Manor Borough agrees to provide winter maintenance in Woods at Brandywine plan

When Matthew Gerega pulls out of his driveway and turns left onto Brandywine Drive, “it’s about a 10 or 15% grade, and in the winter, it can get slick.”

Gerega and other residents in the Woods of Brandywine in Manor are more at ease now that borough officials agreed to provide winter maintenance for a section of the housing plan’s roads.

Residents with children in the Penn-Trafford School District were notified on Friday in an email from the district that the dispute over the winter maintenance agreement between the developer and Manor Borough had been resolved.

The housing developer, Kevin Braun of Harrison City, paid the $3,500 maintenance fee Friday, said borough manager Joseph Lapia. The agreement covers from 337 Brandywine to 397 Brandywine, and Skyline and Creekview courts.

Earlier this month, the borough sent a letter to 71 residents living in the fifth phase of the Woods of Brandywine that the developer had not paid the fee and public work on the road would cease. Braun paid the maintenance fee for last winter, Lapia said, and the borough did provide winter maintenance in November and December 2019.

Braun, who developed the fifth phase of the housing plan under the name of Brandywine Recovery LP, could not be reached for comment.

Rachael Dindak, a resident of the housing plan bordered by the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Routes 130 and 993, said she received an email from the school district Friday afternoon that the winter maintenance dispute had been resolved and the school district would send its buses through the neighborhood.

Braun is the sole member of Brandywine Management LLC, the general partner of Brandywine Recovery of Harrison City, according to Westmoreland County Recorder of Deeds documents from 2017.

Gerega has lived in the plan for about a decade.

“When I first moved in, the road ended about 400 yards past my home and the buses didn’t come down that hill,” he said. “There’s a large hill around that circle, and for lack of a better phrase, it’s uphill both ways.”

Braun has not completed work to have the streets considered a public road, Lapia said. This includes a finishing coat of asphalt and work around the storm drains and catch basins, and converting an erosion and sediment control pond into a stormwater retention pond.

Brandywine Recovery in April 2013 purchased the undeveloped property when AmeriServ Financial Bank of Johnstown foreclosed on the former developer, Jana Development LLC of North Huntingdon. Brandywine Recovery assumed in March 2013 an $845,669 mortgage on the property previously held by Jana Development, according to county documents.

Brandywine Recovery acquired 13 lots in the plan from Jana Development in April 2013.