Jun 10, 2016 3 min read

CECIL – Southpointe Golf Club has filed suit against more than 235 homeowners and businesses over its inability to subdivide or develop its property since 2011.

A disagreement over a deed issued for the land in 1988 and coordinated by the Redevelopment Authority of Washington County, the public agency that spearheaded development of Southpointe, has the Southpointe Property Owners Association citing veto power against the golf club of any development plans.

But according to court documents, the club is arguing that veto power, partly afforded by the authority, expired in 2010. Now the club is taking its fight to the supervisors of Cecil Township, filing an appeal May 31 challenging the township’s unified development ordinance amendment approved by the board of supervisors May 2. The amendment prohibits the club from changing land use categories from residential to commercial or other similar classifications with less restrictive usage.

Site application documents filed with the township on May 5 show Southpointe Medical Associates is seeking to build a special needs pediatric facility and supporting structures called the Hope Learning Facility along Southepointe Boulevard using property owned by the golf club and the Iceoplex. A hearing on the application and its zoning is scheduled for 7 p.m. June 20 before the township zoning hearing board.

Southpointe Golf Club is a commercial facility in a special development district zoned with both commercial and residential categories. According to the appeal, the club received approval of subdivisions to individual lots, but a Feb. 16 zoning hearing board decision recommended amending its ordinances to prevent those changes. The appeal states the club is now discriminated against as the only property in Southpointe prohibited from making any change of use classification. It adds that the only provision to allow a change under permitted right usage would require approval of 100 percent of surrounding property owners.

“The 100 percent requirement is unprecedented in the township’s history of land development regulation,” the appeal states, and adds that the “board (of supervisors) action to pass the ordinance was not supported by any substantial evidence, nor any evidence at all” to support why the land use categories could be restricted from changes.

The most technical argument highlighted in the appeal is that the township did not properly advertise its May 2 meeting by listing it as May 3 in a legal advertised in the Observer-Reporter on April 25 and that the township did not directly notify the club nor any other stakeholders.

The appeal states “the board failed to provide the required public notice of the consideration of enactment of a zoning amendment by way of … the (Pennsylvania) Municipal Planning Code” and claims that where a municipality fails to meet those requirements, then the zoning action is then void.