Steve Nave, of Tri-State Ventures, LP, presented sketch plans to the Bethlehem Township Board of Commissioners during its Monday night meeting. According to Nave, St. Luke\u2019s plans to house medical offices, urgent care, and a physical therapy center in the building.<\/p>\n
Variances for both the building and parking lot are still needed from the township zoning hearing board.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really difficult site to develop,\u201d said Commissioner Malissa Davis. \u201cI think that diagonally makes it better and less onerous for the residents on the west.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis praised the conceptual plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if you put it smack dab on the corner of Farmersville and Easton, it will really be a hardship in the design for one. Second, it could make Farmersville look like a canyon and all the parking would be directed at the residents,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Michael Hudak said he also liked the plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree that developing that site, it\u2019s not an easy footprint, and this would work better than pushing everything out to the curb,” he said.<\/p>\n
But not every commissioner was convinced that the sketch plan was the right one for the parcel.<\/p>\n
\u201dI think it needs to be looked at again,\u201d said Commissioner John Gallagher. \u201cWe get a streetscape that is more desirable than all this open space from the street. That\u2019s the purpose of the street enhancement overlay.”<\/p>\n
Nave said the streetscape plan for the property will be presented at the zoning hearing meeting for variances.<\/p>\n
Commissioners also expressed concern over the potential increase in traffic with the new construction.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re likely going to have to look into a widening of that intersection (Farmersville Road and Easton Avenue),\u201d said Hudak.<\/p>\n
Davis said she was concerned about drivers making a left-hand turn onto Easton Avenue during rush hour and potential congestion onto Farmersville Road.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat intersection backs up and this would be putting traffic onto Farmersville,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Nave said those same issues have already been expressed by the township\u2019s planning board and will all be further worked out with the traffic and neighborhood impact studies that will be conducted and submitted to PennDOT for review and approval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve Nave, of Tri-State Ventures, LP, presented sketch plans to the Bethlehem Township Board of Commissioners during its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,38576,805],"class_list":["post-159341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-insideyourtown","tag-lehighvalley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159341","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=159341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}