Walnut Crossing And Other Developments Move Forward In Lansdale

Bruce Schwartz•

A rendering of Walnut Crossing

Lansdale Borough Council’s agendas will be filled with real-estate development decisions in the next couple months.

The borough’s Code Enforcement and Land Planning Committee, at its monthly meeting last Wednesday, voted to move three residential development plans ahead – and to set up a conditional use hearing for a fourth.

Overall, there’s an increased interest in renovation and redevelopment in the borough in 2020. "We continue to see a high number of permits being applied for and processed,” Building Code Official Jason Van Dame reported.

"Year to date, even with the pandemic — or maybe because of the pandemic — we’re 25% over the number of permits we issued at this point last year. We’ve issued a little over 1,000 permits so far this year,” said Van Dame.

Actions were taken Wednesday on several projects:

43 W. Third Street. The Walnut Crossing apartment complex, which has been chewed over by zoning, planning, code and council for nearly five years, is approaching the end of its long planning process and the beginning of actual construction.

The code committee Wednesday voted to recommend borough council approve final land development for the six-story, 204-unit project on 1.14 acres bounded by Third and Walnut Streets and Lansdale United Methodist Church. At 77 feet high It will be the tallest residential complex in town. And it’s the highest-density project by far in the county, spurring the borough to recently amend its zoning ordinance to deter future proposals of similar scale.

"We’ve been before the borough a number of times, most recently the code committee in spring for recommendation for preliminary (land development) approval,” said project engineer Jason Smeland. Questions of the building’s scale in relation to the neighborhood, accessibility for firefighters, advanced systems needed to achieve a certified-green environmental footprint, and a high-tech automotive stacking and retrieval system to reach the required parking spaces, all have worked their way through the system.

Said Smeland, "The planning commission and borough staff feel that we’re at the point where all the issues we have now are building-code related, and that we’re in a position to move on to the next process and out of land development.”

The committee agreed, and full council is expected to approve final land development later this month, which moves Walnut Crossing closer to shovels in the ground. Next would be the building permitting process, in which various issues are worked through to ensure the structure is in compliance with local and national building and safety codes.

320 Madison Street. The storefront facing Madison Station Apartments is seeking approval to become a four-unit residential space. With a conditional use hearing already on the agenda for the Oct. 21 council business meeting, developers came to the committee also requesting a waiver of preliminary and final land development requirements. And the committee voted to recommend that waiver to full council.

"The space was originally supposed to be a brew pub that went in Madison Street, but the lease fell through,” attorney Joe Clement told the committee. "As a result, the space is a white box right now. The applicant went back to see what the best use would be, and it appeared that now, with the changing market conditions, the best use is for residential space.”

Clement noted that the property, which sits between Dresher Arcade and the rear of Stove and Tap, actually fronts on West Main Street with retail establishment Wister’s Barbecue, so adding residential units would be permissible under conditional use. But, he said, the application also is seeking to bypass the usual land-development process because "we plan to use what’s existing. There will not be any earth moving and very, very minor modifications to the exterior. It’s only interior renovations here.”

315 West Main Street. A new application for conditional use was presented for the property best known as the former home of PEAK Center, between Love Obsessed and the Dresher Arcade, and vacant in recent years. Developer Daniel DeCastro is seeking to renovate the building inside and out, keeping the required retail on the ground floor but adding four residential units to the three existing apartments on the upper floors.

While the Lansdale Planning Commission has yet to see the proposal (it’s on the agenda for the commission meeting Monday, Oct. 19), Lansdale Borough Planning Consultant John Kennedy told the code committee that once a completed conditional application has been received the clock starts ticking on a mandatory hearing.

"They will be back at the (November code) committee meeting and you can see what the planning commission recommended,” Kennedy said. "Also, they will be asking for a waiver of land development, essentially similar to the 320 Madison project.”

He said that, even sight unseen, a motion to advertise the hearing — which would be scheduled for the November borough council business meeting — needed approval to meet the legal timeline. "You have to hold a hearing within 60 days, otherwise it would be deemed approved,” said Kennedy. "You will get an opportunity to review this more thoroughly next month. We just need to keep the process moving to schedule the hearing.”

The code committee approved the motion to advertise the conditional use hearing, which would be scheduled for borough council’s No. 18 business meeting.

512 Green Street. The code committee voted to recommend preliminary and final approval for minor land development for construction of a 50-by-52-foot, four-unit apartment building on a block lined with both small apartment buildings and single-family housing.

The Green Street quad project, like others mentioned above, will appear on the agenda for borough council’s monthly business meeting, Oct. 21 at 7 p.m., held via Zoom.