Hilltop Mobile Home Park has been sold and its residents evicted, but plans to build student housing on the site have now run into a roadblock.
The College Township Planning Commission has come out against a rezoning request from Lafayette, IN-based Trinitas Ventures. The planning commission is recommending that the College Township Council deny the proposed change.
Trinitas Ventures specializes in luxury student housing and wants to build a new complex on the 30-acre parcel at Squirrel Drive, where Hilltop Mobile Home Park once stood.
Kenneth and Sharon Mayes, who owned Hilltop, sold the land to Trinitas Ventures and ordered tenants to move out. That sparked a heated controversy. Many former Hilltop residents didn’t know where they would end up, even as the Feb. 28 eviction deadline came and went.
Former Hilltop residents urged the council to reject the proposal. Others in the community also asked council to deny re-zoning; if for no other reason than to prevent another student housing complex from being built in State College.
College Township Senior Planner Mark Holdren says council members will discuss the planning commission’s recommendation during a public meeting, then will decide whether to approve the rezoning request. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. on June 25.
“We’re not saying the property shouldn’t be rezoned,” Holdren said. “We’re just saying what Trinitas has proposed isn’t appropriate at this time.”
In February, Travis Vencel, Vice President for Development at Trinitas, sent a letter to Holdren. In it, he says Trinitas wants to rezone the land to R3, which means it will accommodate single family, multi-family and mobile home uses. Vencel did not immediately return requests for comment.
Holdren says he doesn’t know what, at this point, the College Township Council will decide. In December, at a packed township meeting – where Trinitas representatives were expected to present the rezoning proposal but did not show up – council chairman David Fryer sympathized with the dozens of supporters who at the time, wanted to save Hilltop.
“I don’t want to go through a rezoning request any more than anyone does on this council,” Fryer said. “I wish we could take a vote tonight, but we can’t.” Fryer did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
