READING, Pa. – The Reading City Zoning Board voted Wednesday to grant developer Alan Shuman a zoning relief for a 156,000-square-foot shopping center planned for the city.
The 19.3-acre site at 1853 North Third Street is the former site of the Glidden paint factory, which closed in 2007.
The factory building has since been demolished.
The vacant lot is bounded by Byrne Street, Richmond Street and Rockland Street, and is located between Centre Avenue (Route 61) and North 5th Street Highway (Route 222).
The property’s registered owner is Anoread LLC, which has a sales contract in place with Glidden Development LP.
The site is located in the MC Manufacturing Commercial Zoning District and the proposed use is permitted by special exception. The permitted zoning mitigation also includes deviations from off-street parking requirements and loading dock requirements.
At a public hearing last month, Schuman said he has already successfully developed three neighborhood shopping centers in the city over the past 15 years.
Schumann is seeking to develop a fourth shopping center on 13 acres south of the property in question.
City zoning ordinances call for 800 parking spaces depending on the size of the development, but Schumann’s plan calls for just 500.
Schumann previously testified that zoning officials have the authority to grant a 50% reduction waiver on parking fees if the tenant has a similar use, an exemption Schumann has received at other shopping centers in the city.
The second zoning issue concerned the designation of loading spaces.
Shuman determined that the loading area would be in the upper left corner of the plan because the tenant configuration had not yet been laid out.
Schumann had sought zoning approval with the condition that the area be required to have multiple loading spaces once a site development plan is finalized.
The project has zoning approval but is still subject to comprehensive land development plan review by the city Planning Commission.
The commission also ruled on two requests from the Reading Parking Authority for several changes to the residential parking plan at Mulberry Street and North 9th Street.
The variance was requested because the project exceeds the impervious cover percentage and requires the elimination of screening, visibility triangles, parking lot setbacks from existing residences, landscaping requirements for buffer strips, and reductions in dimensional requirements for handicapped parking spaces.
The commission denied an appeal for a zoning proposed for Mulberry Street, but approved an appeal for a zoning on North 9th Street.
The commission did not give any reasons why it rejected one appeal and approved the other.
In the new appeal, the Commission considered the following requests:
Harnoor Properties, LLC, 1014 North 13th St., applied for a special exception to expand the use of a nonconforming gas station/convenience store to a crispy chicken franchise that it claims will not impact its existing business.
As an alternative to a special exception, the applicant sought consideration of a deviation from the uses permitted in the R-3 Residential District.
A decision is expected to be made on September 11th.
