I attended the planning and zoning meeting of the town of Milton. At hand was a discussion of merit whether or not to change the residential zoning of an 8-acre plot, currently occupied by a soybean field and some dilapidated housing; to a commercial zoning predicated to building a health campus comprising a pair of two-story buildings that would have a 20,000-square-foot footprint.
The attorney for the developers was woefully unprepared. Their presentation was a prototypical exercise of: We’re the big guy who knows what’s best for you scenario.
In addition to providing some cherry-picked quotes from the town’s comprehensive plan, the presenting attorney was unable to provide an answer to any of the following questions posed by the zoning board: How many jobs do you expect to be created? What changes in the amount of traffic do you perceive? How many parking spaces are scheduled to be provided? The property in question is in a wellhead district. Has a study been done to see if: 1. It is allowable? 2. Has an impact study on the well itself been done?
We’ll get back to you on that was the generic response … or we are waiting for DNREC; or we are waiting on DelDOT, and so forth. After the presentation, the public made the following comments: it’s a good project that doesn’t belong across from a middle school; adjacent to a historic residential neighborhood; would be a negative example of spot zoning; and by the way, in your plan, readily available online, one woman counted in excess of 400 parking spaces to be provided.
I hope the planning and zoning commission declines to go any further on this fiasco, as given that there were about 80 people in the room, the next time this comes before the commission, I would expect that there would be 300 or 400, all in opposition to this project.
David Krasnoff
Milton
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