UPPER NAZARETH TWP., Pa. — A proposed eighth Lehigh Valley Industrial Park will not go forward after township supervisors voted Wednesday against zoning changes for the project.
About 50 people came to the meeting, where township resident Becky Bartlett gave the board a petition opposing rezoning she said included signatures from “over 130” township residents.
Of the township residents who spoke, the overwhelming majority opposed the zoning change.
Speakers cited an already traffic-choked Tatamy Road, the proposed development’s proximity to Nazareth Area Intermediate School, and risks of the sinkhole-prone geology beneath and around the site.
Representatives for the developer suggested they may still pursue the project in the future, after negotiations allowing the township to set binding conditions for the project through zoning rules.
For now, most of the 52-acre property next to Nazareth Area Intermediate School along Tatamy Road will remain mostly zoned for medium-density residential development, allowing single-family homes, small apartment buildings, townhomes, and other uses.
The northeast of the approximately T-shaped lot is zoned for extractive industry like the adjacent quarry.
It would have been the eighth project by Lehigh Valley Industrial Park, a nonprofit whose developments of the same name include a vast section of the former Bethlehem Steel plant.
“Our number one goal is jobs, diversifying industry, and increasing the tax base,” said LVIP President Kerry Wrobel. “We take a large tract of land, we secure all the approvals, we install roads and utilities, and we sell the subdivided parcels with all those improvements in place.”
Number eight would consist of six buildings covering 40,000 to 60,000 square feet each, with occupants that could include medical facilities, office space, and light manufacturing.
Wrobel spoke more about what they would not be: ammunition, toxic waste, fertilizer, spices, explosives, and definitely not warehouses.
“The cry is ‘warehouses,’ right? No warehouses. LVIP is not constructing warehouses here,” he said.
Unlike most developers, Wrobel said, the organization is highly selective about the businesses it allows to buy and build on their land. He said these and other restrictions, like those on operating hours and noise pollution, would be enforced through binding covenants that carry over to a lot’s future owners.
Residents raised examples of occupants they said called the developer’s ability to effectively keep out undesirable or unsafe businesses like Concept Sciences in Hanover Township, Lehigh County, where an explosion in 1999 killed five.
In response, Wrobel said the businesses mentioned, which also include a Hanover Township manufacturer of gas anesthetics and a reportedly unpleasant-smelling processor of spices, represent only a small fraction of the businesses in their industrial parks.
Throughout his presentation at Sunday’s meeting, Wrobel told township residents to visit another Lehigh Valley Industrial Park development nearby — number six, in Bethlehem Township — and see what it’s like for themselves.
