SANATOGA PA – In its latest cooperative effort with Limerick (PA) Township to frame the future of development surrounding the Sanatoga interchange of U.S. Route 422, the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners authorized a consultant Thursday night (June 17, 2010) to create an official map that graphically shows builders and property owners how it expects the area’s traffic to flow.

Consultant Peter Simone talked to commissioners about traffic flow on properties surrounding the Sanatoga interchange of U.S. Route 422.

The map, already in draft form and displayed to commissioners during their second meeting of the month in the municipal building on Buchert Road, indicates much of the development on vacant land within Lower Pottsgrove’s boundaries both north and south of the interchange would be along five-lane boulevards interspersed by two-lane feeder roads and an occasional traffic circle.

The map does not commit commissioners to any particular feature, according to consultant Peter Simone of Simone Collins, a Berwyn PA-based landscape architecture firm upon which the township has relied for several years. “It doesn’t force you to act in any way,” Simone reassured the board. “But it helps them (developers) know what you want, and it gives you options to act,” he said of the map.

Limerick Township supervisors authorized their portion of the map earlier this month. The Lower Pottsgrove board followed suit, unanimously, at a cost estimated to be about $1,500 or less. The maps are being coordinated by Traffic Planning and Design Inc., the Sanatoga company that serves as transportation engineer for both municipalities. TPD will ensure “the roads line up with what Limerick is also doing,” Simone noted.

Once Lower Pottsgrove’s map is completed, the board could hold appropriate hearings and ultimately adopt it as part of its planning code.

Simone and township officials have met on several occasions with several property owners and developers known to have an interest in attracting business to the interchange. There have been “few if any discussions about the roads as they’ve been laid out,” according to Simone. “The real discussions are about what’s going to happen with the zoning.”

Proposed zoning and property usage requirements yet to be adopted by commissioners will dictate what can be built within the area, where, for what purposes, and how. Those changes, initially created in draft form two years ago, were put on hold as Limerick and Lower Pottsgrove agreed to cooperate on interchange planning.

“We would like to build in as much flexibility in the zoning as possible, so developers have options too,” Simone said. “They’re all over the place with ideas about what they want to do with their properties, because the (real estate) market’s been so crazy.”

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