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Mega-Warehouses in White Township Face Possible Doom (Again) Aug. 8th

July 17, 2023

Protest signs outside the White Planning Board meeting. The Jaindl company has its roots in
turkey farming. Photo by Joe Phalon, 7/2023.

The Pennsylvania developer that has proposed 2.6 million square feet of warehouses in White Township faces a dismissal of the project if a representative of the developer does not appear at the Aug. 8th Planning Board meeting.

The board, at its July 11th meeting, attended by more than 250 residents, voted unanimously to send a letter to Jaindl Land Development Co. stating that if they don’t show up at the August meeting, a vote could be taken to jettison the entire project.

Jaindl has not had a representative at a Planning Board meeting since this past January, board attorney Tara St. Angelo said. For each of the following months, Jaindl asked that testimony by its expert witnesses be pushed back a month. St. Angelo said the time has some for Jaindl to make its intentions clear.

“You can’t just not show up think you can keep postponing,” St. Angelo said.

Should Jaindl be absent from the August meeting, the Planning Board could take a vote to dismiss the application “without prejudice,” meaning Jaindl could resubmit its plans but that it would have to start the process over from the beginning.

The current application has been before the board since 2019. A resubmission could result in a similar timeline.

The several hundred people in attendance had hoped the board would take a vote on ordering the application to be resubmitted on the basis of changes made to the plans during the four years it’s been under consideration.

About 250 people attended the July White Township Planning Board meeting. Photo by Joe
Phalon, 7/2023.

In particular, the board at its May meeting indicated that changes proposed for an access road to the site directly from Route 519 rather than off Foul Rift Road might be substantial enough to warrant starting the process from the beginning.

The board planned to discuss the matter at its June meeting at the Municipal Building, but that venue could not accommodate the several hundred people wanting to attend, so the board called the meeting to order and then immediately cancelled it, moving the June business to July’s meeting, which was held at nearby White Township School.

To the frustration of much of the crowd at the July meeting, the board did not vote on the dismissal based on the changes, and instead held the vote calling for Jaindl to appear at the August meeting or face a dismissal.

Joe Phalon, Contributing Writer

Contributing Writer

Joe brings decades of journalism experience to the Ridge View Echo, covering everything from local school boards to the U.S. Supreme Court. A former National Law Journal editor and Columbia Law School press officer, he now enjoys telling community stories in Blairstown, where he lives with his wife, Rose, and their two dachshunds.