Seven Fields officials are raising concerns about a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation traffic impact study for Henderson Crossing, a future mixed-use development off Route 228 in Cranberry Township that will include a Meijer grocery store, residential buildings and other retail spots.

Borough council members emphasized that their goal is not to stop development, but to make sure traffic concerns are addressed and regional impacts are properly evaluated.

“We understand and respect growth, and we’re not opposed to it,” Dawn Servello, council vice president said. “We just need to do our due diligence for our residents to fully understand what the impact is going to be on Seven Fields.”

The borough’s engineer, Douglas Evans, recently reviewed the study and sent a letter to PennDOT that included six main items of concern, among them are the project’s construction timeline, which assumes the development will be completed by 2029.

Evans deemed it a “very aggressive schedule” in the letter, noting that it would be wiser to take it “further out in the future for a more realistic build-out construction schedule.”

The ongoing planning of the development comes as PennDOT seeks to widen a roughly 3-mile stretch of Route 228 that cuts through Seven Fields and Cranberry and Adams townships.

Evans noted that additional traffic changes along Route 228 may be necessary to handle increased congestion, including possible signal timing adjustments and added lanes.

Through his analysis, he also noted that projected traffic from other nearby mixed-use developments, including Quincy Heights in Adams Township, was not included in the analysis, which he said could significantly affect results.

“The addition of the projected traffic volumes would have an impact on the analysis results and the proposed recommendations outlined in the current traffic impact study,” he wrote. “What was the basis for not including this development?”

In addition, Evans wrote that several intersections along Old Mars Crider Road were left out of the study, despite expectations that those areas would see increased traffic.

“Because of how we are sandwiched between the Quincy Heights development and soon Henderson Crossing, Mars Crider Road is a main thruway,” Servello said. “There’s going to be an effect on Seven Fields because of that.”

Borough officials said they plan to seek clarification and revisions to the transportation impact study in the coming weeks and months.

In the meantime, Servello encourages residents to reach out with questions and concerns as the process plays out.

“We are taking residents’ concerns very seriously,” she said. “We just want to make sure everything is very transparent and that we fully understand their concerns. That’s why we’re going through all these steps to make sure we have a full understanding.”

Evans requested in the letter that PennDOT hold a virtual meeting or phone call with the borough and asked for a response by Feb. 25.