Editor's note: The author was involved with this redevelopment project.

Drive through Lansdale Borough and it's hard not to notice the construction projects reshaping the formerly sleepy little community. Lansdale, a densely populated, three-square mile borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, located 28 miles northwest of Philadelphia, and bisected by a rail line, has quickly become a hotbed for redevelopment and public-private partnership projects. But, less than a decade ago, Lansdale was viewed as a stagnant, working class, anti-development community with a perceived higher-then-average crime rate for a Philadelphia suburb, and an aging public infrastructure. In 2010, that began to change as members of Lansdale Borough Council and the Lansdale Parking Authority focused on making the borough more than just a train stop and a town people drive through on their way to the Montgomeryville Mall. They had a vision of turning Lansdale back into a destination. Borough Council tasked Borough Manager Timi Kirchner, our firm and borough staff with making that happen.

Over the last eight years, I have been involved in rebranding and redeveloping Lansdale Borough, most recently as special counsel to Lansdale Borough and as the Lansdale Parking Authority Solicitor. Lansdale Borough Council and the Lansdale Parking Authority provided us the latitude to use our expertise to implement their vision. The results are tangible. Over $52 million in public funds and grants, and over $55 million in private investment, have been poured into approved projects in Lansdale Borough—all of which are either built-out or underway—including: nearly 500 residential units; new retail/commercial spaces; a new municipal complex and police station; redevelopment of a brownfields site; SEPTA's first new commuter train station in three decades; a commuter parking garage; over a mile of contiguous, recreational trail; public amenities; a new street-crossing of the train tacks at 9^th Street; and countless adaptive reuse projects and commercial fit-outs of existing structures.

Revitalization is not accomplished with a quick, one-time cash infusion that may occur through, for example, the sale of a piece of municipally owned property, and it doesn't happen overnight. Sustained community revitalization requires attracting a critical mass of people with disposable income to spend in the community. And, in the absence of a large commercial or industrial district, the best way to draw people with disposable income is to encourage the construction of housing stock in which they want to live. Today, that means creating walkable communities with public amenities like parks, pools and trails, and, especially, easy access to public transportation or highways.

The unlikely keystone of Lansdale's resurgence was a dilapidated, municipally owned parking lot. The Madison parking lot tract is a 6.4-acre site that was home to a metered parking lot, partially paved and partially gravel, desperately in need of repair, and crisscrossed by aerial utility lines. Some of the meters worked, some didn't, and the lot was overrun with SEPTA commuters on a daily basis. The Madison parking lot site, located in the heart of Lansdale, on the opposite side of the train tracks from the SEPTA's Lansdale Station, and formerly the site of the Lansdale electric generation plant, didn't look like much on paper either. It is geometrically challenged (consisting of three, irregular triangle-shaped pieces), adjacent to a freight train yard, home to an electric substation and one block off of Lansdale's downtown. However, we knew we had a diamond in the rough if we could find a way to get people safely across the tracks from the site to the train station. With that in mind, we proposed that borough council and the Lansdale Parking Authority use the Madison parking lot site to create a catalyst for redevelopment and revitalization of the entire borough.

We set out to rebrand Lansdale as a pro-business community, ripe for redevelopment and adaptive reuse, and to highlight the borough's public amenities and public events. To create interest in Lansdale among developers, we worked with Lansdale code officials to implement policies to streamline inspections and permitting; recommended procedures to reduce the time period and uncertainty of the land development approval process; and, crafted flexible zoning to provide for a myriad of development options in the borough's core districts for borough council to enact. Borough council also approved a new boroughwide color scheme; authorized the installation of way-finding signage to help people find the borough's many public amenities and resources; adopted a slogan (Life in Motion) that embraces the borough's railroad heritage; and, established and fund a nonprofit organization (Discover Lansdale) to act as the borough's promotional arm, liaison to the business community, event planner and vehicle to fight deterioration and blight within the community.

At the same time, we recommended that the Lansdale Parking Authority and borough council create interest in the Madison lot project through a publicly vetted request for proposals for a mixed-use development of the site that included the core concepts of appropriately dense residential development, ground-level commercial space and public amenities such as a public gathering space, recreational trail and public parking. We encouraged a partnership with SEPTA to gain better access to public transportation, including the Lansdale train station and SEPTA buses, for the community. We sought out every available public funding opportunity—including grants through the Redevelopment Capital Assistance Program and Keystone Communities Program—to improve the Madison parking lot site and the public infrastructure around it. We encouraged Lansdale Borough Council to invest in a new police station and municipal complex to signal that the borough's elected officials were encouraging private development in the borough by investing public money into making the borough a safe, welcoming community with state of the art public amenities and services. And, we helped borough council to trade off many of the traditional development and utility fees in exchange for developer installed public infrastructure improvements and public amenities of equal or greater value which benefit the project site as well as the surrounding community.

The net result is a public-private partnership project that has been touted as a crown jewel of Montgomery County, and a model transit oriented development, that includes: a remodeled, high-level platform train station; a 680-space parking garage; a pedestrian bridge and stair tower, complete with elevator, connecting the public parking garage to the Madison parking lot project site; a 10,000-square-foot public plaza that connects the pedestrian bridge and stair tower to Madison Street; 17,500 square feet of commercial space lining the public plaza area; 180 apartments; a reconstructed Madison Street, 60-feet wide with public parking on both sides that, in combination with the public plaza with also serve as a public event space; and, a 10-foot wide recreational trail running the entire length of the development site.

New residential units have been or are being built within walking distanced to the Madison parking lot project site, and new restaurants and shops are popping up all over downtown. With a lot of hard work, and a dedicated borough council, Lansdale has again become a vibrant community, attractive to both residents and businesses.

Joe Clement is a partner with the law firm of Wisler Pearlstine and practices in the areas of municipal law, zoning and land development, business law, intellectual property and civil litigation. Contact him at [email protected].