Ferguson Township Rescinds Pine Hall Development Master Plan

A once controversial master plan for a large residential and commercial development in Ferguson Township is dead.

Township supervisors on April 18 voted unanimously and without discussion to rescind the August 2019 conditional approval of the Pine Hall Traditional Town Development master plan because the developer who applied for it no longer has an equitable interest in the property.

The plan for 150 acres along Blue Course Drive and Old Gatesburg Road has been mired in legal challenges since its approval and was never recorded.

Jaymes Progar, assistant township manager, said such an action is standard when an applicant developer no longer has ownership or equitable interest in a property and the plan has not commenced.

Rescinding the master plan means that if another developer wanted to move forward with a similar project, they “would be essentially starting from scratch,” Progar said.

Texas- and Florida-based Residential Housing Development LLC, which acquired an equitable interest in the property, began working with the township in 2016 on a new master plan for a traditional town development. (An earlier master plan was previously approved in 2010 for Pine Hall Development Corporation, which continues to be the owner of record for the property.)

The multi-phase plan that was ultimately approved in 2019 would have included 1,023 residential units, with a mix of apartments, townhomes and single-family homes, as well as 30 acres of commercial development with commercial and mixed-use buildings, including a cinema, hotel, grocery store, food service, office and retail buildings. Each phase would have required specific implementation plans.

It also would have resulted in the removal of 55 acres of the 65-acre, privately-owned Pine Hall Forest, with the developer required to replace 40% with new plantings.

The loss of 85% of the forest and its mature-growth trees drew opposition from some community members, including the Nittany Valley Environmental Coalition. The coalition filed a land use appeal, arguing that the plan incorrectly applied and misinterpreted Ferguson Township ordinances, and that it violated citizens’ due process and environmental rights.

Ferguson Township supervisors noted at the time that Pennsylvania municipalities are not permitted to regulate tree harvesting on private property, and that the TTD allowed them to require retention or replacement of a percentage of trees over a certain size.

A lawsuit brought by a neighboring property owner is still ongoing.

Circleville Road Partners, developer of the neighboring Turnberry development which was approved in 2011 under the traditional town development zoning ordinance as written at the time, filed multiple appeals over changes to the TTD ordinance and the plan approval. CRP says it met “numerous conditions of approval and modifications” in gaining approval for its development. Turnberry is about 50 percent complete and CRP intends to develop the remainder under its approved plan, according to a notice of appeal in 2019.

But, CRP contended, Residential Housing, in developing its new plan over the past three years, “inexplicably convinced the Township to tailor fit its TTD legislation to fulfill all of Developer’s wants in connection with its concept plan,” through amendments to the ordinance.

The amendments “have the overall effect of comprehensively changing numerous requirements of the Zoning Ordinance in the TTD Zoning District for the benefit of a single tract of land being developed by a single developer to the detriment of CRP, Turnberry and the Township as a whole,” according to the filing

Centre County Court and Commonwealth Court previously rejected arguments that the text amendments changed the nature of the TTD as a mixed use district or that they created a new land-use category.

In its still-pending lawsuit CRP, which is based in Allegheny County, says it requested pursuant to the state’s Sunshine Act to be notified directly by the township about meetings related to the Pine Hall development, but did not receive notification for a public hearing and the meeting at which the plan was approved. Actions taken at those meetings could be nullified by the court if the township is found to have violated the Sunshine Act, according to CRP.

The township through its solicitor denied it violated the Sunshine Act and noted that CRP representatives in attendance at many of the meetings throughout the consideration of the plan. CRP’s attorney, according to a letter, also received electronic notifications through the township’s email notification service.

The next hearing in that case is scheduled for June 8.