Ardsley Wildlife Sanctuary

Some details below may not be correct - this is information passed on by residents.
               Please  check  with township to check the facts:

3-26-08 The area now known as the Ardsley Wildlife Sanctuary was once owned by Hillside Cemetery ... they wanted to build homes there for years. At some point, the owner had filled in ponds on the property so they could build on it. This caused incredible flooding in the area. The township purchased what may have been about 80 acres of the property ( using open space grants ? ) There was possibly a long legal wrangling. The township put in basins & tried to restore the natural ponds to help with flooding in the area. The school district purchased the remaining 20 acres to be used as an outdoor classroom. They named the area the Ardsley Wildlife Sanctuary. There are about 20 or so deer, many foxes, skunks, raccoons, turtles, pheasant and countless other bird species back there.

In about 2007 some folks began contemplating what might be done with the land. Many want to put in soccer fields. To others, who live nearby, that might entail roads, parking lots and a lot of traffic. Land Concepts was hired to do a study of the landscape, wildlife, soil, neighborhood, etc. - of the entire area - to determine what if anything can be done with the property.

There is not a clear, lovely, flat 80 acre field to work with. It is wooded & hilly and broken up into smaller parcels, surrounded by burial grounds on 2 sides. The only known access by road requires an easement from Hillside Cemetery, which, some think, they are not likely to grant. Or new roads would need to be built into the property where dead end streets have always been.
Much of it the property swampland, much of it is ponds & reservoirs. Ardsley is in a valley - at the bottom of two hills along Susquehanna Rd. and therefore, needs a lot of reservoir space during the rainy seasons. There is concern that whatever is built there, will flood and whatever water they may displace from there, will go into other peoples yards & homes. Even though the fields would not be impervious, they would have to be graded so that they were usable and that could still cause problems with the natural runoff. Any concrete or blacktop paving, would add to the flooding problems already in the area.

As of 3-27-08 Land Concepts is ready to hold the first of its d public meetings to inform people of their findings & get input from residents. Unfortunately, few residents know about the meeting as of this writing on 3-26-08 .

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  Our codebook
Part 1   Township's Codebook    except for  zoning
Part 2 Zoning Portion of Township Codebook

or go to http://www.abingtonpa.gov/info/newcodebook.htm

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Abington Township revamped the entire Township website at the end of 2015 and broke all the links to the information. In 2017, under Richard Manfredi, someone inexperienced was assigned to redo the entire website again. The public was not asked what problems they would like to see fixed. Their new plan was not well thought out, so everything was very hard to find and there were giant paragraphs you had to slog through in order to find the pertinent one or two lines that you needed. Or if you were lucky enough to even find the meetings and agenda page, there was (and still is) a whole page of nonsense on top, so you think you're on the wrong page. Zoom limks are burrid in a giant paragraph, so people can't find them to attend the meeting. They know about these  problems - but have just decided to ignore us.... for the whole of Richard Manfredi's time here (with Tom Hecker's consent).

 Now, in 2025, we are due to get a new Manager, and there are funds put aside to, once again, upgrade the Township website. We can only hope for a fresh chance at fixing some of these things, as our Township website is the best tool we have for communication and should be an easy, user friendly site for all.

We need volunteers willing to work together to help improve the Township site that everyone has to use,  to make it functional and accessible. 

 We will be repairing our broken links in this Abington Citizens site, too, and fixing some of our many, many typo's as much as is possible. (Yes, it's quite evident that, unlike the Township, WE don't have a paid staff of 275+ or a $93 million budget).

 So...please let us know if you find broken links or typos. Send us the URL and/or and the name of the page it is on, so we can correct it.
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