More on the Chambers Hill development.
From the Central Penn Business Journal...
Retail developer aims for Swatara Township
By Jessica Bair and Eric Veronikis
1/4/2008
The developer of Silver Spring Square shopping center in Cumberland County has shifted its midstate focus to the East Shore.
Florida-based Regency Centers is drafting plans for an approximately 700,000-square-foot shopping center in Swatara Township, Dauphin County.
The $90 million project, called Swatara Marketplace, would be built along U.S. Route 322, just west of Mushroom Hill Road.
It would resemble the 500,000-square-foot Silver Spring Square, said Powell Arms, vice president of investments at Regency. Regency completed Silver Spring Square in Silver Spring Township last year.
Wegmans, Target, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond and Panera Bread are among the retailers at the Cumberland County shopping center on the Carlisle Pike. Tenants have not been solicited for Swatara Marketplace, Arms said.
“Right now, we’re trying to identify what the off-site improvements need to be to make the traffic work there,” Arms said. “We will solicit (retail) interest once the traffic issues are worked out.”
Wegmans Food Markets Inc. has not announced intentions to build in Swatara Marketplace, but that doesn’t mean the company will not build there, said Jeanne Colleluori, spokeswoman for the Rochester, N.Y.-based grocery-store chain.
Silver Spring Square is the first Regency shopping center in which Wegmans opened, Colleluori said. Wegmans plans to open another store in a Regency shopping center under construction in Manassas, Va., she said.
When Regency executives pitched Swatara Marketplace to Dauphin County Commissioner George Hartwick III, they said they hoped to attract a large grocery store like Wegmans to the site, Hartwick said.
Hartwick is oversight commissioner for the county’s office of economic development. He supports the development of the shopping center because Swatara Township houses other successful shopping and industrial centers, he said.
“Swatara Township has been pro-growth, and that’s one of the reasons they have kept low property-tax rates,” Hartwick said. “I know that with this type of development you want to make sure they are taking care of all the traffic concerns. They talked about an access road that would ease congestion on 322.”
Traffic changes and other off-site improvements should cost about $23 million, but that figure could change, Arms said.
Plans for the project, which would create about 2,600 jobs, have not been formally submitted to the township, Arms said. A construction timeline is not yet available, he said.
“Overall, what we’d be trying to do is improve traffic flow through that commuter corridor, and widening is one of the things contemplated,” Arms said.
Without road improvements, the project would not work, said state Rep. John Payne (R-Dauphin County).
Route 322 is already congested during peak travel times, and to introduce more traffic there without building an easement road or another traffic easement, such as a cloverleaf, would not work, he said.
Payne does not want to see more red lights along the highway near the proposed site, he said. Existing red lights already snarl traffic, he said.
“I’m very supportive of the project,” Payne said. “That kind of commercial development is a good thing. It’s a good strip for commercial growth; there’s nothing wrong with that. It creates a huge tax base.”
Regency is proposing a tax-increment-financing partnership made up of the company, the Central Dauphin School District board, Dauphin County and Swatara Township.
Together, the groups would issue debt to help fund the necessary transportation improvements, Arms said. Part of the real estate taxes that the development would generate would help pay that debt, he said.
Paul Cornell, administrator of Swatara Township, said he believes the township’s board of commissioners, the county and the school district would all support such a partnership.
“When I first arrived here 11 years ago, there was a request for a shopping center. That request has never gone away,” Cornell said.
The 120 acres that Regency wants to develop have always been zoned commercial, Cornell said. The property has never been developed because it is practically landlocked between highways and is difficult to access, he said.
Regency worked with Penn-DOT to come up with a transportation-improvement plan that would relieve those issues and keep the bulk of traffic away from area residential neighborhoods, Cornell said. The company has also approached the owners of neighboring properties to work out agreements should it need to purchase the properties, he said.
“What’s not to like? They really did their homework,” Cornell said. “They have really gone out of the way to impact the community the least that they can.”
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