Alburtis Borough Council discussed the conditional use hearing for a multi-family home at 315 E. Stone Ally at the Feb. 22 meeting. The hearing involved two witnesses who answered questions about the project.

The first witness was Andrea Keeney, the principle owner of Jar Development LLC. She explained the property in question currently has an abandoned house on it which will be replaced by an eight unit apartment complex.

Keeney said there would be two main changes based on previous recommendations involving adding sprinklers and removing an oak tree on the property which was in the line of site. Each unit would be a two bedroom apartment and there would be two units on the ground floor of the building and six units on the first and second floors.

The second witness was Harold Newton Jr. He talked about how the property does not meet the minimum lot size but meets all measurements deemed by the ordinances. Newton explained the property meets the impervious cover limit of 25 percent with a building coverage of 6 percent.

He then explained the property would take care of stormwater and runoff by having a swale along the front and back of the property taking the water to a retention pond. The net increase in impervious coverage would be 10 square feet.

Each apartment would be 650 square feet. A quarter of the property would be the building and parking lot while another quarter of the property would be the retention pond leaving half of the property for active recreation.

The part of the property left for active recreation would be about a tenth of an acre. Because there is a community park nearby the borough council questioned whether it would make more sense for the property owner to make a donation to the borough’s parks and recreation commission.

Newton explained all traffic from the property would enter through Gold Alley. He also discussed curbing. There were also questions about whether Gold Alley is wide enough for a two lane road.

Alburtis resident Sarah Stuber asked about parking on the property. She noticed the property would allow two parking spaces per resident and there may be problems because there is no parking on several of the nearby roads. Stuber worried some families have more than two cars if they have teenage or grown children. She also mentioned residents are likely to have guests over.

The property representatives argued some apartment complexes offer one and a half parking spaces per unit adding not everyone has two cars and not everyone is home at once. Council questioned whether residents could have extracurricular vehicles, such as boats and recreational vehicles. Newton explained there could be an item on the lease saying residents could not have vehicles other than cars.

Newton also talked about waste management on the property. He explained there will be a dumpster on the property which will be accessible to a garbage truck. The dumpster will have a metal fence or masonry wall around it.

Newton said there would be a single building on the site and there would be public sewer and public water available on the property. He explained LED lighting would be used in the parking lot and there would not be streetlights. Newton added there would possibly be storage available on the property.

The borough council voted 5 to 1 to approve the conditional use. There was one abstention.

Council then looked into accepting the waivers representatives from the Stone Alley property have asked for.

The first waiver discussed included the cart way and right-of-way width of the road the property is on. The next waiver had to do with curbing and sidewalks. The property representatives waived curbs on Stone Alley, but agreed to add curbing on Gold Alley. They waived both of the sidewalks in question.

There was another waiver regarding a tree blocking the sight triangle. The representatives agreed to remove the tree. The final three waivers had to do with listing monuments on the property, high density polyethylene and combining the preliminary and final plan.

The borough council had previously discussed adding no parking signs along a portion of East Penn Ave.

Borough Manager Sharon Trexler came up with a price of $99.03 for each sign. Solicitor David Knerr said work on the street should be done all at once to lower advertising costs. The borough council debated how many signs were needed.

The meeting ended with the recognition of a donation from the William Butz Memorial Fund and the discussion of a future meeting. The William B. Butz Memorial Fund contributed $2,500 to the Borough of Alburtis.