HATFIELD TWP — A new look is on the way for Hatfield’s favorite place to live más.
Township officials recently saw a sneak preview of a planned upgrade and lot consolidation for the Taco Bell restaurant on Broad Street.
"Currently, the property is developed as a former Pizza Hut and a current Taco Bell/Long John Silver’s, with two separate accesses to each of the properties,” said engineer Brian Cleary.
"The proposed redevelopment will consolidate the properties into a single property, and will also get rid of the two individual accesses to Broad Street, and propose a single access to the new combined development, with a combined parking area,” he said.
Located on the 1700 block of Broad Street south of Cowpath Road, the current Taco Bell building was constructed in 2003 to replace a prior, smaller building that had been built in 1981, according to MediaNews Group archives. County property records indicate that the 1.1-acre site was owned by Taco Bell Inc. from 1981 until 2006, when it was sold to an Oak Restaurants LP for $10; a sale in late 2021 transferred the property to a Conshohocken-based "Lansdale Investors LLC” for $1, according to county property records.
Just to the north of that site, the pyramid-roofed former Pizza Hut building sits on a site that is just short of one acre and has changed hands six times since 1997, with the most recent sale also occurring in late 2021 from Oak Restaurants LP to Lansdale Investors LLC for $1; in 2014 the township commissioners approved a request from the owners to connect the two sites to share parking.
Township planning and zoning officer Ken Amey introduced the planned project on July 26, saying the former Pizza Hut has "been closed up and it’s been repurposed a couple of times. It’s currently closed, and this project will result in the demolition of the current Pizza Hut restaurant, construction of a new building, for which no tenant has been identified, and then a remodeling of the Taco Bell interior.”
Cleary and developer Joe Depascale then gave details, telling the board that the main goal of the project is to remove the two separate driveways that enter and exit Broad Street, and create a new shared entrance between the two. The new driveway would lead to a combined lot with the Taco Bell in its current location, with plenty of parking for visitors to pick up their favorite burrito, quesadilla or a Baja Blast, and a new retail building just north of where the Pizza Hut now stands.
"The Taco Bell will no longer include a Long John Silver’s, it’ll just be a Taco Bell. A dual-ordering layout will be proposed for the Taco Bell,” Cleary said, showing a site plan that depicts two driveway lanes running along the eastern end of the site, then merging into one lane as they head toward the Taco Bell pickup window.
Replacing the Pizza Hut will be a new retail building of 3,767 square feet which Cleary said would be used for retail space, and located closer to Broad than the Pizza Hut had been. The two buildings will be surrounded by a total of 66 parking spaces along the shared driveway and behind the retail building.
"As of right now, it’s just general retail. They’re going to have to market it: if it doesn’t end up being a use that qualifies as general retail, if we need any sort of relief from the (township) ordinances, we’ll be back in front of you” for additional approvals, Cleary told the board.
Depascale added that his firm currently operates the Taco Bell and has already applied to the township for permits to remodel that building, while the changes to the parking and driveways will need PennDOT approval before any changes to the site layout are made.
"That’s usually the long lead item. So, as soon as we possibly can, but we’re going to get the building remodeled and cleaned out now,” he said.
Commissioner Bob Rodgers asked if any new tenant had been identified for the retail building, and Cleary said it had not. Board President Tom Zipfel asked if the project included any changes to the current roadway such as a turn lane, and Cleary said the current road would not change, only the driveways, and the stormwater retention basin behind the current Taco Bell will likely be expanded.
"We are actually expanding that facility, to meet the township’s requirements for discharge offsite, so we’ll be improving stormwater quality,” he said.
Several waiver requests are included in the formal plan documents submitted to the board, largely to do with the sizes of pipes, curbs, and sidewalks on the site; those waiver requests were vetted by the township’s planning commission and largely approved, Cleary told the board, adding that the township’s engineer "has indicated that they have no issues with the requested waivers.”
After the presentation and Q-and-A, Amey said the applicant would be back for a formal approval vote at the commissioners’ Aug. 23 meeting, and Depascale said he plans to remove the old Pizza Hut building as soon as possible.
"I’m going to demo that probably when I start the remodel, just to get it cleaned up and off the property now. It’s empty, and not in great shape, and we’re going to try and lease a new pad,” he said.
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