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 Double Crossings by Ron Harper, Jr. Friday, 18 April 2008
Dale High moves behind the scenes to get taxpayers to help pay for his shopping mall. It's good to be Dale. Imagine you are Dale High flying over Lancaster. Look down. To the east you see your Greenfield Industrial Park, which draws businesses from the city. It prospers. In the center of town, taxpayers are building you a $76 million hotel beside an equally expensive publicly-funded convention center, which you get to use exclusively. Now, on the west end of town, you have a couple of friendly township commissions which are shepherding your $100 million shopping center, while pushing $25 million in taxpayer funds for road improvements so your customers can get there. The chorus of citizens protesting below? The sounds can't reach you from where you sit. "Nobody here knows how anyone else is going to vote," said Manheim Township Commissioner and Vice President of the board, Mike Flanagan, before the 3-2 vote in favor of moving High's project forward last week. The comment drew laughs from the small crowd who came to witness The Crossings at Conestoga Creek's predictable vote at the Manheim Township Commissioners' meeting last Monday night. The Crossings is a behemoth of a development, a 646,000 square foot shopping center and parking lot across from Long's Park and Park City mall. Flanagan, together with Carol Simpson, had joined with ailing Larry Downing, who phoned-in his "yes" vote, to give key approval to the project.
The vote was orchestrated and choreographed by one of the two Penn Square Partners, Dale High, and was the second step for "The Crossings at Conestoga" to becoming a reality. Just how big is High's project? Combine all three of Lancaster County's Wal-Marts, add the Home Depot and the Circuit City; that's almost how big the proposed shopping center will be. The project was introduced with blaring trumpets on March 23, 2006 by business partner, Lancaster Newspapers, Inc., which is the other half of Penn Square Partners. That day, the Lancaster New Era ran a beautiful, full-color illustration of what the "...pedestrian-friendly, open-air,'lifestyle' shopping center" would look like. The intrepid LNP reporters cut and pasted High's public relations department's description of the project. A High spokesman was quoted, saying that the project was conditional on road improvements, and then described how it would be paid: "Construction of the new interchange would depend on Congress approving funding," the spokesman said. Enter Carol Simpson. A little more than three weeks before the public found out about the proposed shopping center, then-board President Simpson signed a letter on behalf of the commissioners, asking Senator Arlen Spector to give funds toward the Harrisburg/Route 30 exchange. The February 28, 2006 letter said in part, "We are working in close partnership with High Real Estate Group to advance the project." There are no township resolutions or any meeting minutes that indicate when the decision to enter this "close partnership" with High began. Zero. In addition to signing a letter asking for funds, Simpson also traveled to Washington, D.C., and lobbied for the money. Did Simpson travel with High to Washington? It is unconfirmed, but widely rumored, that Simpson was indeed accompanied by High himself, and that the trip included some socializing, where High enjoyed his favorite mixed drink (Manhattans). When contacted by the Post a week after her "yes" vote about this trip, Simpson said, "I don't want to talk about it. We made our decision and that's it. I don't want to talk about it." Township manager, Jim Martin, said that just he and Simpson made the trip together. Throughout the entire public process, when the Lancaster Newspaper has covered the hearings, the stories are almost always supplemented with gorgeous developer-provided full-color "artistic representations" of the bucolic shopping "experience" to come. When William Cluck, a lawyer for neighbors fighting the project, suggested corrections and a story idea to an Intelligencer Journal reporter, she responded with a profanity-laced email dismissing it. Eventually the newspaper's "coverage" of the hearings was reduced to almost nothing. So just how wired is this project? Martin signed a letter on behalf of the township's Municipal Authority asking the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development (DCED) for state tax dollars to pay for the road improvements. The letter talked up the shopping mall, saying that it was a "unique development opportunity" and that paving over the old Deisley farm would "preserve farmland in the township." When Flanagan, chairman of the Authority, was questioned by the Post on Monday night at his home about the farmland claims, he pointed out that he voted against the text amendment (the first step in the approval process) because it didn't require developers to purchase enough Transferable Development Rights (TDR). Flanagan, who helped develop the township's TDR program in the 90's was adamant about preserving farmland, but resigned to some development. Before voting 'yes' on the conditional use, Flanagan said, "It is likely that this particular shopping center will be built somewhere in Lancaster County in the coming years. That being the case, the question becomes - should it be here and under the conditions contained in this motion?." He went on to talk about the benefit of the regional road improvements that were coming along with the project, albeit, he acknowledged, at taxpayer expense. So, how could Simpson and Flanagan sit in judgement of High's "conditional use" application, given the cheerleading roles they both played? State case law in Min. Inc. v. Zoning Hearing Board of Wharton Township answers the question: "...requires a local governing body in the performance of its quasi-judicial functions to avoid even the appearance of bias or impropriety. A showing of actual bias is unnecessary in order to assert a cognizable due process claim; the mere potential for bias or the appearance of non-objectivity may be sufficient to constitute a violation of that right." But the apparent conflict of interest doesn't end with Simpson and Flanagan. Township engineer, Rettew and Associates, also serves as High's engineer! So township residents are paying their public engineer to review something prepared by the engineer's private employer! And what about the grant from the DCED? When contacted Monday, DCED spokesperson Janel Miller said that the application is not approved, but refused to provide a copy of the application to Post. According to Cluck, the application says in part, ""High Real Estate Group and Manheim Township have formed a public-private partnership to advance the significant improvements to US Route 30 and SR 230 to support economic development initiatives in the region" That can't be good news for taxpayers, because when High is involved in these "public-private partnerships," it is usually the "public" who gets stuck with the bill. |
© Copyright 2008 by Lancaster Post. All Rights reserved.
Downing's unprecedented phone-in vote strongly suggested that his vote, contrary to Flanagan's statement, was known prior to the meeting. The vote was taken after 15 hearings, which included over 50 witnesses and lasted over 50 hours.