Middletown approves Wood Services overlay to guide campus growth, with supervisors split

The Middletown Township Board of Supervisors approved on a 4-1 vote an overlay zoning ordinance that creates a Community Development Transitional (CDT) district covering portions of the Woods Services campus in Langhorne.

The ordinance lets Woods seek conditional-use approval for a restricted set of institutional, medical and mission-related uses already present on the campus and permits one apartment building aimed at affordable/attainable housing. Dawn Diamond, chief executive officer of Woods Services, told the supervisors the ordinance "is very important to us" and that the revised proposal removes more than 100 acres and most nonresidential uses from an earlier version.

Supporters said the overlay formalizes existing campus activities and replaces repeated zoning-board petitions with a conditional-use and land-development review process before the township. Michael McGinnis, counsel for Woods, said the campus is currently zoned R-1 and that "anything that Woods does requires zoning relief in the…