The Logan Township Planning Commission voted Tuesday to recommend the township supervisors rezone 39 wooded acres that cover a hill across from the main entrance of Penn State Altoona.

The change could allow the college to obtain a grant to create a master plan for the tract.

The board voted to recommend the change from residential to institutional after neighbors said they were satisfied — for the first time in three meetings — that Penn State is committed to keeping tract as green space, guaranteeing their continued enjoyment of the wildlife that thrives there and ensuring that their wells remain unsullied.

The neighbors previously worried because the rezoning would make the ground eligible for construction of a dorm or classrooms, if Penn State changed plans.

The neighbors don’t need to worry, according to college Chancellor Lori Bechtel-Wherry.

“If funded, we are in a long-term commitment to follow the plan and especially not sell the property or diverge from it being green space — in perpetuity,” said Bechtel-Wherry.

“There will not be buildings or homes on that land,” stated Bechtel-Wherry.

The grant — from the state Department of Community and Economic Development or the Department of Con­servation and Natural Re­sources — would require maintaining the land in its current state. Any violation would not only force the college to pay the money back with interest but would put the entire university’s relationship with all state funding agencies in jeopardy, Bechtel-Wherry said.

Further, the funds that a successful master plan could make available would further bind the college to keeping the site green, she said.

It would make no sense to build a dorm on the ground, because of its location across busy Juniata Gap Road, she said. The college actually has plans for another dorm, but that will be located between the Oak building and the chapel, she said.

The master plan for the wooded area will help fulfill Bechtel-Wherry’s long-term goals when the college bought the property in 2005, after she had learned not only that it was for sale — but that there were rival bidders, including one that wanted to build a strip mall and another that wanted to build the equivalent of the Nittany Lion Inn on top, Bechtel-Wherry said.

“I wanted to avoid adverse development of that beautiful property” — and the aesthetic blight it would have inflicted, she said.

“From the way you presented it, I’m in favor (of rezoning),” said neighbor John Grassinger.

“Me too,” said neighbor George Gibboney.

A third neighbor also acquiesced, on condition the college follows through.

Supervisors are ex­pected to decide at their Jan. 24 meeting whether to advertise a public hearing on the rezoning question, Planning Di­rec­tor Cassandra Schmick said.

The supervisors indicated last August they were amenable to the college’s proposal, when it was presented to them in keeping with a township policy that calls for supervisors to provide a preliminary ruling prior to the Planning Commission’s ex­amination of the issue, so applicants can back off if their cases are hopeless.

Penn State plans to ask for between $100,000 and $200,000 — money that would require a 15 percent match if it came from DCED and a 50 percent match if it came from DCNR, Bechtel-Wherry said.

If it gets the money, the college would hire consultants in landscape architecture, forestry, biodiversity, education and community needs, she said.

The plan would deal with safety, ease of use and erosion control on trails, accessibility, forest health, educational opportunities for local school students, forestry management demonstrations for area property owners, development of a native plant and pollinator garden, control of invasive species, green space enjoyment for local residents and research and teaching opportunities for faculty and students.

It will be a “living laboratory,” Bechtel-Wherry said.

The plan could help determine a way to discourage partying on the property, Bechtel-Wherry indicated in response to a neighbor’s concerns.

Restrooms and parking would be across Juniata Gap Road, in the developed part of the campus, she said, in answer to a neighbor concerned about her well.

Penn State might have set the controversy at rest with a unilateral offer to add a deed restriction prohibiting the use of the ground for anything but green space, but that would have taken a long time and wouldn’t have been as simple as it sounds, according to the college’s coordinator of grants and contracts, Andrew Mack.

Such a restriction would have needed to be approved by higher-ups at the university, following investigation and analysis and decisions about precisely what the college could and couldn’t do on the land. Afterward, it would have meant followup monitoring by agencies to ensure that the college was complying, he said.

Still, such a deed restriction might ultimately be possible, she said.