Warehouses vs. way of life

Rural residents are fightingconstruction of largetrucking-distribution complex.
BOILING SPRINGS, Pa. (AP) -- When Ivo V. Otto III was a boy, one of his first jobs on the family dairy farm was whitewashing the barn. In subsequent years, he tended the calves and in the fall came his favorite task -- harvesting the corn, chopping it and storing it in a silo.
"On a farm, if the sun's up, you're working," said Otto, who continued to work on the farm during his college summers and even a little bit into his law-school days. "Naps are unheard of."
Now, the 49-year-old land-use attorney is preparing to sell a significant portion of the land to a developer, whose plan to build four retail-goods distribution centers covering 2.2 million square feet -- the size of 40 football fields -- has sown resistance and resentment in the surrounding community.
For nearly a year, the development plans submitted by Keystone Property Trust have been under review by South Middleton Township officials as lawyers debate whether the project meets zoning requirements and whether roads can handle the traffic.
Surrounding the site -- which is still corn and soybean fields near the village of Boiling Springs, about 15 miles southwest of Harrisburg -- are farmsteads and an upscale subdivision complete with a golf course that nudge up against Pennsylvania's dairy country and two major highways.
What's at stake
At stake for residents is their way of life: They fear dangerous or noisy tractor-trailer traffic, diesel exhaust that is potentially carcinogenic, and the presence of such a large business that does not support high-paying or highly skilled jobs.
"The thing that companies like Keystone don't want to address is that the scope and size of their development has real-world economic and lifestyle impacts," said Douglas Wendt, a 30-year-old sales and marketing consultant who lives nearby.
If it could, Keystone Property Trust would find a less objectionable site near the interchange of Interstates 76 and 81, but the area is already saturated with distribution centers, said Donald Chase, a senior vice president for the West Conshohocken, Pa., developer. Even so, he said, the facility will bring property taxes and hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs to the area.
"We think it's going to be a benefit to the community and a lot less intrusive than people are portraying it to be," he said.
Industry trend
Pushing the development of distribution centers in Pennsylvania and other states has been a drive among retailers to reduce costs by replacing multiple, smaller distribution centers with a single, bigger, higher-tech facility in an area that is centrally located to more stores, those in the industry say.
To accommodate the trend, developers are pushing farther beyond saturated metropolitan areas in search of cheaper land, less congested highways, and sites within a day's drive of as many major cities as possible. Mega-distribution centers have encountered a mixed reception in other parts of the country.
In Killingly, Conn., local officials rejected a proposed Wal-Mart distribution center on a 350-acre site because of the public outcry. Elsewhere, tax credits and grants are being extended to developers that build distribution centers that provide jobs -- such as a new Target distribution center near Chambersburg, Pa., and a planned General Motors parts distribution center in Hudson, Wis.
In the anthracite coal country in northeast Pennsylvania and the one-time manufacturing hub in New York's Mohawk Valley, distribution center jobs are replacing some of the jobs lost when those industries withered.
Truck traffic
Cumberland County, where Otto's land is located, has the highest concentration of trucking and warehousing jobs in Pennsylvania, according to the state Department of Labor. And since 1982, heavy-truck traffic in Pennsylvania has grown more than 30 percent faster than overall traffic, according to the state Department of Transportation.
Critics of the proposal question whether the proliferation of the huge warehouses will aggravate a recent spate of deadly crashes involving tractor-trailers on interstate highways.
In the towns and cities along I-81 and I-76, a few miles north of Boiling Springs, distribution centers are clustered for miles along roads accessible to both highways. Tractor-trailers labor to make tight turns into huge warehouse lots that line two-lane county roads.
To fight such a fate for Boiling Springs, some residents have handed out literature at polling stations and raised funds to hire lawyers. They have opened Web sites and passed out red-lettered plastic signs that now adorn front lawns and roadway shoulders, screaming, "No Monster Warehouses!"
Doug Gale, the homeowners' association president of the nearby Mayapple subdivision, said his members thus far have raised $20,000 to pay lawyers, and "we're going to need to raise much more because we're going to need to spend much more."