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The Peters Judgment
Proposed redevelopment of the Barto Tract has been a lightening rod of an issue, attracting, focusing the energy of a larger storm: a debate over the fundamental character of the Phoenixville community.
There’s the density of development there. Some months ago, learning of the proposed 450 residential units in the mixed-use retail-residential project on 5.6 acres, Regional Planning Committee member Lee Ledbetter joked that the Committee had far under-rated the Borough’s ability to accept the density of regional growth.
There’s the project’s probable height. Behind streetside retail-residential development are two 14-story mixed-use residential-commercial towers, ten stories over four of parking.
Those facts appeared to split the community into two camps: one, seeing in the proposal the death of a quaint, low-density village; another, seeing in the project Phoenixville’s necessary future.
But at the conclusion of the last Borough Planning Commission session on zoning amendments for the project, Commissioner Teena Peters said this:
“When this [project] first came in, I was not happy with the idea,” Peters said. “Manny has a valid vision. It may not be my own but I won’t oppose it. Phoenixville can stay village-like or go in a different, more progressive direction.”
An extraordinary statement. It’s not often that a public judgment arising from deeply-held convictions treats competing judgment with such equanimity, and even less often that public judgment is willing to stand aside for its opposite to have its day.
Peters may take heat for that equanimity, from those whose politics is populated by “winners” and “losers,” those who are “right” and those who are “wrong” on any given issue. From this source, though, Peters gets admiration.
Posted by
G.E. “Skip” Lawrence
There’s the density of development there. Some months ago, learning of the proposed 450 residential units in the mixed-use retail-residential project on 5.6 acres, Regional Planning Committee member Lee Ledbetter joked that the Committee had far under-rated the Borough’s ability to accept the density of regional growth.
There’s the project’s probable height. Behind streetside retail-residential development are two 14-story mixed-use residential-commercial towers, ten stories over four of parking.
Those facts appeared to split the community into two camps: one, seeing in the proposal the death of a quaint, low-density village; another, seeing in the project Phoenixville’s necessary future.
But at the conclusion of the last Borough Planning Commission session on zoning amendments for the project, Commissioner Teena Peters said this:
“When this [project] first came in, I was not happy with the idea,” Peters said. “Manny has a valid vision. It may not be my own but I won’t oppose it. Phoenixville can stay village-like or go in a different, more progressive direction.”
An extraordinary statement. It’s not often that a public judgment arising from deeply-held convictions treats competing judgment with such equanimity, and even less often that public judgment is willing to stand aside for its opposite to have its day.
Peters may take heat for that equanimity, from those whose politics is populated by “winners” and “losers,” those who are “right” and those who are “wrong” on any given issue. From this source, though, Peters gets admiration.
Posted by
G.E. “Skip” Lawrence
posted by The Phoenix Files at
12:16 PM
2 Comments:
As Phoenixville's boundaries are pretty well fixed and nothing is happening down on the French Creek flood plain (old steel company property) the only way to build is up.
Go for it Manny!
Right, we need 2 14-story phallic symbols in our downtown, get real! Or are they 2 giant middle fingers to the rest of the county?
The building of this property in the described manner is like trying to put cigarette boat on Marsh Creek, it is over kill.
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