Comprehensive Plan Backed

From the BCCT

Council backs plan to revitalize downtown
Forty-two percent of all residential properties in the borough are rentals.
By DANNY ADLER

A common theme in Morrisville’s new comprehensive plan is to revitalize the borough’s downtown and make it a focus of future economic development efforts.

The 156-page plan, which gained unanimous support from the borough council last week, also addresses housing issues in Morrisville, where 42 percent of all residential properties are rentals.

The plan was created by the borough and Bucks County planning commissions and serves as a policy guide to decisions regarding the town’s physical development. It makes dozens of recommendations.

“We’re trying to enhance the borough,” said council President Nancy Sherlock. However, she later added, the problem is that there isn’t a lot of room to build in Morrisville.

Councilwoman Jane Burger said many of the goals in the plan can be achieved “but not quickly.”

“All of these things probably won’t happen in 10 years, but we need to keep working toward that,” she said. “It’s a guideline. If you were doing a painting, I’d describe the comprehensive plan as the background. … It takes time.”

The plan says the borough can increase its tax base by attracting non-residential development. One such area to develop, the plan says, is south of Bridge Street between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Delaware Canal, which could serve as an extension to the downtown business district.

It also asks Morrisville officials to adopt form-based zoning that can control the design of the borough’s downtown. Form-based zoning codes, according to the Form-Based Codes Institute’s Web site, “address the relationship between building facades and the public realm, the form and mass of buildings in relation to one another, and the scale and types of streets and blocks,” with less of a focus on land use.

As far as housing is concerned, the plan recommends Morrisville look at sources of funding for housing rehabilitation and explore creating a program to turn duplexes and other rental conversions back to single family, owner-occupied housing.

Sherlock said the borough has been taking some steps to revert rentals back to owner occupancy; when a house sells, it reverts back to single-family home ownership.

So many rental units increase transience and absentee landlords who “only care about the rent check,” Burger said.

Some other recommendations in the plan: develop community greening and gardening programs; update the borough’s 1999 open space plan; market the borough as a historic and an affordable town; establish a shade tree commission; require all new developments to plant trees along streets; designate a historic district; work with the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission to implement solutions to congestion problems.

Morrisville Comprehensive Plan

Thanks to the emailer who sent this in.

There is a Morrisville Comprehensive Plan posted on the borough web site http://morrisville-boro-gov.com/CompPlan.asp - it's over 150 pages plus appendices. According to Jane Burger there will be a meeting Tuesday, September 9 at 6:30 to vote on approval of this plan - or to at least discuss it. Public comment will be accepted. Legal notices have been posted.