Faced with losing a major mall project and the millions in transportation dollars tied to it, Cranberry officials have asked the state Department of Transportation to approve a scaled-down approach to improving Route 228.

Short in funding by about $20 million, township officials have shaved several components from the project that had been OK'd by PennDOT, in hopes of preserving $65 million in committed transportation funding that goes hand-in-hand with the mall long promised by Simon Property Group, of Indianapolis. The mall would involve at least 700,000 square feet of commercial space on 80 acres at Route 228 and Interstate 79.

The alternative would have been to watch Simon walk away and lose one of the biggest transportation projects in Cranberry history, township officials said.

"That's a lot of money and it will fund significant infrastructure improvements," said Cranberry's strategic planner John Trant Jr. "We've spent years trying to find additional funding and we've been unsuccessful. This is not the ideal scenario, but it's realistic."

Now, Cranberry must wait.

The township has given PennDOT an outline of a project that does less than the department had envisioned for Route 228. "If the project stalls indefinitely and no improvements are made to Route 228, a great opportunity will be lost,'' wrote Cranberry Manager Jerry Andree in an Aug. 19 letter to PennDOT.

The current proposal is to focusing improvements between Route 19 on the west and Castle Creek East Drive in Seven Fields on the east. The eastern terminus in the original plan would have been Myoma Road, farther east, in Adams. Also, Route 228 would be widened only between Franklin Road and Castle Creek, instead of adding through-lanes in each direction throughout the project area. In addition, construction of a loop road from Route 228 to southbound Interstate 79 would be delayed.

Those cutbacks would translate to a fully funded status for the remaining $65 million worth of work, including intersection improvements along the corridor, elimination of the tapering of the road east of Franklin, and construction of an overpass ramp from I-79 to the Simon development, as well as a ramp from westbound Route 228 to northbound I-79.