Housing Density

Borough officials announced Tuesday that they have sold excess sewage treatment capacity to Tredyffrin Township to the tune of $528,000. The windfall, expected after the transaction is finalized next week, puts Malvern $1 million in the black, spurring some Borough Council discussion about the town's fiscal direction. At issue: whether to eliminate Malvern's $1.2 million debt or hold onto its cash reserves. By paying off the debt, residents would be taxed just on operating expenses in a town where the tax rate has been holding steady at 30 mills for the last two years, borough officials said.

Pennsbury Township is at war with itself again, as the supervisors move to circumvent a court order blocking a proposed town-center development along Route 1. A residents' group opposed to the development, Pennsbury Village, thought it had won in August, when a state judge said township land crucial to the deal could not be used for it. Without that tract, the site is too small for the housing density the developers want. On Monday, the supervisors are expected to decide whether to change the zoning to allow the original housing plan on the smaller site.

A development company that filed plans to build 577 homes in Eastampton Township last year is suing township officials, accusing them of stalling the project so they could rezone the land in question. Eastampton Center, with headquarters in Union, is asking Burlington County Superior Court to compel township officials to approve the plans for the housing development and for 200,000 square feet of commercial space on the company's vacant parcel. The land, which is between Smithville, Woodlane and Monmouth Roads, previously was zoned for residential and commercial use. It was rezoned to agricultural, commercial, business park and recreational use on Dec. 23, nearly four months after the project plans were submitted to township officials.

After 10 months in the making, a proposed historical preservation district in Cheltenham Township will have to wait a bit longer for approval. And even then, its passage is not guaranteed. On Tuesday night, the board of commissioners closed a public hearing and took no vote on the proposal except to study the notes of testimony and discuss it again at a future hearing. "I'm for development, when it can be fit in with preservation," said commissioner Harvey Portner. It was Portner who, 10 months ago, first brought up the possibility of combining three properties - the Faith Theological Seminary, the Chelten House and Elstowe Manor, both now part of the Dominican Sisters' Retreat and Georgian Terrace, an administration building for Temple University's Tyler School of Art - into a single historic district.

Passage of a revised zoning ordinance was upstaged by a show of irritation among the three East Fallowfield Supervisors at their meeting Wednesday night. Earl Doan, chairman of the board of supervisors, promised revenge on Supervisor David Leavitt after Leavitt abstained from voting on the new ordinance, which had been approved by Doan and Supervisor Ronald Scott. "I feel like I've been shafted," Doan said, "because I spent one hell of a lot of time on this thing. " After the 2-1 vote, Doan said he would be "a lot more reluctant to support anything Mr. Leavitt presents" to the board.

By a 7-0 vote, the Middletown Township Planning Commission has snubbed a company's request for a zoning change to develop 18 acres in the northern part of the township. The Erin Development Corp. of Langhorne had asked for a change from manufacturing to residential zoning. Ed Murphy, representing Erin at the meeting, had pitched a sketch plan for 35 single-family homes. The Planning Commission members agreed that the land should be zoned residential, but they favored a different type of residential zoning.

Residents organized to persuade the developer of a high-density subdivision in Buckingham to relocate a recreation complex and several houses have won the concessions - in exchange for higher housing density. Developer Christopher Gigliotti of Langhorne got the unofficial blessings of the township's supervisors last week on an alternative sketch plan for the new subdivision on a 120-acre tract along Pineville Road. One of the residents' major concerns was that noise from the planned recreation complex at Buckfield Farms would disrupt their rural neighborhood.

The New Britain Township Board of Supervisors voted on Monday to designate about 60 of the 158 acres of open space owned by the township as wildlife and nature preserves that can never be built upon. The preserve acreage is scattered throughout the township, but 42 acres are near Fairwood Drive and Park Avenue. Board Vice President Frederick Groshens said that township officials had considered as early as 10 years ago to get these areas officially preserved, but an active Park and Recreation Board had been around only for the last year and a half.

Geology was the subject of the 10th hearing in the ongoing Tredyffrin zoning hearing board case in which the applicants are arguing the township code is not valid for their property. The hearings, which began last year, have accumulated more than 700 typed pages of testimony and more testimony due. The next hearing is set for June 24. Mill Valley Associates is challenging the township ordinance provisions for housing density for its 76 acres on both sides of Mill Road south of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

One of the largest remaining tracts of privately owned undeveloped land in Warminster finally may be headed toward development. At a meeting of the township's five-member Planning Commission on Wednesday, representatives of Orleans Corp., a builder and developer in Huntingdon Valley, proposed to build houses, townhouses and condominiums on an 85-acre pasture being sold by Christ's Home. Although the plan is still in a conceptual phase, township officials who attended the meeting said it called for roughly 765 units, or an average of nine an acre.