On January 21, 2021 at 7pm, the Evesham Township Planning Board will meet to discuss the new 'Evesham Township Downtown Vision Plan.'
Prior to today, if you had asked me what I thought about Main Street, my answer would be:
"I'll admit I do not think much of the Main Street area, but I also don't feel much can be done about it. People always like to point to Haddonfield as a model, but towns develop differently, and I don't think we can achieve anything like that here. Haddonfield has continuous adjoining buildings without driveways in between them, so you can get more quaint shops and restaurants in a smaller area. Haddonfield also has anchors: the library, the post office, a full grocery store, and a hi-speed line stop. In addition, Haddonfield has a wider road main road, allowing for on street parking, and wider sidewalks, allowing for outdoor dining and shopping."
However, the new Vision Plan has me very intrigued.
The plan is a followup to the "2020 Vision Plan" that was adopted in 2010. The purpose of the new plan is "to provide a design and organizational framework for downtown Marlton's continued evolution and transformation into a more diverse and vibrant hub of community life." That's a mouthful. I am going to give my summary of it, but I would encourage everyone to read it for themselves, as I have yet to meet anyone that says "I like our downtown. Its perfect."
Residents of Marlton participated in the gathering of research for this. Back in 2018, we were given the opportunity to let the Township know what we thought worked and didn't work, and what we wanted to see happen by indicating on this chart and others like it. (A beer garden won overwhelmingly!)
Before I get into the plan though, it is important to note that trying to shape the downtown is not like a game of SimCity, where you can say 'put a museum here' or 'blow up that old building and put some quaint shops there.'
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| Don't like the big building? SimCity allows you to click on it and demolish it |
The Township does not own the downtown area, and any improvement will require buy-in and cooperation from the private property owners. While residents frequently say "we should have a coffee shop"or "they should put a nice restaurant there", the Township can't do those things. The only thing the Township can do is provide infrastructure and financial incentives for a PRIVATE entity to determine it would be economically viable to build a coffee shop or restaurant.
It should also be noted that not everything in the plan will happen and not everything in the plan NEEDS to happen. The makers of the plan obviously recommend that everything happen, but some of the items suggested will be much more easily accomplished than others, and some will have more of an impact than others.
Back in December, I posted about a plan that was coming before the Zoning Board to build a parking lot behind two buildings on Maple Avenue. The spaces behind the building, hidden from public view, would be combined into a single parking lot. While I liked the idea, the plan was met with almost universal disdain.
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Top: 12 and 14 North Maple today
Bottom: Proposed parking lot behind 12 and 14 North Maple |
The aversion to the parking lot fell into a few distinct criticisms
- "Paid parking in Marlton?? Heck no!" This objection I understood.
- "Why do we need parking? There's no where to go." This is the chicken vs the egg. Why build parking if no one needs it? But, on the other hand, why build a restaurant if there's no where for a customer to park. Which has to come first?
- "Why are we building more stuff?" We aren't. A private developer is combining two already paved lots into a more useful paved lot for public parking.
What did not occur to me at the time was that perhaps this parking lot was part of something bigger. The location of the parking lot indicated above is marked in the yellow box below in the new Vision Plan..
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| To get your bearings, 1) is the Bottlestop and 2) is Sal's Pizza |
It looks very different from how the area looks today.
For starters, in the proposed plan, the building that contains Sal's Pizza has been moved closer to the street, so rather than parking in front of Sal's, you'll park behind it. Obviously moving the building is one of those things that is more difficult to achieve. But looking at the rest of the plan, the unified parking behind all the buildings is amazing. An additional street (or parking aisle) has been created as well, west of Blue Anchor Street, where there is only a driveway now.
In addition, there are a bunch of smaller buildings have been added to the west side of Blue Anchor Street and the north side of Cottage Street that don't exist today. One of the ideas throughout the plan is that smaller, 'cutesy' buildings can be added for small businesses. Picture an ice cream shop or a handbag store in a new building like this.
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| "Fill in the missing 'gaps' with appropriately scaled infill buildings" |
Smaller buildings like the ones above can also 'fill in' places where driveways are now. One of the other primary goals of the plan is to reduce the number of 'curb cuts' and driveways. For an example of this, we can look at the south side of Main Street in that same area.
On the top photo, I've marked Starbucks with a 1 from the Vision Plan. The bottom photo is how it looks today. Again, behind the buildings is a unified parking lot with two entrances from Main Street. Currently, there are 6 curb cuts/driveways in that same area. And where driveways have been removed, new, smaller buildings have been added for additional shops.
Another potentially interesting suggestion is to add either a new vehicular or pedestrian street behind Zed's. In addition to providing space for additional small shops, there are two green areas for public gatherings.
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| 1) Zed's 2 & 3) New shops beside new road/pedestrian mall |
There are several other maps of the downtown area with similar suggestions: unified parking, fewer curb cuts, new small stores.
The Vision Plan also mentions a pedestrian bridge, the idea of building a walkway above Route 73, connecting Marlton Crossing (Chickie's and Pete's, Sprouts, DSW) with Marlton Square (Trader Joe's, Starbucks, GAP). The idea is pretty self-explanatory, the question is where funding will come from.
The next section of the report has to do with green infrastructure. The goals are to preserve what greenspace still exists in the downtown area, properly manage storm water runoff with rain cisterns, rain gardens, pervious asphalt, green roofs, planter boxes, infiltration beds and other methods.
In the final section entitled "Potential Design Guidelines" are a bunch of really interesting concepts designed to promote outdoor dining and shopping, continuous sidewalks, bike-ways, bike corrals, and landscaping.
Assuming the plan gets approved, I'm hopeful that the Planning Board or eventually the Council will provide their plans for implementing it. It will not be easy, as most of the properties are privately owned. Again, the town cannot legislate these changes. However, development of the Main Street area into a more attractive and pedestrian friendly environment will increase the property values for all owners in the area, so there are certainly financial incentives. And it doesn't need to be (and won't be) all done at once. It would appear to be a long term goal to strive for.
I encourage you to read the plan and attend or watch the livestream of the Planning Board meeting on January 21 and have your questions ready.
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