Carol Simpson hears footsteps.

Earlier this month Nelson Rohrer, a former Manheim Township commissioner, filed to run as an independent, again seeking to fill a seat on the board — perhaps Simpson's seat. And Simpson, who chairs the township commissioners, said she understands Rohrer might use the topic du jour — High Real Estate Group's proposal to build "The Crossings at Conestoga Creek," a huge open-air shopping center across from Long's Park — as a club.

Rohrer demurs. It's not that he's against development of the 90-acre site, known as the Deisley farm, per se; it's just the way current officials have gone about it that bugs him. "The commissioners have climbed on this bandwagon before they really know anything about it," he said.

Yet the issue might prove an irresistible electoral weapon. Five years ago another proposal to develop the site was a factor in getting another politician unelected. Now, as then, there's considerable opposition to bulldozing the Deisley farm. Nearly 1,200 people have signed a petition demanding the land not be developed at all. Others say they merely want the "right" type of development there.

From a developer's perspective, the Deisley farm and a few similar tracts in the urbanized part of the county certainly look right. A location along a booming corridor a short hop from the highway is the place to be. And planners want them there, as the idea of "smart growth" is to channel development into already built-up areas, to limit development out in the rural hinterlands.

But community opposition can scuttle plans — and the careers, perhaps, of public officials who support them.

"What frustrates me about the Crossings project," said Simpson, "is that people seem convinced that if they can defeat the project — which involves defeating me, they think — it will remain farmland. ... When I explained to someone publicly that it is zoned industrial and will be developed that way if this fails, the exact response was, 'Stop threatening us.'

"You can't win. And in this case, that might be a literal statement."

Ballpark plan
The rancor surrounding High's proposed shopping center is something of a distant replay. In 2002, then-state Rep. Jere Strittmatter favored building a minor-league ballpark — a strip mall would have been built next to it — on the Deisley farm. The community rose up against the plan; Manheim Township officials then suggested putting the ballpark on the Aaron Hess farm, across from Red Rose Commons. That got people even madder.

Voters took out their anger on Strittmatter during the May primary of that year, electing challenger Roy Baldwin (who himself was defeated in last year's primary by John Bear after Bear successfully made an issue of the legislative pay raise, for which Baldwin had voted). Baldwin's backers said his victory had less to do with proposals to develop the Deisley or Hess sites than with the way the episode demonstrated how those representing Manheim Township were perilously out of touch with their constituents.

Nelson Rohrer echoes that argument. High's proposal "is not the reason I'm running, but it's one piece of a bigger puzzle" — indicative, he says, of the way the township does business.

"Public discussion [of the High proposal] is now taking place," he said, referring to the three public hearings — one of which ran for eight hours — and another three that are scheduled. "But they should have taken place at an earlier stage of the game."

Rohrer's not the only one questioning the process. Harrisburg attorney Bill Cluck, hired by a group calling itself Lancaster for Smart Growth, wonders how it is that U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter has earmarked $2 million for road improvements the township will require High to make to the Route 30-Harrisburg Pike interchange, when that project wasn't even on the county's wish list. Township officials sitting in judgment of High's plan, he notes, have publicly backed it in print and in letters to legislators and state agencies seeking funding.

"I'm not making charges of impropriety," he said, "but this is the wrong group of people to judge this project."

The bulk of the opposition to High's plan centers on likelier suspects. Residents of the East Hempfield neighborhoods that abut the Manheim Township site worry that a new shopping center will overload their already-busy roads with more traffic. And Manheim Township resident Joan Hawkins continues to collect signatures on her petition asking that nothing be built there, that the Deisley farm be turned into park land. She attends the Sunday-evening concert series at Long's Park, approaching patrons about her cause. "About 95 percent of people agree to sign," she said; on a Web site, expandlongspark.org, she implores readers to save "this valuable GREEN SPACE."

Less valuable?
There's the rub.

While the site might be aesthetically pleasing, notes Lancaster County Planning Commission Director James Cowhey, it might be less valuable than other green space — rural areas with contiguous tracts of farmland that are in danger of being developed if development can't be contained to the already-urbanized areas.

That's not to say he supports this particular plan. But in general, planners do tend to support things citizens may oppose — higher densities, roads connecting one neighborhood to another. That's "smart growth."

"The community has told us that they understand," Cowhey says. "And that's been taken up by elected officials who are willing to stand up" for that approach.

"But when the rubber meets the road — that's the hard part," Cowhey said. "A lot of people say, 'Oh my God, there goes another farm.' " And when there are points to be scored, he worries it can sap the political will to stick to smart growth as the county envisions it.

Yet, Cowhey said, opposition groups that come to power often ultimately buy into that which they once opposed. "They often come around to a broader view, and don't just represent that smaller view" that might have spurred their activism in the first place.

There may be more opportunities to test that thesis. As Commissioner Simpson notes, the Deisley property isn't the only one guaranteed to generate controversy: Aaron Hess, owner of the farm across from Red Rose Commons, passed away last year. The land is zoned R-3, permitting high-density residential development. No proposals have come in yet, Simpson said. But she understands the property owners "are inundated with proposals from developers based all over the U.S.

"Whatever it is," she said, "it will create a firestorm once again."

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Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817.