Agreement again seemed distant Thursday evening as the State College Planning Commission once more weighed the future of the ‘Beaver Canyon’ area.
HFL Corp., a downtown developer, wants to construct an eight-story student-apartment building at 254 E. Beaver Ave. The land, home to a former fraternity house, sits at the southwest corner of East Beaver Avenue and Locust Lane. It’s the southwestern edge of Beaver Canyon — the unofficial name for a high-density, off-campus stretch of student housing.
To enable the new project, the borough would need to rezone 254 E. Beaver Ave. from its current, small-scale residential status to a more commercial designation. Members of the Planning Commission are advising the Borough Council on how best to handle the request. (Council members, not the commission members, hold the decision-making power.)
But commission members split over several key questions at their Thursday meeting, as they have in months before. Two of the members — Michael Roeckel and Anita Genger — said they think new development at the site should be limited to four stories. Cindy Carpenter said she would prefer a limit closer to the four- to five-story range.
Evan Myers and Ann Bolser, meanwhile, said they would support an eight-story cap. Members Charles Gable and Ron Madrid were absent.
‘I do feel we’re very dense (in development) at that end of town,’ Carpenter said in the meeting. She said she’s concerned that the area doesn’t have ‘enough of a mix of uses.’
Neighboring the proposed redevelopment site, a student apartment building across Locust Lane stands seven stories high; another, across East Beaver Avenue, stands 12 stories.
Peg Hambrick, a resident of the nearby Highlands neighborhood, said she would like to see no zoning changes at 254 E. Beaver Ave. The density allowed under the current designation — a few stories at most — is ample, she said.
Likewise, ‘I think there’s too many students in too small of an area right there’ already, Roeckel said. ‘I think having that many students concentrated in that small area is what’s given us a lot of problems with riots, with football weekend hijinks’ and with rowdiness in the Highlands.
Bolser, however, said she believes that in the burdens, the borough can find opportunity. She would like to encourage development in town, she said.
Advocates for the apartment project, at prior meetings, have said the borough needs to embrace dense residential development downtown. Otherwise, they have said, homeowners in traditionally single-family neighborhoods will face increased pressure to convert their houses into student rentals.
And that, the advocates have said, will make it even more difficult for the borough to strengthen its stagnant tax base. Most students do not pay a substantial amount of earned income taxes to the borough; more permanent residents usually do.
Meanwhile, the borough zoning staff will use the Planning Commission’s feedback Thursday to craft some specific zoning concepts for 254 E. Beaver Ave., Zoning Officer Herman Slaybaugh said. The commission is scheduled to discuss the matter again at a noon meeting on Oct. 6 in the borough building, 243 S. Allen St.
Earlier coverage
