Pennsburg City Zoning Code

Ensure that institutions and recreational facilities are suitably designed and sited to protect the character of adjacent residential neighborhoods.

Ensure that institutional development will take place only when served by adequate public facilities, services and streets.

Provide appropriate standards for the creation and expansion of institutional and recreational uses in the Borough.

Churches, chapels or other places of worship and their adjunct residential and/or educational facilities.

Cemeteries and burial grounds.

Convents and monasteries.

Institutional headquarters for educational, fraternal, professional, religious and other nonprofit organizations of a similar nature.

Institutions for the care of the aged, children, handicapped or mentally ill, including nursing homes, convalescent homes, retirement communities, and personal care facilities, in compliance with applicable state and federal regulations.

Schools and other educational facilities, including private, nursery, elementary, junior high, and high schools, colleges, universities and theological schools, whether boarding or nonboarding, public or private.

Municipal buildings, offices and uses, including police, fire companies and ambulance services.

Parks, playgrounds, open space preservation areas, and recreational facilities, but excluding any commercial recreation facilities.

Libraries, historical sites and museums.

Accessory uses customarily incidental and subordinate to any of the above permitted uses, in compliance with the provisions of § 110-312 of this chapter, including day-care centers as defined herein. Day-care centers shall comply with the provisions of § 110-313 of this chapter.

Minimum tract size: one acre.

Minimum lot width: 150 feet.

Minimum building setbacks:

Minimum distance between structures: 25 feet. When, from a functional standpoint, a grouping or clustering of buildings is practical, this distance may be reduced when approved by the Zoning Hearing Board as a special exception, in accordance with the provisions of Article XVIII of this chapter.

Minimum parking and service area setbacks:

Maximum building coverage: 40% of lot area.

Maximum impervious surface coverage: 65% of lot area.

Maximum building height: 40 feet. However, structures not intended for human occupancy, such as towers, steeples, chimneys, etc., may exceed this limit up to a height of 60 feet, by conditional use, in compliance with the provisions of §§ 110-306 and 110-328 of this chapter, provided that the front, side and rear yard setbacks are increased by two feet for every one foot of structure height over 40 feet.

Public utilities. All uses shall be served by public sewer and water facilities.

Access and service areas. A planned system of efficient ingress, egress, internal circulation of traffic, loading and unloading, and disposal of solid waste or recycling material shall be required.

Landscaping. All landscaping, including parking lot landscaping, buffers and screen plantings, shall be provided according to the provisions of the Pennsburg Borough Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance.

Parking. Parking shall be provided in compliance with Article XIV of this chapter.

Performance standards. All development in the IN Institutional District shall comply with the performance standards in § 110-321 of this chapter.

Traffic impact study. A traffic impact study shall be required for all institutional developments with 50,000 or more square feet of building floor area. The study shall comply with the provisions of § 110-327 of this chapter.

Architectural plans sufficient to show building entrances, service and loading areas, refuse collection and recycling areas, elevations, signs, lighting facilities, and all other pertinent information required by the Borough Council.

A description of the institutional use proposed in sufficient detail to indicate the effects of that use, and plans for handling the production of traffic, noise, glare, air and water pollution, and fire and safety hazards, in compliance with the performance standards of § 110-321 of this chapter.

All information required by the Borough in order to determine compliance with pertinent Borough regulations.