New shopping center eyed near Upland Square

UPPER POTTSGROVE — After the German discount grocery giant Lidl pulled out of a plan to build in a shopping center planned for the area behind the Citadel Bank and opposite the Upland Square Shopping Center, the entire plan was “put on hold.”

That’s what Joseph R. Gambone Jr., president of the Gambone Group, told the Upper Pottsgrove Commissioners at the June 19 meeting.

He was there because his company is contemplating a new plan for the 23-acre site. About 17 of those acres sit in West Pottsgrove Township, with the remainder in Upper Pottsgrove.

Attorney Stephen Kalis said the developers had an approved plan back in 2017, but that things have changed with Lidl’s departure. Nothing official has yet been submitted to Upper Pottsgrove, but Kalis said the developers wanted to take the commissioners’ temperature on several requests.

The new plan, Gambone said, will feature a grocery store, retail and restaurants, but he did not mention any names other than Taco Bell. “There are several names on the list but none of them are 100 percent,” he said.

Other potential tenants include a coffee house, car wash and even a church. Gambone said the center would connect to State Street, but would not allow vehicles to exit onto North State Street, only to enter from that road. On the other side, entrance and egress would be from Upland Square Drive, with a traffic light set up opposite the first entrance to Upland Square when driving west bound off Route 100.

The reason the developers were before the township commissioners are because of what they described as Upper Pottsgrove’s “onerous setback requirements” for the buildings in the center from each other, as well as zoning issues regarding the construction of the church.

Because so much of the proposed project is located in West Pottsgrove, the Upper Pottsgrove commissioners were asked to let that township’s zoning prevail in terms of setbacks. They will also be asked, said Kalis, to change some of their zoning provisions for that area rather than have tenants seek zoning variances.

“We think that’s the cleanest approach, rather than seeking variances,” Kalis said.

The commissioners made no decisions that night.

Upper Pottsgrove is seeing a wave of development proposals, said Commissioner Cathy Paretti and Township Manager Michelle Reddick. At the beginning of the June 19 meeting, Reddick warned the commissioners that “there are a lot of sketch plans being submitted.”

Paretti is urging her fellow commissioners to bring it back.

The planning commission was dissolved in 2020 during the long running feud between Commissioners’ Chairman Chairman Trace Slinkerd and former commissioner Elwood Taylor.

In 2020, a split vote by the commissioners passed a resolution barring any commissioner from sitting on any other board or committee — a vote which recently complicated the creation of a new committee to investigate alternative locations for the new municipal building. Taylor refused to resign from the planning commission calling the resolution unconstitutional.

When Taylor lost his reelection bid in 2019, the resolution became moot as he would no longer be a commissioner. But he still had one year left on his term on the planning commission.

So in February, 2020, 11 months before Taylor’s term on the planning commission would be over, the commissioners voted 4-1 to dissolve the planning commission. Now Paretti wants it back.

“We need a planning commission with all the development that’s coming,” Paretti said at the June 19 meeting, adding, “this is not a well-functioning government.”