For all the consternation about a wave of residential development in Buffalo Township, Drew Klemens saw it coming 13 years ago, when he moved across from a cornfield now slated to become 627 units of upscale town homes and single-family houses.

“Nobody is going to come out to this area and buy a farm for what these developers are willing to pay,” he said on the front porch of his Harbison Road home. “It’s inevitable.”

Developer Charter Homes and Neighborhoods has cleared just about every regulatory hurdle to transforming 120 acres of farmland at the intersection of routes 28 and 356 into a mixed-use community, complete with storefronts, green spaces and relatively high-density housing.

But sketch drawings and additional details provided by the Lancaster-based firm Wednesday at the Buffalo Township supervisors meeting did more than just inspire grumbling from the audience — they made rapid growth the talk of a town some say is bursting at the seams.

“Fix the flipping roads,” said Diana Solomon, 71, of Buffalo Township. “Our streets are not built for that many houses to come in. It’s a mess, especially when Lernerville (Speedway) is racing.”

Route 356, the main target of her complaints, is a state road. The start of a widening project there was recently delayed until 2027.

Josh Camarote, 33, moved four years ago to Sarver Mills, a planned community built throughout the 2000s and 2010s that was scaled back when market conditions soured.

Camarote and his budding family have enjoyed life there, and certainly like being close to the business district along Route 356. But he’s concerned about class sizes as his children move through the Freeport Area School District.

“By the time my 4-month-old gets there … how are they going to do elementary school?” he asked.

Sparrows, as the proposed subdivision is known, is essentially a done deal, Supervisor Michael Oehling told TribLive. The board changed the site’s zoning district from agricultural to town center last year, allowing a wide variety of residential and commercial uses.

And work is well underway on various other new segments.

Laurel Hills, for example, was approved in June and is expected to bring about 100 new homes near Route 356. Pine Ridge, a smaller, senior-focused cul-de-sac off Sunset Drive, recently got its first residents.

But a proposed community along Riemer Road is still very much up in the air. The supervisors unanimously tabled an amendment Wednesday that would switch the zoning code there from agricultural to residential.

Oehling said he’s set on voting against this and future developments.

“We’re already committed to 1,000 homes that haven’t been built yet,” he said. “So it’s important to see how all that is going to impact infrastructure, police, road crew, all the different areas of the township before committing to anything else.”

Township Supervisor Gary Risch Sr. said he shares some of these concerns but has yet to make a decision on Riemer Road. He’s all for Sparrows, though, which he called “first class homes.”

Supervisors Ron Zampogna, Matthew Sweeny and Albert Roenigk did not return requests for comment Friday.

This proposed “town within a town” would certainly be a shock to a pocket of the community that’s relatively quiet, despite the nearby highways.

The surge in population, more generally, has been a disorienting experience for some in the historically rural township.

More than 8,100 people live in Buffalo Township at last count, up from about 6,800 at the start of the century.

Doug Sprankle, the owner of Sprankles Neighborhood Market in Saxonburg, talked Wednesday about how more bedrooms often equals more businesses throughout the region.

“This is going to help us grow,” he said of the Riemer Road proposal. “It’s going to help us diversify our tax base and, long term, keep a store like my store in the area.”

Klemens isn’t quite sure what he’s going to do. Moving might be in the cards, but past experience has told him to take the pros of the build-up in Buffalo Township with the cons.

“I’ve seen a lot of change out here, obviously,” he said. “It’s not all bad.”

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