High Real Estate Group—the development arm of High Industries—has been quite successful with lobbying in Manheim Township. The Group persuaded the Manheim Township Commissioners to change the zoning from industrial to commercial, to waive the township’s floodwater ordinance, and to give conditional approval in spite of wide-scale public opposition, in order to facilitate the Group’s plan for a 650,000-sq-ft shopping center only a few hundred feet from Park City Center and directly across the highway from Long’s Park.
One of the Manheim Township Commissioners even contacted Senator Arlen Specter for support and funding, acting in the capacity of a lobbyist while serving on a board elected to represent the taxpayers of Manheim Township.
Even Mayor Gray’s concerns, presented at a public meeting, about the impact this new shopping center, called The Crossings, the size of 13 football fields, might have on Lancaster City revitalization, went unheeded. That’s successful lobbying.
