{"id":10824,"date":"2025-10-22T03:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T03:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/10824\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T03:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T03:30:08","slug":"appeal-hearing-for-1-2-million-square-foot-building-postponed-in-whitehall-allentown-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/10824\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeal hearing for 1.2 million-square-foot building postponed in Whitehall | Allentown Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. \u2013 An appeal hearing contesting a zoning officer’s decision on a proposed logistics center scheduled before the Whitehall Township Zoning Hearing Board<\/a> was cancelled Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

Applicant Industrial VI Enterprises maintains that its development proposal for 4690 S. Church St. should be considered a warehouse, and not a distribution facility as Zoning and Code Enforcement Officer Christopher Gittinger ruled. The applicant’s appeal consolidates three different opinions rendered by the township on Dec. 17, 2024; Feb. 21, 2025; and June 19, 2025. The property is in the OS-2 Open Space\/Limited Industrial zoning district.<\/p>\n

The developer is asking zoners for variances to construct a 53-foot-high building\u00a0\u2014 a total of 18 feet higher than the 35 feet allowed\u00a0\u2014 and to construct a 200-foot-wide driveway where 40 feet is the maximum allowed. For those variances to be granted, the zoning hearing board wants the use defined applicable to its zoning code.<\/p>\n

VI Enterprises’ argument is that the building’s primary function is for storage. They argued at a Sept. 17 hearing that any repackaging occurring on the site is incidental and ancillary. They used a school building to illustrate their point. A school building, they said, features various entities such as a nurse’s office, a cafeteria, and athletic facilities. However, those entities are not the primary purpose of the building, which is for education.<\/p>\n

The same, VI Enterprises noted, would be applicable for the warehouse, which would feature offices and items associated with supporting the warehouse operations, but would not make it a distribution center.<\/p>\n

At the Sept. 17 hearing, they offered four industry witnesses who all agreed with the applicant’s contention that the facility was a warehouse. Building size and depth were cited as two characteristics to support that argument.<\/p>\n

Gittinger and the township’s stance is that an expected robust amount of tractor-trailer traffic entering and exiting the facility daily is consistent with a distribution center designation rather than a warehouse designation. The township also noted the level of repackaging anticipated at the facility would align it with a distribution center.<\/p>\n

The proposed building would encompass about 1.2 million square feet, feature 653 parking stalls and 288 trailer storage spaces.<\/p>\n

Whitehall Township said the hearing is scheduled to resume Nov. 18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. \u2013 An appeal hearing contesting a zoning officer’s decision on a proposed logistics center scheduled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,6569,1654,8657],"class_list":{"0":"post-10824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-whitehall","12":"tag-whitehall-township","13":"tag-whitehall-township-zoning-hearing-board"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}