One of the most important aspects of our community that we need to continue to expand upon and further accentuate is the walkability of the borough. Our ability to be walking distance away from the stores we love, the community events we enjoy, and the friends we spend our time with is critical to continuing to attract future residents to our borough.
One of the first things new residents bring up when I ask them about why they moved to Lansdale is the ability to easily access great food/entertainment, beautiful parks and the train. With that in mind, one of the top questions we ask new developers is how they are going to market what they build and how they will tie it to the rest of our community. No project should exist in a silo and it is important that we continue to encourage and engage those looking to invest in Lansdale that our walkability is something worth investing in and we can/should all succeed together.
Being a town full of commuters, this makes it even more important that we continue to work on keeping our town walkable. As more young couples, families, and first time home buyers look to escape the city of Philadelphia to raise their kids and begin to set down roots, they will be looking for some of the same aspects that drew them to the city to begin with. Critical to that is walkability to both social events and entertainment. Which, in my opinion, we are well situated to manage.
However, there is one critical piece missing in our community to make our walkability argument ironclad and undeniable. That is walkable access to grocery shopping and or freshly made perishables (although, Amici and a few others do cover some of this). Having a small grocer in the core of Lansdale would help further exemplify a person’s ability to live in our community and easily be able to access fundamental needs without issue.
A small grocer or freshly-made products location like meats/breads/cheeses also fits in with our Main Street motif, unique experiences. In today’s world, most standardized things can be purchased online. You can put anything you can buy in the mall into this category. There is nothing special about these environments or their products. If you review the successful small businesses in our area, they are all offering unique experiences or expertise that cannot be found online. This would hold true for a small grocer as well. Food is emotional and intimately tied to happiness. Having someone you trust provide advice and opinions in a trusted environment would certainly be something that cannot be replicated online.
If we can add a grocer to our already walkable borough, we would be adding a huge feather in our cap as a community. Of course, these are not new ideas; filling a downtown with small businesses that are experts in their trade and unique in their offerings. It was the same proposition made in the 40s and 50s. The only difference is the internet has done to the malls what the malls did to Lansdale in the 80s and 90s.
We have come full circle. The challenge now is sustaining it and helping foster this new growth in a way that, hopefully, sustains it for longtime into the future.
(Mayoral Musings is a weekly op-ed column submitted to North Penn Now, courtesy of Lansdale Borough Mayor Garry Herbert.)
See also:
Mayoral Musings: Honoring Our Veterans
Mayoral Musings: Vote Tomorrow In Election 2019!
Mayoral Musings: Lansdale Borough Hires Rick Lesniak As EMC
Mayoral Musings: Emergency Decisioning And Deliberation
Mayoral Musings: Emphasizing Emergency Empowerment
