Developer pitches plan for 55-andover housing
Movie theater from 2015-16 plans ‘not going to happen’
Developer Mark Nicoletti has returned with a new idea to revive the Towamencin Village Shopping Center.
Two years after the township created a new overlay zone to spur development at the shopping center and an adjacent office building, Nicoletti is now asking officials to consider allowing agerestricted residential housing there.
“This is a business plan that’s based on a pretty realistic assumption: that if there are neighbors on the site, and if we do the improvements, we’ve got a shot at turning around the shopping center,” he said.
Starting in the summer of 2015, Nicoletti and his firm Philadelphia Suburban Development Corp. have discussed various ideas for bringing businesses back to the shopping center, which is located at Forty Foot and Allentown Roads and has seen several large departures over the past decade. In 2015 into 2016, Nicoletti pitched a plan that involved connecting the shopping center to the adjacent SKF Inc. office building just south of the shopping center, and combined complex would share parking and provide connections for a possible gym, health care facility, supermarket or movie theater.
Talks with a large supermarket chain broke down at the negotiating table, Nicoletti told Towamencin’s supervisors Wednesday, and
market trends over the past three years have sent a clear message: large retail is harder and harder to find, but demand remains strong for residential projects.
“Major national chains are rarely opening up new stores. Most of them are closing stores. If they do open a new store, they choose the pin on the map that is ground zero — in this area, they would go to Montgomeryville,” Nicoletti said.
Properties like PSDC holdings near Forty Foot and Sumneytown Pike, close to the Towamencin interchange with the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, could be successful due to high traffic volume — but the market is sending different signals about properties farther away like the shopping center.
“This is where the retailers want to be: near the five-million-cars a year interchange. Us trying to get the retailers to go down to Allentown and Forty Foot Road hasn’t been successful. Us bringing the opportunity to retailers where they want to be is going to be very successful,” he said.
Talks with a local home builder about options at the shopping center and a proposed project in neighboring Hatfield Township led to another idea, Nicoletti said: instead of new offices or retail, the space between the SKF building and the shopping center could be used for residential construction instead.
“We have such an oversupply of office space” in the township, including the SKF building, Nicoletti said: “if we could put an office building on that ground tomorrow, we would do it tomorrow, because that’s what we do.”
“I assure you, we have the incentive to want to put it here. We can’t figure out how to do that, because the market doesn’t want office buildings,” he said.
Part of the proposal in 2015-16 for retail between the shopping center and SKF included a new traffic light to be installed at the existing intersection of Forty Foot and Newbury Way, and Nicoletti said the current Newbury Way community of 55-and-over residential houses could be matched with newer units across the street, which would create foot traffic for the shopping center.
“It’s as if everything is just falling into place, and we’re not taking down the shopping center to do it,” he said. “We’re utilizing that dirt for what the market says it wants.”
Supervisors Chairman Chuck Wilson asked if the proposed residential project would have any impact on the traffic signal and the proposed widening of Forty Foot Road to eliminate a bottleneck just south of Tomlinson Road. Nicoletti answered that he and PSDC have pledged $800,000 toward the $2.4 million cost of that widening and signal, the township has secured another roughly $800,000 in grant funds, and the rest could come from the residential project.
“I can tell you tonight, we will extract, in our negotiations from the builder who’s going to buy this ground and build houses on it, the other one-third. I hope we get the next grant, but here’s your hedge if you don’t,” he said.
Supervisor Laura Smith said she liked the concept, and asked if Nicoletti could look into adding some sort of pedestrian connection to the Tennis-Lukens cemetery, a township-owned property on Allentown Road just west of the shopping center, which Nicoletti said he would look into.
“If you follow social media, if you listen to what our residents are asking, what I’m always hit with is, they want a movie theater,” Smith said.
“Not going to happen” at that site, Nicoletti repled, but it could be part of a development on the PSDC properties closer to Sumneytown — “the movie theater wants to be at the exit. It’s that simple,” he said.
Wilson asked if the shopping center and residential areas would be connected via sidewalks, and Nicoletti said they would, and said tax incentives such as a LERTA (Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance) could be used to attract small retail that would benefit from walk-up traffic.
“We’re going to go after small businesses. We’re going to go back to the basics: the dry cleaner, the nail salon, the pizza guy, and other small businesses: medical offices, maybe a dentist,” Nicoletti said.
Supervisor Rich Marino asked if any demolition would be needed to make the road and sidewalk connections, and Nicoletti said one or two small storefronts could be removed to create a through roadway, running from Allentown Road through the shopping center to the SKF property.
What density would the project need? Nicoletti said his request is for a density of 20 units per acre, similar to PSDC’s projects on Forty Foot near Towamencin Avenue, and the residential complex could be a combination of condo buildings and smaller individual houses.
Wilson asked if a zoning change to allow the residential use in the shopping center overlay created in 2016 would need to be written in a way that requires the shopping center be preserved, and solicitor Jack Dooley said that is one possible approach.
“The use could be confined to just the area we’re talking about tonight,” Dooley said.
Supervisor Dan Littley said he was still wary of further promises, since residents may still recall the proposed movie theater from 2015-16.
“It’s not ‘What is he doing?’ It’s, ‘When is he going to do it?’” Littley said.
“It took us a little longer. There are a lot of serious market forces we’re competing against,” Nicoletti replied.
Littley said he was still worried about adding more residential development, which would increase the roughly 60 percent of the township’s tax base that relies on residential uses, without preserving the commercial property.
“I will consider that, but I’m dead set against any change to the shopping center zoning,” Littley said.
Nicoletti said that’s why he has returned with the residential plan: the shopping center would be preserved, the commercial properties could be revived with more foot traffic nearby, and future commercial development could still take place closer to Sumneytown Pike.
“You put us to the test, to come back with a solution that respects the priorities of the township. I think we’ve done that tonight,” Nicoletti said.
Towamencin’s supervisors next meet at 7:30 p.m. on May 9 at the township administration building, 1090 Troxel Road.