Suburbia: We Can't Work It Out

 Sometimes when people fight like this, it’s useful to bring in a mediator. Which is what the township did, inviting the Urban Land Institute, a national brain trust of architectural and planning experts who parachute into these development disputes to provide clear, levelheaded, well-respected thinking. But when ULI came to Ardmore last fall, it only made things worse. The group found that the township had some really good ideas — for everything but the properties that were the center of the controversy. Other aspects of the plan — the town green, another parking lot beside the township building, a mixed-use building on Cricket Avenue — those were great, the mediators said.

But they firmly said that nothing should be torn down on Lancaster Avenue. Old buildings have value, they stressed, and are the only hope against cookie-cutter construction — the kind you can see in Ardmore at the bustling Suburban Square shopping center, on the other side of the tracks. The ULI panel predicted that by building some of the projects in the town’s master plan — but not, for heaven’s sake, tearing anything down — Ardmore could find the right “tipping point” that would revive retail on its main street. Even Manko originally seemed to think that this halfway approach might work, telling the Inquirer that ULI might have presented a workable compromise.

Only it didn’t turn out that way. The township ultimately decided the ULI plan didn’t offer enough … parking. Apparently, getting people who love their BMWs and Audis and SUVs to visit a store or board a train means offering them a spot right smack next to their destination, not a block or two away. 

But there may be another reason the township couldn’t let go of this one ill-fitting piece of the puzzle. If you’re using a developer to solve the problem of funding your town projects, you need to give him a big enough footprint to cash in on. Otherwise, he won‘t even respond to your request for proposal. Or so the township manager, Doug Cleland, implies. “Discussions the township has had with developers,” he says, “indicate that it’s a relatively small project and therefore it is going to be challenging to any developer to come up with a plan that is financially feasible.” And from what she’s heard, Colette Speakman, the head of the township-sponsored business association, says developer buy-in is critical. “The whole question is how to finance the project,” she says. “The township wants 60 to 80 percent covered by private development.”

So what started as, ostensibly, a transit project and turned into a discussion about what Ardmore could be may end up being whatever a developer decides he can make money by doing. And who knows whether a developer’s profit margins were supposed to be part of the “carefully deliberated redevelopment plan” and underlying governmental process that the Supreme Court ruled local governments should be trusted to follow in these situations?

In the meantime, the commissioner elections are coming up next month, and given the effectiveness of the Save Ardmore Coalition in focusing them on eminent domain in Ardmore, the plan could fall through entirely. But don’t ask how, exactly, the SAC is working the political angle. The group, like revolutionaries consolidating control, recently moved to bar reporters and other non-members from its “strategy sessions.”

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