The owners of North Main Street’s Doylestown Shopping Center are hoping to dramatically change the landscape of the decades-old center with a 200-unit, mixed-use apartment complex, said a partner with Robbins Company.
During a recent “informal presentation,” Robbins representatives shared plans with Doylestown Borough officials that showed a five-story “luxury apartment” community that includes a parking garage, pool, landscaped walkways and trails that connect to the area’s network of bike and hike paths.
“There’s been a complete evolution in retail,” said Sean Sablosky, a partner with Robbins and owner of Arrow Brokerage, the firm that leases the shopping center’s retail space.
“The so-called Amazon-effect, exacerbated by COVID, has changed the nature of many businesses and we have to change to accommodate that,” said Sablosky, explaining the need for a new direction for the shopping center.
“What was a great concept in the 1980s and ‘90s now has to be adapted to the 2000s. Five or 10 years ago, I would have had a long list of retailers wanting to lease,” he added.
Over the past two years, said Sablosky, there’s been about a 30% turnover in the shopping center. Annie Sez was replaced with Planet Fitness; Friendly’s became The Turning Point and Radio Shack was replaced with a bank.
When Bon-Ton went bankrupt, he said, “there was no one to call who wants to lease 70,000 square feet.” He credited his team member Brooke Henningsen with creating The Mercantile, in the former clothing store space. It houses dozens of local artisans selling a wide variety of items and has been well-received by the public.
Sablosky said, if The Mercantile proves to be “successful and sustainable” it could be relocated to another section of the shopping center, to accommodate the apartments.
With the number of Baby Boomers wanting to downsize, skyrocketing, Sablosky said, there’s a strong demand for upscale rentals, such as those Robbins is proposing.
“It’s the largest single demographic in the country,” said Sablosky. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of those born between 1946 and 1964, grew by more than a third, according to the U.S. Census.
Millennials too are showing great interest in apartment living and walkable communities, he noted.
Michael P. Markman, president of BET Investments, the Dresher-based real estate investment firm backing the more than $50 million project, said, the upscale one and two-bedroom apartments community will be a boon to the borough.
The benefits, said Markman in an email, include “repurposing a dead department store, decreasing the potential traffic from the property while improving the walkability and green space.”
As a “vibrant, mixed-use property,” Markman said, the apartment building will have the feel of a “boutique hotel for local residents interested in downsizing and others who recognize the vibrant restaurants and shopping Doylestown has to offer a short walk away.”
The parking garage, Sablosky said, will provide spaces at each level of the complex, allowing residents to park directly outside their units.
Any decision on the plans is at least a couple of years away, as borough officials said they will closely examine the ambitious project.
Phil Ehlinger, Doylestown’s deputy manager, said, the historic community is sympathetic to the significant challenges businesses are facing and the changes they’re bringing to small towns such as Doylestown.
But, he said, in an email, “the challenge for the borough is adapting its land use planning to these changes while not creating imbalances.”
With its some 8,000 residents, the town, Ehlinger said, “is under tremendous pressure from higher-end multifamily development. As a segment of the older population seeks to downsize and young professionals eschew buying homes, Doylestown has become an even more desirable place to live, work and play.”
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