CRANBERRY TWP — Township planners soon will begin consideration of a zoning ordinance designed to allow developers more flexibility in building residential neighborhoods.

The proposed ordinance, which stems from the now-dead Missing Middle Housing, or MMH, ordinance originally considered by township supervisors in February, is geared to give developers an option to build denser neighborhoods aimed toward attracting people to Cranberry who may be unable to afford or unwilling to pay the high house prices typically commanded by area properties.

It is on the agenda for Thursday's planning advisory commission meeting as the first step in a lengthy process in which Cranberry officials will determine whether to pass the proposal and what, if any, changes should be made.

Township manager Dan Santoro said the new proposal, which has not yet been named, is “based on working with the concerned citizens group and concerned residents.” That is, the township took the feedback it has received in the nearly two months since killing the MMH proposal and incorporated it into the new plan.

“The revision that's going to the planning commission reduced the amount of areas that the district would apply in (and) the properties it would apply to,” Santoro said. “It has reduced the variety of housing types, things like that; things that had residents concerned. And it reduces the density from what was previously proposed.”

One of the township's goals, both with this proposal and its previous iteration, is to expand the variety and price points of housing in the township. Santoro said he hopes the changes made to the proposed ordinance, which has not yet been made publicly available, will alleviate some concerns residents brought last time.“I would hope that folks would recognize what is allowable within the ordinance,” he said. “Last time around we got a lot of 'We don't want apartments or multifamily developments.' The last proposal did not allow for multifamily or apartments, and the revised proposal does not.”Nor does the proposal allow for commercial development in areas utilizing the overlay. Santoro said the township received much feedback from residents concerned about whether the prior proposed overlay would permit mixed-use developments such as the Meeder development on Rochester Road.“This is even further away from that,” he said. “The first proposal didn't allow for that; the second proposal certainly doesn't.”

Additionally, Santoro said, the overlay is an optional tool available to developers and does not supplant the base residential zones in which the overlay would apply. Santoro said the township also does not know of any properties being sold on which the overlay could be used, nor does he know of any developers waiting in the wings to utilize it.Moreover, it is not as though the possible passage of the ordinance would immediately lead to a proliferation of use cases, the manager said.“It would be months and months and months” until the overlay could be utilized after potential passage, Santoro said. “A normal, typical approval process is eight months to a year. Let's assume for a second it's approved by the board of supervisors. The first potential development would take eight months to even get approval, and generally they take longer than that.”