know, I can't hold you feet to the fire for a 100-year storm, but obviously it has to be engineered in when you're doing your work for that kind of stuff.

I would point out, while there is no existing storm along Hazel, there is existing storm sewer along Clearview. And the drywall that we're proposing along Clearview will be piped down and discharged into that existing storm line. So we're actually taking surface drainage that drains down through the lot and running it out into the storm.

Yeah, I was more concerned with Hazel. I realize Clearview is a dedicated road, so it probably has storm sewers. Okay, thank you.

Pete? Yeah, on this one, actually, so I wanted to make the solicitor aware that I previously had conversations with this applicant about potentially buying one of these properties many, many months ago. On that basis, I'm going to exercise my right to abstain from deliberating or voting on this matter. That's no longer the case. We no longer... I'm not in that market, I'm not looking for that, but I'm abstaining.

Thanks, Pete. I want to go back to Jacob. He had a couple questions.

So I want to pick up on the stormwater runoff, especially what the plans are or the thoughts behind how the stormwater will impact the neighbors. Looking at this again, the aerial view, what you're proposing, you'd be very close to existing structures, and I'm concerned about the impact on the neighbors that are very close to this property.

So I'll break that down on the two sides. If I start with Clearview side, the storm structure we're proposing is located right here. I would make the argument that's not incredibly close to any existing structures. We are discharging down along the road to an existing storm line that's about right there. There's an existing storm inlet and piping. So we would take our dry well discharge and run it down and discharge it into that existing system. So we're actually taking surface runoff and moving it down into the storm store after we detain it and provide the required release rates by the township ordinances. On the Hazel side, we are proposing a drywall here. I would also make the argument that it's much closer to our proposed structure than the existing structure. And once again, we're collecting runoff that's coming down through our lot. We're collecting the runoff from the proposed house. We're detaining it underground, encouraging it to infiltrate into the ground. which the other dry well does too. So we're actually taking surface water and encouraging it to infiltrate into the ground by storing it, giving it time to infiltrate into the groundwater. In larger storms where we do have to discharge it, that will discharge via pipe out to close to the existing cartway, but at a reduced rate than that is being generated.

And do you have any examples you could share with us of projects you've done similar to this that have been effective in managing stormwater runoff and whatnot and not having an impact on neighbors?

We've done very similar concepts for dozens of projects in Middletown. And as far as I'm aware, I've never received complaints.

All right. Thank you. I don't have any other questions at this time, Mr. Chairman.

Up to the public. Is there anybody from the public who is here to speak on this? Well, you know what? Before we do that, I got a list over there I should go grab, huh? You're up here. You're going first no matter what.

I'm on the list, too. It's okay. Thank you.

Yes. Yeah.

Hi. I'm Melissa Leonhauser. I live at 134 South Hazel Avenue. I'm up here speaking on my behalf on behalf of my husband and family. We live directly across from where they are proposing to put lot three. So there will be concerns that I will say that you've probably heard from my neighbors and some of my neighbors will say, but we will also have some that are specific based on where this location is in comparison to my house. So first is privacy. When I bought this house almost 20 years ago, across the street was somebody's backyard and it was wooded. Now there will be a house directly across looking through my windows. I mean, it's directly across. Second D is parking. So today, if you look at my house, we have three parking spots in front of our house. One to the right of my driveway and two directly in front of my house if you leave a little room in front of the mailbox for the mailman. If you look at the way this is written up, where they are extending the road for the parallel parking will be directly behind my driveway. So even though they're going to extend the road, it's kind of the same because there will now be cars parked there, and I will have to maneuver out of my driveway without hitting the cars directly behind me. Similarly, their driveway will back to where my cars are parked. So we have five cars of personal use at our house. It's my season of life. I have three teenagers at home, and my husband is a police officer in the township and has a take-home police car. So we're already using all of those available parking spots. We are super neighborly and we'll not park them in front of our neighbor's house. So that's where they are. So this parking is going to be super difficult for us. And to the lady's comment about the construction, it is not just the construction in the moment. As you guys know, that is a paper street, which means that if anything were to happen, both during construction, they can assure me, but I need to make sure that there is true accountability if something were to happen on that street, that it would not financially impact me. But with the addition of additional neighbors, people, cars on the street, you've upped the risk that I will eventually have to fix what's in front of my house. So I am very, very against Lot 3. on South Hazel. South Hazel and South Clearview, both are narrow streets, but it's much different because we are not dedicated. And you're putting all of that on the residents of that street. So those are the ones specifically to me. The others, like I said, the street's not dedicated. My neighbors before we moved in actually paved that street. That's why you hear the HOA. They sort of, I don't think it was legal, but they kind of came together. They also put, they put in drainage. On the street, my neighbors did. So we don't really have very much protection there. And there just isn't room. It's 19 feet today, that street, 19 feet. When somebody gets work done on their house, when Pico is on my street, I have had to knock on my neighbor's door and ask them to move their car so I could get down my street. I don't want any more people on the street. I don't want any more cars on the street. We just do not have room for it. The trash truck reverses down our street, and the guy gets out, and he moves the trash can around because he doesn't have room to come down our street the right way. It is too difficult. The emergency vehicles would not be able to get by with this parking. And obviously, lastly, we just are losing more and more vegetation. There's the deer are nowhere to go. There's nothing holding the dirt. Like it is bad already. I do not want it worse. So my ask is that the commission consider the implications to me and my neighbors that will be now and forevermore if this gets approved and weigh that against the benefit that I see is only for the developer. Lot three is in awful shape. It's a small house with small property that they can't do anything with. And I really think that this person that would move in would have a limited backyard on a non-dedicated street, parking challenges, and me looking through their windows. And so I ask that you just do not approve at least lot three. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to go down the list here just to make sure that's BET. Evelyn, is there an Evelyn here? Are you here for this, Evelyn? Okay. Atkins Lane. Leanne Christian? Are you here for this? Okay. Glenn Carpa? You're here for this. Okay. Come on up, Glenn.

I'd like to thank you for the speaker. I don't have to scream. I've been on the street now for over 40 years. In fact, the builder, okay, mentioned that he came around and visited all the neighbors. Well, I never got visited, okay? And when we moved there, that road was put in for our house. Okay. And it's that, that, that row was there for 18 years before they put, you know, before they extended it. Okay. All the way down to Vince's house as it is today. Um, They repaved that entire road, okay, 18 or 19 years ago.

By they, who do you mean, sir?

The builder. When the builder came in and built the additional five houses.

Okay.

Okay. They resurfaced the road the first 300 feet and then paved the remaining, I don't know, 325 feet, whatever it is. Okay. Okay. That area there was never graded right because everybody down from me, all they ever did was complain about stormwater runoff going into their yard. In fact, the last house on there, there was a storm grate. But if you watch the water come down, and I've been watching the water come down that area for 20 years, I don't think it's ever hit the grate. It goes right in the middle of Vince's yard. In fact, there's Belgian blocks there that he had to take out a couple of them to allow a water flow to come down. And the storms we've been having lately, I mean, they've been atrocious. So my concern, number one, is... The condition of the road, the condition of the road is falling apart. You can see cracks every 15 to 20 feet. They're going to be running construction equipment down here. There's going to be additional traffic. I don't feel like shelling out $4,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 to help repair the road. I don't think that's fair. okay um you know it's not about the buck it's about living um you know i i i my my kids grew up there my grand my grandkids gonna come over there you know it's a quiet street looking at this and this is the first time i've seen this here um i'm looking at that house there that's going to be facing uh my house and you know it's it seems like they they acquired every square foot to make this work. And it just seems so out of whack with all the houses in the area. So I mean, that's my feelings on the whole thing. I mean, you guys are going to do whatever you want to do. But it is a community. It's not all about the dollar. That's all I got.

Catherine Lilly, are you here for this? What are you here for? I don't know, Catherine. Everybody only gets one shot now. This is your moment of glory. You can take it now or take it later. Which one do you want?

Both.

So I have built my own house. With that kind of answer, you win.

Yes, thank you. So I have built my own house, and I know what you have to go through. Looking at that map, and they're 10,000 square feet parcels, that's less than a quarter of an acre. So you are putting three houses on 0.75 acres, less than 0.75 acres. So that isn't actually shown to scale, it looks to me, if the houses are 15,000 square, 1,500 square feet.

It's just the foundation, ma'am. Oh, so the houses, okay.

And having lived at Tarryton with major issues with water runoff into my property that the township doesn't address when I've asked, I can tell you that's a big problem. And I have paid my water sewer bill, or whatever that thing's called, the water runoff bill, for the last two years. So you're going to allow somebody to come in and do the same thing to them that you do to Terryton. So you should think about the quality of life and how much you want to expand the small amount of Middletown Township that we have that has nature in it. So that's all I have to say. Thank you.

I'm looking, I don't think, is there anybody else? I don't see anybody else on the list for this case. They're all... Okay. Your name's not on here, though, is it?

I don't know what list you're talking about.

What's that?

I don't know what list you're talking about.

The list that you sign when you come in? Okay.

Go ahead. Oh, I just walked in.

All right.

But my name is Vince Carbone. I live at 138 South Hazel, the last house on the street. My wife and I bought that house in September of 2021. And we fell in love with the road. It's very private, very quiet, not a lot of traffic. We get to hear the high school band play on Friday nights, which is awesome. My concern, as many others have said, is stormwater. Heavy rainstorm, my driveway floods about five inches. Like Glen said, I gotta take Belgian blocks out of my curb just to have the water run down the hill. They're talking about dry wells, which is great. Is there an infiltration study done? How thick is the clay down there? If there is clay, or do we know if it will infiltrate? And then they're going to widen the road eight feet. And they've said before they're encouraging it to go onto the street. That's more flooding for me. It's going to get up to my foundation eventually. It's going to get in my basement eventually. And then I'm going to be screwed because they want to fit this house in this small area. Being the last house, I have to deal with people parking their cars in the driveway, in the street, the trash truck. We have lawn service servicing the street. Sometimes it's very difficult for me to get around just to get out. I'm concerned if my family has emergencies, I'm being blocked in, you know, the code is eight feet for parking. Does that account for human error? If they park two feet away, then they're 10 feet out and now I'm screwed and I can't get out of my house. So those are my concerns and I hope you take them into account. Thank you. Thank you.

I do have another question. I might have heard this wrong. Earlier you said You were going to widen the road? Is that true?

Yes, that's correct. Okay.

Because I'm reading on your waivers, and it says, I read the one waiver where it says to not require sidewalks or street widening. So which part are they widening?

So specifically the area around the circle, if you will, it's this little sliver right here, which is eight feet wide.

Okay.

Although, even though we're doing that amount of road widening, technically the ordinance would require road widening on both streets for the entire fringe of the property. So we are providing some road widening, just not all that is required. That's why they need for the waiver.

Jim, on the paper street, how wide is this paper street on the map?

Do you have an answer for that?

19.8 feet.

No, no. How wide is it on the township map?

So I mean, technically speaking, it's not really on the right.

But let's just say because I had to deal with this last year. Let's just say the township was going to develop that street. What would the minimum with that street would have to be?

Off the top of my head, I don't know. I think it needs at least a cartway width of about 50 feet. Isn't it 50 counting sidewalk and curb? Here we go. Dom's got it.

The cartway width requirement would be 26 feet.

26 there? Yeah. And not counting any curb and sidewalk?

Well, the right-of-way would be 50 feet.

Right-of-way would be 50 feet.

The cartway width is just the 26 feet.

Yeah, that's why I'm a little confused. If it was getting developed and it had to be that wide, how are they getting that close to the street without following the zoning of a proper developed paper street? Like it's on a map. Does it show on a map as a street but just not developed?

No, it's a paper street, so it's not dedicated to the township. It doesn't really have to meet those township requirements. It's its own thing, in a way. I mean, I know it's about the best answer I can give you. But if they're going to develop it, they're going to have to develop it to a certain standard.

Basically, if they do this, it's never getting developed to the standard.

If I may, our lot line, the one that we're measuring all of our distances and lot areas off of, that does provide the 50-foot right-of-way. So we're actually giving up some land there.

On both streets?

Correct. So we're giving up the amount of right-of-way that would be required from our lot to allow that 50-foot right-of-way width.

We can't hear you. Actually, we've had some cases where the utility poles ended up in the street and then they had to have them moved. I mean, we did that daycare where there was a utility pole that ended up in the street and then they have to have the utility company come out and relocate it to where it really belonged. So they would have to be relocated if that was ever the case. Doesn't look like it's gonna be the case here in any time in the future or any time. I think we've, is there's anybody else want to speak on this? I think we've heard, are you, do you live there? Okay, I mean. If they what? You're stealing my idea because that was the next thing I was going to say and you're taking my thunder because I was going to propose something here and this is just an idea but What if you drew a line, let's count your two new developed, I wish we had bigger screens, lot two and three. You drew a line right down the middle of that, made it two lots, could build bigger houses, because you'd have more space, because you'd have more property. You could build bigger houses, sell them for more money, and the people buying them would have more room to expand with a swimming pool or a shed or a garage or anything like that, and you're making the neighbors all happy. I say it's a win-win.

We certainly looked into that, and I know you talked about it not being about the dollar, but unfortunately it is. It's not financially feasible to do two lots.

Okay, so stop right there and explain that one to me. Sure.

The cost of that property was $540,000 for a property with a house that needed complete renovations, which has been done. So I've spent over $700,000 already on this property. To get just one additional lot, even being able to sell the house for more money, would be a loss. So that's why I need to get the three, which is why I agreed to pay that amount, because I knew by right you could get three lots. And what it comes down to is there was multiple people bidding on this property. If I didn't buy it, somebody else was going to do the same thing.

somebody else would still be up here talking to us and i'd be asking them them same exact questions i agree i'm just trying to say it's not about not like we're lining our pockets here it's when the land costs that much money to develop unfortunately explain to me your your costs again i'm sensitive to that you bought this investment so you bought the existing house and it needed a complete reno is that what i'm understanding and so you fix that up and that is now top market value, so you got one. And then, so you're saying to me that if you dropped a single family that was larger than this tiny little 1500 square foot house you wanna put on this lot that looks like a hat, you don't think that would be more valuable to somebody that they wouldn't pay a premium for a larger home with a yard?

Yes, it would be more valuable, not as much as two properties.

No, not as much, but you'd be pretty... Not enough to cover the cost.

Like I said, $700,000 to get one extra lot for a house that's now worth $540,000, maybe.

I assume as a builder you calculated that risk that we may not approve three prior to making your investment.

Well, I based my purchase decision on the fact that it was by right meets all the zoning requirements, so... I was betting that it would be accepted.

So before we bought the property, we kind of, before we hired John Richardson, we took the liberty and looked on the website of Middletown Township and looked at the zoning requirements for a lot in Middletown Township. Now we didn't write the zoning, it's publicized all over the public, doesn't say anything about angles, doesn't say anything about shapes a lot, all it says is 10,000 square feet, an R2 district, 10 foot side yard, and we, Every house that is across the street from us, which I've showed, I presented that to the board, is actually smaller than our lots that we presented in front of you right now. I know they look kind of weird. And the other thing is too, is that I just wanted to mention to you guys that I don't know, like when I grew up in Lang, I grew up in this town. So when we were younger, people wanted to buy houses with more property. And when we have houses right now for sale that have like an acre property, people don't want that much backyard to maintain. They don't want to cut grass. That's just the clients that we've been entertaining lately.

Mr. Nuttall.

I don't know if I agree with that one, but.

Yeah, I'm just letting you know what they, that was the dislikes of the property.

Mr. Nuttall, if I can, Mr. Nuttall.

Do you want to say anything else or no?

I just, in light of what the community members have shared and what the emails we receive from other community members who couldn't be here, I mean, I certainly sympathize that you made this investment and you need to recoup your costs and then some, we would hope. I can't speak for the board, but it's not my responsibility. It's not my responsibility. You chose to purchase this property. I didn't choose to buy it for you. You chose to purchase it. And I understand the legality about the zoning, but the issue that sticks with me is the stormwater runoff and what we heard testimony from, from some of all the neighbors and the emails we received from other neighbors. So I'm just saying that for the public record and for just my point of view. I don't expect an answer or a response. And that's all I have to say about it.

If I may, there's a gentleman whose hand's been raised, and I'm wondering if I can hand him the microphone over there.

Which gentleman's that? Do you live in the neighborhood, sir? Right, but do you live in this neighborhood where this development's taking place? I can't, he has a what?

He has a...

I know. All right, we'll let you be the last guy to talk on this case. Come on up, sir.

May I bring in the microphone?

Oh, yeah, give him the microphone. Yep, stay there, sir. Stay there. You stay there. We got a microphone for you.

Do I have to give chapter and verse, or can I just speak?

You got three minutes.

I've got two issues. One has to do with fire engines. How do you get an 11-foot fire engine into a small road with a whole bunch of cars on it. You can't. We've got roads that CR3 is pushing traffic onto that don't meet the minimum requirements for width, and yet they want to flood it with traffic. This is basically the same thing. You want to take a small road and jam it with cars and then expect to get an emergency vehicle down it. Number two, is stormwater management.

Yes, we've talked about that.

And that's a big one, but you cannot, by the Clean Water Act, you cannot dump water into the Neshaminy River. It has to be maintained and controlled. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Nuttall, can I just make one brief remark? I know you have a large presentation after ours, but I just respond very briefly. To the last comment, we do have a letter from the fire marshal indicating he had no issue with this plan.

Yeah, we have that too.

And the commission, frankly the township, is lucky to have people who are considering the emotional component of this. And I respect the fact that the neighbors are here saying, this is my backyard, this is where I live, and I don't want this. And I can appreciate that, and as a homeowner myself, I get it. You had commented about the legal component, and I would submit to you that they were very honest with you. This is not for Mr. Snyder and his son and daughter. This is to sell. And that is part of this. Their decisions can only be based on law. And while the emotional component is that nobody is going to want more homes in their neighborhood, but But pair that with the takeaway, the numbers, because the numbers are illegal. There's setback, the impervious surface coverage, the maximum building coverage. It's all compliant. And that's how they made business decisions based on the law, because what else are they to do? But Mr. Schneider did consider other things. He didn't have to go knock on the neighbor's doors. He didn't have to consider their opinions on this. He doesn't have to agree to the fact that he's willing to confine his time that he is doing construction. And I would submit that all of the concerns that the neighbors have, yes, I get it. Construction ruining their road. There are parameters in place that would remediate any sort of issue with that. And the maintenance bond, and I can ask the township officials whether or not it's 18 months or a year after. So if something happens or it takes a month or so, they're holding on to their money. to ensure that their neighborhood is fixed to the way that it should be. And so while I get it, it is emotional. And these are their neighbors. And these are the people that are going to live there and see it and hear it and suffer any consequences of it. But their decision has to be based on law. And so I'd ask yours to do the same.

All right. Thank you for that legal description of everything. I'm at the point where I'm going to put this up for a vote recommendation.

Jim, can you just weigh in on that? Can you just make a comment on that?

Which Jim?

That one, the lawyer. Can you?

Yeah, so they've submitted, when they keep on talking about a buy-right plan, buy-right as for the zoning ordinance, there are some waivers that the board can look at under the SALDO, which is what they're looking at. they are the waivers that they're requesting are usually most of them are typical uh the only ones that really are not are the grading within five feet but they have explained why they're doing that the widening of the road this is a paper street and it is not wide on that but they are widening some of it um in order to deny a subdivision in land development there does have to be legal reasoning for it, where they can appeal it to the Court of Common Pleas, and then we're fighting it out there. It's practical reasons. Neighbors not liking it is not gonna win court, but there are some concerns with the Well, they're not asking for variances. The waivers, the widening, it's more of the configuration is a little bit of an issue. But they are making some decent legal arguments.

Yeah, I mean, it's a very weird configuration. In fact, when it first crossed my desk, I didn't think it would be in compliance. I did look at everything. It is in compliance with the zoning. I mean, it's as tight and in compliance for the zoning as it can be.

If I may, there's one thing that Mr. Snyder just talked about.

Is it going to be legal? I'm like right to hear what the legal stuff. Nope. Nope. Nope. It's not going to.

Nope. It's neighborly. It's emotional. Mr. Snyder just leaned in over to me and said, I'm willing to put up $10,000 to get the homeowners association started for that particular property so that it can be official and legal.

Homeowners Association. I thought there was one. We read a letter today that there was.

So when I knocked on all the doors, they all told me that there was supposed to be a homeowners association and they talked about a fee, but no one actually paid into the fee. So I would be willing to do is start the fee and start the homeowners association, get a legal with my crew and the whole, get everyone to sign on it. I'll donate $10,000 to the road AS MY BENEFIT TO BE NEIGHBORLY. BUT THE HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION I THINK AT THIS MEETING AT LEAST SHOULD BE FIXED BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE ARE RIGHT. BEING NEIGHBORLY 17 YEARS FROM NOW, YOUR KIDS BY THAT STREET, WHO'S GOING TO PAVE IT? NO ONE.

I JUST WANT TO READ THIS JUST BECAUSE SO EVERYBODY KNOWS WE'RE ON THE SAME PAGE. WE GOT A LETTER FROM SOMEBODY AT 136 SOUTH HAZEL. She wrote, one of her points was, lack of authorization for the private road use. To date, the applicant and developer have not secured permission from the affected property owners or the homeowners association for use of the private road. This includes use by commercial construction, blah, blah, blah. Proceeding without such authorization raises significant legal and practical concerns. And then in her last point, they said, deed restrictions and requirements from the Bucks County Reporter of Deeds requiring all newly created properties and lots have to have the same restrictions, blah, blah, blah. Also requiring, you must require them to join the Hazel Avenue Homeowners Association, has a name, HOA, including compliance and agreements to our rules and payment by new properties to owners to buy into the HOA.

That doesn't exist.

An HOA would need to be recorded. And as far as we're able to see, and I would submit. And you've looked into this? Maybe the neighbors can clarify?

And I would be willing to do that. I will pay to get the association actually established. And I will start the account with $10,000 and leave it to the residents when I'm done.

I can just explain.

Before we present, when there's comments.

You have to come up here and speak, ma'am.

On South Hazel, Glenn who came up, there were a few original homes. And then 25-ish years ago, they added five more. When those five were put in, there ended up being drainage issues. They came together... probably maybe not fully legally, put money together to pay for the drainage. That's what the HOA is that she's talking about.

But there's not an official homeowner.

It turns out it's not official. But I would believe that her assumption is that it is official, but that was why they had to come together, pool money, pay for that drainage to be put in after the builder had walked away.

Okay.

but I agree with the people there because like a 20 years from now, if one of your kids ends up buying it, like no one's going to pave the road and there's nothing's ever going to happen.

And you're willing to deed restrict properties?

Correct. Yes.

So he's willing to put his property up and donate $10,000 to a homeowner's association to maintain that road. Um, I know we're taking a long time with this, but there is a lot of neighbors here. If some of the few neighbors that talked, I know that you're over in that corner. How does that sit with you guys? Right. I don't know if there's anything, speaking with our attorney, that, I mean, they do meet all the legal requirements of this. But on the flip side of that, that doesn't mean we all couldn't vote no and then they'd have to go to court and it costs them more money to get what they want. So they gotta know that this works two ways. Maybe that's why the developer was willing to put up $10,000 for a homeowners association because it might cost them that much to fight it in the county. So I like that move. I know it's not gonna alleviate the traffic and the requirements, but did you build the three houses in Idlewood?

On Deer Drive, yes.

just last year yes all right i must say he's i walked by them houses every day i live in that neighborhood and he didn't really cause a havoc to the neighborhood at all if you i i the name schneider sounded familiar but the three the three big ones yes um so that that makes me think a lot different now i know you were the builder that built there but I'm going to put this up for a vote right after Tommy's done talking.

So you're going to put that $10,000 up? Yes. So how about the person who buys the house on Hazel Avenue? Are they going to be, can we, Jim Esposito, can they be deed that they have to join this HOA on Hazel?

We can't require anybody that's on that street right now to become part of this. We can't require them to. That would be up to all the owners.

I mean, it's a good gesture there, but you also have somebody move. If this goes forward, the person that moves in, are they going to be responsible to chip in with all the existing neighbors?

I mean, right now, it's only the one house that would be going on Hazel, so it would be one house by itself.

I understand that. That's the one I'm talking about. You can't ask the people on the other street to chip in for the street behind them, but you can ask the person who's buying the house on Hazel to join in with the other neighbors to be a contributing neighbor. It goes back to being a neighbor. They might not like that idea, but... Maybe they're going to say, we want this house bad enough, we'll do what we got to do.

He's offering to do that. The issue I see is that that would be the only house on the HOA that we can say, yes, he's going to create the HOA, that house will be part of the HOA. You'd want to get every other house on that street to be part of the HOA, and we can't require them to do that.

I understand we can't require it. Okay. Can it be put in a deed? No.

In ours, I believe it could be restricted.

It absolutely could be. I'm not saying the township do it. On their end, when they go to sell the house, there's a stipulation in the agreement of sale that they're to join the HOA.

It's part of the HOA, and I would submit that what Amber has read multiple times is that the neighbors wanted it. The neighbors would like to have an HOA where they all work together in this area, but it was not legally created, and while that would require for future owners of that home, to the

Very least it gets you a nice beginning pot of money to handle things like the snow plowing and things like that Something more concrete that gives these neighbors like I understand your legal rights and we can't tie the hands of builders But I need to know what gives them more protection I don't want to just hear we're gonna have an HOA that says like let's all share kumbaya on do the maintenance together because that just still puts a burden on them what what meat is in the pot that these houses are kicking in real money and

He's offering $10,000.

His $10,000 is like what is in the future.

It's just a one-time contribution? So what we're saying is like a typical HOA would require monthly payment towards. And so we can require that our, the two new homes, because it is something that's recorded against the property, it would require consent and volunteer and the other homes to volunteer to join it. But we are only able to restrict the homes that we are building by way of it being recorded and saying you must be part of this HOA. The HOA is its own separate legal document. I think the fact that he's saying, I'm going to give you $10,000 to get it started, which is often the most difficult part of starting them, is making sure there's money to do these things. And then, I'm just throwing it out there, but a typical HOA is like $100 a month. And it goes towards things that are specifically delineated in an HOA.

YEAH, WHAT NEIGHBORHOOD IS THAT?

WELL, I MEAN, IF IT'S BASIC MAINTENANCE, IF IT'S NOT LIKE A HOA THAT DOES THE WHOLE SHABAM, I DO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE THERE'S REAL SKIN IN THE GAME IF THAT WAS THE CASE.

YEAH. BUT WE CAN ONLY, AGAIN, RESTRICT WHAT'S OURS.

Yeah, whatever's under my control, I'm willing to help out with whatever we could do, but I can't force the neighbors to join my HOA fee. So if they don't want to join it, then I will just leave whoever else wants to join it or leave the people that we join our association with the bank account with $10,000 that remains in it. But it does need, I'm just listening to all the people's voices here, and it's just the truth. I mean, unless something's done about it, this is just gonna keep coming up and up and up, and the road needs to be .

Yeah, the more we talk about this HOA, the more I'm like, it's almost impossible to get going. Okay. No, we're not taking any more public comment. I'm gonna say one thing, and then I'm bringing this to a vote. To the neighbors that have spoken up, legally, They meet all the legal criteria. I'm going to be honest with you. They meet all the legal criteria. But right now, tonight, if you wanted him to do anything that would make you guys happy, besides the fact of not building the houses, now is your time. Do you want to do an HOA? Do you want maybe instead of an HOA that he repaves the road when he's all done construction on the houses and gives the roads a new set of blacktop? He seems like he's willing to do something this evening and the clock is ticking. Is there anything the neighbors would like to see to make the builder a friendly builder? And he seems like he's willing to work with the neighborhood by hearing what he's saying.

Yep.

Okay, how about repaving the street when construction's done? I gotta make this quick.

So you gotta come up here, because nobody can hear you.

I mean, in lieu of his HOA starting fee, maybe that'd be something he'd be interested in doing. But make it quick, sir, and I'm bringing this to a vote.

What I said, I mean, nobody on the street wants to be a member of the HOA.

All right, good enough. That's a moot point. HOA is dead.

However, my primary purpose for being here was to make sure, you know, I looked at the parameters. Yeah, they got enough square footage to do what they got to do. OK, you know, like excuse the expression that they got they got 15 pounds of potatoes in there and they're shoving in a 12.

They meet all the legal requirements.

And I understand that. OK, but, you know, I want the road fixed because the roads beat. All right. So now I'm going to ask him one quick question.

Moving on to our. main event of the evening. One more point. I'm sorry. The clock is ticking.

The addition being repaid, it also needs to be repitched to the bottom corner because everything that's been said, I'm still getting screwed with stormwater. You're still getting what? Getting screwed with the stormwater because I'm the last house on Hazel.

Well, the stormwater is something that the township will look into after the fact, right, Dominic? And manage it. It's just not pitched to it for some odd reason. But they are going to change that, Dominic.

I THINK HE'S REFERRING TO AN EXISTING INLET AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STREET, WHICH I DID CONFIRM ON GOOGLE MAPS IS THERE. I MEAN, THE PROJECT AS PROPOSED DOESN'T INCLUDE ANY REPAVING OF THAT AREA. NOW, IT SOUNDS LIKE WE'RE NEGOTIATING FOR THE BUILDING TO DO SOME OF THAT. IT COULD BE INCLUDED TO HAVE IT REGRADED TO DIRECT THE STORM WATER TO THAT EXISTING INLET. Outside of that, the stormwater management ordinances are being met by the dry wells header.

And your company goes out after the fact and checks on this stuff, is that correct?

We inspect it as it's being installed, yeah. And they provide the financial security and inspection escrow. Okay.

Sir, are you willing to... Repair the road when it's all said and done with your generous offer that you've made.

What my offer would be is to, I'm going to block construction traffic past lot three so it doesn't go past the property. This gentleman who stood up, I think I stood in his driveway and I spoke with him. I met you, sir, right? What's your first name? Vince. Vince, I met him out at his house and I spoke to him about this project and he did bring that up to me. I will take direction from Dominic if he wants us to redirect the road and regrade it. I don't want to take responsibility to who gets the water. Right now, this man's getting water.

I don't know if we're talking about redirecting the road.

I'm just talking about to put this gentleman's mind at ease. But we could redirect it during the milling and paving, but I'd have to take direction from Dominic on that because we're on a slope. And no matter what you do, all the water goes to the creek. So someone's going to get the water one way or another.

It's without knowing the full scope of what would be needed out there. I think that's a decision that the township would, we'd have to consult with the township. They wanted us to review and and prepare a design of the roadway that would make sense but i mean i i all i can really say is the existing conditions of the road i mean it is sloped pretty generally down to that bottom of south hazel so they're not proposing to redirect anything um It might be a matter of just looking at that existing inlet, and it could be an easy fix, but I'm not sure, and I can't really say at this moment. And we can look into that.

To answer the original question, he is willing, just to answer what you had asked, he is willing to repave that after construction.

Repave it after construction. Okay, so you're willing to repave the road after construction. I'm going to write that in as item number six. Is that good, Amber? And at that point, I'm going to ask for a recommendation to approve S-LD 26-3, a subdivision and land development application proposing a three lot involving an existing dwelling and two new dwellings at 156 South Clearview, Langhorne, PA, Bucks County tax map parcels 22013136. Recommendation based on a plan entitled 156 South Clearview Avenue subdivision plans compromising of 10 sheets and dated November 12th, 2025. And last revised May 19th, 2026. Plan prepared by Heath Allen Dumac, P.E. of Dumac Engineering of Penns Park, PA. Recommendations further based on compliance with the comments provided. A, June 26th letter from Isaac E. Kessler, P.E. of Remington and Vernick Engineers, Middletown Townships Engineer. B, June 25th, 2026 letter from Matthew D. Johnson, P.E. of Pannoni Associates, Middletown Townships Traffic Transportation Engineer. C, February 2nd, 2026 review letter from the Bucks County Planning Commission. D, a January 27th review letter from Allen Welsh, the fire marshal of Middletown Township. E, February 27th, 2026 from Middletown Environmental Advisory Council. And the applicant is requesting the following waivers of the Middletown Township subdivision and land development ordinances. Number one, section 430-301A to allow preliminary and final plans in a concurrent submission. Number two, 440-407E8 to allow grading within five feet of the property lines and right of ways. Number three, section 440-410B1 to not require sidewalks or street widening. That one still bothers me a little bit if he said he was gonna do some street widening. Is that still written the correct way, Jim?

Can you answer that question? I'm sorry. I was trying to remind.

They said they were going to widen part of the street, but we have not street widening. So if I put that in there like that, doesn't that cover the entire street?

If I may, it's a partial waiver request. And it would be subject to the approval of the plan that's been submitted. So everything we showed to be widened, we understand as a condition of this approval that that will be widened. The rest is a waiver request.

That's correct. So I don't have to change what I'm saying. Okay. So let me get back to that. And also not require curbs along South Hazel Avenue. Four is section 440.507 to not require streetlights. Five is section 440.509A to not require sidewalks. Applicant agrees to pay a fee in lieu of for sidewalks as determined by the township engineer. And six, applicant is willing to repair the road after construction. I have a motion to approve. Is there a second?

I'll second.

All in favor?

Hesitantly, aye.

Aye. All opposed? Opposed.

Opposed.

Opposed. Abstain. Pete abstains. Didn't pass.

Did all members vote? I'm sorry, I didn't hear.

Excuse me?

I did all members vote. I didn't hear.

Pete abstains.

Yes. No.

No. No. No. No. Yes.

I didn't hear.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

Huh? One, two, three, four to one. Oh, can we take a five minute recess, Jim, before we start this? At this time, we're gonna take a quick five minute recess and then we're gonna go on with our main event. Okay, we're gonna resume the meeting now. Before we go any further, our zoning officer needs to make an announcement.

Excuse me, excuse me. All right, is anyone here for what they thought was going to be a zoning hearing board meeting tonight concerning their case, their hearing? You would know what that means if, by... That's correct. Okay, good. Nevermind. Thank you.

We're good. Okay. Before we go to the next item, I would just like to let everyone know that we will not be voting on this next item this evening. This is just an informational presentation. We are not coming up with a motion. We are not taking a vote. The board will not be voting on this tonight. And since we have a packed house, we're going to have to limit public comment to three minutes per person. And if there's a lot of comments that pertain to the same item, we'd appreciate it if everybody would get together and just have one representative speak on that. So with that said, I'm going to go to the final item of the night, which is. S-L-D 25-7 BET Investments is petitioning for an amendment to the Middletown Township zoning ordinance and zoning map to create a community mixed-use overlay district that would affect the property located at the northwest corner of North Flowers Mills Road in East Maple Ave, which contains tax map parcel 22-021-055-002 and is in the R1 residential zoning district. The petition contains a conceptual plan for mixed-use development involving the construction of 290 apartment units with a grocery store, retail space, and standalone restaurant, and two retail pad sites with associative parking, walking trails, and stormwater management facilities. The development detailed on the conceptual plan will have to go through a formal land development approval process at a later time if the proposed petition is approved. There were 35 addresses notified, obviously the internet notified 350 more. So, with that, is there anybody from BET here? Just so I'm on the right page, this is BET, not Wood School presenting anything. Got it, okay.

Good evening. My name is Carrie Nace. I'm an attorney with the law firm of Fox Rothschild here this evening on behalf of BET Investment. Also here is Michael Markman, principal of BET Investments, Peter Clellan, and our traffic consultant, Mark Roth, as well as civil engineer, Tim Casey. BET Investments is the equitable owner of property located at North Flowers Mill Road and Maple Avenue, which is currently zoned R1. As mentioned, we are proposing a new overlay district that would apply to certain properties in the R1 zoning district that satisfy certain criteria. The ordinance amendment would allow for the development of a mixed-use project We did submit a petition for the zoning amendment a year ago. And since that time, we've been working with staff. We did meet with the neighbors at the end of the year last year. And we made certain revisions to the ordinance to address concerns that were raised and resubmitted that back in May. Along with the proposed ordinance amendment, we did submit a sketch plan showing how the property could be developed if in fact the ordinance amendment is adopted by the board. We believe that this mixed-use development is a good transition for this area given the shopping center across the street, transitioning then into the other residentials in the surrounding area. So we're here this evening to present the proposed ordinance amendment to the Planning Commission and share with you the vision that we do have for this project. As you mentioned, we're not here this evening to ask for any formal action to be taken, looking really just as an opportunity to review the project with you and receive your feedback and proceed from there. So what I'd like to do first, I'll turn it over to Michael Markman, who will give you an overview of the project and the vision that we have for this. Going from there, I'll introduce Peter Clellan, and he can walk you through the site plan and the particulars of the ordinance.

Thank you. My name is Michael Markman. I'm the president of BET Investments. And I think we can go through a similar project to this one to start. So next slide, please. So we have the Promenade at Upper Dublin, which is twice the size of what we're proposing here. That's twice as large. It would basically be half of the Promenade at Upper Dublin, which is shown in the picture. And essentially what we do is we create a mixed-use community so that people can shop and live on the same site and we always wanna have a supermarket so you can go down and buy your food and you don't have to worry about getting in your car and going anywhere. This particular project has 402 apartment units and the population tends to be people that live in the immediate area I think the majority of our residents here are 65 or older. And what happens is a lot of friend groups move in. So there's a lot of kind of interaction between the residents, interaction where people have moved out of their house. They're either partially retired or fully retired. And it becomes a community for the community within a community where people can meet and live and shop and work. And it's become a real asset, at least in upper Dublin township. So next slide, please. This is just a picture, that one has a Sprouts as well, which is an organic market who would like to go here if in fact we are approved on this. Next slide please. So with this particular project and what would be similar here, we tend to build kind of something that feels like a resort. So a lot of indoor, outdoor spaces, a large pool area where people can kind of relax and enjoy each other. Here we have bocce. We have outdoor televisions. We have decks. We have water aerobic classes. And it almost feels like when you walk into the place, you're on vacation. So you might go off the property, but then you come home and you feel like you're on vacation. A lot of people have their friends move in with them, as I mentioned. And it's just a nice, safe environment where people can live, shop, and have a nice place to live. So next slide. This is the pool area, obviously. One of the elements which we do here as well is a green roof. So this is an example of the green roof there with kind of like a rock garden around it which helps cleanse some of the water as it comes off the roof. Next slide please. This is an example of one of the indoor-outdoor areas that we have with an outdoor fireplace, a social gathering place. I can tell you right to the right of this area, there's always an ongoing Mahjong game and different residents getting together to share each other's company. Next slide. This is one of our common areas. And once again, this kind of goes with the whole resort hotel area. You move in, you have plenty of places to sit, plenty of places if you want to read, always provide coffee, just a nice environment. Next slide, please. Conference rooms, work rooms, we provide for people that want to get out of their apartment and have another place to do their work or just to kind of read or do whatever they want. This is particularly a conference room that's available to all the residents. We always have a game room, ping pong, pool. This is an area we also have a lot of social gatherings. So we have music come during the summer on the Fridays where people can get together. We provide refreshments and the community can kind of come together. Next slide, please. This is another area that we have events. These are sliding doors that open up, and we'll also have kind of like a guitar player, and on a Friday, and then the people can get together. We usually get 90 or 100 residents that come together, and it's just a social gathering pretty much every weekend during the summer, and we do this at most of our properties, but this property, obviously this property we're talking about in question would be modeled after Upper Dublin. It would just be much smaller.

So next slide, please.

This is an area outside our gym. We always have a gym and there's a water wall and just kind of an area to sit and relax. And we have a coffee station around the corner so you can get your coffee and you can kind of sit and talk to people.

Next slide, please.

This is the gym area. We always have kind of a yoga aerobics room and then a room with fitness equipment so you don't have to join a gym.

Next slide, please.

parking garages so you can have indoor parking. You don't have to worry about snow on your cars. You don't have to worry about shoveling. You don't have to worry about changing light bulbs. We change all the light bulbs. So if you're in a house in the area and you don't necessarily want to take care of your house anymore, but you want to be around the people, you want to be around your doctors, you want to be around the shopping that you know, these communities provide that for you. And this is the parking garage so you can just pull in. You don't have to worry about rain, snow, or anything. And these are free parking spaces to the residents, which they would be in this case too. Before we get to the plan, I just wanna say that I would encourage anybody to come down to Promenade at Upper Dublin and take a look. It's just turned into kind of a community gathering place that's safe and feels good and makes you, you can enjoy actually shopping there, even if you don't live there. And if you live there, you can enjoy shopping as well. So with that, what I'd like to do is turn it over to Peter Cleland, who's our vice president of development, and he's an engineer, and he's going to go over the site plan and some of the other amenities where actually we got feedback from the community that we put on this plan and kind of go over what it is. So I'll invite Pete Cleland to the microphone.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Good evening. So on the screen, you can see the project that we've put forth, as Carrie described, that would comply with the ordinance that's proposed. Maple Avenue is at the bottom of the screen. North Flowers Mill Road is at the right side of the screen. We are proposing... A full access driveway at the existing traffic signal across from flowers middle shopping Center we're proposing another full access on maple avenue kind of. towards the left portion of the page there. as well as road widening along maple avenue road widening along north flowers mill to increase stacking length and operation of that traffic signal so as you come in from maple avenue There's a T intersection where you would proceed to the right to go to the retail area or to the left to go around to the parking structure for the residential area. So the entire left side of the page is the residential area. That large green area within that building would be the courtyard that Michael showed you on the previous pages. We would then have the residential units extend above the retail in the central brown box on the plan. And as the chair mentioned, there's two freestanding retail buildings to the right side of the page, as well as a freestanding restaurant to the bottom right corner of the page. We're then proposing stormwater management between the project and North Flowers Mill Road. and as was mentioned, 290 apartment units, roughly 85,000 square feet, I can't see the numbers here, of total retail on the site.

If you can go to the next page.

So here we have provided a larger context aerial where you can start to see more of the Flowers Mill Shopping Center as well as the interchange and how this all lays in with that. Also on the lower right hand side of the page, and we'll get to a blow up of this in a moment, We are proposing as part of this project from our earlier application and from discussions with both the neighbors and staff, traffic has been made very clear as a major concern within the township and bringing some sort of improvement to the township beyond what would be required by the project itself. So at the lower right hand corner of the page, we are proposing a relocation One second while we try this mic. There we go. So the area that we're talking about is down here. So this is North Flowers Mill Road as it approaches Maple Avenue. There's an existing traffic signal here by the Dunkin' Donuts and the gas station. These are the off ramps from Route 1. so what we're talking about doing is relocating north flowers mill road sorry south flowers mill road to line up with the ramps eliminating the traffic signal here in front of the dunkin donuts to improve the operation of maple avenue by cutting out wait times and traffic signal from the area.

If everyone would please refrain from anything talking right now, please. Thank you. So if you can go to the next page.

So it's sort of a blow-up of what we're talking about. This would involve relocating, currently, Wood Services. And yes, we are separate from Wood Services. But currently, their driveway comes out to Maple Avenue at the intersection with the northbound ramps. So their access would be relocated elsewhere, as you can see, further south along the relocation of Flowers Mill Road. We would form another intersection there. And we've performed a traffic study of the area. We've performed a study identifying how this would improve the area. And it has the function of improving level of service within that intersection by full letter grade or more. For those of you that don't know what letter grades are, we can get into that, but wait times at traffic signals are measured by letter grades A through F. And as you can imagine, you have a lot of sort of substandard wait times at some of these intersections, and this improvement is proposed to improve that. Next slide. We wanted to run through just some historic areas of the site. I know there's been a lot of conversation during prior meetings with neighbors and even earlier in the project about the fact that the site is wooded today and that people don't want to lose the trees that are on the site. So just going back in history a while, back in 1950, this was a farm field, much like the other lands around it. Next slide. 65, still largely farm field. Route 1 was in the process of being constructed there. In 75, Route 1 is through, still largely an open parcel, starting to be neglected and some trees are starting to grow in, some industrial showing up to the east. Again, even as recently as 1980, not a lot of coverage on the site, just again, through neglect, a lot of trees starting to fill in the farm field. And in 1990-ish, it's starting to get more grown in. Then you can go to the next slide. So, of course, there's been a lot of conversation. Michael, do you want? about why the township would consider something like this. Aside from what we perceive to be a great transitional use from the shopping and from the highway uses that exist nearby, as well as the highway infrastructure itself as a transitional use between those different areas, there are significant tax benefits both to the township and to the school district as a result of a project like this. looking at the, and what this slide does is compare what the property is zoned for now, which is R1, where you could do 18 single family homes, which would result in a very minor financial benefit to the township of like $16,000, but would actually be a net loss to the school district of $119,000. Our project, because we don't generate school kids, we have all ones- and two-bedroom units in this type of facility, we do not get children by large numbers. We do get some. I'm not going to tell you we don't get any, but we do get some, and those are accounted for in this study. and the net impact to the township would be about $140,000 annual tax benefit to the township and almost $900,000 to the school district. Next slide. And then we've also prepared some rendering, so this would be from Maple Avenue looking into the site, sort of on the western end of the site looking in.

Please, we can't, you can't do that. Just, all right, stop.

The question was how many stories is it? I can certainly answer that. I probably should have. Portions of the residential are five stories on the left side of the page, and then there's four stories that go above the retail. And then this is a view more from the eastern end of the site, again on Maple Avenue looking in. And as Michael mentioned, Sprouts Grocery Store is interested in the site. So that's sort of that green sign band area that you see on the building there is Sprouts and the other buildings, the restaurant is at the very right side of the page. And that is our presentation. As Carrie mentioned, we have prepared an overlay ordinance with certain provisions that would relate to doing this specific type of development to try to control that this is the outcome that you would get, presuming that there is interest in this outcome.

One more thing.

So what I'd also like to do, I'd like to go back to the traffic slide and have our traffic engineer talk about the reconfiguration of that intersection and how it does, in fact, benefit the surrounding area. And it's not inexpensive. It's probably going to cost a million and a half dollars. And Woods would have to kind of contribute the ground to that. But I wanted to talk about how that would be a major beneficial traffic improvement for the area.

If I could, could I walk up to the screen, is that okay?

As long as you have that microphone.

Okay, sure. So as Pete was describing, currently South Flowers Mill comes into Maple Avenue at a signalized location across from the Dunkin' Donuts. North Route 1, both the off-ramp and the on-ramp, exit onto Maple Avenue at a signalized intersection that's shared with the Wood driveway. What's being proposed, so it's two signals, as everyone knows. Everyone in this room knows. They drive through the intersections every day. So there's two signals that try to operate together. They try to operate together. So what's happening is people that are exiting from the ramps have their own phase. They all go on green, but at that time, everything else has stopped. Okay, and they have to come through two intersections. Some have to weave their way onto Maple Avenue and then onto South Flowers Mill. Likewise, if you're leaving South Flowers Mill, you gotta weave your way onto Maple Avenue. Either go straight through, make a right onto northbound Route 1. So there's multiple movements occurring in order for you to make really one move. Okay, so what this is doing You can't see me on TV?

Yeah, so if you just hold this button and just go like that. Okay, but you don't have to point, you can point it, see how I'm pointing it over here? It's just a proximity thing.

It's this button right here.

Hold it and hold it down.

Okay, thank you. Okay, we'll try. I'm chewing gum too, so we'll see. So basically, what's happening is we are relocating.

You got it? I guess.

You can hold it anywhere you want.

take your finger off and start again so as I was saying so right now when you're exiting the northbound route 1 you have to make multiple moves to go on to South Flowers Mill Road the realignment of South Flowers Mill to opposite the Route 1 ramps will eliminate one of the traffic signals along Maple Avenue. It'll also, as I mentioned, making multiple moves to just, now you can just go across the intersection onto Route 1. You can also exit Route 1 and go straight across the intersection and continue on the South Flowers Mill Road. What it's doing is it's eliminating phasing of the two intersections. So two intersections are becoming one, which is adding more green time primarily to South Flowers Mill Road and to Route 1. Maple Avenue has plenty of green time. Well, if you...

Please, everyone, please let him speak, and then you'll have your chance.

But if you feel it doesn't, you will increase the green time on Maple Avenue as well, okay? Because we're eliminating a whole phase. So a phase could take 20 seconds, 25 seconds of each cycle. you're adding that into every cycle. So you're then increasing the capacity of this intersection and reducing delays. And what Pete was talking about with the letter grades, and I won't get into a whole, not technical in nature, but it's pretty simple. It's just like when you go to school. A's are the best, F's are not good. Okay, so in this case, we're improving the letter grades at these intersections. So whole letter grades improvements. Now, so everyone understands in the audience, when you are performing a traffic study, and when you're looking for approvals from both the Township and PennDOT, you have to mitigate your traffic, okay? So there's traffic that's generated by this particular development. We are required to mitigate that traffic. So we're required to get it back to a letter grade that it is without our traffic. With these improvements, we're making it even better than that. So we're not just mitigating our traffic, we're mitigating the traffic that's already on the roads today. That's why this particular improvement is significant in nature to the overall operations in the area. not only the operations, but the safety. I mentioned multiple movements. I mentioned that people have to exit, get onto Maple Avenue, then make their way over, turn onto South Flowers Mill Road. If you're not in the right lane, then you're weaving through traffic that you don't want to weave through. It's a safety improvement as well as a capacity improvement. Just real quick to touch on North Flowers Mill in front of our site. So right now, I think everyone understands, especially in the afternoon, sometimes in the morning, when you're traveling southbound on North Flowers Mill, so you're coming down in front of the township building here, and you're crossing the existing intersection that goes into the Flowers Mill Shopping Center, when you cross over that signal, you're still in a single lane. But what's happening is people want to try to get into the left lane. Some want to get into the right lane. The stacking, the availability of those lanes is not that much. So everyone is in the through lane fighting to get into a left lane or right lane. our improvement is widening that whole section of north flowers mill road to lengthen those auxiliary lanes so that you can enter into the left turn lane a lot sooner than you can today okay so you're not fighting with the through traffic you're also not using the gore area okay that's not wide enough to create your own left turn lane so once again both the capacity improvement as well as the safety improvement so that i'll end with that but that was just the explanation of the traffic improvements thank you thank you i can just add one more thing if we go back to the plan um

Yeah, so one of the things we're proposing, if you look at the perimeter of the property, we're proposing walking trails around the entire property and then connecting them over on both roads. So the public will be able to walk around the property, through the property. And the other thing, when we met with the neighbors, there's a strip of land to the top part of the property that's currently owned by the township. And we volunteered to make improvements there on behalf of the township. Some people asked for a dog park. Some people asked for some other things. We're open to talk about improvements to that area that would benefit everybody in the area. So basically, we're open to suggestion. We feel like we've offered a traffic improvement that's actually going to improve the traffic in the area. And we're here to get feedback and comments from the community and the board, and then see if we can make it better. And that's what we're trying to do.

So thank you. OK, thank you. Since we're not voting on this tonight, Dominic and Matthew really don't have to render any advice to us because there's no vote going to be on it. So I'm going to start with Pete from the board. You have the floor.

Thank you. Um, as I looked at this submission at this application, um, I just went through your overall ordinance and I appreciate your presentation. Um, thank you. But I wanted to bring up, I have really like 12 or 14 different topics here that I want to go through. I won't go through, I won't belabor this, but just to kind of go through. In my mind, this all amounts to, you know, tell me how I'm not looking at this the right way, or change my thinking. How am I not looking at this the right way? So I just want to kind of go in order through your ordinance starting kind of with the title. This came before us by way of history a little bit. This came before us initially a year or two ago as a CMU district. You're calling this a CMU commercial mixed use district. This originally came to us as a CMU district proposed by the Wood School. And at that time, they had a map. Here was the original map. And they wanted to propose an overlay district to have all these uses, commercial, high, heavy residential uses, and so forth. And the map included this property and properties in general west of Route 1. That was... specifically excluded and rejected from that submission at that time. And at that point, you renamed it to a CDT district. It was the Community Development Transitional District. And I think you did that in order to be able to come back to us again at some point and call it a CMU district again, which is what you're calling this. This is a CMU district. So just by way of history, This was proposed before, it was rejected once, now it's being proposed again. This lot was specifically excluded from what was introduced originally. What changed that makes it now

something that we should look at again what's the difference from then to now yeah what happened was woods actually had you know they wanted to develop certain things on their property they grouped it together with this that was not our choice um we never and it wasn't rejected it was just basically the wood said well it seems like we want to just go on our own can you back off and we did

We actually rejected, I believe, the first plan where this was included. Ben Woods came back again. Ben Woods came back again, and this wasn't included on there. And I do believe we rejected that one too, even though it wasn't included under this board.

There was an ordinance that was commented on. We actually never made this presentation to this board. The first time we made the presentation was to the Tarrytown neighbors.

Oh, we understand. Woods did.

Woods made the... Not with the plan, just generally with what they wanted to do.

Sir, I believe it was you here a while back saying to us that This is going to change the neighborhood.

Wait till people's property values go up because of this place. I mean, I, sir, I never said that.

I'm telling you, I wish it was on TV because I know you, you guys were here before.

We were, the woods combined the two plans and it's semantics anyway. I mean, they combined the two plans. Now, if you're against it, you're against it. You just tell me you're against it. If that's what you're telling me and I'm, I'm,

I'm not telling you. I'm trying to get to the bottom of his question.

They brought us in with them, and then it turned out that they wanted to separate. So we said, okay, we'll back off. And if there would be an appropriate time to come back, we'll come back. And so they went through with their land development, and now we're back in with this land development.

So if you weren't here, just so you're aware, it was rejected by this board. This lot was included with that proposal. Am I wrong about that?

I don't think so, but I'm looking for some help over on the other side.

So there was initially a plan that Woods brought. They had discussions, obviously, with BET that included this property and the entire Woods complex of 250 acres over there. You guys rejected that. We did. We absolutely did. Yes. They did not make that presentation. That was Woods and their attorney. Obviously, they had discussions with them of what the plan could be for that, but it was not their presentation. Woods then came back on their own and only put their existing parcel, took his parcel out of it. because they wanted the affordable apartments and a couple other things like that. So both parties decided to do it. But it was not Mr. Markman and BET's presentation the very first time.

Understood. This board rejected it in its first iteration.

But it's obviously a little bit different from that iteration as well.

All right, let me get to the second point. And not all of these are of the same import. Moving on to page two. of your proposed ordinance, your proposed non-residential use A6, and I think our township engineer also picked up on this as well. You're proposing to have as a permitted use personal service shops. and I think you read in their letter, we unfortunately in Middletown, we have overlapping meanings for what personal service shops mean. If you read the definition in our code, it means a place for body piercing and tattooing. I'm gonna take it you're not proposing that.

Correct, we're not proposing that.

Would you change that to be more specific? We take it you probably mean things like barbershop, salon, tailor, nail salon maybe. I don't know. I recommend you be more specific about that to overcome our overlapping meanings.

We saw that, too, and that was a mistake.

Okay. Let's correct it. Third point. Third point, and again, our township engineer picked up on this as well. There seems to be a discrepancy between whether you're proposing to allow drive-throughs on this site or not. Your paragraph... 522.05.2 says that you would permit a restaurant which can include sit-down or take-out excluding drive-throughs, but then in paragraph D3 on the same page, you would permit as an accessory use drive-through service as an accessory to any of the permitted uses above, basically. Am I reading that as a discrepancy or how does it? What's intended here?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't need a drive-thru. It was intended for a bank, so that was a mistake as well. If I could potentially have a drive-thru.

That's a mistake as well.

Yeah, as far as drive-thrus for a restaurant, yeah, we don't intend to have a drive-thru restaurant here.

So the correct one is no drive-thrus on this site at all?

I mean, I'd like to have one for a bank, but if you object to it. I don't care what it is. What is it?

What's that? I don't care which it is. Which is it? We were just looking for a drive-thru for a bank. You would propose drive-thru for a bank. That's all.

That's all.

All right. Moving on to the next one. You have a section in here about buffers. Paragraph 500-2205.3E about buffers. You're proposing essentially, I'm paraphrasing, a 25-foot buffer, softening buffer area along the property line against residential zone districts. In my mind, what I see in this proposal basically diminishes or destroys the buffers in the township. When this came before us before, I know I personally made a very big deal at that hearing about the value of buffers in the township. There are some developments in this township that are done very well with good buffers, and there are some that are not. The building we're sitting in, there's a very good buffer here. You drive on Flowers Mill Road, you really have to look well beyond a lot of trees to see the building we're sitting in. The shops at Flowers Mill, to some extent, has a very good buffer. You would be right across from them. But in the plan that I see, it doesn't look like you're proposing the same thing they have, a very much more than 25 foot tree line buffer. It looks like you've front loaded all your stormwater management to a long, FLOWERS MILL ROAD, AND ESSENTIALLY, YOU'RE CHOPPING DOWN EVERY TREE ON THIS 20-ACRE SITE, AND YOU'RE FRONT LOADING. THERE'S SOME, IT LOOKS LIKE THERE'S SOME LANDSCAPING COMING BACK, BUT AM I WRONG? I DON'T SEE THE SAME LEVEL OF BUFFER AS I SEE ON OTHER PROPERTIES RIGHT HERE ALONG FLOWERS MILL ROAD. I WOULD URGE YOU TO RECONSIDER THAT. to preserve more buffer. By the way, that goes for Wood School as well. They have a lot of acres, 200 some odd acres, I think. And they conduct a lot of activities on that site. We drive and they exist in between all the major streets and highways on this township. And guess what? We don't really know they're there. Why? Because they have a lot of great buffer space all around. We'd like to see that here if that's part of this as well. Your next paragraph, F, about sustainability. In order to advance the township sustainability goals, you're proposing some zoning bonus measures. And as I study your plan, and I study these zoning bonus measures, every single one of them, except for the last one, which I'll make a separate point, every single one of them, if you elect to satisfy these bonus items, which all sound like great things, Structured parking, green roof, plugging, charging stations for electric vehicles, solar power, renewable energy power, things, they all look great and sound great. And every one of them allows you a 2% increase, pardon me, in impervious surface coverage for the site. However, you're proposing in the next chapter, the next paragraph, 500... 22054, you're proposing for this overlay district a maximum impervious surface ratio of 75%. Your plan, it says right on your plan, you only want 54.5%. So the point is you don't really need to do any one of these bonus measures in order to achieve what you want. They sound good. They look good on paper. Any environmentalist would like to see this. But do you really intend to do any of these? Because you don't need to on paper. We actually do. So let me look at the order. The last one you do, and we'll get to that. But any of these others you don't based on what you propose.

Right.

Unless you're proposing something different.

No, that's correct.

So the question would be, do you really propose to do any of those? The last one, let's talk about that last one. Offsite traffic improvements. You explained a lot about what you're proposing on the offsite traffic interchange. I might be alone in this. I don't see much of a problem with that interchange. There's a lot going on there. Could it be a better interchange? Absolutely. Does it bother me significantly? No. Does it bother me significantly enough that I would chop every tree down on a 20 acre site to have that interchange? By the way, The way that interchange is depicted on this view, and maybe, I don't know if we can go back to one of the other views where they depict the interchange a little better. Or this one will do. The way that intersection is depicted, you're gonna wind a nice little path through the woods, and you're not gonna cut down any of those trees. That's how it's depicted here. That's not what you're gonna do if you improve that intersection like that. And you know how I know that? I know that because in this very ordinance, it relieves the right for any environmental concerns when you improve that intersection. That's written in the ordinance. So you're gonna chop down all those trees as well, in addition to all the ones on the site. And the only reason you would improve that intersection, in my mind, and again, this gets back to prove where I'm wrong, you would improve that intersection to serve to flood this area with unwanted traffic. Really, that's what that does.

Sir, no. We don't have to do this. We don't have to do a traffic improvement. We know there's traffic problems around here, and we've looked at it. We've studied it.

We have a traffic engineer that studied it.

I read the study. This would be a significant traffic improvement for the area.

That would make that intersection function much better. I still wouldn't trade it for all the trees on 20 acres. And the way it's written... the only thing you say that and by the way i'm not a tree hugger i served a lot of years on the eac i'm not a tree hugger i'm not i'm an engineer i i design sites for people who cut down a lot of trees and but this site has a special um aspects to it what the what doing that intersection would allow you to do if you read this bonus is if you do that letter upgrade in the level of service of that intersection and by the way it doesn't take a lot of imagination to look at that how it's depicted and see the new driveway to the wood school that's really it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that's just going to be a new gateway to a more commercialized wood school property that's really what that's going to be they had no we actually designed it to try to help the traffic flow in the area with the aid of our traffic engineer after we did the traffic study

The Woods had no idea. We actually just tried to connect their driveway so they could get off the property.

There's no intention there at all. But the way this bonus finalizes, the bonus that you would get by doing this upgrade would be to increase by 50% the disturbance of natural resources on the development of the property. Specifically, I think what you're saying is you get to... you get to cut down 50% more of the trees. Chapter 500-2601-D2, that's in our portion of the code, that's for natural resource protections. If they're not high-level resource protections, which you've termed them as in your plan, you already, that chapter allows you to already cut down 50% of the trees. If you do this, the bonus you get is another 50%. 50 and 50 is 100. Hey, wow, what about that? You get to cut down 100% of the trees. if you elect to do this bonus. I'm not sure you need to do the other bonuses to achieve the level of impervious surface that you're looking for, because your plan says otherwise, but this one you'd probably need to do to cut down all the trees.

So I can tell you from a planning standpoint, I said on my planning commission in my township, I was commissioner, if you don't think that this traffic improvement is helpful for the area, you don't think it's a good planning tool, Then say it. We feel it is.

Again, I think you're mishearing me. I'm not saying it won't be helpful. I'm saying I wouldn't trade it for what this site is now.

And now it's got, I mean, you saw the historical aerial, and most of the trees came after 1980. And we actually did a tree study. That's not how the ordinance is written. I'm just saying, it's the higher quality stuff. And then the other thing is we can potentially preserve trees. So we finally got trees to grow there, and now you want to cut them down. No, we can preserve trees on the Woods property and make sure portions of the Woods property would never be developed as a trade-off for this, and that's something... All right, let me move on to the next one.

The mixed-use development maximum. You want to propose a maximum impervious surface ratio here of 75%. That doesn't really exist on a major zoning designation anywhere else in our township. There are cases that could lead to that. Aaron... cases, but that would be the highest anywhere in our township is what you propose for an impervious surface ratio of 75%. Right now, the lot is zoned R1, and you only get 30% maximum impervious surface ratio. I looked through our entire code. 75% is the highest of any straight district without applying other bonuses and whatnot. So it exceeds what we already have. I also went and looked at other townships.

But you said there's not 75% elsewhere in the zoning code? I'm sorry? It doesn't say there's not 75% elsewhere in the zoning code?

I think if you employ bonuses and other very errant, odd situations, you might be able to get up to that. But generally, no. I've looked at other townships that surround us. If you like 75%, here's where you need to go. And I looked at their townships and what their maximum percentage was in these other districts. Middletown right now, 60% is really kind of our highest in most any district. If you like 75%, maybe you like Falls Township. Their highest is 80%. Bristol is 65%. I went through every one of their things. Ben Salem, 75%. Maybe you'd like, if you like 75%.

We understand. You think it should be less. We'll look at that.

Right. Well, Philadelphia, 100%. So there are places where this stuff persists. From a planning standpoint, where are we going with this? I don't know that it's good planning to allow as high as 75%. Okay, we hear you. Okay, next point. If you look at our township's comprehensive plan, at the very back there's an appendix that lists all the historical places and properties in our township. And there are more than 50 of them. We're a very old township. We're a very historical township. There are more than 50 on there. But there are only two that rise to the very high level of being on the National Register of Historic Places. One of those two is right next door to this. It's the Harewood... property owned by the Wood School, but it's one of only two in our entire township that's on the National Register of Historic Places. Our township engineer also noted in their report, which they issued, they had very concerns about, and Dominic, don't let me say this wrong, you guys had concerns about the building setbacks on this site and how it may affect neighboring properties. Well, one of your neighboring properties is on the National Register of Historic Places I think that really needs to be looked at comprehensively. This township had, I don't know, do we still have a Middletown Historic Preservation Commission? We still have that board. I think they should look at this closely as well. I really think that ought to be part of this. Next thing, we come to parking. That's paragraph 522.054C, parking standards. You divide it into really two areas, non-residential uses, where you propose four spaces for every thousand square feet of gross floor area, and then residential or apartments, where you propose one space per bedroom.

With regard to the apartments, one space per bedroom, that's probably fair.

I would imagine that's responsible. It's basically essentially one per bed, more or less. I think that's fair. As far as the non-residential ones, four spaces per 1,000 square feet, let's call that one space per 250 square feet. Elsewhere in our code, we don't allow this low level of parking. If you look at the parking chapter of our code, restaurants require one per 50 square feet. That's more than four per 1,000. Retail requires one per 125 square feet. That's more parking required than your four per thousand. That's half as much. Offices require one per two hundred. And I guess your bank might fall under that category. I think you need a little more parking when it comes to the...

The response to that is, so the Promenade at Upper Dublin has the same parking ratio, and there's not a parking problem there? Who does? Promenade at Upper Dublin, which is, this is about half of that. I heard you're Upper Dublin. Has that parking ratio, and it functions well. My office is right next to it. I watch it every day. I go there every day, and it functions very well with the floor.

But we're not in Upper Dublin.

So you're saying, but you have Sprouts... You have Sprouts in Upper Dublin. You'll have Sprouts here. They'll be very similar tenants. So you're saying that more people will shop here at these stores than they do in Upper Dublin? They'll be the same stores.

Well, you said Upper Dublin was twice as large. No, I'm saying it's four per thousand parking ratio. But you said the Upper Dublin development was twice as large.

Yeah, it's 140,000 square feet as opposed to it's half the size here. How many parking spaces do you have there? We have four per thousand for 140,000 square feet, and we have one per bedroom. And the other thing you have to remember is that some of the people that are actually shopping in the stores actually live in the space, so there is some cross-parking. So this is what we found to be necessary. And when you tend to over-park a property, it's just not good.

Yeah, I can't speak to Upper Dublin. We're not Upper Dublin.

Yeah, but the stores are the same stores. They attract the same amount of people.

Listen, I don't know that the same clientele, the same people, the same, I don't know. No, I'm saying stores.

An average Sprouts does about.

You can put the same store in different locations and have different outcomes.

All right. If you're going to let me address it, that's fine. If you don't want to, that's fine. You think it's under-parked.

I think what you're saying is the rest of our code proposes too much parking. I think it does.

Why should this propose as much?

I think it does, and I've been involved with a lot of codes, and that's the highest parking I've ever had.

All right, we disagree on that one.

So you like asphalt? You want more asphalt?

We can look at that. Put another level on your parking garage. I don't know. Maybe that's less asphalt. Okay. The next chapter, part of that parking standards, you propose a statement that says the overall required number of spaces may be reduced by the Board of Supervisors during the conditional use process provided a shared parking analysis is submitted by the applicant, period. So all they gotta do is submit a thing. It doesn't have to be approved or reviewed. They just gotta submit it. I don't think that's really worded well enough. I think it's gotta be worded that it's gotta be submitted, reviewed, and approved.

Okay. Okay.

Quite frankly, if I had my druthers, I'd delete that entire section. I think it's an unnecessary section in your code.

I don't necessarily disagree. I have to look at it again and see why we put it there. Okay. I'll look at that.

The Board of Supervisors can do pretty much what they want. They don't need this statement to tell them that they could do that or not do that. But when you put it in there, it gives them a pathway to do it.

It seems unnecessary to me.

Signage, I was going to ask about signage, but you're probably... You're saying it's in accordance with the rest of our code. With regard to the drawings, there's a sanitary lift station on this site. Is that what's at the front of the site?

I'm not even sure.

Yes. What are you doing with that? What's happening there? Can you explain that?

I would just stay there, right? Yeah.

Hey, Tim Casey with Gilmore Associates. We'd be connecting the project to that lift station in coordination with Bucks County Water Sewer. Would it need to be upgraded in any way? They'll study that, and then if it does, we would have to make those adjustments.

What part of our community does that lift station serve right now? How large an area?

I don't have that. Okay.

but you wouldn't modify it other than to improve its capacity to accommodate what it has now, plus also accommodate your use. The new flow, correct. Okay. And that would be subject to the land development, obviously. Yeah. We have districts, we're not saying we don't want this in our township. We have districts in our township that would allow this. Most readily, the GB, General Business District. This is an R1 district. It's the last place you would think of to put something like this in my mind. Again, tell me where I'm wrong.

It's an R1 district, but it's next to a major arterial. And as far as putting something like this in an area that's got good roads around it. But they're not good enough. You have to majorly improve an intersection that's right there. Well, we volunteered that because we knew there was an issue.

willing to do it as part of this because we know that if we're going to build a development like this there's going to be a give back to the community and that's what we have a general business district that already has the roads that don't need to be improved already has the impervious coverage that you've kind of lowered the bar to with this um it's ready it's there it's been done already there um so you're saying so a mixed use project like this has already been done there i'm sorry were you saying at the mall you're talking about or that's our general business district Yeah, that entire area. And then, there are other issues, but I'm gonna let others have part of the conversation at this point.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Pete, very insightful. Tommy?

You gotta follow him. Good job, Pete. Couple quick questions, or whatever. Going back to the original time that they were in front, Wood School, do you own this property now? We have it under agreement. You have it under agreement, so it's still owned by Wood. Correct. Wood told us way back when that we wouldn't see anything like this. The last time they came in front of us with the overlay, and they got the overlay to do the affordable housing, they said they would not come back in front of us with another overlay, and yet here we are. OK. That's my first point. My second point is, why aren't you at the front of the zoning board? You're asking for a zoning change. Correct. You are a planning commission. The zoning board has the authority to change.

Now, Tommy, it's us.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's us.

OK. I've been mistaken then. OK. And then the only other point I wanted to make was you're talking about eliminating a traffic light with the new and improved South Flowers Mill. Basically, all you're doing is moving it inside Wood's property. You're going to have a traffic light where South Mills comes, South Flowers Mill comes and goes onto the Wood property. There's a traffic light right here. And you're adding another one on Maple Avenue. So you're saying you're claiming you're taking one off of Maple Avenue. All you're basically doing is relocating it in front of your property, and you're adding another traffic light on the property of wood to accommodate this improvement you're doing.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's accurate and expensive, and it improves the intersection dramatically as far as functioning and will help traffic flow through the area much more easily. That's why we propose it.

The point was that the point that the other gentleman was making about eliminating the traffic light. Well, here you're basically just moving it, and you're still adding one on Mabel Avenue further down the road. So we're still going to have three traffic light, four traffic lights in that area, just a different location.

The whole point of that intersection is to make traffic function better. So I'll let him. Right.

The point was we're eliminating the signal, the clustered intersection, okay? There's two signals that are closely spaced. I go through it a lot. I understand that. That are clustered. So, yes, we're eliminating a traffic signal of those two clusters and putting a signal where it's more beneficial. That was the point of the improvement.

Beneficial to who?

Beneficial to all residents of the community. All residents of the community.

Because it goes back to what Pete mentioned about we've already been told that they weren't going to try to once they get this other traffic light on their property, how do we know they're not going to come back in front of us and say, hey, we want to put a bank or a store or something here now that we have this nice little driveway set up. Thank you.

Thanks. Jacob.

Well, thanks to my colleagues, Pete especially. A lot of my concerns have already been asked, so thank you. But I would feel more comfortable considering this. I'm primarily concerned about the building height and how it currently conflicts with how the zones are already placed and the adjacent commercial zones. There's a significant difference there. So if you folks would consider a structure that is within the proper building height, then I would be more apt to considering this. And that's my only comment.

Thank you.

Okay. I agree with them, too. Wood School came up to us and told us this was never going to happen. Unfortunately, Wood School is not here tonight to defend themselves, I guess. Is there anybody from Wood School here? And this was supposed to be something they told us was a dead deal. As far as the traffic's concerned, coming off Route 1, there's a little bit of traffic between there and Flowers Mills, but in my opinion, and I live here in this town, there's more traffic when you pass that intersection going into Langhorne, and the problem with that traffic is this. The traffic light on 413 in Langhorne is not Middletown's issue. Middletown has no governance over that traffic light, so I don't think anything you do is going to help traffic going the way it goes, because the traffic light that causes the most problems is in Langhorne, not the traffic lights that are over here. As far as traffic's concerned, it's always backed up from 413 all the way to Flowers Mills. And that's a traffic light that's in Langhorne that we have no jurisdiction over. Nobody does. Secondly, I don't know how I personally can trust like the Wood School when they came and told us we're taking this off the table and then they turn around and here we are talking about this again. Is there any, this would go great as Tommy had mentioned and I think Pete had mentioned, this would go great at the mall. Is there any reason why you're not going to the mall? The old, I should say the old mall. I mean, your infrastructure's there. Your traffic patterns are there. Everything is, like, done for you.

Well, isn't there, what, 400 new apartments approved there already?

Well, I'm getting to my next point with that. Yes, there is 400 new apartments.

And do you like that, the way they were developed and how that sits next to the mall? I mean, we... Yeah, I mean, we've redeveloped malls, but we tear them down first. We redid the Granite Run Mall, and we tore it down. I approached the mall owner years ago. Can I respond?

Go ahead.

I approached the mall owner years ago, but for me, we do mixed-use developments that have all different kinds of different uses that are integrated together. BUILDING APARTMENTS ON THE PERIPHERY OF A MALL IS NOT BUILDING APARTMENTS ON THE PERIPHERY OF A MALL IS NOT REALLY WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO GET. REALLY WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO GET. BECAUSE THEN YOU DRIVE THERE, YOU BECAUSE THEN YOU DRIVE THERE, YOU MIGHT WALK TO THE MALL, BUT MIGHT WALK TO THE MALL, BUT PROBABLY NOT. PROBABLY NOT. WHAT WE TRY TO DO IS INTEGRATE.

WHAT WE TRY TO DO IS INTEGRATE. THERE'S A LOT OF ROOM AROUND THERE'S A LOT OF ROOM AROUND THE MALL THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO IN THE THE MALL THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO IN THE MALL WHERE THE PARK IS.

MALL WHERE THE PARK IS. BUT THE OTHER THING IS THAT BUT THE OTHER THING IS THAT WITH THE SHO You know, these are expensive apartments. They will be if they're ever built. And what we try to do is create shops that work well with our residents and the surrounding community. And, you know, generally shops that, you know, attract people that you want to live near them. So we would never do a tattoo parlor. That was inadvertent. We do shops that people would want to live next to, like a grocery store, you know, potentially a restaurant, potentially a bank. So you don't have to leave the property.

When they came to us with their development, they're saying the same exact thing you said. No, I'm just telling you. I mean, I know you're making a presentation, but you're kind of not hearing what I'm saying. They came to us too. We're adding shops. We're adding stores. We're connecting to this. We're going to build two more. I mean, they came with this same grand plan, which leads me to the next point.

Did they add shops and stores at the mall?

Not yet. No, they haven't. But they haven't rented out all their apartments yet either. And You brought a chart up earlier that says this is going to generate this much money for Middletown, this much to the school district. Well, in reality, if you can't rent them places out, it ain't generating nothing. And if they can't generate it over there, what makes you think you're going to generate it over here?

We know we can rent them out because we've done this other places.

And I've been to your other places several times.

You've been to the Promenade in Upper Dublin.

If you want to go to a store there, you have to park a country mile away.

It's not accurate, no. I've been there. I've been there probably 20 times. Is that true?

I work there every day, and the office building next to it, I can tell you that's just not true. But anyway, I just don't see that, you know, and then my next thing is, if you didn't build it, you wouldn't have to worry about traffic anyway. Because the problem with traffic is in Langhorne. The problem with traffic is a traffic light in Langhorne, not anything to do with Middletown.

Okay, thank you.

No, no, no. It's my turn.

I'll talk as long as I want. I said thank you for your comment. I appreciate it.

And the whole plan does nothing to solve that problem going into Langhorne. It really doesn't. And that's where all the traffic is. If you come here around 5 o'clock, you'll see that from 413 to Flowers Mills, it's car to car.

I've been here at 5 o'clock many, many times.

Okay. So how does your traffic plan solve that problem?

We can't solve all the problems, but we can solve, yeah.

All right. I had one more thing, and I can't remember what it was. Yeah, we've got to go down the line. But I'll let it go. I don't know what it was. I'm moving on to Joe. Amber?

I actually had the privilege of going through a similar concept at a broker's open at Cherry Hill Mall next to it where they have kind of the mixed use district off the mall where they have the shops on the bottom and living space and we got to do the tours and the concept itself I love. I think it's cool. I think our shopping here is terrible. I think our mall could use some help. However, my concern is that this to just cite this parcel feels inappropriate for what you're looking to accomplish. I live by the hospital, so my choice is when I wanna come up, if I wanted to come shop in your thing coming up 413 to 213, I can either go the back way where I sit, and then I always hit the train traffic back there, or I'm stuck on 213 sitting by Brothers, you can't move. So there's a bigger systemic issue of traffic than just that isolated intersection that is really not a problem for, I would say, any of us. I wouldn't say if any of us put a finger on it, we'd be like, oh, it's that one. It's deeper than that. The other concern that I have is I just don't know that the demographic at this point that this, how this benefits our community. We just built luxury senior homes at Stone Meadows Farm. The farm, Shady Brook, they want to put senior homes there. You're saying this is mostly attractive to seniors because they're luxurious, they're more money, they're going to live together.

I would say the majority of people, not all. It's also young professionals.

I'm not sure that this is helping anybody with affordable housing, new housing, people that need families in our communities.

That's accurate. It's not affordable and it's not geared towards . Correct.

That's correct. So, and I just don't know that it's an appropriate project on a very inappropriate site. And that's just how it sits with me as it is.

Okay. Thank you.

Jake, I'll give you one quick question and then I'm going to open up public comments getting late.

Just a comment. Reviewing the economic impact studies, the fiscal impact analysis, an additional time. I figured I just want to bring up for the record, again, a more comfort level the jobs that would be generated by such a development, the people who work there, based on the salaries that are included in the study, those salaries are not a family-sustaining wage, and the people who work there wouldn't even be able to afford to live there. So I just want to make that part of the question.

You're saying in the shops. That's accurate. That's true. Yes.

Did you say he was correct?

That's correct. The people that live in the shops would not be able to afford to live here, yes.

Okay, I'm gonna open it up to public comment now. I'm gonna start down the list of people who signed up and then from there, if there's anybody else wants to speak, I'm gonna limit it, it's getting late. So I'm gonna limit everybody to three minutes, please. And let's try and keep it civil. So I'm gonna start with Lauren LaRue.

Three minutes, Lauren. Okay, Lauren Leroux, 18 Sequelpare Road. This development sounds awesome, and the green roof sounds great, and I appreciate the history of the property that they shared with us today. It's just not right for this space, and the ordinance that they're proposing and the way that they're attacking our natural resource protections and allowing them to cut down all of these woods. I just want to make sure everybody in this room knows, and I was here last year, and I know I talked to you guys, this isn't just a wooded area, these aren't just trees, this is an environmentally sensitive wooded area. And so what that means is, according to our code, we can only cut down up to 20% of those trees, and we can't cut any more than that. So this proposed ordinance would allow them to cut down all of those trees, and deed restrict some similar type of trees in another part of the district, but those trees are already deed restricted by our code because we can't cut them down. So it's asking us to allow for these environmentally sensitive woods to be cut down with the wishful thinking that we can preserve something somewhere else that's already being preserved. That's a fake out. The reason these are environmentally sensitive wooded area is because there are steep slopes and there's a stream that runs through there. I have the wetlands inventory. I don't know if you guys took a look at that, but there's a stream that runs through this and there are severely steep slopes. I have pictures that I took when I went back to the property. Cutting this down and the way they have proposed their stormwater management and everything is like spells disaster for flooding on Flowers Mill Road. So if we try to allow this to happen, we're just opening up the floodgates for more problems and more traffic. And it gives them license, if we give them this ordinance, it gives them license to cut down more than we would otherwise allow. And the idea that we can deed restrict it somewhere else is a misnomer because it's already deed restricted. So thank you guys so much for your time and I appreciate it.

Thank you. Joey, is it say Joey and Kelly? Is there a Joey and Kelly here?

Is there Joey and Kelly here? Where's he at? I'm sorry. Right here.

Oh, okay. Thanks. Thank you. But then they can't see him. Can they? Can you see me? It doesn't matter.

Okay, go ahead, sir. Yeah. I'm Joey Kelly, Lauren Mack, Hawthorne Avenue, Langhorne, PA. Can you hold the mic closer? Yeah. Hawthorne Avenue, Langhorne, PA. My daughters know what I do more than anybody else I know in Bucks County. I've been watching this Woods Project for the last five years. And we met at the library, my daughters and I, at the library in Pine Street. And I said, there's a 90% chance these people are not going to know how to develop a historic project like this. I'm a national, international corporate real estate expert from Maryland to Long Island to Canada. I did a few articles with the New York Times. And I work for the May department stores, Lord & Taylor, Payless Shoes, 7-Eleven, Wawa. And this project, and I say this nicely, these guys come into this project, they don't even know where they're at. This is not a problem. I know these guys from years ago. I went to shopping center conventions with these guys. Promenade is not what you want here, okay? There's something good here. I just want to tell you another thing. I said this from the beginning. When you do a project in a historic district like that, you bring skilled architects in first, and you design buildings that you want to see, the right size, the right architecture, and you get people walking. You want to be able to walk from Tarrington Estates down to Maple Avenue to Brother's Pizza, okay? you know, that creates community wealth, okay? And the reason I'm doing, I wanted to do this is, we wanted to, my daughters are really in the history of Langley. And my aunt, I'll tell you a story about my aunt Mary, she lives in Highland Park. Well, she lived there to be 88 years old. Her father was the greatest architect that ever lived in Norfolk County. He designed the He designed Lady Grace School, Pendleboro Hall. He did Lady Grace Cemetery. He did Hornet and Harness. And my Aunt Mary's oldest brother, Henry Jr., he was MIA in New Guinea in 1944. but we wanted to do a project honor this history and bring the best architects we can in the Northeast to come down and do a project with civility and do it right. I've been invited to many boroughs and many towns. I was invited to Pennington Borough last year, Cranberry a year before that. I did projects in Doylestown Borough, Newtown Borough. But I'm just going to say this. This isn't even close, okay? Okay.

That's not the way to do it. Thank you, sir. Evelyn, is there Evelyn here? Evelyn?

Thank you so much. I've lived in Langhorne most of my life. Two points. Number one, loss of vegetation. Do we all remember how many times that 413 is closed because it's flooded down by the old grist mill? Two days. You can't get up and down 413. I know. I'm a registered nurse who worked on call. Secondly, the... The problem isn't this stupid pattern they have up here. The problem is the train trestles on South Flowers Mills Road and the one on 413. If you see a bus coming or a large vehicle or an EMS or a fire department, you wait till they get through. We're going to be backed up all over the place. They looked at this years ago. They cannot widen those train trestles. The engineer said it could not be done. So I hope these builders and these engineers don't have to get up to the only medical trauma center we have in the area because they're not going to get there. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Leanne Christian? Is Leanne here? Leanne? Leanne? Kathy and Lily? I think. No? How about Laurel? Is there a Laurel here? Laurel, where are you at? Oh, okay, you're up.

I don't have too much to say, but we're talking about the traffic right here on the corner. And the problem isn't just there. If anybody's ever come down Maple Avenue past Wheeler Way, you'll be sitting there for 15 minutes trying to get through. So I think that you need to look at that as well. And the other thing too is expensive housing.

Do we need any more?

Don't we need affordable housing? You have the place down in Oxford Valley Mall that's really, it doesn't look like there's many people living there. So why are we creating more? Especially here, we've got the area by Oxford Valley Mall that has plenty of space if they want to develop where the mall is failing. Why don't we use that? So, sorry.

I brought that up. Bob? Bob? I can't see your last name. Black Eyed Susan Road?

Yep.

Okay.

Good evening, I just have a few points. Most of the points have already been covered here tonight. My concern, okay, is right now St. Mary's and Wood Schools, okay, are the two largest employers in Bucks County, okay, and they use these intersections down here because they don't wanna go down 413 because of it's a single lane, all right? So what they do is they'll go down and go by the train station, but they don't wanna sit there, so they come to Flowers Mill, okay, a lot of the time. The other things are, okay, supermarkets. Let's talk about supermarkets. Currently, there's eight supermarkets within five miles of here. Do we need another supermarket?

Okay.

Also, my concern is extended delay time for emergency vehicles, ambulance, fire, and police, okay? It has to be considered here. Also, we had the PennDOT plan to do a cloverleaf that would put more traffic into 213 and also, in other words, onto 413. So that's coming up by PennDOT. Lastly, we have two large warehouses that were built on the Riemann Toll property about two years ago, and currently they're unoccupied. When we start getting tractor-trailers in there, because this has already been all approved, Okay, look at the traffic in this area, what it's going to be like. My last thing, okay, we, Middletown put in a stormwater fee. I know that was mandated by the state of Pennsylvania last year, all right? And, you know, we're going to be eliminating more open spaces, okay? So we're going to create more stormwater, okay? So we're going to have, the fee's going to go up. We know that. So this is the concerns I have. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. George Chase? I think I'm George. George Chase? Okay.

Did I say that right? Yes, you did. All right. Stuart Chase, 410 Renwood Drive, Langhorne. As I was putting my thoughts together, I thought of wood services. All the years as a non-profit, and this is the predicament that they leave us with, going to a developer with such a very special section of woods. And that was my other concern, was the environmental impact of how wildlife the amount of oxygen that the trees bring, the carbon, the sound barrier. And just to take that down seemed to be, to make no sense. But I'd like to congratulate the board, your homework. You guys did very well tonight. I really appreciate you.

Thank you.

You guys did very good. Thank you so much.

Marie Monteleone? Did I say that right? I'm two for two here.

Thanks so much for hearing my question. I come from 211 Sugarberry Lane. I appreciate that there was a discussion of the rating that was done or the study that was done for Maple Avenue and South Flowers Mill Road. Would you divulge please what the rating was and what it would be currently? In addition, there was a question, there was a statement that there would be an additional entrance on Maple Avenue. If I'm correct, what's the anticipation of what that reading would be at that intersection that would be created? And lastly, what is the impact on the water table?

Thank you. Barbara, is there a Barbara here? Barbara Dotsie? Oh, okay, Fran.

You have to come over here and speak though, ma'am, if you don't mind. I want to congratulate everybody that's here for continuing to come out. My biggest disappointment is Woods Services and the disservice that they're doing to the community. They run tax-free, and then they want to monopolize and do whatever they want in the community. It's not fair to the residents who pay taxes and support the Woods Services. So it's not against them. It's the harm that they're trying to do to our community that I have a problem with. Thank you.

Thank you. James? James. Oh, that's an R?

Okay. James Belser, 662 Valley View Road, pretty much right across from Curtis. Your buddy. I think everybody covered it except the real simple thing. This is R1. I live R1. I moved because it was R1. Building a five-story structure is not a town. It becomes a city. We're no longer middle town. We become middle city. I don't want to live in a city. I want to stay in my town with houses, not high-rises. So I'll leave it like that.

Thank you. You're definitely not getting this one right. Is it Sherry? Who lives at 59 Blue Bonnet? There's no way I'm seeing, no way. I'm out. I'm giving you the address. 59 Blue Bonnet is the address. Nobody? All right, I'm out. Let's go with this again. Who lives at 129 West Marshall? Huh? Oh, well, they say it. I can't read the name. Can you read that?

Larry Zetterberg, 129 West Marshall Avenue, Langhorne. A couple of things. When you looked at the picture of the apartment building, that apartment building took out all of the trees. Believe me, there's not one tree left in that whole area because it's all under pavement, pavers, asphalt, whatever. And the other thing is Mill Creek runs through that whole property all the way to Flowers Mill. And I visited a house that lived on the banks of Mill Creek. She was about 15 feet away. And she showed me how close Mill Creek came to flooding into her home. on a superstorm. We're talking about superstorms, not hurricanes. The superstorms are getting worse. They're not getting better. And so you have to deal with the superstorm that's dropping two and four inches of rain in an hour. And if that is not planned, then that's going to be a continuous problem. And Mill Creek goes all the way, as I said, through back from behind the Langhorne Swim Club all the way to Flowers Mills. And there's all types of animals, plants, you name it. And that is a maturing. In one of their documents, they said it was a declining forest. It's not a declining forest. It's a declining forest because it's getting old. And you have these super storms running through, knocking down trees right and left. In Catawissa, which I'm very familiar with, nature preserve, I went to a house. Now, Catawissa is much smaller than than Mill Creek. And I went to one of our neighbor's homes, and she showed me how far the water had flooded. Now, to get to her house, it had to overflow its bank by eight feet, and it came with two feet of the corner of her house. So if you don't do some real good remediation and you do the adequate planning for that, you're going to have all types of problems when the superstorm comes around. And you, but every tree will be gone, period. That's it. And I am a tree hugger. I have 35 acres in Oregon and it's all timber land and it will never be cut as long as I live.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Deb Parkers. Did I get that right? Yeah. Oh, sorry.

Hi. I just had a couple things. Number one, I don't know what meeting these guys were at in December where they're talking like they got some constructive feedback from the community because that room was packed with over 100 people that were all angry and told them to their faces that we don't want this. And yet they came here and presented it like they got all this constructive feedback. The second thing I wanted to talk about was South Flowers Mill Road. They're presenting that like it's an offering to kind of correct a problem that I don't really see. I mean, I got used to it pretty quickly after I moved here 20 years ago. But if we do see that as a problem and we want to correct that, can't we just take the land by eminent domain? They're trying to change the look in the field. The guy said it was a five-story building. I'm just completely appalled. I know I called out and I shouldn't have done that. But I just kind of wanted to point out it's a five-story building. It completely changes the look and character of this area and I completely object to that. And lastly, like Fram said, I'm completely disappointed by Wood Services, because I feel like this community has supported them and their mission over the time that they have been here. And they're not being a good community partner by continuously putting forth these proposals. And I think at this point, it's time for them to change their name, because all they want to do is cut down the trees.