A recently submitted plan for a 1-million-square-foot warehouse at the Benner Commerce Park has community members and county officials asking questions.
Specifically, who exactly is behind the massive “fulfillment center” facility that would employ nearly 700 people?
“I have some concern [about] what it is that they are going to be transporting, what they are going to be shipping, what they are going to be warehousing,” Centre County Commissioner Steve Dershem said at Tuesday’s board meeting.
“At the level that this is, I think that we deserve some answers as a community. I don’t know what the exact answer to that is. I am in support of business and I am supportive of private property land use. My question is, something of this nature involves many elements beyond the scope and boundary of their property.”
Commissioner Michael Pipe knew of no previous occasion when a plan came before the county and the developer would not identify the end user.
“Essentially all that we know at this time is that it is a warehouse for e-commerce,” Pipe said.
And while there may be a likely answer to who the company is, representatives for the project developer, SunCap Property Group, were mum at last week’s board meeting, saying they were bound by a non-disclosure agreement with the prospective employer.
Matthew Virgin, SunCap senior vice president for business development, told the board at the time that they would work with the company on permission to disclose it, but that it would likely be months before that happens.
“This was just brought to our attention last week and as I’ve ruminated on this quite a bit I really would like some answers to this,” Dershem said. “I know that they probably won’t be generally forthcoming but I think we need to know more about what’s going on here to say that a land development of 1 million square feet be pushed forward.
“We can speculate who it may be and who it might not be but ultimately when you’re talking about large hydrogen tanks out and hydraulic systems, it’s difficult to say that this is a good project or a bad project or whether it meets the metes and bounds of the conversation.”
Pipe said that “the company … would be better received if they would be more transparent with this.”
Speaking on behalf of the Sierra Club Moshannon Group and the Nittany Valley Environmental Coalition, Benner Township resident David Roberts said the organizations “have some serious environmental concerns” about the project.
“I’d like to make everyone aware that this project will have impact on the class A wild trout waters of Logan Branch and the karst aquifers, water supplies and springs of Benner Township,” Roberts said.
The proposed facility would be only a few hundred feet away from the Logan Branch, Roberts said.
“The 103 acre site will receive over 100 million gallons of precipitation annually,” he said. “Having all this impervious surface in a large basin… will funnel all this water away from natural infiltration. Infiltration is a primary source of water for stream base flow necessary for a healthy stream and for trout populations. It’s been well recognized that increase of impervious surface area is a threat to trout and that Nittany Valley has already exceeded recommended impervious surface areas that impact streams and trout populations.”
Roberts also raised concerns about direct contamination of aquifers through sinkholes on the site, an existing stormwater basin with overflow pipes that drain directly into the sinkhole area and the need for a retention system to prevent any vehicle fluids from seeping into ground and surface waters.
A large stormwater detention facility is included in the plans. Carly Davis, of project engineer Langan Engineering, told commissioners last week that filtration is included in the stormwater management and none will be released into state waters.
“What we’re asking for is instead of asking for the old cookie-cutter type of stormwater management is to put in green infrastructures that would be comprised of bioswales, rain garden-type things, and utilization of perimeters with bioretention that can help to absorb the stormwater and enhance the infiltration in a natural way,” Roberts said.
The developer will be required to meet Benner Township’s stormwater management standards and has begun the process for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Centre County Conservation District, county subdivision and land development planner Christopher Schnure said.
The required permit process is designed to regulate stormwater and wastewater discharge. Schnure said it will include an erosion and sedimentation pollution control plan and will address thermal impacts of the impervious surface on stormwater runoff.
The commissioners voted on Tuesday to approve a memorandum of understanding for the township, county and developer. The MOU stipulates the developer will reimburse the township for engineering review costs and authorizes county and township engineers to work together as the process moves forward.
Pipe said the commissioners could not reject the MOU because it conformed with the county’s land development requirements. But, he noted, it is only a preliminary step in the process before the project can be approved.
“This is not the final stamp,” Pipe said. “There’s many, many other issues, DEP, PennDOT, many other things that are going into play at this point.”
The county planning commission is expected to review the plans at its next meeting, which will be held at 6 p.m. on May 24 at the Willowbank Building in Bellefonte.
“I hope that we have a thorough concept and understanding about the impacts that this may bring,” Dershem said. “Whenever you put 25 acres of building under roof that’s more than just impacting that property. It’s going to impact literally the region. I hope we all understand what that means and make sure that we’ve crossed all our ‘t’s and dotted all our ‘i’s.”
