A few days ago Eli Kahn said in a Malvern Patch article there were “no flaws in East King design.” (You know other than the buildings are cavernous, hulking, have barely any set backs, and is utterly out of scale with the rest of tiny, small town Malvern.)
So I took some photos today. Take a peek. I still say this is Malvern’s mistake. But I don’t think a super urban looking man-made canyon with zero attention paid to anything other than this developer’s towering edifice to his own legacy enduring or otherwise is the way to go in a very small town.
At the bottom is the rendering of this guy’s Valhalla. I took these photos today because it doesn’t even look like the same street in reality to me. I think the sheer lack of human scale and lack of set backs is profoundly disturbing.
The developers might not appreciate my opinion, but I am entitled to it and it is shared by a LOT of people.
This is a New Urbanism Nightmare, not Fairy Tale.
I live in Norristown, but used to work right near there, and my brother lives on the other side of Malvern. Today I was driving out to his house and saw this development for the first time, and without knowing anything about it or about your blog (which I found after looking up info on the development), I had the same reaction you did–it’s too big for the site, too jarring a style for the neighborhood, and way too close to the street. Why would Malvern bring a cityscape to their otherwise nice little town?