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Conditional use request OK’d for building at the Country Club Shopping Center.
DALLAS TWP. – The supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the conditional-use request from a developer to build a 30,000-square-foot retail building on the site of the Country Club Shopping Center.
Richard Holthaus, vice president of Humford Equities, which owns the land, said it will take close to a year before ground is broken on the planned strip mall, which will house small, retail spaces of 1,500 to 2,000 square feet each.
Plans for the project, which will be situated between Thomas’ Market and M&T Bank, call for doubling the size of the parking lot, Holthaus said.
Resident Dave Pellam asked the board if the heavily wooded 50-acre parcel of township-owned land could be used for sustainable forestry, thus creating revenue for the township as well as preserving most of the trees. A proposed gas line could run through 4 acres of the land.
“I’d like to keep it a forest,” Pellam said. “I’d hate to see it get exploited.”
The board hasn’t made a decision yet as to whether to grant permission to Chief Oil & Gas Co. to lay the pipeline. The township’s solicitor, Tom Brennan, said he hopes to receive a management plan for the property, which was donated to the township decades ago, from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
In other business, the board decided to follow the lead of the Dallas School District and unanimously deny a request by J.W. Ventures to forgive back taxes on the Mark II property.
“It’s not that we’re not welcoming new developers in the Back Mountain; it’s just not a precedent we want to set,” said Brennan. “If you do that for one person, it’s hard not to do that for everyone else.”
Also, the board announced the Dallas Area Municipal Authority will increase the sewer rate for 2011 by approximately 2.5 percent. This will raise the current annual residential bill from $322 to $330 next year.
Solid waste and recycling fees will be increased in 2011 to $260, which is an increase of $30 per year. This is the final year of the J.P. Mascaro & Sons contract.
Bids will be accepted early next year for solid waste and recycling services for the years 2012 and beyond.
The board reminded residents that leaf pickup will be Nov. 15-19. The next supervisors meeting is rescheduled Monday, Nov. 1, because of Election Day on Nov. 2.