Beginning of an End for Sleighton (5/4/13)(7/26/13)(4/9/14)

On Thursday, 5/2/13, I attended a public dual township meeting for both Middletown and Edgmont. This meeting was about the proposed Sleighton development by the Toll Brothers. To start, I was unable to copy and past the image but the plan is viewable here. Here's also a link for the official minutes from the meeting. I will also paste the description of the meeting from Edgmont's website which the plan is also on:

  Representatives from Elwyn and Sleighton Inc. hosted a special public meeting at the Penn State Brandywine Campus for Edgmont and Middletown Township residents and other interested parties to unveil the conceptual site plan which includes a proposal for 116 Single Family Homes and 19 Carriage Homes in Edgmont, and 125 Single Family Homes and 156 Carriage Homes in Middletown. The current project total is 397 proposed homes. 

  
Since I was at this meeting all this information is legit, it's not based on speculation or rumors, and if I say something that is I will state that. I will also update this blog when something new happens. Anyway, at this meeting there was a representative from Sleighton Inc. (who mostly talked), a representative from Elwyn, a few representatives from each township, and two representatives from the Toll Brothers.

Sleighton is currently in a certain kind of sale (forget what it's called) where if this plan goes through the property will automatically be sold to the Toll Brothers who presented this plan. 116 acres of land which is mostly the corn fields is part of an agricultural protection pact, and this can't be built on. Other than that most of the property will have the 400 homes, and EVERY SINGLE BUILDING WILL BE DEMOLISHED EXCEPT THE CHAPEL. They are claimed to be "unsuitable" for any other use.  This likely means the huge trues are all going to be removed too. They said the stone will be used for "monuments" on the property which sounds like a joke. The Edgmont side is under R-4 Zoning and the Middletown side is under some zoning that requires on schools or retirement homes, which by the way these are all age restricted units. 

Now from what I understood the Toll Brothers pay more money for the more homes they are able to build. It helps explain the density, which is around 2.5 houses an acre. Now Elwyn invested money in Sleighton in 1998 which I assume was loans and the Program failed in 2001 so Sleighton was shut down. Now I may be wrong on a few details here, but Sleighton Inc. owes back Elwyn an amount of money, which they refused to tell us that amount. This is all speculation but this sounds like the only reason why they're building this this development so dense, so they can pay this money back. It makes sense also because if they build mansions with bigger lots, the project would still make just as much money (not saying I want this either) A gentleman in the crowd stated that when he makes a bad investment he doesn't ask the township to bail him out. His whole comment got a clapping audience and shut up the Sleighton Inc. representative for a few moments. They are also running sewer and public water starting at Lenni, going behind the Franklin Mint, and going up Valley Road. 

Now some issues that effect the community around Sleighton is traffic issues and the high density. Sleighton is on all back roads which have one lane portions, have sharp turns, and are narrow. These roads already face traffic issues, and the main roads like Middletown Road and Baltimore Pike already face major traffic issues too. This project will add at least 400 cars to these small roads and main roads. The Township of Edgmont is also known to be a low density community, and this project hurts that status.

I highly recommend to everyone interested in this issue to go to the next public meeting, there's supposed to be more. This one was highly informative and people were allowed to ask questions and speak out against this. You can either keep an eye out for the next one or subscribe to be notified on Edgmont's website.

Sadly this plan is likely to go through because the Toll Brothers have a lot of money and money=power these days. If this were to go through, it's expected to start in 3-5 years. This project is going to destroy many historic building which cannot be replaced, and create many problems with a high density development. If you want my opinion, I would reuse all these buildings and make a little mini town type community there. As I said, I will add anything new to this and date that information, please feel free to leave comments. If you want to email me personally, I prefer to be emailed through mikedaman758@yahoo.com. Trust me, I'm happy to help or inform you.

7/26/13 update:
I attended another public meeting that involved Sleighton. The topic for this one was an environmental issue. It turned out that the issue is that they found over the legal limit of lead arsenate in the soil, which can cause cancer. Lead arsenate was a popular pesticide for orchards beginning in the late 1800s. It was used up the 70s I believe when it was banned do to obvious health problems. Sleighton used to have orchards so that's why the lead arsenate is in the soil.

What's going to happen now? It doesn't intimidate the Toll Brothers unfortunately, they've dealt with it before. In areas that they develop they must either remove the soil or bring down the levels of arsenic. In areas that won't be highly used, they will likely have to do nothing. The sad thing is that more trees will have to be removed.

Locals should be concerned too. I talked to someone who researched this and the arsenic can become airborne and can go into ground water from the removal process. They will either rotor till soil from under to bring down the levels or remove the soil, heap it up, and cap it off somewhere on the property, which can potentially cause runoff. The township is going to have a geologist look into it, but for now, this is one more reason why this development shouldn't happen.

Again, feel free to comment or email me at mikedaman758@yahoo.com.

4/9/14 Update:
Wow! I can't believe it's been almost a year since I have had any activity on my blog! Quite honestly I have sort of fell off the Sleighton train a bit, although I've been still following closely. There have't been any updates that I know of about the actual plan, and besides a small community Q and A that I was unable to attend the other night, there haven't been any meetings either.

The only thing new that happened in this time period really was the fire of the Washington Cottage, which completely destroyed it. I will make another post more specifically about this incidence on my blog, so keep an eye out for that. Anyway, in a nutshell for now, Washington Hall  burned down on Saturday, March 29. Whatever remained was immediately demolished, so nothing is left of it. This was certainly set by someone, whether it was intentional or not, because there's no electrical or gas hooked up, and there was no lightning that night. Plus what else would you expect for a Friday night?

This may end up speeding the progress if the Sleighton demolition, but I can't be certain on that. It may have been answered in the small Q and A session I made mention of. It wouldn't surprise me though. In the rumor mill, again RUMOR, apparently people in the local community are making a big push to get this school demolished. It wouldn't surprise me if this was true, because people complain about everything. In reality, there is a lot of crime that takes place here, two buildings burned down, and this place is becoming a bit of an eyesore. In reality though, people should be complaining to Elwyn to add security and maintain the property better which would solve these issues. They should be better at this. Sure, if you demolish the buildings, it may solve the issues, but worse issues would follow though. Along with the loss of irreplaceable history and farmland, you would also have
construction noise, unsightly equipment and debris, and maybe some traffic issues. After that, you
would have a few more years of construction, and eventually 397 crappy homes and traffic problems. Crime issues vs. that? I'd choose crime, which can be limited if Elwyn took better responsibility.

I'm considering forming a group that will focus on conserving more buildings, because I feel there's a lack of effort in that right now. We can trash Elwyn and the Toll Brothers all we want online, but I doubt they even see that or care if they do. We actually have to make an effort, and I would need help so if someone's down for that, contact me. Even if we save one more building, we did do something. And again, keep an eye out for my next upcoming post.