By Jeff Werner; BucksLocalNews.com Editor

The Promenade at Sycamore Street, a mixed use development of retail stores and condominiums, received preliminary/final plan approval from the Newtown Township Board of Supervisors on Wednesday night.

McGrath Homes will build a three story, 40-foot tall building at the 1.96 acre former Acme Supermarket site at 200 Sycamore Street. The building will house up to eight retail businesses on the ground level, 25 residential condominiums on the second and third floors and an underground parking garage.

"The Acme site has been an eyesore for a long time. Now we're finally going to get something in that space. It's going to be a great benefit to our citizens," said supervisor Matt Benchener. "I'm glad to see this moving forward."

Chairman Rob Ciervo, in casting his vote to approve the plan, offered reluctant support.

"This is a project that I initially did not support because the applicant had come in with a big request. They have done a tremendous job working with the various professionals," he said.

"I'm still not excited about 25 condos there. I would love to see one floor of 15," continued Ciervo. "But the applicant has variances so I don't see how I can bring up those issues which were addressed awhile ago. A vote was taken," he said, referring to the zoning hearing board, "and this is where we are right now."

The approval followed an extensive discussion over traffic issues, prompted by concerns raised by neighboring Newtown Borough.

Borough council leaders Mike Sellers and Gerard O'Malley publicly called upon the board to put the brakes on the project, at least until the next township meeting. They asked the supervisors to consider including the traffic impact on nearby borough streets and intersections in an amended study.

"There's some further review and study necessary," said Sellers, who asked for the extra time to review information provided by the developer's traffic engineer.

"I know the developer wants to see this project move forward," said Sellers, "but we're concerned about uncertainty on these issues and the lack of clarity on the solutions."

Supervisors' chairman Rob Ciervo said he shared the borough's concerns after reviewing the study and not seeing information about the borough intersections.

"That's why I specifically asked if they (the traffic engineers) had studied the two borough intersections. They say that they have and I trust our traffic engineer when he says there were no significant issues."

The developer's traffic engineer Joseph DeSantis, the executive vice president of McMahan Associates, said its traffic study did weigh the impacts on two borough intersections and concluded it would be minimal, but due to an oversight the information was not included in its report.

"The impact on all the surrounding intersections, including the two intersections (State and Washington and State and Jefferson) the borough asked us to add, is not significant," he said. "The analysis shows the level of service doesn't change. We're not adding a lot of traffic to the surrounding intersections."

The intersection of State and Jefferson, he said, has plenty of capacity to handle any additional traffic. And the four-way stop sign does its job well, he said.

Overall, projected DeSantis, the Promenade will not be a significant traffic generator. "The amount of traffic we anticipate is less than what the Acme generated when it was in operation."

Where there is an impact, said DeSantis, is at the intersection of Washington and Jefferson. "We looked at a lot of different ways to solve it, but the answer is pretty simple. It (the traffic signal) needs more time. We can easily move more traffic on Jefferson by adding more green time."

DeSantis said a suggestion by the borough's engineer to consider adding a left turn arrow to move west bound Jefferson traffic onto southbound Sycamore would do little to help traffic flow. "There really isn't enough traffic turning that direction to warrant that. And all it really does is eat up clearance time."

DeSantis said his firm also examined banning left-hand turns from Jefferson onto Sycamore. "That does help and it makes the intersection work even better. That's something you can consider."

Supervisor Mike Gallagher said his bigger concern is how the property affects traffic patterns once the building is fully occupied.

Benchener agreed, and requested that remediation language be built into the motion. "The language should also include its impact on the borough," he said.

At the request of the township, the developer agreed to conduct a traffic study update within six months of the issuance of the final certificate of occupancy. McGrath also agreed to comply, at its expense, with the result and recommendation of the study.

At the end of the discussion, Sellers sounded a conciliatory tone. "If the vote is to approve the project without taking more time, than so be it. You have to do what you feel is appropriate for Newtown Township."

At the request of chairman Ciervo, the developer also agreed as part of the approval to voluntarily donate $5,000 to the Newtown Library Company and to earmark $10,000 of its $159,000 park and recreation fee and lieu contribution to the township's general fund.

The supervisors have not decided how that money will be spent, though some members of the board favor restoring full or partial funding for the Wrightstown Library and the Newtown Library Company.

"In a lot of ways we're locked in certain funding streams," said Benchener. "This is a place where we're getting a signficant revenue impact and because we have someone willing to work with us in a creative way on a creative solution we can now allocate some of that money that's typically very inflexible to a need in the community that we all value."