Planning Commission

The Montgomery Planning Commission had their monthly meeting today and Executive Director, Scott France gave the same presentation given to the Commissioners with a few updates.

• The Structural Assessment Report (SAR) Request for Proposal (RFP) is being worked on now in preparation for the Request for Expressed Interest (RFEI) scheduled to go out in the fall. According to his statement, the report that was included with the demolition request was not complete and did not contain the same attention as the new report will contain. Mr. France commented that they are close to awarding a contract for the SAR.

• There are plans to incorporate the Prison project, along with other County projects, on a new public website. The website will provide a section for the public to weigh in.

• An alterative site for a firehouse, which was a possible use for the prison site before, has been discussed with the municipal leaders in Norristown, which effectively takes the firehouse off the table for that site.

• There has been some national interest seen already.

Interesting to note that Mr. France included in his comments that the original request for demolition was seen as a mistake by the Planning Commission as they tend to want to save historic iconic buildings and work toward adaptive reuse. Many of the comments from the other planning board members echoed that sentiment.

Of course it comes down to money. The County simply does not have the resources to do an adaptive reuse on its own. Therefore this project will be a public private partnership. No specific figures were given to the renovation costs, or even if the whole facility would be saved. However, it appears that the front portion - generally referred to erroneously as the facade - is acceptable for reuse. It will come down to the responses from the RFEI.