It's exciting and encouraging to see new commercial development proposed for the junction of New Castle Road and the Route 422 interchange in Butler Township.

Representatives of United Growth, a California-based developer, presented its plans Wednesday to the Butler Township Zoning Hearing Board. United Growth's 61,000-square-foot development would include a Dick's Sporting Goods, Moe's Southwest Grille, Mattress Firm and a Bob Evans restaurant.

If the proposal meets with approval at all township levels, which would include the planning commission and the township commissioners, construction would begin just after the new year and be complete by next fall, said Zeden Jones, vice president of United Growth.

New business is always a welcome prospect, but it might be prudent at the same time to review and update a regional strategy for community development. The community would benefit if a regional commercial strategy encouraged the existing retail centers like the Clearview Mall and Butler's downtown to thrive while cultivating new centers. In too many cities, new and bigger developments stand not far from empty former big-box stores.

It also might be time to consider extending New Castle Road northward beyond the cloverleaf interchange with Route 422. The option is made more attractive by the uncertain future of the Lions Road bridge a few hundred feet to the west of the interchange. The interchange road is designed to handle heavy traffic. It would make sense on several levels to lengthen it, eventually to connect with Route 8.

Such planning might also fall in line with a proposed study to create a bypass to divert truck traffic around Butler's downtown.

Whatever course is taken, it seems advantageous to everyone if we adopt a regional approach to development. We'll be a better community as a result.

The anti-frack forces showed no restraint Monday when complaining to the Butler Township commissioners about the township's approval of a Marcellus Shale gas well pad on the Krendale Golf Course property.Members of the group that calls itself the Section 27 Alliance raised the prospect of death, destruction and school evacuations in the remotely possible event of a gas well accident.“How many people are going to die if there's an explosion?” asked one.Commissioners “threw us under the bus on this one,” said another.The over-the-top rhetoric is nothing new. It's been going on for months.However, this time there were children in the room. Local pupils were being recognized for their participation in a poster-drawing contest.There's no doubt the passionate language frightened the children. That's not only unfortunate, it was unnecessary. The Section 27 folks could have made their point without the death and destruction scenario.You think they could have toned down the apocalyptic talk this one time for the sake of the children — the very same children for whom the anti-frackers say they care so profoundly.

Cheers and mazel tov to Congregation B'nai Abraham. Members of the Butler synagogue last week dedicated their new Torah scroll, capping a tumultuous nine months that began when a boiler malfunction saturated the synagogue's atmosphered and damaged the existing scrolls.The congregation conducted a Simchat Torah Festival that featured a procession with dance, song and selected readings from the Torah, a 150-foot long scroll made of animal skins and hand-inscribed with the first five books of the Bible's Old Testament. Kosher scrolls are made to exacting instructions given to Moses by God himself, according to Hebrew and Christian narratives.Stories about the synagogue's calamity were published in the Butler Eagle and resulted in an outpouring of help, sympathy and prayers from Butler's Christian community, among others.A national Jewish newspaper picked up the Eagle stories, and a Florida woman, the widow of a rabbi, offered her late husband's Torah scroll, free, to provide that scroll with a good home.That scroll is now the Butler congregation's most prized possession — and an answer to prayer.