The Gettysburg Planning Commission and Borough staff will host an open house on July 29 to seek public input on changes to the revised zoning ordinance.
The open house will be held at the Gettysburg Municipal Building, 59 East High Street Gettysburg, PA. The time of the meeting is to be announced.
Administrative staff will be seated at different stations with copies of maps and documents in front of them to answer questions and hear comments from the public.
The Planning Commission may host an additional public workshop in August if there seems to be a need for one following the open house. Commission members may also set up a booth at the Adams County Farmer’s Market to inform more people that the process is happening.
The goal was to go beyond the bare minimum requirements for notifying the public, Planning Director John Whitmore said, and “provide meaningful public comment and interaction.”
Community members can also email comments to Whitmore at jwhitmore@gettysburgpa.gov or attend the monthly meeting of the Planning Commission at 7 p.m. on the third Monday of each month. The next Planning Commission meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 15 at 7:00 p.m.
Planning Committee Chair Charles Strauss suggested that if members of the public find sections of the ordinance that they don’t agree with or fear will create problems going forward, one way to participate is highlighting specific parts of the ordinance and even suggesting alternate language.
The current draft of the zoning document can be located on the Gettysburg Borough website under “Planning Commission.” (https://www.gettysburgpa.gov/rezoning).
The process of crafting a new zoning ordinance has been broken into three parts. First, a small committee made up of community members, an expert consultant, and two members of the Planning Commission worked for months to create a draft. This draft is now being presented to the Planning Commission in sections over the next several month’s public meetings.
The Planning Commission will likely make revisions before stage three, which is presenting the draft to the Borough Council. Borough Council has the ultimate power to approve the new ordinance, though any major revisions at that stage will have to be sent back to borough staff.
Map discussion
On Monday, June 17, the commission heard a presentation about the draft zoning map, but did not yet propose any significant changes to the draft.
The meeting can be viewed on the Community Media of South Central PA website. Discussion of the zoning draft starts at around the 41 minute mark.
Strauss said, “Everything is open right now, so I believe this is a very exciting time for the Borough of Gettysburg to have a chance to look at how we inhabit space in this borough and how we use that space, how it looks, and how it accommodates us.”
He also clarified that development projects underway already will be “grandfathered in” and governed by the existing ordinance.
Whitmore presented to the Commission about the new zoning map draft and explained some of the process the committee used to create it.
“Your zoning is your land use tool to implement comprehensive planning so you can have future development, future land use, planned with zoning.” Whitmore said. “As I’ve said before, zoning is the fun term for land-use regulation.” Whitmore has spoken previously about this process in an interview with Gettysburg Connection.
One challenge he spoke about was predicting population changes after a major event like the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected where people choose to live and work.
US census data, collected in 2019, predicts population decline in Gettysburg Borough while the comprehensive plan predicts some population growth over the next 20 years. It then becomes the Planning Commission’s job to make decisions such as whether to encourage construction of more housing or other types of development in the zoning ordinance.
Nicholas Redman, who served on the drafting committee, said of building the map, “We really tried to get the feel of these neighborhoods and put them into these new zones.” For example, he talked about how the area east of Lincoln Square on York Street is now more divided between the more historic section and general commercial than it was on the previous map. “We really tried to keep it to ‘What’s the character now, what’s being used there?'” he said.
Borough Engineer Chad Clabaugh felt the committee’s draft was very “down the middle.” The goal was neither to drastically slow down development or encourage rapid new development.
Whitmore predicted the most community comments would come from concern about taller buildings on the revitalization area which includes Hotel Gettysburg and the “Gettysburg Station” project, which is a mixed-use development planned to include 186 apartments next to the train station. He said one thing to keep in mind is that development is limited by the cost and feasibility of larger and taller building projects, particularly given steel shortages.
For the upcoming meeting in July, the Planning Commission will review the introduction to the ordinance and the definitions section of the new draft. The August meeting will be used to delve into the proposed zoning districts.
The Planning Commission plans to have their draft finalized and ready to move to the Borough Council at either September or October’s meeting, depending on the number of edits needed and time needed for public participation.
Catalina Righter, freelance reporter, lives in New Oxford. She previously wrote for the Carroll County Times and the Kent County News, covering crime, education, local government and arts. She works as a legal assistant.
I love the ideas shared by Jim McHenry. The high-rise building would be a disastrous mistake on so many levels! And so ironic after all those years of near-draconian enforcement by HARB. Keep the history and the aesthetics, and do NOT sell-out to temptations of tax revenue from over- development. Sprawl is already upon us. Just because so many are moving here from the cities and urban areas does not mean we should accept those perspectives. There are more sustainable ways to exist and thrive. We must think creatively, carefully, and with consequences in mind.
I’ve said this several times before and will definitely not get traction AGAIN . Putting an apartment complex downtown -a multi story building is a huge mistake. Given the fact the temperatures now are climbing faster and faster with Climate Change -This will become a Heat Island for downtown Gettysburg.. Not only will the temperatures spike downtown during the day, at night they will not relent with this extra cement. My advice is to put in a giant Park as in Central Park New York City. Repleat with trees/plants/sitting areas with benches and a gravity fed fountain requiring no pumps.… Read more »
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments and ideas on the transformative use of the spaces within Gettysburg. These ideas and suggestions
are powerful and aesthetically exciting! We need a model like this that prioritizes and strives to address both environmental and community sustainability needs.. We need those conditions that will help to create and grow resiliency in the days ahead.