Cherry Estates wants out

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Remem­ber Cherry Estates? If you don’t, it’s no big­gie. Mem­bers of the Vil­lage of Sun­bury Plan­ning & Zon­ing Com­mis­sion approved the un-built eight-lot mini-subdivision on East Cherry Street in Sun­bury way back in Octo­ber of 2006.

Then the econ­omy tanked and Cherry Estates ground to a halt before any dirt was turned. But Cherry Estates, a Rody Prop­er­ties LLC vision, did not go away; the devel­oper tried to wait for the econ­omy to improve before turn­ing first dirt or sell­ing the approved mini-subdivision to another developer.

Unfor­tu­nately, zon­ing cer­tifi­cates do not last for­ever; the ball­park is two years. In 2008 Rody Prop­er­ties asked for and received a zon­ing cer­tifi­cate exten­sion for Cherry Estates; and filed an appli­ca­tion for a sec­ond exten­sion that came before mem­bers of the zon­ing com­mis­sion in 2010.

The plan was that happy days would return again (remem­ber those?) and Rody Prop­er­ties could res­ur­rect Cherry Estates; but happy days are not here (yet) and Rody Prop­er­ties’ opti­mism finally evap­o­rated. They’ve thrown in the towel – sort of.

Sev­eral months ago Jim Ull­man, rep­re­sent­ing Rody Prop­er­ties, approached mem­bers of the zon­ing com­mis­sion and pro­posed break­ing the 3.7-acre site into three large lots and sell­ing them to indi­vid­u­als to build homes on.

Fast for­ward to last Wednesday’s zon­ing com­mis­sion meet­ing when Ull­man was in cham­bers seek­ing a for­mal lot split for the site.

Ull­man said if the lot split were approved he had a firm buyer for one lot, a ten­ta­tive buyer for a sec­ond lot, and was cer­tain that the third lot would find a buyer.

Vil­lage con­sult­ing engi­neer Wes Hall, CT Con­sul­tants, said all three lot’s set­backs and frontage adhere to R-3 code, but he did request that a 40-foot drainage ease­ment be set at the back of the lots.

“The san­i­tary sewer lateral’s depth at the sewer main on the two east lots is in the seven– to eight– foot range,” Hall said. “They would need a nine-foot min­i­mum to have a toi­let in the base­ment with­out a base­ment grinder pump.”

Ull­man was reminded that each lot buyer would need to pur­chase a san­i­tary sewer tap from the vil­lage, and a water tap from DelCo Water. Each tap is in the $6,000 range.

Vil­lage solic­i­tor David Brehm noted that lot pur­chasers be made aware of a pos­si­ble future need for sidewalks.

“In newer devel­op­ments side­walks are required,” Brehm said. “You might want to give a notice to the prop­erty own­ers that side­walks could be required at a future date, but are not required now due to lack of con­nec­tiv­ity. It doesn’t make sense to make side­walks that go nowhere, but we do have an ordi­nance on the books that requires sidewalks.”

Brehm said as the vil­lage begins updat­ing its com­pre­hen­sive mas­ter plan pedes­trian access cor­ri­dors will be on the table.

Sun­bury mayor Tommy Hat­field agreed that any­one pur­chas­ing the East Cherry Street lots should be made aware of a pos­si­ble future man­date to install sidewalks.

“If side­walks were built to their right and left most home­own­ers would want to put walks in,” Hat­field said. “We’re not request­ing that they install side­walks today, but it makes sense to let them know walks may be required at a later date.”

Zon­ing com­mis­sion mem­bers approved the Rody Prop­er­ties lot split request.

The next Vil­lage of Sun­bury Plan­ning & Zon­ing Com­mis­sion meet­ing is sched­uled for 7:30 p.m., Mon­day, August 27, third floor coun­cil cham­bers, Sun­bury Town Hall. All Vil­lage of Sun­bury com­mis­sion, coun­cil, and com­mit­tee meet­ings adhere to the man­dates of Ohio Sun­shine Law and are open to the public.

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.