Yes. It seems there was more wishful thinking than planning on this proposal.

In December we had this:



Really? Is that why most TND's have their own elementary school????? Carson Elementary in the Kentlands has an enrollment of 745 (50% more than East Petersburg Elementary) and serves the Kentland's almost exclusively. The Kentland's is one-half the estimated population of Independence. Is this what they meant by 'little effect'?

On traffic, we heard how everyone would walk to work. A 2003 traffic study for Southern Village in NC just west of Raleigh (a TND with 312 acres, 1,150 residential units, 225,000 sqft commercial) showed that less than 6% of the employees lived in Southern Village. Why? They could not afford it. Also, this same study showed that less than 40% of Southern Village's commercial/retail customers came from within Southern Village.

The Kentland's, again one-half the population of Independence, is serviced by three 4-lane divided highways.



Well I guess the developers should not have gone for super-size in the first round.

meeeoooowww!!!!

who is selfish, the farmer who owns the land and wants to profit, or the person who wants to force him to "save the land" so she can look at it while she speeds by on her way to buy something?LOL

cramming 6000 people onto 300 acres where there are only 2 lane roads leading out is the epitome of foolishnes. tell me , will they widen the entire hburg pike or just let it bottleneck down the road a piece.
tnd's can be good , just not this one.

It's like you're reading my mind...

On the one side, you've got:Charter Homes,a local builder with what I would argue is a proven record of planning well-built new residential neighborhoods that maximize density in a way that's sensitive to the communityTheir concept was developed with the assistance of Duany Plater-Zybek (www.dpz.com), widely recognized as a national leader in planning cutting edge communities, and whose portfolio includes the aforementioned Kentlands as well as Seaside, FLTheir proposal is supported by Lancaster County Planning Commission, widely regarded as one of the most talented and forward-thinking planning agencies in the state, if not the countryAll of which is endorsed by the Coalition for Smart Growth in Lancaster County, an organization whose mission is to build consensus among disparate interests (builders, planners, ag preservationists, etc.) around land-use issuesOn the other side, you've got:FredFred's angry mobIn the middle, you've got:EHT township supervisors, whose responsibility is to lead the community through challenging situations, negotiating compromise and consensus along the way, to arrive at a solution that is in the best interests of the communityEHT residents, 80% of whom chose not to be part of the angry mob, and who trusted their supervisors to do the right thingWith this decision on Heidi Wheaton's motion, EHT supervisors have increased the likelihood that more projects like DR Horton's Village Grande will come to pass. Seems to me that didn't work out so well either...

I'm listening just fine. The "rhetoric" and petitions were against approving the proposal "as proposed". I'm not sure how you can blame them for expressing their opinion that the TND not be approved. If the township folks chose not to negotiate, that is on them. I don't know what kind of discussions they had in that regard, or what Charter felt in regards to negotiating. Sometimes if the two sides are too far apart it really makes sense to start over instead of negotiating. In the end, nothing has really been lost. It is not as if an alternative was "approved" instead of the TND. I would expect there is nothing preventing Charter from going back to the drawing board and presenting another plan. If another developer, or charter for that matter proposes a plan that puts 1 acre houses on the land, I would expect the other side to protest just as much as the folks who were against the TND. And, it is certainly within their right to do so. Maybe that plan would be scrapped too. If somebody would come along and propose something "in the middle", I would expect that is where negotiations will begin.
Later...Shawn

I'm curious. What are the issues with Village Grande?
Also, Charter has not developed anything in this community even remotely close in scale to what they proposed. Again, the logic seems to be that if a small planned dense community is good, then a gigantic one must be even better. I think even the smaller Charter dense places like Mill Creek, Veranda, and Florin have had some issues. That is to be expected when you cram that much development and that many people on a small tract of land. Those problems will be magnified exponentially in a community the size an density of what was proposed for EHT. The plan made a lot of assumptions in regards to who would be living in the community and how those people would behave, that just don't seem to be very realistic at all. Once the thing is built, if the assumptions turn out to be wrong, what then? There really is no turning back at that point. You just have to live with what you got.
Later...Shawn

Numerous complaints about construction deficiencies that were never appropriately addressed by the builder. It was a major issue in EHT for a while. Heidi Wheaton became the homeowners' advocate, and made this a major part of her campaign for state Senate.