Home DEPOT groundbreaking awaited
Do-it-yourselfers soon can expect to have a new place in Fayette County to shop for a hammer, sheet of plywood or a gallon of paint. On Wednesday, an attorney with the developer working on vacant land off Matthew Drive announced an upcoming groundbreaking at the site of the future Home Depot home-improvement store.
“Our goal is to break ground well before the end of April,” said Marco Marzocchi, representing Widewaters Uniontown Company LLC of New York.
Home Depot will build on a 9.38-acre lot behind the Super Kmart store.
Supervisor Chairman Robert Schiffbauer encouraged Marzocchi to announce the groundbreaking during the supervisors’ business meeting Wednesday, saying the public would be reassured by the news.
“I’m happy to be reassuring to them,” Marzocchi said.
A Home Depot attorney also was present but offered no comments.
In 2001, Home Depot was said to have an interest in placing a 120,000-square-foot retail store to employ 120 to 140 people at the Widewaters property, but that December, the supervisors said the company had backed out of the plan. About a year later, the store got back on board as the first to follow through with plans for construction where Widewaters is working to develop 72.71 acres of property into 11 lots on both sides of Matthew Drive.
On parking, the supervisors last month, in response to a request by another developer to loosen the township’s parking requirements, decided to amend the township zoning ordinance in regard to the size and number of off-street parking spaces required for retail stores and personal service establishments. They also agreed to give others the option of asking for even fewer parking spaces.
The amendment cut the required number of parking spaces in half to one space per 200 square feet of retail floor space, or five spaces per 1,000 square feet.
Widewaters and Home Depot submitted a parking needs analysis and asked the supervisors to drop the requirement for the store from five parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of retail space to 3.5 spaces per 1,000 feet.
The three supervisors voted unanimously in favor of the change for Home Depot.
In other business, the supervisors passed a resolution to declassify 109.47 acres of property in a Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ) within the Fayette County Business Park.
The supervisors’ move made them the first to take action on a request to the township, Laurel Highlands School District and the Fayette County commissioners by the Fayette County Redevelopment Authority.
The KOZ offered tax forgiveness until Dec. 31, 2013, to tenants located within a designated 169.47-acre area of the park. The change would leave just 60 acres in the KOZ.
Schiffbauer said the area is zoned M-1, light industrial, but can be opened up for retail and business that he said could expand in the area to complement the businesses around Cherry Tree Plaza, along Matthew Drive and the Uniontown Mall.
Supervisor Tom Frankhouser said the KOZ at the county’s business park was meant to attract manufacturers with high-paying jobs. Schiffbauer added it was not meant as a place where existing businesses could relocate to take advantage of the tax breaks.
Further, they talked about the cost of doubling the Greater Uniontown Joint Sewer Authority sewage treatment plant.
Frankhouser said the authority will make a pitch Friday to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to increase the low-interest PENNVEST loan to South Union, North Union Township and the city of Uniontown to cover the project.
Frankhouser said the municipalities were able to secure a nearly $14.7 million loan to increase the treatment plant’s to 8 million gallons of water a day and as much as 20 million gallons of wet weather flow, satisfying a consent order by the DEP and giving the municipalities plenty of room for growth. He said the authority recently opened bids for the project, and the low bid came in at $17.6 million from Galway Bay Corp., although he said a contract has not yet been awarded.
Also, the supervisors authorized township secretary Shauna Frankhouser to act as South Union’s agent in asking the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) for reimbursement of costs related to the Presidents Day snow emergency.
The supervisors said the secretary will tally the costs, which included hiring five local contractors and overtime hours to the township employees, as well as about $70,000 worth of salt for a 48-hour period. Schiffbauer said the township will request a 75 percent reimbursement.