During their meeting on Monday, December 3, the Bath Borough Council helped push forward a long-dormant land development plan that would finish the second phase of the Bath View Condominiums project.
Shortly after development of the condominiums on North Walnut Street, the developer failed, never completing construction of a second condominium building. While other developers attempted to purchase the property, none were willing to pick up where the original developer left off. However, developer Justin Huratiak of Huratiak Homes chose to move forward with the project and finish what the original developer started.
“After all these years…we got this back on track,” said Blake Marles, borough solicitor.
Borough Manager Brad Flynn was thrilled with the progress, thanking Huratiak for his patience and perseverance as they worked together through what Flynn described as a process that was far from easy.
Now, Flynn looks forward to the Bath View community finally coming together.
“I am happy for the people in Bath View,” he said.
Huratiak is also looking forward to working with the Bath View Condo Association and board, who he will be meeting with throughout the development process.
“[We will] bring that community back to where it should be,” he said. “We are looking forward to getting started.”
In other news, council also approved a 2019 engineering and traffic survey. The borough has attempted three separate times to receive a grant for adaptive traffic signals that will help traffic congestion in the borough. However, the borough was told it needs stronger engineering evidence to show that traffic is an issue. This survey, from a third party, will help provide the evidence the borough needs, as well as short-term and long-term suggestions for traffic improvement.
Flynn says the survey would give the borough a “solid transportation plan” that is “specifically tailored” to the problems the borough faces.
This survey, however, comes with a cost of $102,400. Two community development grants will help cover $55,000. The rest will come from the borough’s capital improvement fund.
The lack of outside resources or funding is something that frustrated council members and Mayor Fiorella Mirabito. The surrounding, larger townships with the majority of development, they said, get all of the funding from the state, while the borough, which experiences the direct impact from the surrounding communities’ traffic, gets “nothing.”
Mayor Mirabito noted that Bath is the only municipality in either Lehigh or Northampton County to have five highways.
“It is time someone pay attention to the small guy,” she said.
