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Planning commission advances comprehensive plan land-use discussion, flags three subareas for change
Summary
Commissioners identified three Township subareas—South Gulph Road, Henderson/Route 202, and Hertzog/Church Road—as priorities for rethinking land use, discussing mixed-use, transit-oriented housing, and green-space targets to guide a future land use map.
The Upper Merion Township Planning Commission on March 11 continued its deliberations on the Township's comprehensive plan future land use map, focusing on areas the commission sees as ripe for change over the next 20 years.
Township Planner Jarrett Lash presented examples from high-growth communities and mapped the Township into twelve subareas. Commissioners prioritized Area 6 (South Gulph Road corridor), Area 9 (Henderson Road/Route 202 corridor), and Area 11 (Hertzog Boulevard/Church Road industrial corridor) for further study.
On Area 6, the commission discussed replacing large office buildings and surface parking with taller, smaller-footprint mixed-use buildings, more public green space, and a mix of office and residential uses. Lash suggested a minimum floor-area ratio in the range of 2.0 to 2.5 and a green-space requirement of roughly 35–40 percent to encourage vertical development without prescribing a fixed story count.
In Area 9, commissioners prioritized two-story neighborhood-serving mixed-use development to provide commercial and dining options for adjacent neighborhoods such as Candlebrook and Stonebrook while transitioning scale back to nearby homes.
For Area 11, members discussed transforming heavy industrial parcels near the Norristown High Speed Line into lighter-scale, transit-oriented residential development with better pedestrian connections to the station and new community gathering spaces.
Lash said he will compile feedback from the session and prior Board workshops into draft future land use map concepts and consider consolidating zoning districts with specific standards that reflect the desired gradients across the Township.
