Norristown approves 116-unit apartment building as it tries to revamp its downtown

Philadelphia-based MM Partners is expanding into Norristown with a seven-story, 116-unit apartment building at the intersection of Main and DeKalb Streets.

The proposal at 69 E. Main St., which was approved by the Norristown Municipal Council last week, would be built next door to the Justice Center Project, an ambitious renovation and expansion of the county courthouse.

“The narrative was always ‘Norristown is going to develop,’ but it never really did until now,” said David Waxman, the founder and managing partner of MM Partners, noting that the number of projects is part of what attracted MM Partners. “The courthouse alone is a $400 million project right next door. We can really start to move the needle.”

The building will include more than 11,000 square feet of retail space and 28 parking spaces. MM Partners estimates that construction costs will come to $28 million, and building is expected to begin by early 2025.

The land, once the site of an old movie theater, has sat vacant for decades under the control of Norristown’s city government. Before the pandemic, the municipality issued a request for proposals in a bid to enliven the heart of Norristown, which has long struggled with vacancy and low foot traffic.

“You can’t just expect business to move into a place, you need the people first,” said Thomas Lepera, president of the Norristown Municipal Council. “So we thought density along Main Street would be the best option to bring people and businesses back.”

Norristown hasn’t seen much new private sector development in recent decades. But that is starting to change. More than 1,200 housing units are slated for the municipality of almost 36,000, according to the Montgomery County Commerce Department, with another 618 units just across the Schuylkill from the Norristown Transportation Center in the borough of Bridgeport.

Waxman says he sees parallels between Norristown and North Philadelphia’s Brewerytown, where his company has made a name for itself with adaptive reuse projects that brought new market rate housing to a neighborhood that also hadn’t seen much of it for decades.

“There’s a fair amount of other developers with projects planned in Norristown,” said Waxman, expanding on the county seat’s attractions for his company. “Then we dug into the market and saw extraordinarily high occupancy, pretty darn good rents, where the majority of the product [housing] is over 70 years old.”

Waxman also was enthusiastic about the Norristown Transportation Center, which is very close to the development site and serves various bus routes, a SEPTA Regional Rail line, and the Norristown High Speed Line.

“That’s a really nice thing to have a block away from your front door,” said Waxman.