Plan to build new municipal complex on open space sparks dissent, lawsuit in small Montco town

Plans by Upper Pottsgrove to use land purchased years ago as open space for a new $5.5 million municipal complex have caused a furor in the normally quiet Montgomery County community of 5,921 residents notable for its rolling hills and rural character.

Municipal meetings that once drew only a handful of residents have been packed in recent months with people who want the land to remain untouched. A duo of neighbors sued the commission, hiring a former Pennsylvania legislator and open space expert as their lawyer. The ruckus led a commissioner to resign as the board’s vice president in February, telling a local newspaper that the commission president had overstepped his authority in overseeing the plan.

The dustup has its roots in a November 2008 deal by Upper Pottsgrove to buy 36 acres of farmland from Thomas Smola for $450,000 and “utilize it for township open space.” Smola has since died, but plans begun in 2020 by the township commissioners to use part of the farm for the complex began circulating widely among residents only when an ordinance was passed to pay for the complex last summer.

The triangular parcel off rural Evans Road has no trails or amenities and has most recently been leased for farming.

Matt Murray, a real estate broker and 20-year resident of Upper Pottsgrove, has led the charge against using the land for anything other than open space, saying it was paid for by taxpayers for that purpose.

“It’s become my full-time mission,” Murray said. “I firmly believe in open space. I don’t think they were expecting any pushback.”

Nathaniel Guest, a lawyer and executive director of the Colebrookdale Railroad Preservation Trust, has joined Murray’s fight against the township.

The township’s plan is “illegal and wrongheaded,” Guest said. “But we know it’s an uphill battle to fight it.”

They credit the Pottstown Mercury newspaper, which has only one reporter, Evan Brandt, remaining on staff with bringing the issue to light.

In February, Murray and Guest filed a civil suit against the commissioners in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, contending that the township’s actions violate Pennsylvania’s open space act. They’ve started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for legal fees.

Oliver Bass, president of Natural Lands, the largest nonprofit land trust in the region, wrote in a letter to the Mercury that he was “dismayed and alarmed that the township has plans to construct a municipal complex for township offices, police, and highway departments on 10 acres of the Smola Farm at 370 Evans Rd., a site also within the Stone Hill Conservation Landscape.”

The Stone Hill Conservation Landscape comprises 6,777 acres of continuous forest in Montgomery County.

Bass said the township plan “risks undermining the public’s trust in the open space funds established — per Pennsylvania’s Open Space Act — across our region and the commonwealth.”

Neither board president Trace Slinkerd nor the former vice president, Cathy Paretti, responded to Inquirer requests by email for comment. Though she stepped down as vice president, Paretti remains on the board.

Aloysius Gryga, an official at CMC Engineering, which was hired by the town to manage the site development of the new municipal complex, posted a rebuttal to Bass and project opponents on the township’s home page. Gryga said parts of the plan have been “continuously and purposely misrepresented to the public.”

Gryga said commissioners took into account many factors when they began planning the new complex in 2020, such as terrain, ease of access, and possible disturbances to neighbors, and did not make the decision lightly. He said that the plan calls for using 1.2 acres of the total 36 acres.

Gryga said both a prior and the current solicitor said the property could legally be used for the complex, which would be paid for through money from the sale of the township’s wastewater management system. Under the August 2022 resolution to use the money, Slinkerd, as board president, was given authority to make decisions related to the construction of the municipal building.

Though the land had been purchased with a check from the township’s Open Space Fund, it was never formally preserved through a deed restriction or conservation easement.

“It is municipal-owned land, and the proposal is to use it for a municipal purpose, to stop the current business use of the property, and to make the ground more usable by the public,” Gryga wrote.

He said the township also plans to create a network of publicly accessible trails on the property.

Murray’s lawsuit alleges that the plan is invalid because township residents approved a tax on themselves in 2006 to pay for open space, and the money from that tax was used to buy the Smola property. In addition, it notes that the township identified the land as open space in its own open space plan.

In their legal rebuttal, the commissioners denied most of the claims without detail.

“What’s worrisome here is the people of Upper Pottsgrove voted by referendum to tax themselves to buy open space,” said Kate Harper, the lawyer representing the two residents. “They never thought that they were voting by referendum to tax themselves to buy a new township complex.”

Harper, a state representative for 18 years, helped craft the county’s open space plan. She fears that Upper Pottsgrove could be setting a precedent for other municipalities looking to use land paid for with open space money for other purposes.

Meanwhile, Murray and Guest hope the commissioners board will change its mind and look elsewhere for a new complex. The two stood recently on the property — dotted with construction stakes, plastic flags waving in the wind — and said it was Smola’s wish that the land be preserved.

“I hope that the commissioners understand that we know they have a tough job, that they’re not getting paid to do this,” Guest said. “But if they are concerned about representing their constituents, they now have a golden opportunity.”

View the complaint filed against the Upper Pottsgrove Commission:

View the commission’s legal response: