Bensalem's Lin-Park residents oppose plan for townhouses next door

In the first half of the 20th century, two experimental communities took root on adjoining patches of Bucks County farmland.

One was Linconia, created in the 1920s by a bold, white farmer named Frank Brown who believed that black residents should have a chance to live outside the city. He set aside 80 acres and invited them to build their dream homes there with their own hands.

Three decades later, Concord Park sprang up. The vision of civil rights activist Morris Milgram, it was America's first commercially developed, integrated housing community.

The pair flourished in Bensalem Township and eventually merged as Lin-Park, an enclave of about 300 homes - many still occupied by the original owners or their descendants.

But where two once were company, residents say, three now threaten to be a crowd.

A builder's proposal to put 175 townhouses next door has thrown a fright into Lin-Park's populace. The points of opposition are those typically voiced in development fights - traffic, storm-water flooding, ruined wetlands - but with an addition.

As worrisome as anything, residents repeat, is the potential loss of Lin-Park's quietly historic "character."

"It's diverse. Everybody gets along," said Linda Brown, who has lived there 14 years. "It's so nice and peaceful. You could just drop a penny and hear it."

Their worries could be salved or inflamed Monday night, when the Township Council is to take up the Somerton Valley Homes proposal. Bensalem's Planning Commission has twice rejected it, mainly citing density and traffic, but has no power to stop it.

Calls to council members were not returned. Barbara Kirk, township solicitor, said there was no "specific indication of which way council intends to lean," whether toward rejection, approval, or approval with conditions. However, the township has approved two new roads passing through the wetlands of Poquessing Creek and into the intended development.

"I hope the houses won't be built over there," said Mildred Mitchell, 90, who helped pour the foundation of the rancher she and her husband built in 1947. "It's really too much."

A K. Hovnanian project, the townhouses would occupy about 45 acres near Street Road and Route 1. Thomas R. Hecker, a lawyer for Somerton Valley, projected a price range in the high $200,000s to the low $300,000s - comparable to the $150,000 to $400,000 that Lin-Park's single-family houses fetch.

Hecker has sought to squelch one bit of speculation among residents - that the townhouses, if they don't sell, could be turned into rentals, even federally subsidized (formerly called Section 8) units.

"It's not cheap housing at all," he said.

Such assurances have done little to temper opposition.

On one recent evening, homeowners were busy cutting their lawns, watching children ride bikes up and down the narrow streets, and chatting on front porches and patios. Bright yellow signs in the yards said: "Don't disturb the wetlands! We don't want flooding!"

Residents have held pie and hoagie sales to pay for a lawyer to help them fight the plan.

The original Somerton Valley proposal, in 2005, called for 74 single-family houses. But when the economy tanked and mortgage money became dear, the plan for more than twice as many townhouses replaced it. The former was more palatable to Lin-Park residents.

Even now, they say, cars from nearby commercial and industrial businesses cut through the community at rush hour to and from busy Street Road, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, or Route 1, less than a mile away.

"We have enough traffic coming through," said Morris Lovelace, who has lived in Lin-Park for 18 years.

That's an eyeblink compared with Warren Swartzbeck's 43-year tenure. Now 84, he worked for Milgram and remains a member of the Fair Housing Council of Suburban Philadelphia.

"It was wonderful," he said, recalling the kindergarten that neighbors opened and the babysitting clubs they started.

In North Carolina in the 1940s, Arthur and Mildred Mitchell heard from friends about the land available to African Americans in Bucks County. Arthur came up first, then sent for his wife and their 12 children. They paid $400 for a small parcel.

African Americans typically couldn't get mortgages, so they worked on their houses piecemeal, using paychecks to buy materials and doing the labor themselves.

Arthur Mitchell's job at a pipe company consumed him during the week. On weekends, little by little, the family's house rose on Kay Avenue.

Today, the Mitchells' daughter Delores lives across the street. Their grandson Frederick D. James Jr. heads the Lin-Park Civic Association.

Felicia Webb Glover, 38, a guidance counselor, grew up in the community and returned after college. Within the last several years, her two brothers bought homes a few blocks away.

Glover noted glumly that the township had approved two zoning changes - one to permit townhouses instead of single homes, the other for the wetlands roads - over residents' objections.

"We weren't heard," she said.

Karen Downer moved to Linconia in 1948 and has seen the community grow ever more diverse, drawing newcomers of Indian and Asian backgrounds into the mix of black and white residents. She took notice of it as she watched the children outside her window one recent day.

"It was like the United Nations," she said. "They were all out there playing together. We're in such a great spot."