A Chester County hamlet called Glenmoore will soon have a neighborhood of million-dollar homes

It’s not unusual this time of year to see a truck bearing freshly baled hay slowly make its way along Fairview Road in Wallace Township’s Glenmoore section.

Called ‘The Village’ by locals, Glenmoore is similar to countless other hamlets that once dotted rural Chester County. It’s a community of two-lane roads and beautiful vistas, largely unchanged and thriving along with the suburban-style residential neighborhoods that continue to be built nearby.

The latest development is The Estates at Stonecliff, 36 semi-custom homes on half-acre lots, all but three of them arranged at the crest of a hillside above Devereux Road. Portions of the 73-acre site, formerly known as the Heim Farm, were under cultivation until 2023.

“The homes will be nestled up here and [the development] will be surrounded pretty much on all sides by existing woodlands,” said Mike Long, production manager for Foxlane Homes, a Mid-Atlantic regional real estate firm headquartered in Fort Washington, Montgomery County.

“It’s rare to find a community where no homesite backs up to another,” sales manager Nicole Fitzgerald said. “There will be a lot of privacy. And the views are stunning.”

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Prices at The Estates are expected to start at about $1 million.

The 12 square miles of rolling hills, fields, woodlands, and wetlands that compose what is now Wallace Township were settled by Europeans in the 1600s on land that for centuries had been home to the Lenni Lenape people. The township was created in 1852 and grew slowly until the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s expansion from Carlisle to Valley Forge opened in 1950.

Between 1950 and 1990, Wallace Township’s population tripled, from 771 to 2541, and rose from 3,240 in 2000 to 3,711 in 2020, according to the U.S. Census.

Since 2020 several large residential developments, including The Estates at Stonecliff and The Trails at Marsh Creek, have been approved, are under construction, or have been proposed for land along what has traditionally been a rural stretch of Devereux Road.

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“The peak of development in Chester County was from 1980 to before the Great Recession” of 2008, said Brian O’Leary, executive director of the county Planning Commission.

“A lot of developments approved before the recession are now building,” he said.

Along Creek and Fairview Roads — the Village’s primary thoroughfares — there are three churches, a variety of vintage houses, a volunteer fire company, recreational fields, access to walking trails, and a handful of businesses.

“I think more people moving in could be great for our community and for our congregation,” said Matthew York, pastor of Faith Alliance Church, in Glenmoore, where he’s also a member of the volunteer fire company.

Royce and Julie Dorman opened Mean Bean Coffee & Cream, a coffee, pastry, and ice cream shop, in a vacant Creek Road storefront just after Christmas in 2023.

“Business has been great,” said Royce Dorman, 39, who grew up in Chester County and spent a dozen years surfing and bartending in California before moving to Glenmoore with his family seven years ago. He did most of the renovations to create Mean Bean from an old deli’s shell himself.

Dorman cherishes the small-town feel of the Village, where Mean Bean has quickly become a popular gathering place. And he doesn’t expect the cozy vibe of the Village to be diluted by the Estates or other new residential developments like it.

“I’m excited that there will be more people living here,” he said. “More people mean more customers.”

The prospect of more residential development does concern Mean Bean regular Wesley Kaufman, 37, whose two children attend Glenmoore’s sole elementary school.

“We moved here five years ago because of how quiet it was and how much of a sense of community there was,” she said.

“But now everything seems to be building up, and we don’t have the roads to handle it,” she said, adding, “It feels more and more like we’re not out in the country.”

Sarah and Mike Walls grow and sell flowers at their Make Your Day Design business on Devereux Road, which also is their home.

The couple said they welcome the prospect of new residents and customers, but also have reservations.

“It’s no surprise that people would want to move here, to such a wonderful place,” Mike said.

“We love living here, so we get it,” said Sarah. “But it seems like everywhere I drive, there’s a new development going up.”

The issue is not new people, but old infrastructure, Mike said.

He’s one of a number of local residents who wondered out loud about the capacity of the Devereux Bridge.

The span was built in 1877 across a tributary of the Brandywine Creek, at the foot of Devereux Road. The heavy equipment at the Estates construction site doesn’t use it.

“We want to be sure that the township has everyone’s best interests at heart,” Mike said.

Elise Grashof, assistant manager of Wallace Township, said the Estates at Stonecliff “is one of three developments in the same vicinity that were processed by the township around the same time.”

The Estates “as well as the others considered at the time incorporated the trails, open space, and other features called for in the ordinances,” she said.

Grashof also noted that preserving the township’s rural character and open space are elements of Wallace Township’s Comprehensive Plan.

O’Leary, of the county planning commission, also noted that the county has been able to protect 31% of its territory from development or preserve it as farmland. Some of those efforts have involved partnerships with land conservation organizations.

Development pressure, he said, “is still here” in Chester County.

“It’s still here and it’s still coming.”

During interviews at the construction site on Devereux Road, Fitzgerald and Long said Foxlane Homes intends to the make the Estates of Stonecliff a part of, and not apart from, the community.

They’ve met with residents of the adjacent Lexington Manor neighborhood and want to be respectful of their, and other local, questions about the project.

“There will still be a lot of open space after we’re done building. There were still be a lot of green space,” Long said.

“We’re only here to make this community better.”