JOSS Realty retunes Pitcairn property for the post-COVID era.
Jenkintown Borough released its agenda for next week’s meeting yesterday, and one item stands out. Council will vote to send borough solicitor and Kilkenny lapdog Patrick Hitchens to represent Jenkintown as Cheltenham Town Council discusses the latest plans for the Pitcairn property.
Page 49 of the 49-page agenda PDF document is a notice from the neighboring township, which states:
APPEAL NO. 24-3763: Application of 165 Township Line Road Owner, LLC, owner of the property known as 165 Township Line Road, Jenkintown, PA 19046, from the Decision of the Zoning Officer for Zoning Relief to allow for the conversion of the existing Pitcairn I building from offices to 36 residential apartments and the construction of a new three (3) story mixed-use building (Pitcairn III) with 50 apartments, ground level retail or restaurant and parking on the property located within the MU-2 Mixed Use Zoning District.
JOSS Realty Partners has been working to transform this area since at least 2019 when they and SEPTA unveiled the initial renderings at a public event at the station. Since then, it released a second round of renderings of what it described as Class A office space paired with a standalone, single-story shopping plaza. Unfortunately, the design and layout of this idea looked stolen from the 1970s and better suited for a suburban office park than the Wyncote historic district.
JOSS now seeks approval for eighty-six new apartments in a mixed use development adjacent to the busiest train station on the SEPTA system outside of Center City. Normally, density near such active transit makes perfect sense. In fact, one might even ask “What took them so long?”
Transit oriented development includes residential, retail, and office/commercial, but post-COVID realities seemed to have stripped the office component from the plan. That is cause for concern, because developers have too-often watered down “mixed-use” to describe an apartment building with a nail salon.
As we’ve written in the past, the fact that such a busy station has so little commerce surrounding it might make it a national anomaly. When the Reading Railroad built the Jenkintown/Wyncote station, the estates owned by the Wanamakers and Widners, etc. dominated the surrounding area. As the Gilded Age waned, families sold off and subdivided the properties into smaller residences, preventing the development of a commercial district where the towns and SEPTA now need one so desperately.
For the moment, all of this new development will sit over the Cheltenham line, but Jenkintown has its share of commercial properties in that corner of town that seem shamefully underutilized.
The ground floor of One Jenkintown Square appears designed for retail, and the office buildings at 101 and 115 West Avenue which maybe represented state-of-the-art office architecture for the 1980s, today looks woefully dated. Single-purpose buildings surrounded by large parking lots next to such active transit suppress pedestrian leave money on the table, for both the developer and local governments.
Finally, for those who’ve accused this page of NIMBYism, I’m composing this article while looking at 101 West out my kitchen window as I write this. No one would be happier to see it transformed into a pedestrian-friendly project with maybe a coffee shop or pub.
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