A concept plan for a proposed Wawa location on North Atherton Street has reignited concerns among residents about potential traffic impacts in the Overlook Heights neighborhood of Ferguson Township.
Representatives for the convenience store chain presented to concept plan to the Ferguson Township Planning Commission on Monday night, primarily to gauge support for a modification to allow an access point to the site directly from Atherton Street before submitting a formal land development plan.
Wawa is looking to build one of its first Centre County locations at the northeast corner of North Atherton Street and West Aaron Drive on the site of a now vacant former auto dealership. The concept plan includes a 5,330-square-foot store, six fuel stations under a canopy, underground fuel storage tanks, an air station, a trash corral and 60 parking spaces. In addition to food and convenience items, Wawa plans to sell beer at the store.
The gas station does not service tractor-trailers, but does have two oversized spaces for the likes of box trucks or landscaping vehicles, Wawa real estate project manager Mike Spiegel said. Electric vehicle charging stations would depend on vendor interest, but conduit will be in place to accommodate them.
Under the township’s subdivision and land development ordinance, driveways to a corner lot property must have access from the streets of “lower classification,” meaning Wawa would only be able to utilize the existing access points from Aaron Drive and Bergman Boulevard, which connects to the property from Vairo Boulevard.
Delivery trucks, however, cannot make the turn from Vairo Boulevard onto Bergman Drive, which is also “pretty parked up on both sides” at various points during the day, said Tony Fruchtl of project engineer PennTerra. That would result in most traffic to the site having to use Aaron Drive and then turn left into the property.
Wawa is proposing an entrance and exit in front of the property on North Atherton. It would allow left and right turns in but right turns out only. A deceleration lane stepping off of North Atherton Street would be created approaching the right-in.
“We’re in discussion with PennDOT about the exact configuration of that intersection right now, but the goal is to have the right-in, the right-out, and then also the left into the site,” Fruchtl said.
Of 16 businesses on North Atherton Street bordered by two streets, 11 have access points on North Atherton, Fruchtl added.
Planning Commission members generally expressed support for the idea, but member Jennifer Eccleston raised a few concerns. Eccleston, who is a CATA bus operator, noted that there is a bus stop in front of Rita’s Italian Ice, immediately after the proposed exit from the Wawa.
“I foresee the people exiting out of Wawa to continue northbound on Atherton, rear-ending me while I’m driving the bus, or not understanding that when I put my …four-ways on that I’m gonna be stopping to serve that stop, and they pull out in front of me,” Eccelston said.
She added that just past Rita’s, drivers are often trying to make left turns onto Atherton Street from Champs.
“That is a big issue as well for traffic right in that area,” Eccleston said. “So we’re just kind of compounding the issue a little bit.”
For the seven residents who offered public comment, the proposed Atherton Street access did little to quell concerns Wawa would result in increased traffic through the residential Overlook Heights and exacerbate existing issues of entering and exiting the neighborhood.
Neighborhood residents raised the same issues a year ago, when the project was first introduced as Wawa requested and was ultimately granted a zoning variance allowing 110 square feet of a fuel station canopy to encroach into the rear setback.
Wawa representatives met with neighborhood residents at the time to discuss their concerns, but resident Rob Venema said on Monday that he is “a little bit disappointed right now,” with the concept plan.
“Quite honestly, we met with the township and representatives of Wawa a year ago, and from what I can see, most of what we’ve brought up has not really been addressed,” Venema said.
The development, Venema said, will have a “direct impact on the essential character and public welfare of our neighborhood,” and will affect 250 homes and thousands of residents. Residents are worried, he said, that Wawa customers may use neighborhood streets as a shortcut to circumvent North Atherton Street traffic, or use the Wawa property as a cut-through from Aaron Drive to Bergman Boulevard and on to Vairo Boulevard.
Access to and from Bergman Boulevard has, for more than two decades, been controlled by a gate operated at the property owner’s discretion, township engineer Ron Seybert said. Wawa intends to use Bergman Boulevard as one of its access points.
Venema suggested that the township create a “choke point” at Aaron Drive just beyond the Wawa entrance, utilizing barriers, like State College did in College Heights, or a gate, such as the one that restricts access into the Trader’s Joe Plaza from Sheetz on North Atherton Street in Patton Township.
He also raised concerns about light and noise pollution, suggesting that light standards on the property be lowered, deliveries be limited to daytime hours and a privacy wall be constructed along the entire length of the residential side of the property.
Several residents noted that Overlook Heights has no sidewalks or streetlights, and that people of all ages are accustomed to walking and biking on neighborhood streets. Megan Orient said that on one block near the proposed Wawa site, there are 10 children under the age of 12 who frequently bike and walk in the street.
Existing traffic problems are also a point of concern. Overlook Heights essentially has three points of egress, Leah Witzig said, two of which are at signalized intersections. At the Clinton Avenue and North Atherton Street intersection, where traffic has less time to get out than the opposing traffic from Blue Course Drive, she said.
At the Aaron Drive and North Atherton Street intersection, traffic backups are already a common occurrence.
Mark Chaplin said he often has to get into the middle of the intersection as the light turns red to be able to turn left onto Aaron Drive.
“Every single time I try to turn into Aaron, a bunch of people run the red light headed northbound,” Chaplin said. “It happened to us on the way to this meeting. Probably every other time I go through there, I have to impede traffic just to get through the intersection because nobody pays attention to the red lights. And that’s with no cars in that lot. There’s a really serious bottleneck there.
Seybert said some of the issues may be remedied through a potential PennDOT pilot project to better manage signals throughout the Atherton Street corridor. That project, which Seybert said he is hopeful will take place “in the near future,” would involve input from each municipality in the corridor.
Ferguson Township also has received a PennDOT grant to make improvements at the Blue Course Drive/Clinton Avenue and North Atherton Street section that “should address some of the concerns for difficulty in leaving the Overlook Heights neighborhood at Clinton Avenue,” Seybert said.
For the Wawa development, a traffic impact study has been conducted and is under review by PennDOT. It will be submitted with the land development plan.
“So once all that is done, then there’ll be all kinds of information to share with respect to the study,” Seybert said. “But before it’s completed, it seems inappropriate to publish it. We expect that to come in with the actual development proposal.”
The Ferguson Township site isn’t Wawa’s only planned location in Centre County. The company submitted a land development plan in 2023 for a store at the intersection of Benner Pike and Eagle Point in Benner Township, though construction has yet to begin.
