Government
The 150,000 square foot building near the Doylestown Airport would have generated 90 truck trips a day to the township’s narrow roads.
Residents gather on the front lawn of the Buckingham Township building on July 24, 2024, to view a hearing on a proposed warehouse near the Doylestown Airport at a meeting.
Residents applaud the decision by Buckingham Township to reject a proposed warehouse near the Doylestown Airport at a meeting on July 24, 2024.Photo Credit: Ed Doyle
Residents gather on the front lawn of the Buckingham Township building on July 24, 2024, to view a hearing on a proposed warehouse near the Doylestown Airport at a meeting.Photo Credit: Ed Doyle
Residents applaud the decision by Buckingham Township to reject a proposed warehouse near the Doylestown Airport at a meeting on July 24, 2024.Photo Credit: Ed Doyle
Previous
Next
By Ed Doyle
Published July 25, 2024 at 1:05 PM
Last updated July 25, 2024 at 1:05 PM
DOYLESTOWN TOWNSHIP, PA—In front of hundreds of residents both inside and outside of the township building, Buckingham officials on Wednesday night rejected a proposal to put a warehouse in a field near the Doylestown Airport.
The 150,000-square-foot warehouse was proposed for a parcel of land bounded by Stony Lane, Cold Spring Creamery Road, Burnt House Hill Road and Landisville Road. The developer projected that 45 trucks making 90 trips a day would have used those roads to access the building.
The township’s board of supervisors held a hearing last night to determine the fate of the proposal. During a nearly five-hour meeting, it was standing-room only in the township’s large meeting room, and 100-plus more residents were on the front lawn of the building in folding chairs, where they watched the proceedings on a large TV.
Sign Up for FREE Doylestown Newsletter
Get local news you can trust in your inbox.
For months, Buckingham residents have warned that the warehouse would flood the township’s country roads with truck traffic. They said truck traffic would not only clog the roads but pose a threat to motorists, pedestrians, runners and cyclists, all of whom use the streets.
Critics of the proposal added that having so much truck traffic streaming down narrow, residential roads would destroy the rural character of the township, ruining their way of life and crashing property values.
Residents also warned that the warehouse would affect not just Buckingham, but neighboring townships like Plumstead and Doylestown, as truck traffic rolled through all of those communities to get on or off larger roads.
One problem with those arguments is that property near the Doylestown Airport is zoned for industrial uses like warehouses. Township officials repeatedly cited that fact as they seemed to get behind the proposal. And when the developer behind the project, J.G. Petrucci Company Inc., planned to leave more than half of the property undeveloped, that helped build support among township officials.
The developer made other promises to sweeten the terms of the deal. It has promised to make improvements to some local roads, including widening Stony Lane to make room for truck traffic coming in and out of the building. And at last night’s meeting, the developer said it would agree to reduce the number of loading docks in the building and make other changes to address residents’ concerns.
For residents who viewed the warehouse and the truck traffic it would produce as an existential threat to the character of Buckingham, none of that was enough. When the warehouse seemed like it was on a fast track to being approved, critics found a new way to fight back.
At a May 1 meeting, the community group Stop the Buckingham Warehouse argued that a review of the plans showed that the building would not be used as a traditional warehouse, where goods are delivered and stored. The building would instead be used as a trucking terminal, or a place to unload trucks, sort the merchandise and then ship it out quickly.
While the Buckingham facility would have been a little small to function as an Amazon warehouse, an early rumor about the building, it could be a good solution for a larger retailer that was looking to deliver goods to its stores in the region. The building would address “last-mile delivery,” a warehousing term that describes how to get merchandise off over-the-road trucks and deliver it to stores and homes.
Community residents who have worked in warehousing and logistics who spoke at Wednesday night’s meeting said that last-mile delivery facilities tend to produce much higher levels of truck traffic because vehicles are constantly coming and going. Township resident Tim Cathers, who said he’s worked in transportation and logistics for more than 30 years, said the difference between a warehouse and a truck terminal is important because inventory in truck terminals “moves in and out of the building at a much faster rate than at a storage warehouse.”
Cathers said these terminals tend to have more doors than traditional warehouses—like the Buckingham proposal—and a much higher volume of what he called “throughput,” or the movement of goods. “More doors means more throughput and more trucks,” Cathers said.
The difference between a warehouse and a trucking terminal is significant because of zoning laws. Buckingham’s zoning regulations, for example, require truck terminals to be 1,000 feet from private wells. The well for one house is only 57 feet away from the edge of the property.
Buckingham’s zoning regulations also require truck terminals to have “immediate access” to arterial roads like routes 313, 413, 202 and 263, not narrow country roads like Stony Lane and Landisville Road.
Because the proposed building can’t meet those rules, residents argued that township officials had to reject it.
Several township officials countered that they didn’t think that the building meets the definition of a truck terminal, which typically has facilities to repair and store vehicles. Representatives from the developer also disputed that the building was being built as a truck terminal.
But Cathers said that a search of Petrucci buildings similar to the one being proposed in Buckingham found ads that specifically referred to the buildings as “ideal for last-mile delivery.” He said that none of the ads he saw said the buildings could be used for long-term storage or warehousing.
Cathers’ presentation fired up the crowd. When the meeting was opened up to public comment at about 11:30 p.m., the crowd had thinned out. Those who remained rallied, making impassioned pleas to township officials to stop the project.
Several said that Buckingham is notorious for resisting development, even when it comes to requests from residents to put additions on houses. They implored township officials to use that same rigor in screening the warehouse proposal.
Many speakers begged township officials to put the brakes on the proposal and accused them of not doing enough to scrutinize the plans. Mike Bateman, an organizer of the group Stop the Buckingham Warehouse, complained that one of the plans for one of the largest buildings in township history “was on cruise control.”
Other residents said they couldn’t understand how a township that has done such a great job of preserving open space would move forward with a proposal that would change the community.
It was after midnight when the township’s three supervisors began the process of making a decision on whether to vote for or against the proposal. Two of the three supervisors said they thought the project would in fact function like a warehouse, not a truck terminal. Many in the audience gasped at that decision, thinking it was laying the grounds for the supervisors to approve the project.
But minutes later, when it came time to vote up or down on the project, the mood shifted. Two of the three supervisors voted against moving the project forward, leading to thunderous applause from the audience.
In announcing his decision to vote against the proposal, Chairman Paul Calderaio said that he had heard feedback from the community and was taking it seriously.
“There are simply too many unaddressed concerns to warrant allowing this plan in my opinion to move forward,” Calderaio said. Board member Jon Forest similarly voted against the proposal after saying that he thought the proposal would function as a truck terminal.
Vice Chairman Maggie Rash explained that she voted in favor of the proposal because it seemed like the least bad option for developing the site. In 2000, the township approved a much larger warehouse that would develop much more of the land on the site. The current developers could opt to build that size facility with relatively few restrictions since it was already approved by the township.
Rash said she appreciated the fact that in the current project, the developers had proposed keeping so much of the property undeveloped and had offered to reduce the number of loading docks in the project. She warned that the next proposal could be bigger and much worse for the township.
Rash also predicted that the current proposal will likely wind up in court. “Where it goes from here I’m guessing is up to the courts in Doylestown,” she said.
Want more news like this delivered to your inbox? Sign up for our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters online.