Olympic Realty developed the Home Depot store in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, located at 1013 South Hanover Street. Like all large scale projects we run into opposition in securing all our entitlements.

However, in this project we ran into a huge obstacle being close to the Letort Spring Run an EV (Exceptional Value) rated stream by the State of PA, that amongst other things, was a prime trout fishing stream.

An organization called Trout Unlimited with over one hundred thousand members came after us in strong opposition to the project claiming the storm water runoff from our parking lot would pollute the stream. They were well funded with scientists, biologists, hydrologists, and lawyers ready to challenge our project. They even enlisted the help of former President Jimmy Carter, an avid fisherman, and Trout Unlimited member, to contact the CEO of Home Depot to pull out of the project.

Long story short, after much wrangling and engineering work we came up with an engineering solution that provided four layers of on site storm water treatment so that cooled drinking water quality runoff came off our site that would not harm the stream or trout.

This in turn, became the gold standard of how developers could proceed to develop in areas around streams with an EV designation.

To learn more about Carlisle Center, click here.