A large apartment and townhome complex proposal by a team led by developer Lou Pektor in Palmer Township mostly sailed through a Lehigh Valley Planning Commission committee on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The application proposes the construction of 320 apartments across seven four-story apartment buildings, three 12-car garages, a clubhouse with associated amenities and two bridges crossing over Schoeneck Creek. It\u2019s the second phase of the project at 1492 Van Buren Road.<\/p>\n
The Comprehensive Planning Committee has moved the draft letter to the township to the full LVPC, which will take it up at Thursday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
Palmer Township Director of Planning Craig Beavers, who also sits on the committee, said plans for the site are moving forward after years of legal wrangling.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in the 2010s, this site was originally proposed as a major industrial facility,\u201d said Beavers, who later abstained from voting on adoption of the letter. \u201cIt was a truck terminal under a different developer at the time, and they were proposing up to a couple thousand truck trips a day idling through this area.\u201d<\/p>\n
A settlement between developers and the township in 2025<\/a> shifted the land\u2019s use to residential. The land was purchased from developer Abe Aityeh in June 2025 for $11.4 million<\/a> by a joint group led by Pektor.<\/p>\n The first phase, which was reviewed by the LVPC last year, includes 92 townhomes and is split from Phase 2 by Schoeneck Creek. Two bridges will be built over the creek to connect them.<\/p>\n According to Palmer\u2019s website, the first phase has been tabled by the township\u2019s planning commission while the developer revises its plans. An additional phase across Van Buren Road will include 216 additional apartments. That has also been tabled by the township.<\/p>\n Some issues LVPC staff members had with the second phase included concerns over preservation of wetlands around Schoeneck Creek, including riparian buffers, and the potential for sinkholes.<\/p>\n Another potential problem was the buildings\u2019 proximity to Route 33, which runs along the property\u2019s northwest boundary, could cause air and noise quality concerns.<\/p>\n It was also recommended that the township request an updated transportation impact study for the site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A large apartment and townhome complex proposal by a team led by developer Lou Pektor in Palmer Township…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,6290,157,182,139,434,2182,28,432],"class_list":["post-272115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-easton-area","tag-lehigh-valley","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-palmer-township","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272115","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=272115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}