La Salle-sponsored shopping center - mediocre planning wins again

[Kukla65th]

If you've been down Chew Avenue lately, you've seen the new shopping center that La Salle University pushed through.

A new grocery store is perhaps the only real plus of this plan. Why? Because yet again, in the flurry to gain SOME kind of new investment, mediocre design was allowed to manifest itself.

Is it entirely logical that a neighborhood in which a major segment of the community doesn't drive, is home to a new development that it better situated in some corner of Exton or Montgomeryville?

This development is good in terms of the services it will provide, and yes, even for the low-quality jobs it will provide, but as a contribution to the East Germantown community, it falls on its a%s in terms of vision.

I guess this was easier than all the schools in that area coming together with business owners at Broad and Olney to rethink and revitalize that intersection. Please hear my sarcasm.

They can't revise that zoning code fast enough.

[billy ross]

Which intersection are you referring to? Chew and what?

[Kukla65th]

Chew Avenue and Wister Street...stretches along Chew up to Locust Avenue.

[plyfreak]

What a shame... If you have read any of the forums at PBlog in which Mark Cohen has posted, he stresses that government can do nothing about private investment planning. Is this true? Couldn't the planning commission (correct agency?) have requested a more neighborhood appropriate design?

Once again, we witness a city neighborhood acting like a suburb; while the newer suburbs promote city-like commercial developments. What an odd situation.