A development
proposal has just been presented to West Norriton Township, Pa., my home of
long residence, that allows me to revisit the subject of a previous post. The fact that this new tidbit provides
additional evidence that I was right the first time probably influenced my
decision.
Picture if you
will a road, a rather new and modern super highway, lanes separated by a
median, accessible only by grade-separated cloverleafs, pretty much the whole
nine yards. It is very heavily traveled,
in both directions. At each end is a
housing development. They are by no means
mirror images of one another, but both were built to take advantage of the new
highway and the traffic it would bring. That
traffic has materialized, and more than had been planned for (surprise!
surprise!). The development at the
road’s eastern end not only prospers, it has recently offered plans for a
dramatic increase in units. The one at
the western end? Opinions differ, but only
in varying degrees of disappointment.
Why should this be? For starters,
because one development is adjacent to King of Prussia while the other is in
Pottstown.
The fate of these
two projects, one at each end of a new road, is testimony to how the construction of
a road can be sold to the general public as one thing, when it is actually
something quite different. The road
about which I write is U.S. Route 422, and I have written about it before, in
my post on February 20, 2014 (Why Did
They Build The “Pottstown Expressway”?).
That post contains what you should know about the project, but here is
a brief summary: The road was sold to the public (who would pay for it) as a
benefit to a needy community at one end. Its true purpose, however, was to open for
development the land along the road itself, to the benefit of a very different
group of people.
The success of
the road’s real purpose is beyond obvious, whether you live in the area or just
have to drive through it. This post is
essentially just piling on, but the contrast between the two ends of the road
has many facets, none of them good for Pottstown. That deserves to be better known.
The two housing
developments in question were built to take advantage of the same two things: a
scenic river along which people would want to live, and a new, modern road to
connect the new residents to their workplaces some distance away. That very same combination—with a much
stronger road component—is what drives the current building frenzy in the
Conshohocken area, but it attracts the roving eye of entrepreneurs wherever it occurs.
It did so at each end of the "Pottstown Expressway," and two entrepreneurs chose to build housing developments at those points. Pottstown Borough Council
approved the Hanover Square Townhomes project in 2005. The site had earlier hosted Mrs. Smith’s
Pies, and great hopes were entertained for this repurposing of abandoned
land. Ownership changes and the economy postponed
groundbreaking until 2009, after which the construction site was sold again,
this time to Cornell Homes Inc. It
initially offered townhouses for sale, but the lack of response led to offering
some for rent. This has had decidedly
mixed results.
The eastern site
is also an old industrial one, repurposed.
The area is known as Betzwood, after an early industrialist, and has
hosted several occupants, but its brief early 20th-century turn as a
movie studio for Lubin Films is its chief claim to fame. It sits at the foot of the high bridge over
the Schuylkill at that point, not quite at the end of Rt. 422, which is just a
short distance away after crossing the river.
Brian O’Neill, who specializes in converting former “brownfield”
industrial sites (and is a major player downriver in Conshohocken), won
approval for what became “The Lofts at Valley Forge.”[1] Additional units were later built on the same
site, just downriver from The Lofts, and named Riverview Landing. Its website inexplicably identifies
Eagleville its location, but it is really in West Norriton.
While Hanover
Square emphasizes affordability, The Lofts and Riverview Landing aim rather
more upscale. The Lofts pitches itself
as “luxury waterfront homes for the Philadelphia and King of Prussia area.” True, it is a considerably more picturesque
location than that of Hanover Square, although marred by the huge bridge
virtually overhead. The bridge, of
course, is what quickly connects their residents to King of Prussia, so its
looming presence be damned. Without it,
there would be no Lofts at Valley Forge or Riverview Landing in the first
place. Want more evidence of success at
this end of the road? The Lofts and
Riverview Landing are about to be joined by an additional 1,330 more apartments
in four large buildings, somehow squeezed into the same site. West Norriton has received the Conditional
Use Request, and unless the township commissioners somehow grow a backbone and
insist on more than one entrance for all these people and their cars, we can
expect construction to start in due course.
So, it’s location,
location and location, right? King of
Prussia is happening (and for those who crave something different, Phoenixville
is nearby), and Pottstown isn’t, despite the “lifeline” road having been in
place for some years now. No one calls
it the “Pottstown Expressway” any more; that was just a campaign slogan. It’s just Route 422 now. You can read a great deal about Route 422, its
traffic nightmares and proposed solutions, but you won’t read anything about
how it has energized Pottstown, because it hasn’t. Then again, that wasn’t its real purpose in
the first place, remember? That was just
the “party line,” and if you control the terms of the discourse, you determine
the result.
Is it any wonder
I use the school cartoon I do to accompany my links on Facebook?
[1] In the interest of full disclosure, I must confirm that
I, upon discovering that the original plans for The Lofts called for the destruction
of the only two remaining buildings from the Lubin area, contacted the late Dr.
Joseph Eckhardt, the leading authority on the Lubin studios. Together we successfully lobbied for their
retention. I must also note that as this
is written, a request has been made to West Norriton Township to allow the
conversion of these two buildings into residences, in addition to all the
others.
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