Site-seeing tour
Road to progress: Colebrookdale Rail ride among highlights as county group tours area
Jill Blumhardt lives in Lower Moreland and didn’t know much about Pottstown — until Wednesday.
Blumhardt, who is a member of the Montgomery County Planning Commission, said as she drove west on Route 422 Wednesday morning for a meeting in Pottstown, she did not expect much.
But those expectations were dashed by the time she had finished her three-hour tour of the borough.
Asked what she thought as she stepped off the PART bus commandeered as a tour bus for the annual offsite meeting of the planning commission, Blumhardt said, “I was surprised. And you know what? I’ll be back.”
Once a year, the ninemember planning commission holds a meeting in a remote location, said J. Drew Shaw, environmental planning section chief for the county planning commission.
This year was Pottstown’s turn.
The Pottstown attraction that seemed to make the biggest impression on several of the visitors was the Colebrookdale Railroad, which met the tour bus where it crosses Manatawny Street and carried them back to Memorial Park.
It’s why Blumhardt is coming back — with her three sons, ages 4, 8 and 10.
“I asked Nathaniel (Guest) how I get tickets. We want to come back for the holiday rides,” she said.
On public display was “Storm King,” the latest addition to the historic railroad line, a luxurious parlor car complete with bar, period seating and lighting and stained glass windows.
Guest, who is the executive director of the Colebrookdale Railroad Preservation Trust and led the visitors through a tour of the dining car, “Dawn Treader” coach car as well as the open air car, said the railroad’s next priority is to build a permanent station in Memorial Park.
“It’s a great place to attract visitors, right off Route 422 and Route 100,” he said.
And fund raising is urgent because the railroad’s fame is already attracting bus tours of enthusiasts from as far away as Iowa, he said.
“It’s an amazing restoration job undertaken almost entirely by volunteers,” Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale said of the railroad. “This is a great asset for Pottstown.”
Steven Kline, chairman of the county planning commission, agreed.
“This is something I didn’t know about until today. It’s amazing, a gem right in the middle of this part of the county,” he said as he rode in the open air car.
In Pottstown, the railroad is part of the TRec district, or tourism and recreation district, that also includes the soon-to-open Carousel at Pottstown, Manatawny Green miniature golf, Pottsgrove Manor historic site and Memorial Park, home to playing fields, a splash park, dog park, BMX track and skate board park as well as host to numerous high profile events like the Volleyball Rumble and the Pottstown Brew Fest.
Also serving as an attraction are the many trails — bicycle and walking — being proposed throughout the borough and surrounding townships, said Justin Keller, the regional recreation coordinator for six area municipalities and the author of numerous grants which have helped move those trail projects forward.
Steve Bamford, executive director of Pottstown Area Industrial Development, said those attractions, as well as the Schuylkill River Trail, River of Revolutions Interpretive Center in the Schuylkill Heritage building, can all work together to attract people to Pottstown, its restaurants and hotels to support the local economy.
Investors have already been attracted to both the downtown — with 11 major buildings changing hands in the last year — and efforts are underway to do the same along Keystone Boulevard, the last major undeveloped parcels in the borough and West Pottsgrove Township, Bamford said.
“There are a lot of different puzzle pieces that are coming together,” said Gale. “I’m really very bullish on Pottstown. I think it has a great future and potential.”
Some of that potential, already realized, was on display during the tour, including Montgomery County Community College’s new sustainability and innovation center in the other half of the former PECO industrial building in Riverfront Park, which also houses the Schuylkill River Heritage Area; the former Jefferson School, now low-cost senior apartments; as well as the former shoe-polish factory and chemical storage warehouse that now houses the North Hall of Montgomery County Community College.
All of those projects featured adaptive re-use of existing buildings, noted Jody Holton, the executive director of the Montgomery County Planning Commission.
“I’m amazed to see all the architecture that has been preserved in Pottstown,” said Kline.
Another place that features such adaptive reuse efforts is the renovation now underway of the former Fecera’s furniture warehouse — which had a previous life as a shirt factory. After years of standing empty, that property at Beech and Evans street is now being transformed into apartments marketed to artists, as well as the new home of the ArtFusion 19464 art center, said Mike Stokes, the assistant director of the county planning commission and the tour guide for much of the bus ride.
But that does not mean Pottstown does not still face challenges, and the tour took note of them as well.
For example, one of the first stops was the closed Keim Street bridge, which County Commissioner Val Arkoosh told a Pottstown audience in May is not likely to see reconstruction until 2019 or later.
And as Stokes — a graduate of and parent of a student at The Hill School — talked about the benefits the school brings to the borough, he also highlighted Hobart’s Run, the school’s efforts to improve the neighborhood that surrounds its 700-plus acre campus.
Kline said the tour “also highlights the industry that used to occupy Pottstown and how it left. The struggles Pottstown goes through as a result are indicative, I think, of what they are calling today the ‘rust belt states,’ and I think it’s always a challenge for the town and the planning commission to find ways to revitalize here because this borough is so important to this part of the county.”
However, “I do see progress and talk of all the additional things that are in the works have the potential to come to fruition,” said Kline. “But like anything, it will take a slow burn to get there.”
Nevertheless, said Holton, “we have seen a great deal today and we didn’t even go to the Steel River Playhouse or some of the many other things going on here.”
She ended the tour noting, “there is no doubt that Pottstown is a dynamic place to visit and there is always another day to visit Pottstown.”