TodayFrat house targeted as site for new apartments in Shippensburg
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A developer wants to turn this rundown fraternity house on the edge of Shippensburg borough into 24 new student apartments. Karissa Zimmer/The Sentinel
Preliminary plans call for 24 new three-bedroom apartments to rise from the site where a dilapidated fraternity house on the edge of Shippensburg has irritated its neighbors in the past.
The apartments, targeted at Shippensburg University students, will be an extension of the Madison Court development in neighboring Shippensburg Township, where 60 three-bedroom apartments have been completed.
The site is now occupied by a home owned by Lambda Chi Alpha Properties. It has been vacated but previously had 35 residents.
The house — formerly owned by the Acacia fraternity — is slated for demolition as part of the project.
Planning commission members looked at a preliminary sketch plan Wednesday. Engineer Mark Sturtevant said he was looking for “comments and concerns” he should consider in preparing a conditional use request and a subsequent land development plan.
Conditional use is required because the Madison Court proposal calls for more units per building than are automatically permitted in the borough zoning ordinance.
Sturtevant told the commission the twin two-story apartment buildings will be nearly identical in appearance to the recently built Shippensburg Township units.
Concerns
Commission members identified three specific areas of concern in Wednesday’s discussion:
• Preventing traffic from the site from accessing Martin Avenue. In the past, drivers drove across private property to get to Martin Avenue and then drove across more private property to get to King Street, according to Bob Weaver, borough code enforcement officer.
• How to best screen the project from the rear of properties in the 400 block of East King Street, where residents organized in the past to complain about behavior at the fraternity house.
• Whether to require a second access to the apartments via an emergency-use gate from Martin Avenue.
Sturtevant called the project the best use for the property, which borders a wetlands. He said the apartments would generate tax revenue for the borough, help concentrate SU students in a single neighborhood and help reduce behavioral issues through the use of a full-time property manager.
He discounted the potential traffic impact on the area, pointing out that “observations” at the now-occupied Shippensburg Township apartments indicate that 80 percent or more of the residents walk to the SU campus daily.
‘Green’ concept
Sturtevant also touted the “green” concept of the proposed development, saying that water runoff will be managed by the use of pervious surfaces that permit water to leach into the ground rather than collect in detention basins.
Sturtevant said porous asphalt will be used for parking surfaces and porous cement used for sidewalks.
“The only impervious surfaces will be the building themselves,” he told the commission.
The planning commission is expected to review the conditional use request Nov. 12, and council could consider it Dec. 2.
