Oh, I suppose that I should apologize in advance to downsizing McMansion dwellers, except to me, it kind of seems like a first world problem that they wish to downsize but they wish to find a condo with huge square footage which of course in turn begs the question are they downsizing or are they just McMansion style swapping?

I think you undoubtedly know already how I feel about some of the quotes in this article. And may I just say that the “design“ of this monstrosity has the appeal of looking at old squishy turnips, well actually the crates they go to market in, because once again it’s another bunch of boxes supposedly passing as exciting design architecture.

However I am also saying thank you to the Inquirer and reporter Jesse Bunch for a comprehensive article because frankly the local paper seems to cover nothing much. They might as well just bury Main Line Media News.

Inquirer: 52 luxury condos are proposed for downtown Wayne as Main Line living evolves

The complex faces a vote from Radnor Township’s board of commissioners next month.

by Jesse Bunch
Published Jan. 10, 2024, 11:59 a.m. ET

I don’t even know where to start with this. I remember when I heard this development might be happening. Everybody told me I was crazy something like that would never be proposed.

Yet here we are.

I think I’ll start with the Radnor planning commission member, who spoke. His name is MJ Frumin. He spoke about the empty storefronts, and the need for Radnor to embrace change. With all due respect to Michael Frumin, that’s not going to fix your empty storefronts. Look no further than Ardmore. Ardmore had to have all this development and at night it’s often dead even with all those restaurants and new apartments/condos and one of the problems with all of that development there is there is no freaking parking. Ardmore is so urban and dirty every time I’m there. It breaks my heart. And I say that as someone who still has friends with businesses there.

The empty storefronts exist in Wayne in part because of the landlords who set the rents. Store fronts also sit empty because there is a serious lack of workforce housing available, which means million dollar condos aren’t going to attract people who need workforce housing and those are the people that staff these stores and restaurants. So people don’t open businesses and often close businesses. It sometimes seems like commercial landlords have forgotten how to attract businesses as well as retain them. There are also general economic factors at work as well.

I watched the meeting replay, and a lot of the residents spoke from the heart and I know for a lot of them it’s not easy to stand up and speak in public. There was one lady in particular, who was very succinct and spot on. I don’t know her but her name was Eileen Stoveld and she said very nicely what a lot of us are thinking. She remarked how hideous the design was, and that there was no real green space, and their idea of a courtyard was a joke. She also commented on the lack of setback. And she was reading my mind about the Ardmore buildings because if you’ve been following me as a blogger at all for years, I’ve said how hideous and grotesque I think the new construction is on Lancaster Avenue and just off of it, like Cricket Avenue. Of course, this speaker had me at garden designer, which is what she does.

I was speaking to someone yesterday about this who asked me if I could try and find something nice about this project. And I told them honestly as it currently stands, I could not. It’s a very unattractive design and it’s that Lego looking flat roofed what is supposed to be architecture today that you see everywhere. These designs are all variations on a theme and they do not fit into their surroundings at all. They look institutional – another Wayne example? The condos behind the Land Rover dealership which has the charm of a mental institution aesthetically.

Further into the point, this is an awful lot of units for that corner planned for Bellevue and Lancaster. It’s a place where there are known stormwater issues, sewer issues, parking and traffic issues . If you look at the plans or concept of this developer, it looks like it’s a really wide street it’s not it’s like all those plans we used to look at in Lower Merion for Ardmore that looked like Valhalla in the middle of a green field. Instead, they were poorly designed bad architectural concepts being shoehorned in and around Lancaster Avenue and side streets.

These designs aren’t working. So I’m guessing that they make it cheaper for the developer to build? This project, for Wayne is another one without sufficient setbacks. And a lack of human scale. there are the immediate neighbors, and the neighbors further out that need to be considered here. If development is going to occur even in an overlay district, it should fit with what’s there. This doesn’t fit. It doesn’t have to be the samey same architecture of the past, but what is so difficult about building some thing that has real panache and style and doesn’t look super urban in a suburban setting? I mean, don’t people want actual green space and gardens? Gardens and gardening are good for you and no developer seems to want anyone to garden anymore.

I had to laugh when the residents were referring to the traffic study in their comments. It took me back to when my favorite former lower Merion. Commissioner Lew Gould said with regard to traffic studies that get what you pay for or something along those lines (I am paraphrasing.) I remember a traffic study they did in my old neighborhood in Haverford in Lower Merion Township for a townhouse development that no one wanted.

Anyway, they did this traffic study in August when everyone was away before the schools came back, and colleges also weren’t back. So this traffic study done for this Wayne proposal was apparently done before the AT&T workers returned to their offices full-time post Covid. And it came out at that meeting that like they literally just all returned in 2024? Are you kidding me? For real?

So not only does this design need to be improved and scaled down, they need actual comprehensive and real study of real traffic, real parking issues, stormwater management, sewer issues, etc. otherwise, as it stands, this literally is lipstick on a pig, and it’s another Jabba the Hutt project.

Other things to be considered is the sheer amount of development that seems to be coming at almost the same time. And then there is some development like the stuff on the Hamilton estate etc. that is in process. That’s a lot in a small area.

Now you had people from the business association get up and talk, and didn’t I read that the current president of the business association is attached to this project because of other relationships anyway? And you’re telling me that he doesn’t have enough business sense to realize that a rush to a lot of unwelcome development is not going to solve the business district woes?

Let’s talk about the business district for a few minutes. First you have the obvious which are the rents that merchants can’t afford because a lot of times merchants will get expensive rate but not inexpensive the first couple of years of their lease and then there’s a jump. I know this happens in Wayne in particular because I’ve known people who have had businesses there in the who left because of that. Next there is the parking situation. I used to love to go to Wayne to visit some of the businesses and for dinner or lunch, and I miss doing that and have since I moved to Chester County. But much like Ardmore, and Bryn Mawr there is insufficient parking and it’s a giant pain in the ass to park.

And then in Wayne, one of the things I find the most egregious on N. Wayne Ave., are the people that pull into the handicapped spots who aren’t handicapped and at a bad angle. So even if there was a good space available to park, you can’t park because you can’t fit into a should be free spot because the person next to you is a space hog.

And Wayne is chock full of selfish parkers. I mean, there is parking enforcement with Radnor Township but the only thing they care about our tickets they don’t really seem to do much about how people are parked.

Wayne is one of the greatest downtowns in the area, and it deserves support. But it deserves support from the right kinds of projects, and I just fail to comprehend how the business association doesn’t get that?

The other problem with this project other than its lack of design and it’s gargantuan size and scale, are the price points. And as I mentioned already in this post, they don’t have workforce housing anymore in Radnor Township. And affordable housing is also limited and I don’t mean subsidized housing by that statement either. I mean stuff that is just affordable to regular people, the people who seem to be getting shoved out of Radnor just like they have been shoved out of lower Merion for years.

I have very little faith in Radnor Township doing the right thing here. I predict as is the case with most everything else that it will get a rubberstamp and a bunch of commissioners who will look the other way, and that includes Jack Larkin, whom residents seem to be perplexed by these days. They seem to all be saying that they feel like commissioner Larkin has checked out? I am interested in the fact that he hasn’t updated his bio on Radnor Township website is he like ashamed of whom he is working for now?

My other problem in general with the Radnor Township board of commissioners is some of them might be perfectly nice people, but a lot of them haven’t lived here long enough, nor do they know the backstory or history of the township they serve. And by history, I also mean social and political history not just literal history. The township manager should know better because he can’t have forgotten how he came to be in Radnor in the first place, right?

And this overlay district they’re talking about in Wayne. The Wayne Business Overlay District is something I have been concerned with since the initial concept, and basically it was because of what I had seen in Ardmore. In theory, a lot of these overlays seem like a great idea but sometimes they’re too airy fairy and pie in the sky and then when they are practically implemented, you see the problems and then you can’t do anything about it.

Allow me to quote an article by Sam Strike from 2007:

Monday night a roomful of Wayne business and property owners and other interested parties attended a public hearing about the township’s proposed zoning and subdivision changes to downtown Wayne.

The ordinances for the Wayne Business Overlay District, a 70-acre area in downtown Wayne, have been in the works since last year and are a technical follow-up to the township’s more conceptual document, the Wayne Master Plan.

In short, crafters of the plan and ordinances predict that the new zoning and subdivision regulations will create a better “sense of place” and a more connected, pedestrian-friendly downtown, and will control the inevitable redevelopment in the popular town center….”We’re fortunate to have people who want to come into downtown Wayne and spend millions of dollars… We just need rules and regulations on how we want it to be done,” said Third Ward commissioner Bill Spingler Tuesday.

But during this public process the understandable questions are surfacing – how can the public really know how the new regulations will manifest themselves? How will ideas on paper translate into real life?

Some of the commissioners said on Monday that they have been getting an earful on the zoning ordinance’s definition of “redevelopment,” which is essentially a proposed expansion to an existing building that adds gross floor area of at least 25 percent of the building’s footprint or area.

That 25 percent would trigger “redevelopment” (and thus all of the regulations therein).

Why 25 percent, is what the commissioners wanted to know from the ordinances’ presenters.

The percentage was based on research, and on what they thought constituted a substantial change. They also pointed out that many, if not most, of the properties in downtown Wayne could technically not be added onto by that percentage – they don’t have the land and they wouldn’t have the parking to allow it.

There had to be a “trigger” for redevelopment, said committee member Mac McCoy.

At the public hearing, there were discussions over general ideas in the plans and over specific properties by their owners, who have a great interest in the ordinances’ effect on them.

At the beginning of the hearing, the township planner Matthew Baumann told the commissioners that the ordinances had been heartily approved by some staff members of the Delaware County Planning Department.

“I’m proud of this,” said Baumann, who wrote the ordinances. “This shows we’re leading the way in smart growth… we’re leaders now and people are going to follow us.”

Anyone who knows me will tell you smart growth to me is utter catch phrase bulltwaddle. I think this project as it stands is bulltwaddle. I feel sorry for the residents.

There, I said it out loud, much like I questioned this overlay district years ago. I thought it would create problems and here we are.

Wayne is charming as a downtown with cute residential side streets. It doesn’t need to be overly urbanized by flat roofed monstrosities that are a joint project between Mike Brady and Fred Flintstone. Learn from Ardmore’s mistakes. Learn from us out here in Chester County who are also the recipients of similar bad architecture.

And similar bad architecture is the crux of it. It’s all the same style everywhere. It’s not like any of these developers try to fit in or be inspired by what is already there. Does that make me more of a traditionalist as someone suggested recently? No. It means I appreciate a good design when I see it and when is the last time we saw a good design anywhere ? Or even an original one?

Wayne is not Center City Philadelphia, nor should it be.

This is all rather sad I think.