A crowd gathered inside the Ross Township municipal building Wednesday, when the zoning hearing board reconvened to discuss a proposed warehouse and vote on how to proceed.

Jim Fareri and the three-member hearing board - Mike Galler, Leonard Ventre, and David Bray - met in executive session for about 20 minutes.

“We determined that we did not have the jurisdiction to make a determination if it was a warehouse or a distribution center,” said Fareri, solicitor of the zoning hearing board.

Wednesday’s hearing was a brief 25 minutes, compared to the nearly three-hour hearing that occurred in March and involved a lengthy debate about the definition of a warehouse versus the definition of a distribution center.

Brothers Tighe and Neil Scott are selling tracts of their property at the intersection of routes 115 and 33. The Gateway Motel is adjacent to this piece of land.

The brothers swore under oath that their potential buyer wanted to build a warehouse. They hired Peter Polt, executive vice president of J.G. Petrucci Co. Inc., as a consultant. He helped generate the plan that Lehigh Engineers made.

However, when Shawn McGlynn, Ross Township zoning officer who works for SFM Consulting, reviewed the Scotts’ application, it sounded more like a distribution center/trucking terminal.

The property is in a general commercial zoning area. According to the township’s zoning ordinance, which was written in 2000 and amended a few times, warehouses are permitted but distribution centers are not.

“The proposed look of this building seems like every other distribution center I’ve seen. We must get it correct right now or low and behold what is built is not a warehouse but a distribution center,” said McGlynn.

The question of jurisdiction also came up in the March meeting.

Fareri said he received an email right before the meeting but that it was a legal issue, and he needed more time to research.

Since then, Fareri and the zoning board decided, “We do not have anything to do with this until there is some other appeal,” said Fareri.

Stephen Davies was one of four parties to provide a written statement. These were included in the hearing’s exhibits.

He lives on Route 115 at the corner of Mount Eaton Road. His house is about a mile from the proposed warehouse site. His kids play in the Ross Common Creek, which is now an exceptional value stream. He did not want the increased truck traffic and pollution caused by the warehouse to ruin the creek’s status.

“I feel that they made the right decision. They didn’t have the right to decide this case at the township level, but there is jurisdiction at the county level,” he said.

Fareri said Wednesday’s no jurisdiction vote means the property is still for sale and attorney Leonard Zito, the Scotts’ lawyer, will have to discuss with them what is next.