Kidder Township residents say the township’s zoning ordinance allowed a developer to run rampant with a warehouse expansion.
They demanded that the board of supervisors change Kidder Township’s zoning rules at a public hearing on Tuesday night. That hearing is the latest in a series of meetings with township leaders about four new warehouses slated within a 2.2 mile stretch of State Route 940.
Their biggest demand? Make the township’s code less confusing.
LOVE Kidder Township, a grassroots protest group of mostly township residents, insists the code leaves the township powerless to turn down commercial developers’ requests. Residents say the ordinance uses vague terms to define a warehouse from a truck terminal or a distribution center.
Beth Hurley, LOVE Kidder’s founder, said the zoning laws let developers get away with misleading plans – all the warehouses are built on spec, so residents do not know what the warehouses will be used for. The group formed in December with the influx of warehouses popping up in the township.
“When you use these definitions interchangeably, what happens is everything gets really squishy,” said Hurley.
The Kidder Township Board of Supervisors said they will review residents’ concerns from the hearing over the next few weeks before potentially revising their zoning ordinance.
Kidder Township is not the only community fighting to reform its zoning ordinance.
Brigitte Meyer outlined her Zoning Guidebook for Township Leadership. She’s an attorney with PennFuture, an environmental legal organization pushing back against warehouse development in the Poconos. She said municipalities are worried about the wrong things. They should focus on how development will affect the community, not whether to define a project as a warehouse or truck terminal.
“What matters when you’re trying to figure out how to regulate these things, is the features that are going to cause the most impact to the environment and to the surrounding community. And for these uses, those are the size of the facility and how much truck traffic it’s going to generate,” said Meyer.
Developers, she said, can build massive logistic centers without much township oversight as there’s little measurable standards they have to follow. Putting in size or traffic limitations would give the board of supervisors more control over commercial developments.
Meyer explained that communities got caught off guard by the onslaught of warehouse developers. Most of these projects in the Poconos started within the last five years, and they exploded during the pandemic where more people switched to online shopping.
“And it’s something that most municipalities, their zoning ordinances were not ready for,” said Meyer. “It’s something that was not contemplated when these things were drafted decades ago. And this is a pretty impactful form of land use.”
Residents worry more development will tear up the land, create truck traffic and change the culture of the Poconos.
Several people, many who own second homes in the Poconos, traveled from Palmer Township in Northampton County to speak to Kidder Township officials. They raised concerns, including vehicle crashes caused by truck traffic.
Paul Lorigan bought a home in Snow Ridge Village three years ago, before development started on State Route 940. He lived in Palmer Township for 28 years before getting fed up with overdevelopment. Lorigan said he hopes Kidder Township will change its ordinance before it’s too late.
“Maybe a lot of you will take it for granted if you’re here all the time,” said Lorigan. “We like to take walks at night, and we look up and you can see the stars…we don’t see the stars down in Lehigh Valley.”
Still, some residents worry that code changes will not be enough to slow the warehouse expansion. The board waived several requirements for the township’s first completed warehouse, including its Environmental Impact Statement, according to township Right-to-Know Officer Chrissy Lindsey. The impact statement holds developers accountable for their expected effect on the environment.
The Kidder Township Board of Supervisors did not give an exact date when it would potentially revise the zoning ordinance and added that officials would post a decision on the municipality’s website, said Chairman Raymond Gluck.
Township Solicitor Robert Yurchack said he did not know when the township would release its decision as he was not at Tuesday’s meeting. He referred the question to Gluck, who could not be reached for an answer.
