One longtime Farmingdale Road resident can remember when only 10 cars a day went down her road just west of Lancaster.

"Obviously, that was many years ago," she laughed, speaking of the two-lane, now-usually-busy road that bends and weaves between Marietta Avenue and Harrisburg Pike.

And things will only get worse on the East Hempfield Township road if a much-discussed shopping center, The Crossings at Conestoga Creek, is approved nearby, the woman and other Farmingdale residents agree.

"We're not in favor of it," she said of the Crossings plan, "and I think traffic has increased already."

Other residents, and her township's officials, also are concerned.

On Wednesday night, another Farmingdale resident handed in a petition to the East Hempfield supervisors, signed by 170 people, opposing the new shopping-center plan.

Even though it's just a stone's-throw away from the East Hempfield residents, the new shopping center would be built in another municipality, Manheim Township.

Also concerned about the traffic issue, East Hempfield officials are responding to their residents' concerns.

Two township supervisors, Brett Miller and G. Edward LeFevre, plan to attend meetings when Manheim Township officials review the project.

"We want to make sure that the interests of the township and its residents are strongly represented during the deliberations" of Manheim Township officials, Miller said this week.

If built, the $100 million mall across from Long's Park would be Lancaster County's second-largest, trailing only the nearby Park City shopping center.

A public hearing for "The Crossings" project will be held by the Manheim Township Commissioners on Monday, May 7.

Also this week, High Real Estate Group announced results of a traffic study of the $25 million in road upgrades that would accompany its proposed "Crossings" project.

Although the shopping center itself would greatly boost traffic, High officials said the road improvements they are offering would make traffic on the often-congested Harrisburg Pike corridor better than it is now. The key aspect of the improvements would be a reconfiguration of the Route 30 and Harrisburg Pike interchange.

Since unveiling plans for "The Crossings" along Harrisburg Pike, High has been working through a multi-step approval process.

High now is before the Manheim Township Planning Commission, an advisory panel that makes recommendations to the township commissioners, seeking to have the "Crossings" approved as a conditional use.

The planners are set to continue reviewing High's application on Wednesday, April 18.

The commissioners' May 7 meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the Manheim Township building, 1840 Municipal Drive, according to Manheim Township's Web site.

If the project is approved as a conditional use, then the High firm will return to Manheim Township for approval of a land-development plan.

Manheim Township's decision "will have an enormous impact" on East Hempfield and, specifically, the Farmingdale Road area, Miller said.

And the biggest issue is obviously "the huge traffic impact that will inevitably result," he said.

Another East Hempfield supervisor, Bernard Krutsick, said this week that officials in the township "feel it would definitely increase traffic in that whole area and along Harrisburg Pike, and we're very concerned about it.

"But the bottom line is, it's a Manheim Township decision."

Manheim Township is Lancaster's most-populous suburb. East Hempfield ranks second.

The issue of one municipality making decisions on a major project that abuts the border of a second is not uncommon here.

When Lancaster City was considering plans for what would become the Red Rose Commons shopping center back in the mid-1990s, many in neighboring Manheim Township were concerned about the Fruitville Pike project's impact on traffic in their community.

And when Lancaster's new minor-league baseball park was first being considered five or six years ago, the site now proposed for the "Crossings" in Manheim Township was suggested as a ballpark location.

In reaction, a group of East Hempfield residents and officials attended a Manheim Township meeting to express their "very serious concerns," as one said at the time, about plans to build the ballpark there.

With Manheim Township residents opposing sites for the ballpark in their community, Clipper Magazine Stadium was later built in 2004-05 in downtown Lancaster, at Harrisburg Pike and North Prince Street.

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