New concept for old school

Townhouses over retail discussed

SOUDERTON >> Borough officials say they want to take a road trip to central Pennsylvania to look at developments there with townhouses built on top of stores and other commercial units before making further decisions about what ultimately will be constructed at the former Souderton Area High School site.

The plan is for a mix of residential and commercial uses in the block between School Lane, Chestnut Street, County Line Road and East Broad Street (Route 113), but the only things built or in the process of being built thus far are 72 townhouses.

Plans for the next step to include townhouses on top of commercial space, modeled after two developments in Mechanicsburg, which is near Harrisburg, were discussed at Souderton Borough Council’s Feb. 19 work session meeting.

If the plan is approved, it would be a first for this area, Chloe Mohr, a Montgomery County Planning Commission community planner, said.

“In Montgomery County, the only place we have mixed use buildings with residential over retail is in your traditional downtowns,” she said.

Those are apartments, not townhouses, she said. There are other mixed use developments in the county, but those have the businesses and homes in separate buildings, she said.

The Mechanicsburg developments appear to be successful, but those are not in town, she said.

“It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere,” she said.

“It might work out really well” in Souderton, Mohr said, “but we

don’t have an example just like this.”

The townhouses would be sold to homeowners while the commercial space would be leased out to businesses. Under the plans, the commercial space and garages

for the above townhouses would share the first floor. With that leaving less than 400 square feet for the commercial space, council members said they were concerned the space would be too small for retail stores or any business that needed storage or room for preparing goods, such as food preparation for a restaurant or a bakery. As a result,

businesses moving to the units might be service businesses that were not open evenings rather than the types of businesses that could also attract customers nights, council members said.

“The question that I think we’re raising is will it attract the kinds of businesses that will give us that downtown area, the central square kind of thing, that we’re looking for,” council member Richard Halbom said.

Developer Clay Heckler said more than one commercial unit could be combined to make a larger space. It would also be possible to have no garage or a smaller garage with some of the townhouses if the business said before the building

was constructed that the space was needed for the business, he said.

There would also be additional larger commercial buildings available on the site, he said.

“The niche is somebody that can only afford 400 square feet who wants to get started,” Clay Heckler said. “We have plenty of pads for them to expand to.”

Max Heckler, Clay’s son, said some of the space might be used as offices or service businesses, but most would not be.

“When I’m looking for tenants to fill these spaces, I’m looking for restaurants, I’m looking for a local brewery, I’m looking for things that people would want to have there,” Max Heckler said.

Questions were also raised about the number of homes in the plan.

At a previous meeting, borough council and the planning commission set its limit, council member Dan Yocum said.

“We were pretty dead set on 120 max residential units,” he said.

The plan shown at the Feb. 19 meeting had a total of 151 homes.

“This is a townhouse site. I know nobody wants to hear it,” Clay Heckler said. “What we tried to do is give you something that’s gonna look like what you want, create a space that’s gonna work for you, but it has to have the residential.”

The homes are necessary in order to pay for the development costs of the site, he said.

“I can tell you the economics of it, there’s no way you’re paying for all this infrastructure with cutting out a bunch of residential units. It’s not gonna happen,” Heckler said.

Heckler also said the number of homes has been reduced from the more than 200 apartments initially suggested.

“That’s not where we started. That’s where you started,” Halbom said.

“That never would have been approved,” council President Brian Goshow said.

Goshow said council does agree the change from apartments to townhouses is an improvement.

“I think we’re closer now than we were before, but it does need some tweaking,” Halbom said. He said he wants to go see the Mechanicsburg developments before making any further decisions. Other council members were also invited to make the trip at the same time.

Under the borough’s initial approvals, no more than half of the square feet of floor space in the development could go for residential use. The most recent plans shown are approaching 80 percent of the floor space going for residential use, Mohr said.

Heckler said if the ratio is based on the amount of land use, however, the split between residential and commercial is about equal.

The increase in homes comes with an increase in the amount of commercial space in the plans, which the borough has asked for, Heckler said.

“I think when we say more commercial, that’s as a percentage, not necessarily more commercial space, but as a percentage,” Goshow said, “and part of the way you get that more commercial as a percentage is to overall lessen the density of the whole project.”

The homes are necessary for the development to also include commercial space, Heckler said.

“That’s what pays for the retail space and they provide customers which is critical for that space,” he said.

Goshow said there are already enough people living in the surrounding area to provide customers for the businesses.

“What we want and what’s gonna work, obviously need to meet,” he said, but said the issue remains the same as it always has been.

“From day one, the issue has been too much density overall,” Goshow said.

“From day one, the issue has been too much density overall.” — Souderton Borough Council President Brian Goshow

“I can tell you the economics of it, there’s no way you’re paying for all this infrastructure with cutting out a bunch of residential units. It’s not gonna happen.” — Developer Clay Heckler