Lehighton Area School District's elementary center land use plan has been granted conditional approval.

Borough council unanimously agreed on Monday to the stipulation based on the April 11 review letter of borough engineer Bruce Steigerwalt.Before that, council agreed to grant several waivers for the Lehighton Area School District primary/elementary center project.Those waivers deal with storm pipe size, paving materials, plan scales and location map scale.All of those items were previously recommended by the borough's planning commission for approval, Steigerwalt said.Afterward, district solicitor William Schwab, who attended the council session, asked for council to authorize borough solicitor Jim Nanovic to work with Schwab on easements related to sewer, electric, and a developers agreement, to which council agreed to."I would say it was a successful night as everything passed by a 7-0 vote," Schwab said."There are certain things that must still be completed, but this is a step forward."Also Monday night, the school board voted to move forward with bid document preparation. Directors Richard Beltz and Byron Arner, who have favored repairing and renovating the existing elementary schools, were opposed."This allows us to work on the bid documents related to site work," Superintendent Jonathan Cleaver said after the meeting. "The bid documents for mechanical work and things like that are already done, we just needed the borough's conditional approval to move forward with it."The district is proposing building a $32.5 million elementary center and closing its four existing elementary schools.Jarrad Hedes contributed to this report.