Doylestown is considering a proposal for 60 affordable apartments for seniors and veterans

After three years of conversations, meetings, and negotiations, Doylestown Township is expected to vote Tuesday on a proposed 60-unit affordable apartment building for people 62 and over. The facility will be actively marketed to seniors who are U.S. military veterans as well.

Based in Philadelphia, the Arcadia Land Co. is asking the township board of supervisors to allow residential development on three acres zoned for light industry on the 200 block of North Broad Street.

Arcadia’s $30 million project includes 18 market-rate townhouses open to all ages, as well as three apartments set aside for people over 62 who are still working. The developer also must file a land-use application, undergo public hearings, and receive final board approval before construction can begin.

“There’s a need for this,” board chair Barbara Lyons said Monday. “It’s the only place in the township where it will work, and it will be a great location for the people who will live there.”

The North Broad Street site is a 10-minute walk from Doylestown Borough’s busy downtown. The new community also is across Broad from a once-industrial area in the borough where residential, commercial, and park development have spurred “a very positive transformation,” Arcadia president Jason Duckworth said.

In that evolving district, where Broad Commons Park replaced a former PennDot facility, Arcadia recently opened The Martin, a high-end, 59-unit apartment building. Arcadia is partnering with Pennrose, a Philadelphia firm specializing in affordable housing, to develop the senior building at 280 N. Broad.

“There’s a three-year waiting list for Grundy Hall, the only senior affordable building in the township,” said Ryan Bailey, senior developer at Pennrose. “We’ve been working hand in hand with both the borough and the township on our project. This will be a really nice-looking, well-maintained development.”

Local concerns about the density, building height, and traffic impact of the proposed project are similar to those that have arisen in suburban communities not only in Bucks County, of which Doylestown Borough is the seat, but throughout the Philadelphia region. A nationwide shortage of housing, market-rate as well as affordable, has fueled multifamily development proposals as well as “not-in-my-backyard” responses in cities and suburbs alike.

» READ MORE: ‘Don’t let them turn Upper Gwynedd into Philly’ say opponents of affordable apartment complex approved for Montgomery County town

Complicating matters for Arcadia and Pennrose: A portion of the development site is in the borough, where some of the worries among elected and other officials are about adding traffic to the two lanes of North Broad Street.

“Traffic is quite a bit of a concern among our residents,” Doylestown Borough Council President Jack O’Brien said.

The borough and township “have had a very mutually agreeable relationship, and we’ve tried to come up with a collaborative approach,” he said.

Duckworth said the proposal has been revised and now calls for demolition of the vacant Tilley fire equipment building on the property, enabling the entrance road to the development to be built farther from the busy Atkinson Road intersection.

The revision also calls for building a public dog park on a little under half an acre of land abutting Broad Street that Arcadia is offering to deed to the borough, said Duckworth.

Township Supervisor Jennifer Herring asked the board to pause its deliberations over 280 N. Broad last month, in part due to the mostly technical recommendations made in a Nov. 1 letter from the Bucks County Planning Commission.

“It was absolutely no reflection on the project itself,” Herring said, adding that her concerns were about the potential ramifications of amending the zoning ordinance to allow residential uses in light industrial zones. Broad Street is one of three such zones in the township.

“Our median home price is near $650,000,” she said. “We have a really beautiful community, and people want to live here, but only certain people can afford it.

“We want to make sure our seniors are taken care of, and we want workforce housing. We want people who grew up here to be able to come back and live here.”

Supervisor Ryan Manion — president of the Travis Manion Foundation, which assists military families in memory of her brother, Marine First Lt. Travis Manion — described the project as “an important step we should be taking as a township.”

Despite positive comments about the general need for affordable housing by township and borough officials, support among members of the board of supervisors, and praise from veterans groups, some supporters said concerns about 280 N. Broad have a familiar ring.

“There’s a reason why it’s so difficult to do these affordable housing projects,” Kellie A. McGowan, a Doylestown land-use lawyer representing Arcadia, told the Nov. 21 board of supervisors meeting.

“They’re never in the right place,” she said. “That’s what we keep hearing.”

A recent post on the ”Heard in the Hood” page of the Lantern Hill Property Owners Association website urged residents of that nearby Doylestown Borough neighborhood to mobilize opposition to 208 N. Broad.

“The proposal is being spun to describe these housing units as housing for veterans, a group we all admire and support,” the post says. “However, the reality is that the housing would be open for all low-income residents ... the concern from our residents is that this type of housing will negatively affect the values of our properties and the appeal of the neighborhood and this area ... in general.”

Representatives of the property owners association did not respond to a request for comment.

According to the developers, every tenant in the senior building must be age 62 or above and have no more than $47,000 in annual income. The three “workforce housing” units in the building will be for working people over 62 but will not have income restrictions.

While tenants can’t be required to have served in the U.S. military, the apartments will be actively marketed to veterans, Bailey said.

“I do believe there’s a need,” said Peter Scott, commander of Albert R. Atkinson Jr. American Legion Post 210.

A good number of his members are struggling to get by; some had to cancel their memberships when yearly dues went up by $5, he said.

And in addition to affordable rents, “the other great thing would be the guys could get where they need to go” from the North Broad Street site, Scott said.