Cherokee proposal cuts land use in half

By RICHARD PEARSALL ( Courier-Post Staff)

PENNSAUKEN

Township officials on Wednesday unveiled a new approach to redeveloping Petty's Island, one that eliminates the golf course originally proposed for the 392-acre island and concentrates development on a single contiguous section.

"We've gone from a proposal under which 60 percent of the island would be developed to one in which only 28 percent would be developed," Mayor Rick Taylor said.

No decisions have been made on what the actual development will consist of, including whether it would include a 350-room hotel, another part of the original plan, Taylor said.

"All we have is a footprint, not a plan," Taylor said of the report that was unveiled Wednesday evening.

Cherokee Pennsauken LLC, an offshoot of a North Carolina-based developer that specializes in cleaning up old industrial sites, remains the township's designated redeveloper for the island.

The report unveiled Wednesday evening was compiled by a Wisconsin environmental firm that Cherokee hired at the township's request to re-evaluate the island in terms of its environmental impact.

"We thought we had a good plan from the beginning," Taylor said Wednesday, "but we also listened to the critics and said "we hear you.' "

Steven Apfelbaum, a representative of the environmental firm, Applied Ecological Services, said the company conducted its study without going onto the island, relying on a wide range of previous studies and data.

"The next step in the process is to go on the island to confirm and fill in the gaps," Apfelbaum said.

Cherokee first unveiled its plans for Petty's Island, which sits off Pennsauken and Camden in the Delaware River, in the spring of 2004.

The plans called for the construction of 1,000 homes, divided among two tracts, one of which would be devoted to single-family houses with starting prices in the $500,000 range, the other slated for townhouses and condominiums that would start around $200,000.

Much of the island under this plan was to be used for a golf course, next to which would rise a 350-room hotel.

The project was controversial from the start, opposed by environmentalists and some residents who preferred that the site be returned to a natural state and become a park and wildlife refuge.

CITGO, the island's owner, offered to donate it to the state for that purpose, but the state declined.

Last year Lisa Jackson, recently installed as the new commissioner of environmental protection, toured the island to get a better sense of the controversy.

But a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection, Elaine Makatura, said this week there is no review under way of the State Land Trust's decision to reject the island as a preserve.

Wednesday evening, at the public presentation of the new environmental study, Camden resident Tom Knoche raised the issue of restoring the island to a natural state with no development.

"The island sits in the middle of four million people in an area that is generally underserved by open space," Knoche said. "It could be like Central Park."

Early in the planning process, Cherokee infuriated opponents of the development when a consultant it hired to study a pair of bald eagles nesting on the island disturbed the nest and the eaglet in it, eventually leading to the eaglet's death.

Pennsauken officials early on welcomed the Cherokee plan as giving the township a much needed economic boost at the same time it cleaned up an industrial site and provided green areas for both wildlife and people.

The plan to develop Petty's Island is part of an overall, $1.3-billion plan for the township's riverfront, a plan that would include two other nearby areas and a total of 600 acres.

Plans there also call for a mix of residential and commercial development as well as greater recreational access to the riverfront, long precluded by industrial use.

Reach Richard Pearsall at (856) 486-2465 or rpearsall@courierpostonline.com
Published: March 22. 2007 3:10AM

Note: The title of this article was changed in a later online edition to: Petty's Island plan cuts land use in half