A building from the former George Westinghouse Research and Technology Park is seen in Churchill. The borough council voted Tuesday to allow a proposal to build an Amazon facility to move forward. (Photo by Ryan Loew/PublicSource)
by Mila Sanina, PublicSource
The Churchill Borough Council gave its blessing to a controversial plan from Hillwood Development to build a sprawling Amazon distribution center at the site of what used to be the George Westinghouse Research and Technology Park.
Five members of the council voted in favor of the proposal and two, Norma Greco and Adam McDowell, voted against it.
A group of residents opposing the Amazon development said they would appeal the council’s decision in court.
The distribution center — which Amazon calls “a robotics sortable fulfillment center” — would be a 2.9-million-square-foot warehouse, with 1,794 parking spaces. It’s an estimated $300 million investment, the largest development in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh in recent memory. The site has been vacant for over 20 years.
During a council meeting Tuesday night hosted on Zoom, before the council’s vote, dozens of residents spoke in opposition to the Hillwood proposal and only one spoke in support. Almost 300 people joined the virtual meeting.
A few members of the seven-member council spoke before the roll call. McDowell stated that his concerns have been around the air quality and he does not believe that the applicant has put in an adequate effort to meet the criteria for the conditional use. Greco agreed with McDowell. Those who voted in support of Hillwood’s application said that within the framework of the law, the applicant has met the criteria but they have been frustrated by the “thresholds” set by the law. The approval comes with a number of conditions to mitigate the impact of the project.
One council member, Kevin Collins, noted the $15 to $20 million cost to clean up the site that the borough would not bear under this proposal and the tax revenue that the development would bring. “Churchill borough needs commercial tax revenue… there is a guarantee of a minimum property tax revenue of $2.4 million per year for 10 years,” he said.
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