Madison Lot plans updated
In coming weeks, borough planning commission, council to consider plans that could gain final approval on April 19
Plans for the redevelopment of Lansdale’s Madison Parking Lot are moving ahead, and could be finalized in as few as 14 days.
Borough council saw the latest version of plans to build seven apartment buildings totalling 181 apartment units and 22,000 square feet of retail space Wednesday night, and residents will have two more chances to share their thoughts.
“As an unprecedented project in the borough that will affect our borough as a whole, we wholeheartedly hope that any and all residents that are concerned with this project be at those meetings and have their concerns addressed,” said Councilman Leon Angelichio.
For nearly a decade now, developer Equus Capital Partners has been refining plans to build a complex of seven apartment buildings surrounding a new public plaza atop the current parking lot north of Madison Street.
Equus Vice President of Development John Knott, engineer Ja-
son Korczak of Bohler Engineering and architect David Schmauk showed borough council on Wednesday an updated version of plans last seen by the borough planning commission in March, describing in detail the changes they’ve made based on public feedback.
“These buildings, we designed with a little bit of an urban flair to them. They have no backs to them; they all have essentially fronts, all the way around,” Schmauk said.
“The living and bedroom spaces face out, so it’s not a situation where the living room faces one direction and the bedroom faces one direction. The buildings are nice and safe, with eyes on the property from all directions,” he said.
On the southern end of the triangular parking lot parcel, Madison Street will be widened to create roughly 60 new public parking spaces perpendicular to the roadway, and 35 additional public spaces would be added on the southeast corner, beyond which would be roughly 200 additional parking spaces for the residents of the apartments running along the rail line and around the buildings. A portion of the Liberty Bell Trail would run between the parking and the rail line, and would likely be buffered by a fence separating the two, according to Korczak and Knott.
Talks during the planning commission meeting last month focused largely on the locations and size of trash storage facilities on the site, and the team of consultants outlined details during a code committee meeting and a subsequent presentation to full council. Trash from the seven buildings would be collected at two centralized containers, one near the pedestrian bridge running over the nearby SEPTA rail lines and another at the southeast corner of the site near an electric transformer. Both would be screened with fencing and landscaping, and the largest retail building of the project would also contain internal trash containers with chutes for residents on top floors to drop their trash downwards.
Trash would be picked up “we’re projecting three or four times a week, and we’ll obviously sort of play with that and increase it if needed,” Knott said. A community manager and maintenance worker would work on the site, and would arrange and publicize pickup dates for bulk items like appliances as needed by residents.
Angelichio asked how the largest building, a fivestory building angled to run parallel with the railroad tracks, would handle what he called “wet garbage — food stuffs” from the restaurant use that could be located there.
“Do your trash needs change? Because of the type of materials, not necessarily residential trash but commercial, it becomes significantly heavier, and you have the possibility for contamination of parking spaces, leakage, seepage, critters, pests, bugs,” he said.
Knott said that largest building, termed “Building F” on the plans, would include a large ground floor trash room, with large containers designed to handle that type of trash, which could be rolled out to trash trucks for pickups.
“When the company comes to empty the eightyard Dumpsters, they go down the street, grab the two-yarders, throw them in the truck, and put them back in the room,” Knott said.
Council member Carrie Hawkins Charlton asked why the trash containers could not be moved closer to the northern end of the site, and away from the train station and pedestrian bridge where visitors would enter the town. Knott said the developer and engineers “did look at jamming them in the back, if you will,” but doing so would make residents walk farther to carry their trash to the dropoff sites.
The planning commission raised concerns last month about emergency vehicle access throughout the site, and Knott and Korczak said they have since reviewed the plans with borough Fire Marshal Jay Daveler, and shown how fire trucks could fit every road way and turn every corner on the site, and even drive up the pedestrian plaza if needed.
“The fire truck can get throughout the plaza, if need be. It would have to come up from Madison Street, over the raised pedestrian crossing — there won’t be as big of a curb to hop over,” Korczak said.
On the driveway leading from Main Street toward Madison, what had been parking spaces parallel to the roadway have now been modified to run perpendicular to the road, which will provide more space for delivery trucks to turn around and back in for nearby businesses, according to Korczak and Assistant Borough Manager John Ernst.
“We will be moving forward with it as a field change during construction. We did not put it in the bid specs, because we did not want to hold up the project for revised drawings,” Ernst said.
The parking spaces on the private part of the complex measure 9 feet wide by 18 feet deep, according to This is an image of the planned public plaza and apartment buildings to be built by developer Equus Capital Partners atop the Madison Parking Lot in Lansdale, as seen from Madison Street near the current Railroad Plaza. The rendering is courtesy of Wulff Architects. Korczak, but larger spaces measuring 10-by-22 feet will be created along the expanded Madison Street at roughly the same time.
Two sets of plans were shown to council and the committee: one featuring a series of trees and decorative light fixtures lining a widened Madison Street and providing shade around the public plaza and a second scaled-down version with the trees and landscaping removed. Both would incorporate brick and bluestone sidewalks similar to the downtown streetscape projects completed over the past several years, and Schmauk said the main difference is the presence of raised planters to contain those trees — if fire officials say the trucks can’t maneuver between the planters, the second version dubbed Concept B, without the landscaping, could still be approved.
“‘B’ is a little of a hedge. We have ‘B,’ we’ve expressed that we can do ‘B’ with some really nice materials, but we’d like ‘A,’” Schmauk said.
The project is still being reviewed by borough consultants, and the borough planning commission is expected to discuss the plans when it next meets on April 17, followed by borough council on April 19. Council will be asked to hold a public hearing to consider granting conditional use approval, to allow the residential and commercial uses on the parking site, and could approve the plans themselves later in the meeting, according to Ernst.
“After the hearing is closed, the vote on approval or denial of the Madison Lot project land development application will be put onto the agenda, for that evening’s meeting,” he said. “There will be a vote taken on the approval of that project.”
If council grants its approval, Equus would still need state approvals regarding stormwater management, and Knott said the developer has had several meetings with the state Department of Environmental Protection about those approvals.
“If all works out well, we will have this project, the Madison Street widening project, and the electric substation replacement, along with the underground bore that is bringing power from one side of Walnut Street, underneath the railroad tracks, all happening at the same time,” Ernst said.
Those projects will all be coordinated through the borough so none interfere with another, Ernst said, and yet another project in that area could begin at the same time: a project to convert the former arts center at 311 W. Main St. into restaurants and apartments is starting to seek permits for construction there.
“When it rains, it pours, but we have all been working towards this for several years now,” Ernst said.
Lansdale’s planning commission next meets at 7:30 p.m. on April 17 and borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on April 19, both at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine St. For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.Lansdale.org or follow @LansdalePA on Twitter.