The clothing rental company NUULY has pitched a plan for a 1-million-square-foot operations plant on a reclaimed quarry site in Falls Township, promising to bring thousands of jobs, road upgrades, environmental safeguards and agreeing to ban data centers on the property.
The facility would be at 700 Penn Valley Road, east of Route 13, across from Falls Township Community Park and within walking distance of two sections of Levittown, North Park and Thornridge.
NUULY, a subsidiary of Urban Outfitters, is seeking a zoning change to join two adjacent parcels that are split between Heavy Industrial (HIA) and Farming/Mining (FM), and to create a large nearly 200-acre Material Processing and Manufacturing (MPM) zone. The change would allow for higher
impervious surfaces for property, which will have 1,501 employee parking spaces and 64 loading bays.
The first parcel will be owned by Nuuly, the second will remain privately owned by KPK Development Co.
However, the project can still be constructed under its present zoning, township officials said.
The plant will be Nuuly’s large scale operations hub for its clothing business. It will receive, inspect and process returned garments from its nearly 500,000 subscribers. Specifically, operations will include cleaning and laundering returned clothing, repairing and prepping garments for recirculation, and warehousing, picking and packing clothing requested by its customers.
Dave Ziel, chief development officer for Urban Outfitters, told the Planning Commission that there will be about 2,000 construction jobs. After that, some 2,000 employees will work there.
He said the Nuuly facility on Green Lane in Bristol Township currently employs about 1,000 people who will move to the new plant when it opens, perhaps by October 2028.
“We don’t see (Green Lane) as a closing. We’re shifting,” he said.
The company’s five-year employment projection is 2,800 positions at Falls, he said.
Salaries will range from $17/hour for those starting with the company, to higher pay for those with technical skills and white-collar jobs.
“This is not a forklift-type distribution (center). There are specialty trades … seamstresses, technicians, maintenance technicians, chemical engineers,” he told the board.
“If you look at the 2,000 people, there’s about 750 that range at high hourly wage,” he said, though he didn’t say what that wage would be.
The project was first proposed to the township board of supervisors at its Monday Aug. 24 meeting, which voted to approve advertising the ordinance for the zoning change. It went to the township Planning Commission the next day.
Residents from North Park and Thornridge wondered why such a huge project is unfolding so quickly, especially after public outcry over Amazon’s mega data center in the Keystone Industrial Park.
“This is a residential area near Manor Elementary School and a park,” said Debbie Diaz, who lives on Thornridge Drive, which is within walking distance of the site.
A resident from North Park, who declined to give his name, said there are alternative sites, such as the Keystone Industrial Park.
“Even if I didn’t live near this thing, I wouldn’t want it for anyone else’s neighborhood, either,” the man said. “The traffic is going to change the quality of life.”
Several residents raised issues about chemicals used for laundering and dry cleaning creating environmental hazards. Some worried if the chemicals would be discharged into nearby Mill Creek.
But Chelsea Jackman, a lawyer representing Nuuly, told the Planning Commission that the company uses non-alkaline, phosphate-free cleaning chemicals.
“The pod in your washing machine right now is not as gentle on the (clothes) as what they use to clean the clothes that come back to the facility,” she said.
Overburdened local roads was another concern.
The increased traffic from 2,000 employees arriving and departing over two shifts daily, along with 30 to 40 delivery trucks a day arriving at the plant, will require “significant” changes to Penn Valley Road, especially where it intersects with Route 13, Nuuly’s traffic engineer said. What those changes will be still under study.
The Planning Commission voted to recommend that the board of supervisors grant preliminary land development, but with a hard deed restriction that prohibits “in perpetuity” a data center from operating on the property, or on the adjacent parcel.
The case will next land at the township’s Zoning Hearing Board, which will consider Nuuly’s zoning change request.
JD Mullane can be reached at jmullane@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Nuuly eyes massive clothing hub for Falls site, 2,000 jobs
