Aug. 9—POTTSTOWN — West Pottsgrove officials are asking the borough to sell them a sliver of land at the Pottstown Municipal Airport to help them convert the former township pool property into a memorial park.
The request was made publicly at the Aug. 7 work session by West Pottsgrove Township Manager Deborah Roesener.
However, the land West Pottsgrove needs is planned for additional hangars at the airport and it remains to be seen if both needs can be accommodated.
Operated since 1968 as a private, nonprofit community pool, the Colonial Pool fell behind on its tax payments and finally fell victim to a combination of age, a slow economy and more homes with their own pools in their backyards.
The township paid $71,000 in back taxes and unpaid bills to take over the pool in 2010.
The township also put as least $250,000 into refurbishing the pool facility by the time it re-opened in August, 2011. But the township had little better luck running the pool and it closed in mid-season in 2016 when the operator it had hired walked away.
In 2019, the West Pottsgrove Township Commissioners voted to close the permanently and turn it into a park given that it had been closed for the three prior years because an operator could not be found to run it and no one wanted to buy it.
Since then, township officials have been working to find a way to make the property of use to the public and to combine it with an adjacent 2.5-acre parcel where the pavilion is located. That property can be reached by a Right-of-way off Berks Street which the township would like to widen and use as a two-way entrance to the enlarged park.
The former pool site only has 17 parking spaces with access off Von Steuben and Anthony Wayne drives. From 2012 to 2016, West Pottsgrove leased space on the airport property from the borough for additional overflow parking.
The current master plan calls for the former pool area to become an "inclusive playground" to be provided by Adventure Grove; a new pickleball court adjacent to the pavilion, a memorial veterans monument where the baby pool was located; upgrades to the basketball court already located there, including the addition of lights, a paved walking path; improved access of Berks Street and additional parking.
The Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation provided $15,000 to pay for the drawing up of the park master plan and a smaller grant from the Pottstown Regional Planning Committee's recreation arm has signed on to help pay for the basketball court upgrades, Roesener. told borough council Wednesday.
Patti Grimm, a member of the Pottsgrove School Board and the Pottsgrove Recreation Board, told council that Adventure Grove is a non-profit dedicated to erecting playgrounds that can be used by all, including children with special needs.
West Pottsgrove Commissioner Howard Shawell, who said he raised a child with special needs, said the inclusive playground would be open to all, not just West Pottsgrove residents. "I want everyone to understand that this is not just a West Pottsgrove thing. It's available for West Pottsgrove, Upper Pottsgrove, Lower Pottsgrove, North Coventry and Pottstown."
To make the plan work as drawn, however, the township needs less than an acre of airport land. The problem is, the borough has plans for that land, even if they are not terribly new.
Roesener noted that when the borough was approached about its plans for the airport, Borough Manager Justin Keller sent along a map and plan for expansion that was dated 2008.
"It took the township a year to be granted a place on the agenda with borough council," Roesener wrote in an email in response to a query from The Mercury.
Evidently, that audience was only granted as a result of the insistence of Councilwoman Lisa Vanni last month, who pushed for a vote to put West Pottsgrove on the meeting agenda, a vote she won. "They are our neighbors and when your neighbors want to talk to you, you should at least listen," Vanni said last month.
"This is an area of land that was previously leased to the township and has not seen any development for decades," Roesener wrote. "Their reluctance appears to be based on a plan for the airport that is almost 16 years old and we are not aware of any plans to move this forward. We are simply asking that they consider minor modifications to the location of the proposed hangars in this area which would accommodate both plans."
However, action on the airport plan may be more imminent than it appears on paper, Keller told council. "It's closer now than its been before," Keller said. "We had been focusing on the existing facilities that we already have."
He told council the plan for 22 new hangars has been on the back burner until recently. Because of the age of the airport, other maintenance items had taken precedence. There has been a lot of apron paving, the last of which will be accomplished this fall, painting, and the borough will be putting a new roof on the maintenance hangar.
"We're closer now to constructing new facilities which will bring revenue to the airport through hangar rentals," said Keller,
He estimated it will cost the borough roughly $2 million to erect the new hangars. Half that cost could be covered by a federal Bureau of Aviation grant. The borough has set aside another $500,000 to pay for the hangars. Rents on the new hangars would generate $150,000 to $200,000 a year, meaning "we would pay off the $2 million cost in five to seven years," Keller told council. He added that "there are always people on the hangar waiting list. I think right now, there are more than 20 people on the waiting list."
Councilman Ryan Procsal, pointing to the benefits of an all-inclusive playground, asked if there is a way to shift the airport plans to accommodate West Pottsgrove's request, but Keller seemed dubious. "It would make (the hangars) not feasible," Keller said
He said when the existing "T" hangars were built in 2012, the stormwater infrastructure for the 22 new clear-span hangars was put in place. "So we're already set up there from a site-design standpoint," said Keller. "We're already set up there. We've got the stormwater, it's flat and most of the paving is in place."
"There really isn't any other perfectly flat space where we wouldn't have to demolish a building or move something else around to try to accommodate the request from West Pottsgrove," Keller said.
Ironically, West Pottsgrove is asking to buy back land that was once its own. In 1962, Pottstown Borough "annexed" 112.57 acres of land from the township, which became Pottstown Municipal Airport. In 1966, it annexed another 2.6 acres of land that is now part of the airport.
Originally Published: August 9, 2024 at 7:03 a.m.
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