Riverfront
day there was no visible sign that work has begun on any phase of the trail.
The site is a nearly 25acre, former industrial site along the Schuylkill River in Royersford where 188 apartments, a 25,000 square-foot entertainment venue, restaurant and bar and nearly 25,000 square feet of retail space were first proposed in 2019.
Since then, with this latest grant, the project will have received more than $4 million in state funding, including $1.4 million over two years to restore the former railroad trestle as well as another $1 million for infrastructure and site preparation work.
The site for the complex appears to have been prepped and the refurbished
trestle bridge between Royersford and Spring City had some firsttime users checking it out Thursday.
Among them was the Darling family of Royersford.
Kelly Darling, her mother Kay Alexander, and her children
Suzannah and Brady Darling were taking their first walk across the 1,020foot span Thursday, first constructed in 1919 for a railroad spur.
The Darlings said they enjoy bike riding and intend to use the bridge for that purpose.
Spring City resident Greg Howland, out walking his dog Kona, seemed less impressed. “It’s a bridge,” he said as Kona attempted to convince him to keep moving.
Howland said that given encampments of unhoused
he has seen along the Schuylkill River Trail on the Chester County side, he has security concerns and isn’t sure that some of the money spent to develop the bridge and Royersford site wouldn’t have been better spent addressing that problem.
In addition to funding from the multi-modal source, the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, as well as Montgomery County, have contributed funding.