Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Land Use Development topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Lennar introduces plan to convert vacant office campus to ~120 townhomes, pledges analyses on schools and traffic
Summary
Lennar presented a concept to the Upper Providence Planning Commission to redevelop an 18‑acre office parcel at 11000 Campus Drive into a mixed‑use campus including roughly 120 townhomes, reduced impervious area, and street and stormwater work; commissioners requested school‑impact and traffic data before land‑development review.
Allison, an applicant representative, told the Upper Providence Township Planning Commission on a preliminary presentation that Lennar has the 18‑acre 11000 Campus Drive site under agreement and is seeking initial feedback on a concept that would require a rezoning to add residential to the office interchange district.
"We would obviously need a rezoning for this," Allison said, introducing the team and the site, which she said contains a vacant roughly 85,000‑square‑foot office building and more than 500 on‑site parking spaces.
Mike Brown, a Lennar project lead, walked the commission through the concept plan and product types, saying the draft layout shows "about 120 townhomes," a mix of two‑ and three‑story units including ‘‘Avery,’’ ‘‘Chase,’’ and ‘‘Cambridge’’ models, with at least two parking spaces per unit plus about 53 on‑street guest spaces.
Brown said the plan reduces expected impervious coverage compared with prior allocations—"this plan is gonna land us right around 6 acres of impervious surface"—and includes basin expansion and additional stormwater management measures.
Commissioners pressed the team for information on likely school enrollment and emergency‑service impacts. The Chair said he was "going to look real closely" at how the proposed development would affect the local school district (likely Oaks Elementary) and emergency response capacity.
Allison and Brown said the proposal is preliminary and promised more data. "We can get you some information based on other similar communities we've built, in terms of who our demographic is," Brown said; Allison added that a traffic analysis is being prepared and will be submitted for review.
The commission did not take a vote on zoning or land development at the meeting; staff and the applicants emphasized that formal design and permitting steps, including detailed traffic and fiscal‑impact analyses, would follow if the rezoning advances.
Why it matters: the site sits in a campus area near existing retail and hotels; converting vacant office buildings to housing is a common municipal priority, but local officials and residents flagged potential impacts on schools, traffic and emergency services that they asked the developer to document before any later approvals.
The commission asked the applicant to provide demographic projections, a traffic study and other supporting materials as the process moves to formal land‑development review.
