The Philadelphia Inquirer published a column by Joseph DiStefano over the weekend titled “This new $400 million plaza helps turn Conshohocken into a headquarters town.” The column is fairly extensive and focuses on the impact of the recently opened SORA West development (the hotel, restaurants, and the corporate headquarters of AmerisourceBergen).

From the column:

Conshohocken was built as a Schuylkill Valley factory town, like Manayunk or Norristown, full of stone and brick homes for the families that made Wood steel, Lee tires, Quaker chemicals, and other products in works that lined the river.

Since the 1990s, blocky offices, brass-trimmed restaurants along central Fayette Street, and apartment blocks and factory conversions along the floodplain have amplified Conshohocken’s position, and its two SEPTA stations have helped. The borough sits between car-dependent King of Prussia and higher-tax Center City Philadelphia.

What’s new, halfway up the hill on Fayette, is a city-style redevelopment, with corporate-headquarters amenities. The developer, Bill Glazer’s Keystone Development + Investment, named it “Sora West,” after a sharp-beaked native bird that scavenges in the nearby Schuylkill. Sora East is a smaller building nearby, earlier acquired by Keystone, in 2008.

You can read the full article here (note that it is behind a paywall).