It is one of those buzz words bound to get attention.
It didn't work out so well in Middletown, we're about to see how it fares in Marple.
It's that sure sigh of suburban sprawl, the Town Center.
When they rolled out that notion for the long-vacant former Franklin Mint site out on Baltimore Pike in Middletown, residents went ballistic. They dubbed the massive development 'The City' and successfully forced developers to alter their plans.
More recently a plan to convert the struggling Granite Run Mall to a town center is being greeted with much less protest, perhaps in part because of the fact that the mall is already there, it is in its death throes and it will not cost the township any open space. That was not the case at the Mint site, one of last big open parcels in the township.
The notion of the town center, or more correctly Town Centre, is back on the front page today. We preview what the developer has in mind for the Don Guanella site on Sproul Road in Marple, next to Cardinal O'Hara High School.
That is the reason for the wording on our front page today, which declares Sproul Sprawl.
There is no getting around the scope of this development, dubbed Cardinal Crossing Town Centre. It is huge, with plans for 318 townhouses and carriage houses, a 65,000-square-foot hotel, 80,000-square-foot recreation facility, 100,000 square feet of office space, and 650,000 square feet of retail space.
You can get all the details here.
One thing is certain. Densely populated Marple Township, where infrastructure already is strained by traffic, is about to get even more crowded.
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