Limerick Talks Mobile Home Park, Community Park

Photo by Evan Brandt

Current concept for the master plan for Limerick Community Park, as discussed by the supervisors last night.

Name a kind of park, chances are Limerick Township Supervisors talked about it last night.

Mobile home park? Check.

Community park? Check.

Parking in the community park? Check again.

It was indeed a night to park it and considering the two combined meetings were more than four hours long, we were parked in our chairs for an awfully long time.

At 6 p.m., a hearing on "alleged violations" at the Ridgeview Terrace mobile home park on Ridge Pike were held, complete with lawyers and court stenographers, testimony and code citations.

Too bad it was all a big misunderstanding. Never underestimate the damage bad writing can do.

As the two-hour hearing wound down Code Enforcement Office Director Robert Loeper Jr. indicated that the letter he had sent to Morgantown-based GSP Management had been intended merely to alert him to problems on the property Loeper thought should be discussed.

But since the letter also said something about "could lead to violation notices," the lawyers got unsheathed and we had a little circus about long-standing problems.

Perhaps the best outcome of the time spent was the nearly 50 residents who attended the hearing. Many of them got to "have their say" about conditions which had been eating at them for years. In fact, at one point, Township solicitor Joe McGrory joked the crowd was there "to beat up on" owner Frank Perano, who said he manages at least 70 other mobile home parks.

It is probably a good thing Perano's lawyer agreed to withdraw the formal objection, thus rendering the hearing unofficial, otherwise Perano might have faced a charge of lying under oath.

At one point McGrory asked him if any of the mobile home parks he manages had ever been fined or subject of criminal charges and he said "not to my knowledge."

Perhaps he forgot about the $1.3 million the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fined him and his company in 2012 for violating state and federal laws at 73 facilities in three states, according to this report from WFMZ.

But enough of that ugly business. Let's move on to more bucolic pursuits.

The partial loop was the supervisors preferred option.

Toward the end of this marathon of a meeting, Sarah Leeper and William Collins of the landscape architecture firm Simone Collins walked the board through improvement plans for the township's Community Park as they now stand.

The park is already home to the Manderach Playground, a popular community funded park with its signature two-story tube slide, enjoyed by residents (and non-residents) for years.

After meeting with residents and staff, the firm began, Collins said, with the road that bisects the park currently -- Ziegler Road.

Some wanted it to no longer bisect the park, others wanted access on both sides, so the firm came up with four alternatives, the second of which was the one favored by the supervisors.

Called the "partial loop" option, it allows traffic to pass through the park, but loops it down around the parameter and, with proper traffic control devices, should keep it from becoming "a speedway" as Supervisor Ken Sperring said he fears.

Supervisor Kara Shuler made some suggestions about locating parking closer to fields, for older residents who want to watch their grandchildren play soccer, lacrosse, football ....

Collins said the team had received enough input to move forward.

Current conceptual plans, which have not yet been engineered, call for a long list of amenities including baseball and softball fields, tennis courts, bocce courts, three different kinds of plagrounds, a natural amphitheater and a community center.

You can learn more about it amid the plentiful, plentiful Tweets below: