Newtown Zoning Board Continues Twining Bridge Road Appeal To July

NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP, PA — The Newtown Township Zoning Hearing Board has continued
an appeal until July on a developer’s plan to subdivide a property on Twining Bridge Road into two lots.

DeLuca Construction is seeking zoning relief for gross density, building separation, side yard setbacks and building envelope to build two single family homes on the .308 acre property located at Declaration Drive and Twining Bridge Road next to Devonshire Meadows.

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DeLuca, which has an agreement of sale with the owner to purchase the property provided it can secure zoning relief, is proposing to demolish three existing structures on the property, including a barn, a main house and an accessory residential building, subdivide the property into two lots
and build two single family homes.

“This will not increase the density because there are already two dwellings on the property now,” said DeLuca’s land development attorney Joe Blackburn. “What is not on the property is any manner of stormwater management, any manner of safety control for the litany of safety concerns on the property or any manner of appropriate and proper buffering,” he said.

At a minimum, Blackburn said it will need two lots to recoup the cost of demolition, including the removal of asbestos from the existing buildings, which Blackburn described as being in “an advanced state of dilapidation.”

“This is not an instance of seeking to increase profit. Nothing happens on this property at all without the grant of this relief,” he said. “One (home) doesn’t happen. Two happens or the status quo. This is not an attempt to maximize profit. It will cost us upward of $200,000 just to clean this dump up. And that cleanup does not happen absent two houses. This is not about maximizing profit. This is an attempt simply to clean up the property.”

This was not the first time the property has been before the zoning board. In 2017 Blackburn said the property owner sought similar zoning relief for a three lot subdivision. Blackburn said his office got involved in an attempt to broker a deal which involved a two lot subdivision, which was more palatable to the surrounding neighborhood.

“Fast forward six years the current owner has the property under contract and approached us on what we could do here. We remembered from six years ago that it appears this would be a very achievable project,” said Blackburn.

During the hearing, the project’s lead engineer Justin Geonnotti from Dynamic Engineering in Newtown, testified that the relief being requested is the minimum required to achieve the requested two lot subdivision.

Given the costs involved in clearing the site for development, Blackburn asked Geonnotti if the remediation work is achievable with a one lot subdivision.

“No,” he responded.

“The cost incurred to ameliorate all those issues is significant enough that they would not be implemented, but for the ability to spread that cost over two lots,” Blackburn asked.

“That’s correct,” said Geonnotti.

Attorney Dave Sander, who attended the hearing to oppose the appeal on behalf of the township, asked Geonnotti to explain his answer.

“It’s an economics argument,” Geonnotti said. “The developer would purchase the property for a certain price and would have to remediate the concerns on the property. Everything that is existing on that property has to be demolished and removed in a responsible manner to bring that site up to a developable condition. There’s a certain cost of doing that. With the purchase price of the property and the remediation of the property it is not feasible to develop this site as a single lot. There would be a loss.”

“So there would be no profit?” pressed Sander. “And yet DeLuca knows about the condition of the property, knows that it’s going to cost $175,000 conservatively to get the property ready for development and still wants to buy the property for whatever the purchase price is?”

Case law, argued Sander, “requires the applicant to prove an unnecessary hardship. All the applicant has done in this case is to show the houses they want to put up are necessary to maximize profit.

“Unreasonable economic burden may be considered in determining the presence of unnecessary hardship,” he said. “It may also have somewhat relaxed to a degree of hardship that will justify a dimensional variance, however it did not alter the principle that a substantial burden must attend all dimensionally compliant uses of the property not just the particular use the owner chooses. A variance, whether labeled dimensional or use, is appropriate only where the property and not the person is subject to the hardship.

“We have clearly heard the reason why the applicant wants to subdivide this property into two lots and that is because of economic hardship,” he said. “This is just another step toward degrading the existing Conservation Management district – the three acre zoning – which we have precious little of left in Newtown Township.”

Neighbor John McIntyre, who joined as a party to the appeal, read a statement into the record opposed to the relief.

“As this property currently sits, it is in compliance with our conservation management zoning regulations. It is a 3.08 acre lot with a minimum of three acres required and one single family home is what is permitted,” said McIntyre. “DeLuca is proposing to subdivide this property in half to build two single family homes. This will decrease the minimum necessary acreage by 50 percent and double the number of houses.

“If you look up and down Twining Bridge Road, you will see pretty much all the houses are single family homes on lots of three or more acres because that is what the zoning requires and that’s what all the property owners on the street have complied with. DeLuca seeks a variance so it can violate our CM zoning,” said McIntyre.

“The Municipalities Planning Code is very clear that there must be a hardship,” he said. “The applicant in this case has not proven a hardship and that’s because none exists. If there’s any type of a hardship here it’s to my property,” said McIntyre.

“I already have significant flooding on my property during hard rains. It flows from this property to my property. During heavy rain, it’s like a huge water slide. Now they want to add more impervious surface,” he told the zoning board.

“Thirty-six years ago when my wife and I were looking for a piece of ground to build our house we wanted something with open space,” said McIntyre. “When we found this lot one of the first things I did was to ask the township if more than one house could be built on that property. I was told it won’t happen because it is conservation management land. With that in mind we bought the ground. We have lived there comfortably and happy for the last 35 years. Now here I am tonight looking at more than one house getting built on that property. It just doesn’t sit well with me.”

The zoning board continued the hearing to its July 6 meeting during which it will take public comment and then render its decision. In the meantime it has asked the lawyers to send them relevant case law regarding the appeal.