Murray Bilby
2424 Churchill road
This evening I want to address the topography of the former Westinghouse R&D property. These are a few comments from an article to be published tomorrow on the Churchill future.com website.
All comments are discussed in more detail, on the website.
Photos of the property are also being uploaded for those who have never had the opportunity to tour the property, including photos of the log cabin and around the lake.
10 points
1—to attain the equivalent flat space so that a 630,000 sf distribution center, with parking and roads, something usually found in designated industrial zones, requires the equivalent to a mountain top removal for coal mining in West Virginia.
2—Westinghouse fully understood its responsibilities to the Churchill community in designing their facility. They understood that the C 1 was given to them for a campus environment.
3—The borough was specific in the 304 zoning code, page 35, that manufacturing and distribution centers were neither “permitted” nor “conditional” use businesses for the site.
4—disrupting the topography of the whole area, will create loose material that inevitably will find its way into the streams and stormwater pipes.
5—soil stabilization is critical because differential settlement causes cracks in the foundation of a structure, and is not obvious for several years when the developer is nowhere to be seen.
6—just because laws can be twisted to allow for an activity, does not mean that it is the right thing to do.
7—Anyone who has never gone to an industrial park and spent time observing, at least half an hour, must do so if you are to truly realize the scale of modern distribution facilities.
8—only then can you begin to appreciate the magnitude of a single level 639,000 sf building, and only then can you appreciate 5 of these stacked on top of the other, and taller than the office buildings at Penn Center.
9—Westinghouse designed each building and road around the lay of the land, with diverse landscaping as part of the original design, yet they designed how to use every single square foot of developable area, without destroying the typography.
10-therefore the borough should limit any development to the actual areas that Westinghouse developed. There is a significant amount of area. It will generate important income for the borough and the school district without the required traffic bottlenecks that are inevitable for a distribution center generating over 1000 semi–truck trips daily.