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NORRISTOWN — Growth is a major theme in Montgomery County planning circles as officials look to find the best way to manage future development.
It’s something that Scott France, executive director of the Montgomery County Planning Commission, thinks about as work continues on the 2050 comprehensive plan for the state’s third most populous county, behind Philadelphia and Allegheny counties.
France said he anticipates continuing growth, as an impending influx of nearly 74,000 people is expected over the next few decades.
“Do I see that growth continuing in the current level? I’m still pretty sold that it is going to continue over the next 30 years,” France told MediaNews Group. “We work off projections out to 2050, and in those projections, I think we do see a slowdown that has been accounted for. We’re still seeing overall a decent amount of growth, currently over 940,000 is our projected 2050 population.”
Recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show 866,005 residents call Montgomery County home, gaining 12,201 new residents since 2020, according to data from the Pennsylvania State Data Center released last month.
“I think the growth kind of supports the direction we’ve seen things going in the county, that even as we become more mature and built out, we’re still an economic center in and of ourselves, not just a bedroom community to Philadelphia,” France said.
“People are still making their choices of city versus suburbs based on a number of things, and those factors aren’t much different than they were five years ago, but I think we’re more appealing, too,” France went on to say. “You can live an urban lifestyle in Montgomery County, as well as a suburban lifestyle. Having both speaks to the diversity and the positive opportunities in the county.”
Tracking growth
Growth tracked in Montgomery County was second highest in Pennsylvania, behind neighboring Chester County, which added 15,369 residents. France observed the neighboring suburban county has “more land to develop,” following in the footsteps of Montgomery County’s “rapid growth” in the 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, and early 2000s.
“Chester’s growing with a lot more land, open land, to be developed, whereas ours is more infill, and so now they’re seeing those kinds of gains we saw two decades or four decades ago, which is good,” France said, of the neighboring county to the southwest.
“It’s good to spread it out to places that can handle it, and Chester County’s going through it,” he continued. “They’re probably not thrilled about some aspects of that as well because change is always hard to deal with.”
Turning back to Montgomery County, France noted that local development is focused on revitalizing existing places and “open spaces” in the county’s central and eastern regions. Residential projects have evolved from the previously favored large-scale single-family detached subdivisions to density surrounding denser, multi-family housing concepts.
While France said “We are not seeing a lot of (new) proposals in residentials,” he stressed that “there’s a lot in the pipeline still” that has not yet been constructed. France attributed inflation and rising interest rates to the fact that submissions “slowed down considerably in 2023.” Additionally, rising construction costs related to labor and materials can pose challenges to development.
But that’s not to say there isn’t a lot going on behind the scenes.
“So we’re seeing some of those projects stagnate a bit, or be stuck in a certain phase of development or construction,” he said. “But they’re still out there, they still have market interest and we still expect them to be built, it may just take some of them longer.”
Strategic planning
France said what comes next is strategic planning, as a majority of the area is already built up. Revamping existing infrastructure and preparing for any anticipated growth is key, he said, which is where a study like the comprehensive plan comes in.
First enacted in 2015, the next iteration delves into projections and policies decades down the road, aiming to reduce “pressure on the system.” Work on the 2050 version is underway, and France emphasized the need for public input and coordination with the county’s 62 boroughs, townships and municipalities.
“What we can do is channel the growth in the best places possible,” he said. “So we want to focus on areas where there’s transit, where there’s existing commerce and jobs — live, work, and play.”
Right now, France said “transit-oriented development is a big priority of ours” as ways to increase accessibility are developed. He added that SEPTA is also exploring ideas for this type of development on its properties through parking garages and residential ventures.
“Some communities have been great in trying to implement that, others can do more and it can be a different scale,” he said. “Not every train station has to have a 12-story apartment building. Sometimes it’s much less, but still an important type of development.”
The ultimate key is to aid and maintain the “market rate growth” throughout the area as it increases in popularity. “People want to be here and for very good reasons,” he said. “If we didn’t have those reasons for people wanting to be here, we’d be dealing with a whole host of other problems in decline and there’s plenty of places in the country you can look at that are faced with things like that.
“Growth is not easy and in some ways, it can create problems, but those problems can be addressed and can be better to have than the alternative, which is no growth or stagnation or loss or decline.”
The affordable housing dilemma
Creating more options for housing is top of mind for county planners like France, who stress the importance of ensuring there is availability for those who’d like to live in the county where they work.
“Whether we can support them with housing availability is another big issue, and if we don’t provide the housing and people still come, that’s going to drive up cost of housing considerably, and affordability is probably one of the biggest issues facing not only MontgomeryCounty, the region and the country, and to not allow development of residential units is only going to exasperate that problem of affordability and equity,” he said.
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