Cohousing-L Mailing List: Roads and the town planning board

[Berrins (Berrins]

In a message dated 3/14/2000 12:02:10 AM, sundog [at] gburgtimes.com writes:

<< Thanks to all of you for your input on cohousing/HOA document broiler
plates. It looks as though we're heading for a condominium thing because,
for reasons I don't know how to explain, it works better for our road issue.
We have an access road that is nearly a mile long and we're hoping they
won't make us take it up to township specs ($$$). We are up before the
zoning board tonight. Pray for us!

Peace,

Marya Tipton
Hundredfold Farm
Orrtanna, PA
A Place to Grow
Visit our website at http://users.desupernet.com/rhubarb >>

Good luck!  At Pathways we went with the condo set-up after looking at a few 
different ones.

We also had an issue with the town and our road.  Our road isn't as long as 
yours; only about 1/3 of a mile.  But the developer who is building Pathways 
is also putting three frontage lots off of our road, and Northampton regs 
require that any road with more than three lots needs to be built to 
subdivision standards.  This meant that from the point where the three 
frontage lots joined our road to the main road, we were suppose to build a 
wider road that flattened out more as it reached the main road.  However, 
that part of the road crosses wetlands, so the wider road would not only have 
taken more wetlands away, but would have cost more to build (including 
replicating twice as much wetlands somewhere else on our property).

It took a few sessions in front of the town planning board, but we were able 
to compromise.  The planning board made us keep in the flatter entrance to 
the main road and put in sidewalks, as well as put in guardrails where the 
sidewalk gets close to the road, all of which I'm glad we did.   We also 
promised to never ask the town to take over maintaining the street, which I'm 
not too keen on. 

Bottom line?  We traded not disturbing as much wetlands and less upfront 
construction costs for longer term maintance costs.  Only time will tell if 
we made the right choice.

Once again, good luck!

        -Roger