Suburbs From KOP to Voorhees Embrace New ‘Main Streets’ —But Not Cherry Hill

Michaelle Bond’s article in the Inquirer about citified “main streets” coming to the suburbs has everything you’d expect: interviews with developers and city planners, somewhat silly-sounding quotes from random members of the public, and the hint of snark (all that astroturf!) usually found in the Inky's coverage of anything suburban.

Really, though, what’s happening in King of Prussia, Exton and elsewhere is better than what came before (in the recent past) and better than any contemporary alternatives if one accepts the inevitability of growth. The article’s observation that these complexes “cost open space” overlooks the notion that these high-density projects gobble far less land than traditional housing tracts and shopping centers.

It also reminds me, yet again, of how tremendously stupid Cherry Hill was to reject a similar (and at the time, ahead of the curve) proposal to redevelop the Garden State Park property on Rt. 70 along pedestrian and transit-friendly lines. Not only was the tract perfectly situated to give the sprawly township the semblance of a town center, it lies adjacent to a (woefully underused) passenger train station, on NJ Transit’s Atlantic City Line.

I was working for a newspaper in Haddonfield at the time development of the land was being debated (2005-06) and remember then-mayor Bernie Platt trumpeting the approved plan as “mixed-use,” a politician-speak mangling of that term if there ever was one. True mixed-use developments are dense and pedestrian friendly; the only thing “mixed use” about today’s Garden State Park is that one can drive to the grocery store, drive to the restaurant, or drive to the townhouse—or risk life and limb dodging SUVs while walking across a sea of asphalt.

Garden State Park: A sea of sprawl... and a train station.