Developers held an all-day forum with officials, planners, public and the owner to gain consensus on redevelopment.
By Christopher Merrill
Inquirer Suburban Staff
PHOENIXVILLE - When Phoenix Iron & Steel Co. shut down in 1987, many of this town's residents lost more than their jobs. Their identity began to slip away as well.
Although some people may lament the proposed residential and retail development of the old steel-mill site, others accept that the revitalization of downtown is tied to the development of this now-desolate stretch of land just off Main Street.
The property's owner, Phoenix Property Group, is hoping to head off an identity crisis by including residents in the planning process for the site.
Newly elected Borough Council member Anthony DiGirolomo said he believes the memory of the mill has been holding back progress. "Once we realize the mill isn't going to come back," he said, "we can move on,"
In the spring, Phoenix Property presented the borough's Planning Commission with a detailed plan for the site, now cleared of all but a few rusted remnants of industrial infrastructure. The plan focuses on restaurants and retailers, residential and office space, with efforts to develop the waterfront along French Creek.
To streamline the approval process, the company called for a "design charrette." The concept: Get everyone in the same room at the same time and on the same page.
So last week, developers, planners and architects; local, county and state officials; and members of the public convened at Columbia Station for the all-day forum.
With a charrette, said Bruce Mowday, a consultant with the nonprofit growth-management group Chester County 2020 Trust, "you get everyone with a stake, from the borough, the planners, elected officials, the public and the owner, involved in the process." Then there are few surprises when the ribbons are cut.
Although agencies such as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Federal Emergency Management Agency will have to sign off on the plan's environmental issues, their approval also considers civic acceptance.
For that reason, 157th District State Rep. Carol Rubley (R., Chester), who attended the forum, praised the developers' efforts to keep the public informed.
"So often with any kind of land-use proposal, people start to react viscerally," she said. "They don't often step back and look at the whole project."
And when residents are left out of the loop, she said, misunderstanding spreads: "Sometimes that can detour the entire process."
Klaus Philipsen, lead designer for Phoenix Property, and his Baltimore architecture firm, ArchPlan Inc., have experience with former industrial sites. "The steel site is a wonderful example of where smart-growth ideas can be applied," Philipsen said. "There are many mixed-use opportunities across the country, but only a very few have the trappings you have here."
Of primary importance, he said, is the site's location in rapidly growing Chester County. Furthermore, it is downtown, along a proposed Reading-to-Philadelphia SEPTA route, and is a former industrial-use site.
All this bodes well for successful reuse of a site that he called "basically a black hole in the center of town."
Philipsen said the charrette concept is intended to level the playing field between developers with political connections and the public. "It used to be that you come in and hit the other guy over the head with a hammer. . . . It's not about whoever has the biggest hammer [anymore]."
Although developers are still concerned about making money, he said, they are realizing that successful fruition hinges on consensus. ". . . Anyone can derail anything these days," he said. "It ends up in court and things come to a screeching halt."
This is a prospect that Walter Logan, president of Phoenix Property, would just as soon avoid. "By involving the public in the early stages, it has a tendency to cut down some of the criticisms that can come up later on," he said.
Logan expects his group to present a modified proposal to the borough Planning Commission at its February meeting, and hopes to break ground in 2001.