Lansdale Considering Zoning Changes as Rite Aid Closure Nears

A business at Lansdale’s most visible intersection will be closing within days, and town officials are already looking ahead to what’s next.

Borough officials continued talks on a downtown zoning map update Wednesday night, an update that could affect what follows the Rite Aid pharmacy at Main and Broad Street, just days away from closing its doors.

“There’s a lot of different uses that could go there,” said borough Director of Community Development Jason Van Dame.

In late August North Penn Now first reported that the Rite Aid located at Main and Broad would close in September, relating the news to a drop in Rite Aid’s stock value due to the company’s preparation for a bankruptcy filing in response to mounting costs related to opioid lawsuits.

During a visit Wednesday, store employees declined to comment on the pending closure, but clearance sales could be seen throughout the store, and fliers on the main entrance door read “We’re moving and we packed your subscriptions. Starting September 10, you can pick up your prescriptions at Rite Aid, 1856 North Broad Street” in Hatfield, roughly a mile and a half away, with a QR code to scan for info on that store.

The Lansdale Rite Aid has been a sore spot for many local residents since the late 1990s, when the corner housed the Tremont Hotel, which was first built as a restaurant in 1890 by Isaac Heebner, son of the patriarch of the local Heebner Agricultural Works, and was designed by famed local architect Milton Bean.

An expansion followed in 1892, and several additions were made throughout the 20th century; in 1997, the building was demolished to make way for the Rite Aid, which drew criticism at the time and ever since for an inward-facing driveway layout and massive blank walls facing Main and Broad.

Van Dame said Wednesday night that he and borough staff had no updates or new news about any future owner of that site, nor of any changes to the former Wells Fargo bank branch building about a block away at Main and Susquehanna Avenue, which dates back to the early 20th century and closed in mid-August.

‘Survivor’ Sites Highlighted

During the town’s Founders Day celebrations marking the borough’s birthday on Aug. 26, the Lansdale Historical Society led dozens of residents on a tour of “Main Street Survivors,” highlighting historic buildings along Main Street and their current uses, and LHS has since posted a series of photos on their Facebook page highlighting 1960s revitalization efforts and the buildings that were demolished at that time.

Historic preservation was also discussed for over a decade as the borough tried to convert a former Masonic temple at 311 West Main into a performing arts center in the late 2000s, then a new council voted in 2016 to sell it, and the building has since been converted by the private owner into apartments and a basement restaurant.

Residents also petitioned council to keep part of the 1930s-era former post office that once housed borough hall at Broad and Vine Street, just steps from the Rite Aid, and all but the building’s outer brick walls were torn down, and the adjacent former police station that once served as a library was demolished, in 2013-15 and rebuilt into a new combined borough municipal office building and police station.

In July LHS members urged council to take several steps to encourage preservation and help facilitate the redevelopment or reuse of those historic downtown buildings, and throughout the year council’s code committee has discussed a zoning map update, that includes expanding and subdividing the downtown overlay covering parts of Main and Broad streets. No formal update was given on the Rite Aid on Wednesday night, but Van Dame said staff are still looking into language for a potential historic preservation ordinance, and/or ways to create a downtown district overseen by a historical architectural review board.

“Retail has one of the lower parking requirements, but that would be under the downtown business overlay,” he said.

Spurs Talk of New Zoning

The Rite Aid site, Wells Fargo, and the long-vacant National Auto store at Main and Wood Streets that’s been closed since 2017 — and the subject of talks on a possible conversion to residential apartments last fall — all are within an area discussed at length by the code committee Wednesday: a new zoning map update meant to allow more uses in the downtown core area, while streamlining the borough’s codebook elsewhere.

Council created and then expanded a downtown business overlay in 2016 into 2017 giving certain businesses of up to 20,000 square feet relief from certain parking requirements, so long as they met certain other conditions, and earlier this year the code committee heard details of how the town’s planning commission has been working on an expansion.

“Why are we making the changes? First is to simplify the zoning map a little bit, it can be confusing,” Van Dame said, and “we’re looking at expanding the downtown business overlay to help promote some economic development through town.”

As he spoke, Van Dame showed the borough’s current zoning map, with color-coded areas denoting the current residential, commercial, and industrial areas of the town, then a new overlay developed by township code and IT staff showing colored outlines of the various overlays in the codebook. The proposed expansion of the current business overlay would widen that area farther down West Main toward Valley Forge Road, east on Main to Line Street and Memorial Park, and farther up and down Broad to Hancock Street.

“A lot of those smaller professional office uses are working remotely from home, and not looking to buy buildings on North Broad Street,” he said.

“I think the more opportunity we can create there, the better for our economic development, and revitalization, and the vitality of that area,” Van Dame said.

Reshaping ‘Central Business’

The latest draft and map also clarifies the current business overlay district centered around Main and Broad, calling it the “central business area,” and the expanded overlay zone which would be referred to as the general business area. In that central area, residential unit density could be allowed of up to 50 units per acre, compared to no more than 20 units per acre in the broader “general” area, and building heights could be allowed to go up to 65 feet, with some bonuses allowing heights as tall as 85 feet, only in the downtown core.

“That makes sense for downtown,” said code committee chairman Rich DiGregorio, and Van Dame replied: “It’s not up against any existing residential properties, so we thought it was a good thing to put in there.”

Other changes in the new update include removing the borough’s retirement village overlay, which Van Dame said covers an area north of Hancock Street along the adjacent railroad tracks, and was originally meant to allow an age-restricted development that ultimately evolved into the “Andale Green” complex of roughly 180 townhouses that is now complete.

“At one time, it was proposed to be a potential retirement-age-restricted development. That went out the window back when the housing market crashed around 2008, so there’s really no reason to keep that around” with that property now developed, he said.

The zoning map update also removes an office and specialty restaurant district that was originally added with the goal of spurring economic development, but “doesn’t get used very much,” and those uses would also fall under the new overlay: “We’re not really taking opportunity away, we’re actually creating some more opportunity,” Van Dame said.

The latest draft of that new zoning map will be reviewed by the borough’s planning commission when they meet on Sept. 18, and if that group votes it ahead the code committee could then be asked to formally approve the zoning map update at their Oct. 4 meeting, which would then clear the way for full council approval two weeks later.

“It’s a lot easier to read now, with all the different colors and shapes,” DiGregorio said.

Mayor: ‘Meet this Moment…’

And as for the Rite Aid site specifically, Mayor Garry Herbert said in a Mayoral Musings column after the closure that Rite Aid’s departure, and that of the Wells Fargo, could be seen as an opportunities to “substantially improve our downtown in ways that it has not seen in decades.”

“Upon finding out, I was immediately struck with a sense of hopefulness that the doorway to our community might one day again be a more welcoming and vibrant corner of our community,” he said.

Last year Herbert proposed a vacancy tax meant to spur owners of empty storefronts to seek new tenants or owners, and in his column the mayor referred to the ongoing economic development and marketing efforts being spurred by an outside consultant as a way the town could encourage the current, or a new, owner to redevelop the sites.

“We need to meet this moment and use every lever available to us — which is certainly limited in scope — to encourage the development that our community needs,” he said.

This article appears courtesy of a content share agreement between North Penn Now and The Reporter. To read more stories like this, visit www.thereporteronline.com.

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