College Township Council on Thursday unanimously approved final plans for the first phase of a development that will bring hundreds of new residential units in the Dale Summit area.
Burkentine Builders’ 48-acre planned residential development will be constructed on the west side of Shiloh Road and north of Trout Road.
The 21.6-acre first phase at the south end of the development, behind the Pleasant Pointe apartment complex, will construct 197 units, including 64 fee-simple townhomes, 55 rental townhomes and two three-story apartment buildings, one with 42 units and one with 36 units. It will also have a 9,721-square-foot community center with a clubhouse, pool, pickleball courts, tot lot and parking.
It will have 18 of the overall project’s 62 units designated for the township’s workforce housing program, which is administered by the Centre County Housing and Land Trust. Those will include eight one-bedroom apartments, six three-bedroom rental townhomes, and four three-bedroom fee simple townhomes. The remainder will be allocated in phase two with 44 one- and two-bedroom apartments.
Council member Susan Trainor noted that the four fee simple townhomes will be the first of their kind in the township’s workforce housing program.
“The Burkentines have been working with the Centre County Housing and Land Trust throughout the process, so this isn’t new to them,” Lindsay Schoch, College Township principal planner, said.
The developer is aiming to break ground for phase one in 2026. According to the plan set, the first phase is projected for completion in the fall of 2028.
Phase two of the development, for which a plan submission is anticipated in 2028, will be built out over multiple sub-phases and will construct three apartment buildings with 168, 144 and 120 units — bringing the total number of residential units to 629. The second phase also has a 6.4-acre lot designated for commercial use, as well as amenity space.
The project has 12 acres of open space.
Access to the development will be from an extension of Pleasant Pointe Drive and a new street, Beckham Boulevard, connecting to Shiloh Road. The Centre Area Transportation Authority will service the development, with a bus stop to be located on the Pleasant Pointe Drive extension near the community center.
Approval of the plan has 18 conditions that must be met, most notably submission of a finalized traffic impact study, highway occupancy permit and memorandum of understanding for workforce housing, all of which John Sepp of project engineer PennTerra said are on track, but Thursday’s action represents a culmination of a process that dates back to early 2023 when Burketine first requested a rezoning to allow multi-family residential in the Planned Research and Business Park District.
“This has been a long process and we’re coming to the end,” Schoch said.
The township ultimately approved allowing multi-family residential in the PRBD as a conditional use if it is built under a planned residential development plan. From there came myriad plan reviews, public hearings and meetings leading up to a tentative plan approval in April.
The final plan was consistent with the tentative plan and required little further council input before approval on Thursday.
“Staff, the developer and my fellow council folks here deserve a lot of credit I think for this,” Council President Eric Bernier said. “We stayed nimble. We were responsive. The developer stayed flexible, and we were able to craft something that fits… at least in the spirit of what we’re trying to do out there while we evaluate the entire area.
As the township works on implementing form-based code — which regulates by physical form rather than separation of uses — for Dale Summit, Schoch said staff and Burkentine have worked together on a plan aligned with the vision for the area.
“We tried to acknowledge the fact that we’re changing the zoning in Dale Summit to more hybrid form-based code,” she said. “So we worked with the applicant on the rezoning and the planning commission closely to ensure that the density, the walkability, the open space elements of the form-based code are going to be incorporated into this design, which we feel they did a pretty good job at that.”
“It could prove as a good catalyst project for us and a good example for the density especially some of the townhomes,” Schoch later added. “A lot of the townhomes are consistent with the width that we’re proposing in our form-based code.”
