Morning Headlines: 1,300 New Apartments Planned for Lower Merion Township

As it goes in the nation, so it goes in Lower Merion: Rentals are trending. Heavily. That’s why developers are betting on projects like a 33-unit complex at Athens and Walton in Ardmore and a 284-unit complex on Righter’s Ferry Road. Also, according to the Inquirer:

…115 apartments (plus offices) at the Palmer Theological Seminary at City and Lancaster Avenues, 250 units next to the Wynnewood train station, 121 apartments on a municipal parking lot on Cricket Avenue in Ardmore” and a plan for 40-plus units near Ardmore’s Suburban Square on Sibley Avenue…If all the projects now on the boards are built, they would increase the total number of rental properties in Lower Merion by roughly 20 percent.

Will this activity bring a new surge of life to towns like Ardmore, that can be a little too sleepy for their own good? Or will they flood the school district with too many new students? Read more here.

What else is going on? Well…

• That new liquor store opened at 43rd and Chestnut, just in time for the students’ arrival in University City. If you didn’t get there yesterday, the Daily Pennsylvanian (of course) reports, you missed the first-day free samples.
• The former Riverfront Prison could become the site of The Greater Philadelphia World Trade Center project. The plan, already years in the making, reports Natalie Kostelni, would include “a pedestrian-only promenade linking Camden neighborhoods to the Delaware River.”
• A Seattle-based prefab housing company will open a facility in Pottstown, according to Jared Shelly. It’ll be 15,000 square feet.
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