Plans have stalled for two warehouses below the proposed Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement warehouse.<\/p>\n
The plans call for placing a 1 million-square-foot and a 500,000-square-foot warehouse on land directly below the ICE warehouse at 3501 Mountain Road in Upper Bern Township.<\/p>\n
Developer Vision Group Ventures, Montgomery County, initially suggested the project five years ago, according to Paul Kilar, an accountant representing six homeowners whose properties make up a combined 167 acres that would host the warehouses.<\/p>\n
Kilar noted that an agreement of sale of the land to Vision is in place, but the developer has yet to formally submit plans for the warehouses.<\/p>\n
Developers have experienced difficulties with Issues coordinating the warehouse plan with traffic improvements to the area, Kilar said.<\/p>\n
He said township officials proposed that the warehouse plans and Love\u2019s Travel Stop coordinate improvements to traffic access in the area.<\/p>\n
A version of those improvements put forward by Love\u2019s and Vision was rejected by Upper Bern supervisors in December.<\/p>\n
The plan proposed extensive changes to the Love\u2019s site, including demolishing and relocating the Speedco shop, reconfiguring the lot to allow for more parking and providing another access point at the back of the lot.<\/p>\n
Supervisors denied the conditional use application for the plans, claiming developers hadn\u2019t proved that the plans address several key requirements, including: That the roadway could handle the additional truck capacity and potential traffic safety issues, that pedestrians would have safe access to all facilities on the site, or that the changes specify adequate fire protection.<\/p>\n
It was unclear whether Love\u2019s had fully pulled out of the project at the time of the meeting.<\/p>\n
Kilar said he felt the issue was being mismanaged by township officials. He and a group of homeowners attended a township meeting in March to voice their concerns.<\/p>\n
At the meeting, Upper Bern solicitor Andrew Hoffman disputed Kilar\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Vision) is certainly more than welcome to appear in front of the planning commission at a public meeting,\u201d Hoffman said. \u201cThey have chosen not to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said officials are following the procedures laid out in township ordinances and that he\u2019s told Vision it needs need to come to a planning commission meeting to start the development process.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may not be doing what it (Vision) wants, but we are following procedures,\u201d Hoffman said. \u201cThey are more than welcome to continue the process they have started. It\u2019s their decision not to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vision did not attend the meeting and did not respond to a request for comments.<\/p>\n
Mike Fisher, a former supervisor, said he was in office when Vision first approached the township with the plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe specifically told them we cannot handle any more traffic on our roads,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cWe told them to come up with a plan to feed their traffic onto the interstate (I-78).\u201d<\/p>\n
Vision refused to make that plan, Fisher said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad they done that, it (the warehouse plan) might have been a lot farther down the road,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n
He said supervisors understood the expenses associated with making that happen, but their concern was public safety.<\/p>\n
He said Vision came in with an alternative plan that could have added traffic, and supervisors denied it along with other proposals that could have increased traffic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe asked them to work with us,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cThey haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some residents wondered why Vision hasn\u2019t attended meetings.<\/p>\n
Kilar noted that even if Vision ends up dropping the plans, homeowners would continue seeking interested developers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people who want to do distribution centers,\u201d Kilar said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plans have stalled for two warehouses below the proposed Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement warehouse. The plans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-145874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145874","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=145874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}