Madison Lot Development Opens Eyes for Neighbors

John Black has a love-hate relationship with his residency in Lansdale.

He loves the history of his 80-year-old home. He loves his neighbors and the close knit community. He loves that his children have a place they adore and can cherish memories of as they get older.

Yet Black hates the sound of diesel locomotives at 10 p.m. He hates them at 3 a.m. He hates the what he believes are carcinogenic exhaust fumes that dissipate toward his backyard on W. Second Street, a stone's throw away from the raillines near W. Third Street and Richardson Avenue. He hates his children having nightmares from the blast of the locomotive horns late at night.

Black has learned to live with the contrast between the treasure of a historic home and the noise quality around him.

He doesn't want another homeowner in the future to face the same problem.

"As a homeowner, as a father, there's no way we the people of Lansdale should be conducing (BPG Properties) to put townhomes immediately adjacent to the raillines," Black said. "I think it's asinine, it's unconscionable, it's immoral. There can be better use for that property."

Black is referring to the plot of land along the tracks near Madison Lot and at the bend in Richardson/West Third Street which currently sites the annual Lansdale Beer Fest. 

It is there where BPG Properties Ltd. conceptually plans to build 54 townhomes. A new one-way road – where the dirt road currently exists leading up to the Beer Fest – will be paved as a thoroughfare to these townhomes.

The concept right now calls for a six-story tall building – at Green Street and Main is five-stories tall – with 30,000-square-feet of retail space on the ground floor fronting Madison Avenue.

The remaining floors above it – all condos. About 200 of them.

Behind this building, along the tracks, will be a parking garage. The parking garage will be the spot where residents of these condos will park, as well as commuters and shoppers.

There will be about 400 spaces, in total, in the garage, plus 50 surface parking spaces around the retail areas. Madison Parking Lot now has 215 spots.

And right where Wood Street hits Madison - behind Molly Maguire's and National Auto Store - is the gathering place, a piazza, a walkable area free of interfering vehicles getting to the parking garage.

The project will take about three years to complete.

On Tuesday night, BPG Properties attended a rescheduled Lansdale town hall session to discuss with residents the initial ideas for the Madison Lot development.

Lansdale Parking Authority sold the Madison parking lot to BPG in February.

Parking authority chairman Dan Dunigan called the project "the single largest things to happen in Lansdale period."

George Haines, vice president of BPG Properties, said the firm is in the due diligence period right now.

"As we work through the due diligence period now, we try to optimize and fit the deal," he said. "We want to give you our objective of Lansdale: what we've found and show you what we've discovered in other markets we've worked in."

BPG Properties has developed and owns some residential and commercial properties in the area you may be familiar with – the old Visteon plant in Worcester; ; the $16-million renovation of Madison at Montgomery on Elroy Road in Hatfield, down the street from Pennfield Middle School; Madison at Hunt Club in Lower Gwynedd; the New Britain Village Square at County Line Road and DeKalb Pike; 1001 Continental Drive in King of Prussia; and the Amtrak 30th Street Station parking garage in Philadelphia.

"We encourage you to give us your opinion and the thoughts on the project," said Haines. "This really is on the drawing board. We have an idea of where to put the garage, the retail, the apartments, the townhomes. It is all up for discussion. We can push and pull on the best fit for this site."

Haines said BPG will focus on Lansdale's best asset: walkability.

"It's a suburban-urban project and that walkability is the key," Haines said. 

He said SEPTA calls Lansdale the second busiest station in its system. They will leverage that asset into the project.

He said borough officials have taken great strides in the streetscape project; they have already taken the initiative to start development.

"We want our project to fit what has already started," Haines said.

The demand for more amenities has increased, he said, so it's natural to give people a place to walk to in Lansdale.

He said about $20 million a year is spent outside the borough on food and beverages. Success, he said, depends on having a walkable community the leads to revitalization of downtown areas.

"We want to marry the revitalization of the downtown with the transit center. That's what you've got here," Haines said. 

Haines said the demand for apartments has increased due to people getting married later and having children later in life. He said home ownership dropped from 67 percent to 62 percent in the past year in the U.S. One percent is equal to about 1 million apartment units, he said.

The planned apartments will be "more on the ones and twos," meaning bedrooms, which will appeal to the urban push of the 25 to 40 set.

The mixed-use transit-oriented development leads to the creation of a piazza, he said. Where Lansdale's Main Street is Main and Broad, Madison is only a half-block away. Haines said people need to be drawn to that retail area.

"We see a retail base created for people to walk to. We want people to get into the development and get out very easily," Haines said.

"This could be a real revolution for the borough," Haines said.

David Schoenhard, vice president of Wulff Architects in Philadelphia, said the complex is designed around the neighborhood.

"We thought of the walking loop. You start at a restaurant, and go for a walk around the loop (of Main Street and Madison). So that starts to create knitting the fabric together," Schoenhard said. "We need to encourage and strengthen the sense of the streetscape, so that when you're on a village street you feel like you're nestled in the community."

Schoenhard said the borough's overlay district inspired the project: it is pedestrian-friendly, it is transit-oriented, there are vibrant streetscapes and room for public spaces.

"When you design things, you need to know what your needs are so you can design something that's interesting. Otherwise, it's just a pie in the sky," he said.

Duane Snyder, associate real estate broker at Gerald W. Snyder and Associates, Inc. in Lansdale, asked if BPG is considering the expansion of the parking garage in the future.

"We haven't forecasted with retail 20 years from now how many will park there," Haines said. "It's very, very expensive to go up."

Snyder said there should be room to expand if needed.

"Hopefully, it's going to happen. People are going to come flooding in," Snyder said.

Resident Cathy Radcliffe said it's great to say we want to draw in 1,000 people and have 1,000 spaces, but you have to take into account if they will fit on the streets.

"How many can we actually fit in here? Will they be able to get here?" asked Radcliffe.

Haines said a traffic impact study will be done.

"What makes the project unique is the train station. The whole point is a signficant percentage of our tenants will take the train in and out of Philadelphia on a daily basis. What you would see on a normal project is going to be much less than what you see here," Haines said.

Another resident asked how BPG will make allowances for additional parking later on.

Dunigan said the idea is to make the garage unreasonable for SEPTA users to park there by pricing it a certain way.

"In addition to what parking they are accommodating for, one of the concerns we have is the fact that it gets more SEPTA uses than it should. There are too many spots there currently that allow folks to park inexpensively for the entire day," Dunigan said. "Meanwhile, over at Pennbrook station, there are 70 spaces that stay vacant all day, every day. We want to help direct some of those folks from getting on at Lansdale to getting on at Pennbrook."

Dunigan said there's a stigma in town that there's no parking anywhere. A parking study by Nelson/Nygaard found that within a three minute walk of the Madison lot there are 750 spaces open.

"The other thing to come into this is where demographics are headed. For these types of projects, slightly over one space per unit has shown to be plenty," Dunigan said.

One of things the borough cannot accommodate for are events like Bike Night, where tens of thousands of people "figure out" where to park.

"You can't plan to park for the day when everybody's in your town, unless you want an asphalt jungle," Dunigan said. "Drive past Montgomery Mall. Ninety-nine percent of the time that building is open there's probably 10 acres of asphalt."

Dunigan said better management of spaces will help in the future.

"If somebody can park for a quarter for the day, they will park for the day. If that spot is $1 an hour, $2 an hour, or think about something like New York City where it's $38 for the first 30-some minutes, they won't stay very long," he said. "We would love to plan for 20 years from now. What we will do is make every reasonable effort to accommodate as much parking as we can."

Dunigan said the dilemma with expanding a parking garage is confined space.

"You have a functional use of the property. If we replaced 50 apartment units with open space that could become parking in 20 years, this project may no longer be economically feasible," he said.

Resident John Darab called himself the "what if guy."

"You've got this greenway along the tracks, and you've got all this excitement for it. Two months ago, Mr. Black said that's not a place to build a house. That's where diesel engines run from 8 o'clock in the evening to four the next morning," he said. "If you do that, there should be a barrier the entire length that says we're going to keep noise out of that community."

Darab said a barrier should be put up to keep children off the tracks.

"You want to sell safety, we're talking safety," Darab said. Darab also asked where BPG would dump snow during the winter and the snow on top of the parking garage. He also said high density development calls for a dog park, and there's not one on the plan.

Haines said commuter versus freight trains is something to consider, and that's important when the project revolves around the station.

Schoenhard said there will be noise testing done at the site to record decibel levels, since a required noise minimum must be met for townhomes to be FHA eligible.

He said two proposed ballfields along the tracks would give a location to dump snow.

As far as track crossings, BPG has to be careful.

"You can't just create a crossing across a railroad track. If someone gets hit, you created the crossing, now we're liable. It's Conrail, it's SEPTA, it's not our land. We can't just do that," Schoenhard said. "There are long range plans in improving the crossings. We are looking at that with SEPTA."

Radcliffe asked what kind of retail does BPG plan to put in the area.

"Likely candidates: Iron Hill Brewery, even a Chickie's and Pete's has been thrown out, a Cozy, Panera, I know you have a Starbuck's a little farther down, but a Saxby's Coffee ... heavy on that food and beverage and then if we can lay in a few other retailers along the way," Haines said.

Haines said a grocery store may be tough.

"There's a concept up in Boston like a village market, like a much smaller convenience store," Haines said. "Some amenities for the apartments and the community makes sense."

Councilman Steve Malagari asked if green architecture would be involved in the project. Schoenhard said every major project is LEED, by nature. LEED, he said, is no longer the only one in the game; there are BPI and Green Globes as well.

"There will be many, many sustainability aspects on this project, from clean air to energy efficiency to quality of storm runoff water," Schoenhard said. "To say it is LEED certified comes with the price. It's not the construction price, it's the 'us' price - all the professionals that have to go through the paperwork process."

Schoenhard said Pennsylvania has not signed on to the 2012 building codes yet, but BPG may want to grab hold of some of the aspects of that code with this project.

Black asked if BPG will file an Act 2 or Notice of Intent to Remediate.

Act 2/Brownfields is Pennsylvania’s Land Recycling and Remediation Standards Act. The legislation directs that cleanup options be based on the risk that contamination poses to public health and the environment, including emphasis on current and future uses of the site and potential for off-site contaminant migration, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

"There's a lot of concerns about the amount of freight traffic that comes down that line, with the locomotives, with the smoke," Black said. "In terms of sound barriers and walkability, that's a concern I hope you consider in your due diligence."

Haines said BPG wasn't certain about Act 2 yet.

"The buffering we are looking into. What it looks like and feels like between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., we're going to have people out there staking it out to see what it is," he said. "As far as Act 2, we are in due diligence, we are doing environmental reconnaissance now."

Haines said BPG did Brownfield work in the early 1990s. The environmental study will tell BPG whether or not further ground sampling and borings should be done to test what is on the site.

Resident Steve Moyer said he was honored that BPG considered Lansdale.

"I'm impressed from day one with your plans. I hope we have a fruitful partnership between the town and you guys," Moyer said. "One thing is, I know you can do it. I would hope that in the process of this that we keep getting feedback. This might be the thing that makes all Lansdale work."

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