EASTON, Pa. — Testimony on a proposed Easton Commerce Park mega-warehouse wrapped up at Easton Planning Commission on Wednesday, with opposition presenting numerous witnesses — much to the ire of the developer’s counsel.
Over the course of about 3 1/2 hours, attorney Cody Harding, representing grass-roots opposition group Stop the Wood Ave. Warehouse, presented witnesses questioning numerous elements of the plan for the million-square-foot structure and its development.
Harding tapped 3D modeling expert Dan Brown, Benchmark Civil Engineering Services Inc. President Peter Brown, New York University PhD candidate and graduate fellow Bailey Hilgren and more to illustrate issues with SALDO requirements in plans and studies presented by developer Scannell Properties.
Attorney Mark Kaplan, representing Scannell, objected to each witness, but was overruled in all but two instances.
Kaplan also often engaged in confrontations with Harding, the presented experts and, on occasion, even the commissioners and solicitor Joel Scheer.
Concerning inaccuracies
During his testimony, Brown illustrated how he used plans and data for the warehouse to develop what he considered a more accurate rendering of what the site would look like post-development.
“There are inaccuracies in the representation of what I would consider a lot of the plants and vegetation, particularly around the basins," Brown said.
"This, to me, just reads like a really bad Photoshop job where you just brushed a bunch of dense trees, which you would never have done.”
Brown also highlighted three sloped areas he said he found concerning.
“What I was really curious of exploring was, ‘OK, how steep and impactful is that?’" Brown said.
"And what does that feel, not from here, right, but what does that feel [like] to the user down below, in actuality, what we see when we drive what we see when we walk by?’”
Renderings of what the completed site would look like from around certain points of the city — particularly a shot that showed how the warehouse would look from the Silk Mill — elicited gasps from the audience.
Testimony about traffic
Peter Terry, a civil engineer, provided testimony as a traffic expert.
He spoke on his perceived issues with a traffic study conducted by the developer and testimony from one of Kaplan’s experts at a previous hearing regarding acoustics.
Harding said a particular code for the warehouse was ambiguous, meaning it could be used for a sort or non-sort facility, which Terry said would substantially impact traffic.
“The difference between sort and non-sort is the number of employees, because a sort facility, you're picking individual items and moving them on for a shipment, and in a non-sort you're dealing with bulk quantities,” Terry said.
“In a non-sort facility, you would be moving a pallet, let's say, of televisions. It has a much lower traffic volume, much less intense number of employees, and hence less employee traffic, as well as truck traffic.”
Terry said the traffic permit issued by the state Transportation Department would be based on the lower traffic volume of a non-sort facility in this case.
PennDOT could issue violations if traffic surpassed that rate, he said.
As Terry was meant to provide base testimony for Hilgren to use in explaining how the plan would violate the city’s noise ordinance, Kaplan asserted the city would be responsible for policing violations of the noise ordinance from trucks at the property after completion, to which Terry agreed.
Impulsive sounds
Hilgren said the acoustical consultants tapped by the developer would have used modeling software to test noise ordinance compliance, using Easton’s code as the most stringent example.
According to Hilgren, the cutout toward the back of the property the developer and their experts stated would reduce noise from the site.
“That back cutout area would be rock, and rock sound is propagated in a different way," Hilgren said. "It bounces off rock differently than it would if it was kind of grassy or vegetation.
"And so that cut out in the back, both because it's not necessarily considered effective or enough in the kind of changes of the topography.”
Hilgren said the property's terrain would be concerning in the same regard.
Hilgren also highlighted that the projected sound range for the site from the developer fell between 47 and 52 dba — within the allowable limit — but said the methodology used to get there was flawed.
Impulsive sounds — short, sharp noises with rapid onsets and quick decays usually lasting under a second — would be prevalent at the site, Hilgren said.
He provided examples such as air brake releases and backup alarms.
Hilgren said those impulsive sounds were not considered in the study cited by the developer.
Instead, they were averaged with other sounds, with the report providing a conservative estimate, though the impulsive sounds could very well contribute to noise ordinance violations.
“Those would be happening multiple times per truck movement, multiple times per load on one cycle, and sometimes occurring at the same time as one another," Hilgren said.
"Which would then cause potential interactions, and there would be even more of a problem."
Challenging 'expert' testimony
Kaplan tried to reject each of those witnesses as experts, and routinely objected to testimony and questions from witnesses and the planning commission members.
He more often than not was overruled.
Former trucker Jeremy Gold, testifying how trucks operate on warehouse sites, said there likely would be a substantial amount of engine noise from trucks traveling to a facility such as the Easton Commerce Park warehouse.
Architect Brett Weber corroborated and connected some of the previous experts’ testimony to architectural design principles, and said Brown’s methodology was sound.
Two individuals, a structural iron worker and a local resident, were both rejected from testimony.
Easton Planning Commission will continue to accept written commentary on the project until Nov. 24, with the commission meeting for a final deliberation Dec. 3.
