Evan Brandt, ebrandt@pottsmerc.com February 10, 2003
You might think the head of the builders’ association for two counties would have a negative view of a regional planning effort that just unveiled a way to eliminate the construction of 10,000 housing units in the coming years.
Well, think again.
Provided the regional planning effort in the Pottstown area is being undertaken after careful study and with an eye toward providing for future needs, Duane Searles, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Bucks and Montgomery counties, said he’s all for it.
"The whole idea of developing a land-use plan that goes beyond the boundaries of a municipality is something we as an industry favor," said Searles.
"Smart growth," as efforts such as regional planning and growth boundaries are often called, is a two-edged sword as far as builders are concerned, said Searles.
"For some people, ‘smart growth’ means a way to control or slow growth," said Searles. "In our minds, if done properly, it’s a way to manage growth, a way to anticipate and plan for future needs."
"If that’s what they’re doing (in the Pottstown Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission) then it’s laudatory," said Searles.
What they’re doing is creating the groundwork for a regional comprehensive plan which the eight municipalities that constitute the regional commission will use to re-write their zoning laws.
The comprehensive plan, made possible through Act 67 and Act 68 passed by the state Legislature in 2000, will provide the legal protection for those municipalities to share uses so that each town does not have to zone for each use.
Further, an analysis of the zoning in all eight towns has shown the total amount of housing that could be built under the current zoning is excessive.
By combining through a regional planning effort, the aggregate potential housing of all those towns can then be reduced and the savings, or reductions, divided up among the communities which desire them.
Some communities, such as Pottstown, welcome commercial and residential development and will gladly take whatever more rural townships like New Hanover and East Coventry would like to do without.
While Searles welcomed the approach, he did have a warning related to the principles of supply and demand.
If planners have underestimated the future need for housing, and they have limited the amount of land available, "land prices could skyrocket" and make housing less affordable, he said.
Nevertheless, Searles said he agrees with the goals of regional planning.
"We agree that the population is not increasing at the rate of development and that it’s sound public policy to encourage development closer in (to urban centers) rather than farther out," Searles said.
However, it is easier, and thus more attractive, for a developer to build on virgin land than to deal with the property, regulatory and space constraints that often accompany construction in town.
"We’re human beings and like anyone, when it’s more difficult (to build) in one place, we’re going to take the easier route," he said.
Allowing mixed uses and cluster development, which gives developers more units closer in exchange for open space being preserved, would all aid efforts to attract middle- and upper-income residents back to urban areas.
But Searles points out that there is a point where market forces take over.
"You can’t force people to live where they don’t want to live and many of these urban and town areas have quality-of-life issues that have to be addressed if you want to attract people there," he said.
People were already attracted to Lancaster County when the builders’ association there signed on to the efforts to preserve farmland, said Frank Christoffel, director of governmental affairs for the group.
"It’s been the fastest growing county in Pennsylvania for a while, but we realized that if people are coming for the rural scenery, they won’t come anymore if we consume all the rural scenery," he said.
The builders also realized that in Lancaster, farming is the major industry and that destroying farmland would eventually collapse the county’s economy," said Christoffel.
Construction is only 11.5 percent of the Lancaster economy.
Any effort "had to preserve the business of farming," so the preservation efforts could not just be cosmetic.
"We realized that the two best ways to save farmland are to preserve it and to work with municipalities to build more compact housing," he said.
By singling out "growth areas," where building is encouraged, and by making that building conform to "traditional neighborhood design" parameters, the building industry in Lancaster has all the business it can handle, said Christoffel.
"The houses in the traditional neighborhoods tend to sell well and quickly," said Christoffel.
Smaller boroughs and villages such as Lititz and Ephrata have benefited by become the focus for new investment and investment in older buildings, Christoffel said.
"They’ve made it easier, and people are buying older buildings and remodeling them and doing redevelopment, or in-fill," said Christoffel.
In Lancaster County, about 70 percent of the recent growth is governed by such cooperative efforts, he said.
"Awareness percolated slowly through the municipal officials, but eventually it caught on. Everybody just had to give up a little bit of their control to make it work," Christoffel said.
© The Mercury 2003
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