ADAMS TWP — Two zoning changes are intended to aid residential development and provide a suitable transition from the township into Mars, respectively.

The township supervisors at a public hearing Monday night approved the zoning changes.

One change includes adding a planned residential development element in the areas zoned rural-conservation districts. Gary Peaco, township zoning and code enforcement officer, said those districts now require a minimum of one acre per dwelling.

Peaco said as available land is depleted in the fast-growing township, developers are being pushed into property zoned rural-conservation. He said developers are moving more dirt and removing more trees and natural growth in those zones to maximize their land use.

Peaco said developers can now cluster homes and disturb less of the natural landscape. He stressed the zoning change will cause less impact on streams and wetlands because developers are not altering as much land.

Peaco said about 45 to 50 percent of the township is zoned rural-conservation and some already is developed.

"There is still quite a bit of land available," he said.

Peaco said land preservation also will occur in the new zoning because a shorter road system would be necessary for a development with clustered homes.

Peaco said clustering homes benefits the township because it means less road maintenance.

"The developer wins and the township wins, and there's less land disturbed," Peaco said.

He said the planning commission has been working on the issue for 18 months and last month approved adding the planned residential development element to rural-conservation districts.

The other action approved by the supervisors Monday night was the addition of a gateway district to the zoning ordinance.

The new zone was created for land along Mars-Valencia Road between Route 228 and the township's border with Mars near Brickyard Road. The area was formerly zoned industrial.

Peaco said the change was made to permit and to encourage a mix of retail, office, service and residential use that would include sidewalks, street lights and trees.

He said the change is meant to create a "gateway" from Adams Township into Mars.

"If you walked down Route 228 to the borough, you would have a nice boulevard to walk," Peaco said.

Mars Mayor Dick Settlemore called the gateway district a good idea, but he worries about the Route 228 expansion project under consideration by the state Department of Transportation. The project is not funded and has been postponed indefinitely.

"It's a great idea as long as two or three years down the road we're not paying to move everything," Settlemire said.