On August 18th, Conshohocken’s zoning hearing board voted unanimously to grant a series of variances involving two proposed office buildings on Conshohocken’s riverfront. The buildings are proposed by an entity associated with Morgan Properties. The variances involved building height, impervious coverage, building separation, allowing a visible parking structure fronting parallel to the Schuylkill River, building profile, and building within the floodplain conservation overlay district.
The next step in the process is receiving a conditional use approval from Conshohocken’s borough council involving the building profiles.
Morgan Properties has invested heavily in Conshohocken in recent years. In 2018, it purchased the Millennium I, II, and III office buildings and, in 2024, moved its headquarters to the campus from its original home in King of Prussia. In 2022, it purchased the undeveloped property known as Millennium IV, which sits between Millennium II and III and the Schuylkill River. The two office buildings fall within the Millennium 1 and 4 properties.
During the hearing, a representative of Morgan Properties offered details on the use of the two buildings. The larger building (shown to the left in the two images in this article) is a six-story building with 216,400 square feet. The adjacent parking garage would be four stories and have 960 spaces. This building would be marketed for a single tenant and not constructed until that tenant is secured.
The building to the right is a three-story office building on top of a parking garage that would hold 236 vehicles. The office building would be 87,840 square feet. This office building is a planned expansion of Morgan Properties’ corporate headquarters. The representative of Morgan Properties at the meeting offered that the company is willing to come to an agreement with the borough to delay the construction of this building for a set number of years.
The diagram above shows a lot of green space between the Schuylkill River and the office building to the right. Morgan Properties plans to work with the borough to determine what type of open space or recreational use it would like in this area.
A previous owner of the Millennium IV property, Brian O’Neil’s O’Neil Properties, successfully secured similar zoning relief for an office building on the undeveloped property that was never constructed (view), and the approvals expired. At the time, O’Neil was pitching the site to AmerisourceBergen for its new headquarters, which was eventually built at the corner of Fayette Street and West 1st Avenue in downtown Conshohocken. AmerisourceBergen has since changed its name to Cencora.
During the August 18th hearing, the only public comment offered was from a representative of Hamilton Lane, which is based at the nearby Seven Tower Bridge, and that inquiry involved traffic.
If you are wondering, more people came out to support a residential fence for a family on West 10th Avenue than showed interest in the hearing for the office buildings.
And regarding that fence.
It was stated during that hearing that the zoning hearing board holds a few hearings a year involving similar fences (corner lots that essentially have two front yards based on how the zoning code is written). If they are all being granted, change the code. Why make people go through the zoning process and incur the cost and delay?
Images – From Morgan Properties’ presentation