A huge new transient recreational development plan is being proposed by Jack Lingo Asset Management off Plantation Road (Route 1D Alternate 24), on the border of Rehoboth and Lewes, labeled the Love Creek RV Resort and Campground. This proposal would radically change the current zoning in order to build a massive transient RC city for up to 3,000 visitors a year. If it is approved by Sussex County Council and the Sussex County Planning and Zoning Commission, it would have a seriously adverse effect on that property and on the larger community. Among other negative results would be:
• A serious disruption of a sensitive wildlife area; the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has rightly recommended against it, recommending instead that it become a permanent preserve for forest and wetlands. It also is considered to include historically significant Indian burial grounds.
• Plantation Road already is a crowded, winding two-lane road that most everyone in the area uses at one time or another, doubly crowded at the intersection of Cedar Grove and Postal Lane. As a parallel bypass to Highway 1, even more crowding on Plantation would likely lead to more cars further crowding Highway 1 in busy periods.
• The plan is completely incompatible with the current low-density residential area where it would be built, bringing up to 3,000 transient people into a surrounding community of a few hundred families, all having to use the same narrow Plantation Road to get anywhere, including many RV vehicles going to and from the new development.
• Among a host of other reasons for disapproving this ill-conceived project are the increased pollution and noise, the increased demand on fire, police, EMS, utilities, waste management and other civic services in an area that is already underserved in some of these services, and the likely depression of everyone’s home values in the area as the impact of the development becomes clear.
Plantation Road already is lined with new housing developments contributing to the crowded roads; the last thing needed in that area is such a massive new development with a potential population close to Rehoboth’s entire off-season population (and Lewes’ as well). As Lewes homeowners, joining many others in the area, we urge residents of Lewes and Rehoboth to actively oppose this proposal that would irreparably harm the natural environment and create many other long-term negative consequences for the area.
Tilden and Mary Edwards
The Plantations
Lewes
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