Credit: Google Maps
A largely empty portion of the of the Reedman Toll Auto World property in Middletown Township could become home to a warehouse.
Reedman Toll gained approval during Monday evening’s Middletown Township Board of Supervisors meeting to rezone eight parcels from commercial to light manufacturing. The move reverses a change approved in 2017.
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Peter Clelland, an engineer working for the property owner, said the zoning change several years ago was because a Walmart or Sams Club, which is owned by Walmart, was being planned for the site on Maple Avenue/East Old Lincoln Highway (Route 213), but those plans have fallen apart as the market for big-box stores softened.
A future use for the section property near I-295 could be a large warehouse and there has been “strong interest” in the site, Clelland said.
The main portion of the iconic dealership is not being impacted.
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Officials from the company that owns the dealership showed supervisors preliminary plans for a 450,000-square-foot warehouse that could be built at the site. The officials noted there were no firm proposals, but the plan was just a concept for potential use. Any new construction will have to go through the land development project.
If the portion of the dealership property was redeveloped, Reedman Toll would look at creating a traffic signal at the intersection with Maple Avenue. The overpass connecting the two sections of the dealership project would likely be removed if development happened, officials said.
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About 10 years back, there was a proposal to build a shopping center that would have had retail, restaurants, and a bank at the site of the Reedman Toll test track. Those plans did not moved forward after being denied by the Middletown Township Zoning Hearing Board.
Also at Monday’s meeting, the supervisors granted preliminary and final land development for an upgraded parking area and stormwater management across the street at the Reedman Toll property.
Reedman Toll, which owns the property, is working with PennDOT to add traffic delineators to stop vans from making left turns from the parking lot onto Maple Avenue/East Old Lincoln Highway.
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For the parking lot, the property owner requested variances for the number of required planting beds and one related to the location of trees. Officials for the site owner said the trees would be positioned to create more of a buffer with residences toward the rear of the property and some closer to Maple Avenue/East Old Lincoln Highway.
The area where the upgraded parking and a security hut is proposed is already being used for Amazon van parking and staging.
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