During this week’s meeting of Conshohocken’s Borough Council, the redevelopment proposal by Keystone Property Group took a step forward in the process to make it a reality. The proposal includes building a hotel, two office buildings, parking garage and a public square in the area between West Elm Street and West 1st Avenue along Fayette Street. The office building and parking garage already exist, but the plan is to replace them with larger ones.
The step forward was an informal consensus among members of Borough Council to allow Keystone to move forward with a timeline in which it will seek the creation of a new zoning district (Specially Planned District SP-4), which would “allow Unified Developments, and rezone the block bounded by Fayette Street, West Elm Street, Robinson Alley and First Avenue as SP-4).” We looked up “Unified Developments” in Conshohocken’s zoning code and found that this is when there is a “single conceptual plan (that shall not constitute part of the land development plans submitted) so as to ensure that development is undertaken in an orderly and rational fashion”.
The agreed upon time line is as follows:
- April 2016 – Review by Planning Commission
- May/June 2016 – Hearing on Ordinance Amendment and Road Vacation Before Borough Council
- September/October 2016 – Preliminary land development approval
- November/December 2016 – Final land development approval, along with all other permits and approvals to commence construction of Phase 1
- February/March 2017 – Complete closing on Borough and RDA parcels (RDA is the Montco Redevelopment Authority)
- April/May 2017 – Commence construction on Phase 1
Phase 1 consists of the hotel, parking garage, brew pub, public square and one office building (note that it was acknowledged at a prior meeting that the office building would only be built when a tenant is secured). The Phase 1 office building is at the corner of West 1st Avenue and Fayette. Phase 2 is the the replacement of the office building on West Elm between Washies and Saint Mary Church.
Please note that this is in no way approved yet. Note that in the fifth bullet point that the property isn’t even owned by Keystone. It just an agreement to develop the site if it can get its plan approved. If approved it would finalize the purchase.
There will be several public meetings about this at the Planning Commission level and then at Borough Council. There will be ample opportunities for the public to share its thoughts on the plan.
We will keep you updated.
FYI, as part of Keystone’s presentation it had economic impact numbers, which we will do a story about for Monday.