Condo Developers Go Back to the Drawing Board
The newly revised elevation rendering for the proposed condo development at 110 Park Avenue in Swarthmore. Rendering provided by W.S. Cumby
This article is the first in a two-part series. Part two will appear in the December 10 issue of The Swarthmorean and will explore additional topics related to the new design and the proposed development.
After considering community feedback, the developers who have proposed a new condominium building at 110 Park Avenue have unveiled a new design.
“We really did a lot of strategizing, spent a lot of time, and developed what I think is an extraordinarily very different, attractive building,” said Swarthmore resident Bill Cumby, whose building firm, W.S. Cumby, is behind the project, in partnership with Don Delson (also a Swarthmore resident), and in consultation with the architecture firm Bernardon.
Chris Kenney
At a Swarthmore Borough Planning Commission meeting on October 20th, after an initial “sketch plan” presentation of the proposed project, 26 community members shared their comments on it. Several expressed concerns about the scale and aesthetics of the building, including architect Chris Kenney of Park Avenue, who said, “It is going to likely be the tallest building in our community. It is going to likely be the most massive building in our community. It is going to violate that two-to-three-story cornice line that gives scale to our downtown and makes it the welcoming collection of buildings that give a certain character to the street and gives back to the community.”
[Note: The Swarthmorean has posted videos of all the public comments from the planning commission meeting, and has posted a detailed recap of them.]
In response, Cumby notes, “We did hear a lot of really positive things about the idea, and also a lot of constructive criticisms of the original plan. We listened to them all, we spent a lot of time, and we basically went back to the drawing board after the meeting.”
One of the developers’ primary goals in revising the design was to modify the building elevation in order to create a vertically and horizontally segmented structure. In the new design, “you essentially have the visual effect of three buildings, rather than just one big building. So it doesn’t look as massive,” Cumby said.
Previous designs had incorporated a setback to the building above the first two stories. The new proposed design adds a second setback at the fourth floor, which would make the top of the building recede even further. The intent, Cumby explained, is to make the building feel less imposing at the level of the street and sidewalk. “We tried to make it scale better.”
Previous designs incorporated a setback to the building after the first two stories. In the new design, the development team added an additional setback at the fourth floor. “We tried to make it scale better,” developer Bill Cumby said. Rendering provided by W.S. Cumby
The new plan for the proposed building’s façade incorporates some of the aesthetic features of the current building at 102-104 Park Avenue. “We came up with the idea of [making] the centerpiece of the building … reflect the limestone and concrete pieces of the existing building,” Cumby said.
Another difference: the new proposed plan features a “covered porch” on the second floor, which will be accessible from the second-floor units.
The new plan calls for approximately the same amount of retail space on the ground floor as previous versions did—that is, double the current amount, according to Cumby.
In response to a suggestion that material from the existing façade might be incorporated into the new building, Cumby explained that this would not be possible due to deterioration. The material “couldn’t even be relocated,” he said.
The developers’ will submit their applications for preliminary approval of the newly revised design at a planning commission meeting on December 15, at 7:30 p.m., at Swarthmore Borough Hall, and the commission will review them. There will be further opportunity for public comment at this meeting.
