Ferguson Township supervisors on Tuesday approved a final land development plan for a three-storefront shopping center on a portion of former Harner Farm property along West College Avenue.
Orchard Square is a planned one-story, 19,856-square-foot commercial building with three spaces of 10,722 square feet, 6,483 square feet and 2,566 square feet.
Tenants for the storefronts have not been announced.
Property owner Aspen Whitehall Partners originally submitted a preliminary plan for the new building last August and it was approved in October. The final land development was submitted in March.
The development will have 113 parking spaces — 17 more than the minimum required — at the front of the building, oriented facing West College Avenue, and the rear. It also will include parking islands, trees around the property and stormwater basins.
Main access to the site will be from the private drive off of West College Avenue shared with the adjacent Sheetz that opened last fall at the corner of College Avenue and Whitehall Road. Access also will be available from the Sheetz property, which has an additional entrance off of Whitehall Road.
The new building is also adjacent to Orchard View, a development of 36 semi-custom three- to five- bedroom homes being constructed behind and next to the Orchard Square site.
In a revision from the preliminary plan requested by Ferguson Township Planning Commission, a sidewalk will be added to connect the existing sidewalk on West College Avenue to the new building.
The properties are part of 71.9 acres that Aspen Whitehall Partners acquired from the Harners in 2018 after the land was rezoned for for commercial and residential uses. The developer intends to have a mix of single- and multi-family residential, retail and office space, though formal plans for much of the property — which includes more than 27 acres of commercial land and 44 of residential — have not yet been submitted.
The Harners retained 33 acres of farmland owned by their family since 1945.
Supervisors voted 4-1 to approve the final plan for Orchard Square. Board Chair Laura Dininni voted no.
Dininni did not specify a reason for voting against the plan, but during discussion raised concerns about what she has observed of traffic traveling from the adjacent Sheetz property onto Whitehall Road.
“The problem is that the field of vision for folks who are supposed to be stopping is actually too clear, because what they do is look way down Whitehall and just try to beat the cars onto the road without stopping,” she said. “My proposal is that we could have used shrubbery to appropriately disturb the visual field in a non-dangerous way to slow the traffic to make them stop at that stop sign. In the future, let’s work together to increase safety by thinking about what it looks like when traffic exits a commercial facility onto the public road and just really think in a conscious way about how we’re helping those folks navigate that task.”
She also said the developer had previously talked about maintaining trees at the back of the Orchard View property, but all have been removed.
During discussion of the preliminary plan in October, Dininni said she felt there was too much parking and not enough landscaping.
“It is what it is,” she said on Tuesday just before the vote.
