Parking quotas hinder rehab work
Developer proposes making S. Charlotte St. one-way to add parking
POTTSTOWN » Once again, identifying and securing enough parking to satisfy the borough ordinance is proving to be a major obstacle to re-developing a longvacant historic building in the borough.
In May, Media-based Rockwell Development Group presented plans to borough council outlining a project that would convert the long-vacant shirt factory at the corner of Cherry and South Charlotte streets into 28 market-rate condominiums.
On Aug. 9, they were back before council still wrestling with the same problem — parking.
Tom Burley, the manager for the development group told council that the developers have tried to purchase adjacent properties to no avail, as well as failed to purchase or otherwise obtain spaces in the parking lot across the street for St. John’s Byzantine Catholic Church.
More recently, their request for a variance was rejected by the Pottstown Zoning Hearing Board.
The latest idea — which Burley described as “our last swing at this problem” — is to make South Charlotte Street one-way south between Cherry Street and Industrial to allow for parking on both sides of the street.
As it turns out, the borough abandoned that section of street years ago for an expansion of what was then the Mrs. Smith’s Pies plant.
It is currently owned by the homeowners association of the adjacent Hanover Square townhouse development, which Rockwell manages.
Allowing more parking there — which the developers would like to be counted as “off-street” parking since it is not technically a public street — would get the project to a total of 40 parking spaces.
However the ordinance requires 54 for the number of housing units the project would generate, less than was originally needed because the developers have eliminated one apartment in order to reduce the parking requirements.
Sandra Franklin, a Cherry Street resident who had initial concerns about the project’s impact on the neighborhood, appeared before council to support the plan for South Charlotte Street.
“I think it’s brilliant,” she said.
Burley said a traffic study shows that portion of South Charlotte Street is used by 1,000 cars per day and only 10 percent of them are northbound. That may be because South Charlotte Street is one-way southbound from King Street to South Street.
Police Chief Richard Drumheller told council his department has already looked at the situation and recommends making the street one-way southbound from King Street to Industrial Highway.
“I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that something be done with that old shirt factory.” Tom Burley, Rockwell Development Group
Burley also informed council that the his company met with the homeowners association at Hanover Square and they support the change to Charlotte Street.
“I think they would rather sacrifice a little convenience and see that building developed,” Burley said. “I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that something be done with that old shirt factory.”
The $13 million project to redevelop the former Fecera’s furniture warehouse at Beech and North Evans streets into 43 affordable apartments faced similar parking challenges as it four for more than three years to win financing and borough approval — particularly when council amended the zoning ordinance with even stricter parking requirements in the midst of the process.
Ultimately, after purchasing an additional property and knocking it down for more parking, the Beech Street Factory, as it is now called, won approval for a zoning variance.
Unlike the Beech Street project, the proposal on Cherry Street would create market-rate housing units, not affordable housing.