West Bradford Township has a need for — and a state-mandated obligation to support — more than 1,000 new homes within its growing borders, but township supervisors would rather see their newest residents settle into an industrial area than accommodate a developer’s vision for Embreeville at the southern edge of the township, according to a Daily Local News report.

“What is required at the end of the day is the zoning ordinance cannot exclude legitimate land uses and has to provide a fair share of multi-family dwellings,” township solicitor Kristen Camp said in the article. “Our ordinance does that. And the fact that the board didn’t want to do what Embreeville asked them to do, or pleaded them to do, which is completely discretionary, doesn’t make it unlawful.”

Embreeville Redevelopment LLP wants to build 1,100 residential units on 220 acres of land now zoned for institution or mixed uses and is challenging a December 2013 township ordinance amendment that rezoned land “in an incompatible industrial district that is already largely developed with active industrial uses,” Embreeville attorney Brian Nagle said in the article. “That area cannot accommodate the fair share multi-family housing units that the township needs to satisfy its fair share under Pennsylvania law.”

Read more about the zoning dispute and its three-hour first hearing in the Daily Local News here.