Monroeville council has denied an application for a controversial development bordering the town’s Garden City neighborhood.
The proposal to build 95 homes on 47 acres off Logans Ferry Road at the site of the former Pittsburgh-Monroeville Airport has been met with criticism and resistance from neighbors over the past few months.
After tabling the Primo Land Group’s applications at the planning level, commission Chair Leonard Bertoni called for the board to vote in August, which resulted in a 3-2 recommendation for denial.
At subsequent council meetings, several Garden City residents said they did not feel they were kept informed about the project’s status. Residents of Willow Hedge Drive filed a petition asking the development’s entrance not connect to their road. When residents on Quince Road and Hazelnut and Buttercup Drive found out developers wanted to extend their dead-end streets to serve the new housing plan, they filed a petition with more than 300 signatures.
“They want you to allow them to disrupt our quiet streets,” said Quince Road resident Charlotte Mlynar. “Make them sacrifice their own property if they want to build.”
That led to discussion between council and the developer to have contruction access to the site via Greenleaf Road, which also would be made a permanent route into the housing plan.
Nancy Gormley said the constant revision of development plans is pitting neighbors against each other, when the primary concern is for area safety.
“There are kids on Hazelnut, on Quince, on Dahlia,” Gormley said. “These are the people that we’re concerned about.”
“It’s absurd to approve $400,000 homes with sidewalks and a homeowners’ association that will be accessed through a 1950s-style neighborhood of $150,000 homes, with narrow streets where residents routinely park their cars,” said Quince Road resident Charlotte Mlynar.
Monroeville council seemed to agree, voting 5-2 on Nov. 14 to deny the applications. Councilmen Eric Poach and Bob Stevenson voted to approve the project. Poach asked municipal planner Paul Whealdon if the developers had met all of Monroeville’s ordinances. Whealdon said they had.
Following the vote, developer attorney Anthony Cosgrove asked council members who voted against the project to submit their reasons for denial in writing.
Cosgrove declined comment for this story.
Jim Dallas, who had lived on Buttercup Drive since 1985, said the Willowcrest project would fundamentally change the character of the neighborhood.
“One of the reasons I moved there is because it was a dead-end road,” Dallas said. “These are side streets. They weren’t meant to feed a development with 90-some homes.”
