Travel plaza progress continuing, hotel planned next door
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL - The new Onvo travel plaza at the Highridge Industrial Park, seen on June 28, 2024.
DUNCOTT – A travel plaza at least a quarter-century in the making is finally taking shape, and now developers have planner approval for a hotel next door.
Cass Township Supervisors approved Friday afternoon a subdivision plan and a land development plan related to the new Onvo plaza and a planned hotel.
Frank Zukas, president of the Schuylkill Economic Development Corporation (SEDCO), provided supervisors with an update on the travel plaza and a summary on subdivision and land development plans.
He said the Onvo plaza is on a 31-acre site and a graded pad was included on that site for future development.
An “extended stay hotel” is planned for that pad with 111 rooms, he said. The plans, which were reviewed by the Schuylkill County Planning Commission and approved by the Cass Township Planning Commission, would split the lot into two parcels and provide for the construction of the hotel.
According to the plans submitted to the county, the hotel will be a Townplace by Marriott hotel and will sit between the travel plaza and Keystone Boulevard along Highridge Park Road.
A new road will be built connecting both facilities to Highridge Park Road.
Both facilities are being developed by 611 Land Development, LLC.
The travel plaza has been in the works since the late 1990’s.
It was supposed to be completed along with the Highridge Park Road exit on Interstate 81 and never was.
A 1997 newspaper article about the closure of rest stops in Pine Grove and Mahanoy City noted the travel plaza would “probably open in the first year or two of the next century.”
Because of the travel plaza plans, the article said, PennDOT nixed plans to fully develop its Pine Grove rest area which, with the conversion of Mahanoy City’s into a weigh station, would be the only rest stop between Grantville and Dorrance, 66 miles.
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