The ongoing hearing over a proposed 1 million-square-foot warehouse in Mount Joy Township that has seen serious opposition by local residents is set to see a fourth round of testimony next month, pushing the total hearing time to 12 hours of testimony.
More than 150 people turned out last week to the Elizabethtown Area Middle School auditorium for the third special meeting of the Mount Joy Township Zoning Hearing Board. Many people in the audience wore fluorescent yellow work safety vests with the saying “Just Say No” on the back, encouraging the board to vote against allowing the warehouse to be built.
California-based Panattoni Development Co. is attempting to build the 1,006,880-square-foot warehouse at 2843 Mount Pleasant Rd. in the township’s light industrial zoning district near the Elizabethtown/Rheems exit of Route 283. Panattoni needs a special exemption from the board to build a warehouse larger than 50,000 square feet, the maximum size allowed by right in the light industrial zoning district.
Representatives from Panattoni said a tenant for the warehouse has been secured but declined to identify the business other than that it’s an “electronics company.” The facility, which is the size of 17 football fields, would have docks for 154 trucks, 212 trailer parking spaces and 440 employee parking spaces. It would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and add 605 trucks and 1,024 car trips to local roads on an average weekday, according to testimony.
The special exception requires Panattoni to show the warehouse plan won’t be detrimental to the health and safety to the residents of the neighborhood, including any significant impact on existing traffic.
Residents around the 106.5-acre property where the proposed warehouse is planned have argued for months that their neighborhood, made up of large farms and small country roads, would be destroyed by the number of trucks and other traffic generated by the business. They have also pointed out the potential negative impacts of noise, air and light pollution to the neighborhood from a large warehouse facility.
An online petition started by neighbors protesting the warehouse plan has garnered nearly 1,400 signatures, and an online fundraiser to pay for neighbors’ lawyer fees has raised $5,500.
In testimony, representatives from Panattoni have argued the warehouse is similar to other nearby businesses to the proposed location, including Greiner Industries’ 450,000-square-foot steel fabrication shop spread over multiple buildings in the 1600 block of Steel Way. Franklin Greiner Jr., the president of Greiner Industries, is the current owner of the property where Panattoni wants to build the warehouse.
Panattoni has proposed a list of conditions it would agree to if the special exception is approved, including extending Steel Way as a designated tractor-trailer route for large vehicles accessing the warehouse property, along with other roadway improvements surrounding the property. Signs would also be installed to prevent trucks from traveling east on Mount Pleasant Road.
The overall plan from Panattoni calls for building four warehouses, totaling 2.7 million square feet, at separate parcels in the area around the Route 283 exit. The total space of the project is equal to roughly 47 football fields.
March Zoning Hearing
The March 9 zoning hearing meeting initially centered around questions from William Cluck, an attorney representing local resident Joelle Myers whose property is across from the proposed warehouse, to John Nawn, professional civil engineer from Newtown Square brought in by Cluck as an expert witness.
Nawn, a former chairman of Newtown Township in Chester County, wrote his own report after reviewing Panattoni’s application regarding the traffic impact of the project. He said Panattoni used Land Use Code 150, “Warehousing,” in the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Manual to generate the 1,629 anticipated peak traffic trips to the warehouse.
But Nawn said the warehousing code was not appropriate for the proposed project because the ITE manual used an average warehouse size of 292,000 square feet for the classification, well below the 1 million square-foot proposed building.
Nawn said testimony presented by Panattoni more closely identified the warehouse project under Land Use Code 156, “High-Cube Parcel Hub Warehouse,” which increases the potential traffic impact. He said the traffic goes from 1,629 trips a day to 4,662 trips a day with the different warehouse classification.
The a.m. and p.m. peak hour trips also increase in the different code, Nawn said, going from 144 a.m. trips and 147 trips for the p.m. under Code 150 to 886 a.m. trips and 715 p.m. trips under Code 156.
Nawn said it was difficult to determine what ITE code to use because the tenant and use of the warehouse has not been identified by Panattoni.
“There was a lot of testimony in the last hearing that this building was speculative – was being built on spec,” Nawn said. “There was no guarantee as to what it was going to be. We’re just speculating and building so we get a tenant in there. Well, if you’re going to build a speculative building, then you should make sure you generate the traffic that represents what could be the maximum use of that building, unless you’re providing data to show that’s not going to be that particular use.”
Besides the traffic testimony, Cluck also questioned retired Lancaster County physician Dr. Alan Peterson, the emeritus director of environmental and community medicine at Lancaster General Health, about the environmental health impacts to residents having a large warehouse nearby.
Peterson pointed out the adverse effects of artificial light on humans, saying studies have shown it can have impacts like sleep disorders, obesity, depression and cause cardiovascular disease. He spoke about the impacts of noise pollution on the body generated from an operation like a warehouse, including hearing loss, disrupted sleep and increased stress.
Peterson also highlighted a recent report highlighted in The Guardian UK newspaper that ranked Lancaster County and surrounding counties as having the eighth worst air quality in the United States. He said introducing a large warehouse to the area would only make air quality worse.
“There’s a lot of agriculture in the area, but it is also a transportation thoroughfare and is dotted with clusters of industry, including food processing plants, metal fabricators and plastics manufacturing,” Peterson said. “Mount Joy is a hot-spot for air pollution on the pollution map for Lancaster County.”
Joelle Myers, who lives on Mount Pleasant Road, gave her own testimony regarding the proposed warehouse. Myers said she has lived in the neighborhood her entire life, and her family built their current house about five years ago, sitting directly across the street from where the warehouse will be located.
Myers said the agricultural nature of the neighborhood would be devastated by allowing the warehouse project to proceed.
“We live here because this is a beautiful, quiet rural community,” Myers said. “I see horses every day from some of my neighbors. I see many neighbors walking in front of my house, not needing sidewalks because it’s a rural area. I see farmers taking care of their land throughout the day. I see neighbors going to and from their houses, and I see a community of families that would be dramatically impacted by this.”
The next special zoning meeting is scheduled for April 18 at 6 p.m. at the Elizabethtown Area Middle School auditorium.
Staff writer Michael Yoder is an award-winning journalist who has been honored with several Keystone Press Awards for his investigative pieces.
