Shoppes at Concord

The Concord Township Planning Commission heard a revised plan for the Shoppes at Concord on Monday night. The plan, submitted by the applicant Retail Sites, is now without a previously proposed gas station, but with some new traffic plans for Route 202 and Rudge Road, and with some conditional use approval needed.

Leonard Altieri III, one of the attorneys representing Retail Sites, gave an overview of the plan.

The site is 23.89 acres. It is in Concord Township, but it abuts Chadds Ford Township.

However, Altieri said, “the subject property is, as you will hear later on, wholly and completely within the boundaries of Concord Township.”

The applicant is proposing to construct a shopping center of 158,000 square feet, which, Altieri said, is about 7,000 square feet less than a previously approved center for the same site.

That plan never came to fruition, and that previous developer, Pettinaro Real Estate, sold the property to Retail Sites.

While the shopping center is allowed by right in that C2 zoning district, there are some parts of the plan that will require conditional use approval. Namely, a car wash, several restaurants with drive-throughs, and the sale of wine and beer at the Giant supermarket, which plans to move into the center when approved.

A previous liquor license transfer application was denied in April, but Altieri said that was a different matter.

Altieri added that there’s an additional 23.31 acres between the planned shopping center and the Ridings in Chadds Ford Township. Again, he stressed to shopping center site is solely in Concord Township.

After Altieri’s introduction, Retail Sites President Robert Hill spoke.

“We made some adjustments [to the original submission] that we think will help in many respects, that might not satisfy everyone, but we hope it will,” Hill said.

He said they removed the proposed gas station that was to be part of the Giant. “There will still be a Giant store; it just won’t have a fuel facility.”

Another aspect was to include “community spaces” into the development. That, he said, came from a request from the township.

Part of that space came from separating several of the buildings. Initially, several of the pads, including the one for the Giant, were separated only by expansion joints. That was part of the zoning appeal in December and January, but now the Giant and the next building are separated by 60 feet. He called that new space the “community patio.”

Hill added that they’ve added more walking spaces, landscaping, and places to sit as part of the plan.

Hill then said that PennDOT had asked them to make some traffic improvements. What PennDOT asked, he said, was for them to look at northbound 202 and create a left-hand turn into the project, instead of having people turn left at Ridge, then make another left into the property from Ridge Road.

So, Hill said, they contacted Lamar Advertising, which owns the billboard at the top of the split, and bought a piece of that billboard area to install a traffic light on the southbound side of 202 to let northbound traffic into the site.

“There won’t be any exiting there,” Hill said. “What that allows us to do is to reduce the improvements in the widening of Ridge Road, essentially removing a lane on Ridge.”

What had been considered was adding a second left-hand turn lane onto Ridge, but with the addition of the new light, that wouldn’t be necessary, so there would only be the one westbound lane as it is now, he explained.

“This also allows us to keep the dedicated right from 202 north into Springhill Boulevard,” and into Glen Eagle Square and Springhill Farm.

In addition to the one westbound lane onto Ridge Road, he said there would be two dedicated left turn lanes from Ridge onto 202, one straight through lane into Glen Eagle Square, and one dedicated right turn lane for people to go from Ridge to 202 south.

In terms of economic impact, Hill said this is about a $70 million project. The tax revenue that we will produce to the Garnet Valley School District for the first 10 years of the project is about $4.5 to $4.8 million without adding any additional students to the school district.”

He went on to say the township revenue is a combination of taxes, building permits and some other fees, which comes to about $1.1 million over the first 10 years.

Hill said they estimate adding about 400 full-time jobs and 600 part-time jobs.

A surveyor from Control Point Associates then confirmed what Altieri said earlier that the entire site was within Concord Township. That said, Planning Commission Chairman Mark Elser questioned some of the documents used to determine what was in Concord or Chadds Ford, but there was no resolution on that Monday night.

Engineer Eric Britz, of Bohler Engineering, then spoke about stormwater management on the site, saying there will be ample stormwater protection. He said having more pedestrian accessibility and more amenity spaces — people can walk around or sit — will help with that. There are also ample stormwater basins to contain water, some of which will empty into a wetland area behind the site, a larger property that separates the proposed shopping center from the Ridings. There will also be more landscaping with trees along Ridge and Route 202. The water will eventually make its way to the [Brandywine] creek.

Britz also said that the stormwater management plan meets not only Concord’s code, but also Chadds Ford’s, which he said is stricter than Concord’s.

“We wanted to make it so that we would put out a good faith plan in that we would decrease the stormwater to the more strict requirements, and make a better plan,” he said.

Then came Mark Roth, a senior project manager with Bowman Consulting acting as the traffic engineer. Roth said the current plan differs from an earlier one in which there were two right-in-right-out access points on Route 202, but there was no direct ingress from northbound 202. Northbound traffic that wanted in would have to access the site from Ridge Road. But that has changed with the revised plan.

That revision, as Hill said earlier, calls for a right-in-right-out access at the southernmost point on southbound Route 202. The access at the proposed light at the northern end of the split of 202 is also right-in-right-out from southbound traffic but also allows for a left-turn in from northbound 202. Again, what that does, Roth said, allows for just the one westbound lane on Ridge, and only one left turn lane onto Ridge from 202.

Roth also addressed the parking issue at the site. He said Concord’s code calls for six parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet of gross floor area. By that calculation, he said, they would need more than 949 parking spaces. But they made another calculation, looking at what the demand is.

“That demand falls well below what’s required,” he said. “The demand for a center such as this would be around 267 parking spaces required during the weekday, and 389 spaces required on a typical Saturday. That’s far below the required 949. But the plan being proposed tonight calls for 763 parking spaces.”

The 763 spaces represent 4.83 spaces per 1,000 square feet of gross floor space. That figure is similar to other shopping centers in the area.

Other centers in the area include Glen Eagle Square with 4.73 per thousand, 4.67 at Brandywine Mills, 4.26 at the Shops at Brinton Lake, and Concordville Acme with 4.52.

“Collectively, they average about 4.55, which is below what we’re proposing,” Roth said.

After the presentation, residents of both Concord and Chadds Ford had a chance to address the commission. Some of the comments made and questions raised were somewhat rhetorical in nature in that they couldn’t be answered at the time.

Attorney John Long, who is representing members of the Save-Ridge.org group, was first up. He objected to the fact that there were no renderings presented for the car wash and the drive-through restaurants that need conditional use approval.

Long said many of the Chadds Ford residents in the area are on well water and are concerned that the car wash would pose a pollution issue. “We’d like that to be fleshed out more.”

He also said there’s strong concern about traffic impacts. “You’re talking about taking Ridge Road, which is a tiny little two-lane road to five lanes.”

John Peterson, from Concord Township, wanted to know if the patio area was considered green space. He also questioned the definition of restaurants because that could amount to a multitude of Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Burger Kings. He also said the stormwater management has to be designed appropriately for the people in Chadds Ford who are on well water.

A woman from Concord whose name could not be discerned questioned the need for another car wash because there’s another one just a mile down the road. Concord Township engineer Nate Cline interjected, saying another one is going to be built near the intersection of Routes 1 and 202.

Patricia Young, from Concord, said she hopes the township will be a good neighbor to the folks in Chadds Ford. Her concern is with stormwater management, and how that could affect things downstream.

Chadds Ford Township Supervisors’ Chairman Timotha Trigg addressed the commission about the proposed car wash and the treatment of stormwater runoff.

“You don’t get to choose if somebody wants to put in a shopping center where one is permitted. You don’t get to choose if they put in a car wash, if that’s allowed. You don’t get to choose to make the water run uphill. Water is going to run downhill. You don’t get to choose if downhill is residential. What you do get to choose is what conditions you put on it. And I would ask you to really focus and really ask your engineer what provisions could be required to use only biodegradable detergents, to have additional recycling requirements for the car wash, to require, at the applicant’s expense, that the water that’s released from the stormwater to make sure there aren’t excess pollutants. Put the burden where it should be, on the party responsible.”

The Municipalities Planning Code clock is running on the project. Concord Township has 60 days to act on the conditional use requirements and 90 days to act on the land development plan.

The applicant will be returning to the Planning Commission after further conversations with the township engineer and the land planner.