Phoenixville Council To Address 701 Main Street Development Tuesday

The quest of one community group in the borough to ”keep Phoenixville beautiful” will face an important challenge Tuesday night at the borough council meeting.

The Planning Commission will consider the application to develop high density housing on 701 S. Main Street. In an action memo on September 18, the Commission recommended denial of the application by a vote of 7-0.

The proposal from West Chester-based D L Howell and Associates Inc., submitted to the Chester County Planning Commission on April 29 was met with several concerns,

The plan, which called for the construction of 22 townhomes on a stretch of preserved open space just below the intersection with Route 23, was found by the county to have several issues, including the impact which the development could have on traffic.

“The main driveways from 5th and 6th Avenues are sited too close to Main Street; any delays of vehicles using these access points could quickly create backups that would affect the flow of through traffic on Main Street. Also this design eliminates parking spaces on the south side of 5th Avenue and the north side of 6th Avenue,” the county said in its report.

The county went on to recommend that D L Howell consider using Park Alley as a main entrance and parking area - or even expanding it - if they wanted to move forward with the project.

Two other issues which the county brought up in its report are also paramount to the Keep Phoenixville Beautiful movement, the group behind the “No High Density Housing” yard signs across the borough: the mature trees on the property, and how the size of the housing would fit in with the architecture of the borough.

“The approximately hundred year-old sycamore, maple and oak trees on the 701 Main Street property provide clean air, energy conservation, and food and habitat for wildlife,” Keep Phoenixville Beautiful said on their website.

The county also acknowledged the importance of the trees and said that the April proposal would be too damaging, adding that there needed to be some plan to replant some of the trees and to use some of them as shading from the summer sun.

Both the county and the community group are also worried that the development would not fit in with the surrounding community.

A Change.org petition against the development, created in June, had garnered over 1,300 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.

The Borough Council meeting starts at 7 p.m. in Borough Hall Tuesday evening. Members of the public are encouraged to attend.