Are More Businesses About to Open on High Street?

Photo by Evan Brandt

The former Brick House restaurant has been vacant since 2017.

It looks like there may be some movement in a new business occupying 152 E. High St., the site of the former Brick House restaurant.

A legal notice published in The Mercury Friday indicates that a public hearing will be held before Borough Council on March 11 for the transfer of a liquor license to the site.

For 10 years, The Brick House welcomed visitors to downtown Pottstown from the southern gateway to town since it opened in 2008.

It's closing was announced in September of 2017 and it has remained vacant, although rumors about a new restaurant have circulated around the borough almost since The Brick House closed.

The property was purchased on April 29, 2015 by  860 Lancaster L.P., of Bryn Mawr, which paid Matlack Properties $1,050,000 for the 26,371 square-foot parcel. Matlack Properties had purchased the building in 2010 from Pottstown Development Group L.P., according to Montgomery County property records.

Property records indicate the assessment is $870,250. The property was redeveloped with the help of a tax increment finance district, or TIF, which slowly increases the property assessment to keep the initial tax bill low to encourage redevelopment.

According to the legal notice, the liquor license is being transferred from 64-66 E. Lancaster Ave. in Ardmore, Lower Merion, which is the address of the Mikado Thai Pepper restaurant.

The company requesting the transfer is listed only as WIN Global Investment LLC, with a registered address of 704 Sturbridge Dr., Bryn Mawr, which appears to be a private home, according to Google Streetview. That is the same address listed for 860 Lancaster L.P., the building's owner.

The upper floors of the former Security Trust Bank building have been occupied by offices since it was renovated by Pottstown Redevelopment Corp., founded by John Wolfington, which lost the building when the bank holding the mortgage foreclosed.

Tenants there include the Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation, the TriCounty Area Chamber of Commerce and Pottstown Area Industrial Development, the borough's economic development arm.

In 2010, Dave Walsh, the entrepreneur who opened The Brick House, tried and failed to buy the building. He and his wife Blair still operates another restaurant, BlackJax on Route 422 in Amity.

And 152 High is not the only place movement seems to be in the wind.

Several people have reported seeing activity at the site of the former Slack Shack in the 200 block of High Street.

Once the site of the Slack Shack, this High Street lot between 

the VanBurkirk building and Pottstown Cash Traders has been

vacant for decades.

The gap in High Street's streetscape is covered with a faux front, but several people have seen the doors open and activity inside.

Rumors of a beer garden have made the rounds, and recently, a well-placed source has suggested that a new structure will not necessarily be built in the vacant lot, made so when the Slack Shack burned down decades ago.

That would seem to give further truth to the rumor, but we won't know until it happens, or doesn't.

Approached about the recent activity, Peggy Lee-Clark, executive director of PAID, was tight-lipped, but suggested that several long-rumored investments are about to get up and running.

"In a few months, people won't recognize High Street," was all she would say.

During the Feb. 6 borough council meeting, she did say she had received a complaint from an investor that "there's nothing left to buy on High Street."

Keep your fingers crossed folks.

Pottstown Tax Hike Whittled Down to 9.5 percent

Photos by Evan Brandt

Santa only delivered candy canes, not budget cuts, to borough council Wednesday night. But beleaguered taxpayers are getting an early Christmas gift .... kind of. The threatened 12 percent tax hike has been cut to 9.46 percent.

'Tis the season of giving, so never let it be said that we at The Digital Notebook never gave you anything.

Today we give the gift of good news ... kind of.

Remember when the $48.9 million budget was unveiled in October and it was calling for a 12 percent tax ax hike? We have trouble forgetting it since it would have been the second 12 percent tax hike in two years.

The key words in that last sentence are "would have been..."

It seems that as the budget adoption date draws closer, the tax hike has dropped. Borough Manager Justin Keller told council Wednesday night staff has whittled it down to 9.46 percent.

He pointed out that the 2019 budget calls for less actual spending than the 2018 budget, and that, as of Oct. 31, spending in 2018 is down in a number of categories over 2017.

He ticked them off:

• Administration spending is down 29.2 percent over 2017
• Legal costs are down 16 percent over 2017
• Engineering costs are down 50 percent over 2017
• General government spending is down 50 percent over 2017
• Police overtime is down 20 percent over 2017
• Police court overtime is down 57 percent over 2017

So why are taxes still going up?

Keller laid the blame on two major factors.

FUTURE LEADERS?: The graduating class of the most recent
Pottstown Ciutizens Leadership Academy was
announced last night.

The first was the $1 million increase in pension obligations for 2019.

"That one kind of hit us by
surprise," Keller said. The 16 percent increase "is a big number," he said.

The other was big tax refunds to large commercial properties which had challenged their property assessments and won.

The biggest of those was the $360,000 the borough has to pay back to the owners of the moribund Pottstown Center shopping center at 799 State St. after the court decision on an assessment challenge.

The good news, if there can be said to be any, is that assessments seem to have leveled out and challenges are diminishing.

Keller said as the budget stands now, the millage rate will be 12.675 mills, up from the current rate of 11.58 mills.

Council will vote Monday on advertising the budget and new tax rate, after which the tax rate can go down, but not up. Final adoption of the budget is likely to be at the end of December.

New police sub-station

Council also will vote Monday on a proposal to re-establish a police sub-station in the First Ward, near to the sites of a murder and a shooting last month.

It's been five years since the police had a sub-station in the First Ward. The previous location was adjacent to the Chestnut Street Park.

A new police sub-station could seen be located here.

The new location, presuming council approves the move, will be space being offered free of charge in the Beech Street Factory building, once Fecera's Furniture Warehouse, at the corner of Beech and North Evans Street.

Given that two of the three recent gun crimes involved locations on North Evans Street, it seems like a good spot.

The most recent shooting, Nov. 30, was the discovery of a victim who had actually been shot in Warwick Township in Chester County, but came to a residence in the 400 block of North Evans Street rather than go to a hospital. Go figure.

The night before, a shooting victim as discovered three blocks south on North Evans Street.

On Nov. 18, Sylvia Williams was shot and killed inside her home in the 300 block of North Washington Street during a home-invasion robbery.

Ten days later, Aaron Joseph Taylor, 18, of the first block of West Second Street, was arrested, along with a 17-year-old juvenile, in connection with the crime.

Last night, Mayor Stephanie Henrick, used her monthly Mayor's report to comment on the gun violence.

Here is what she said:



Councilman Ryan Procsal, who represents the First Ward, later said that gun violence must be taken seriously.

He said he hoped before committing more, would be shooters ask themselves "do they want to spend their next 25 years, or their entire life in jail? Because that's what's going to happen to them."

Odds and ends

A few other nuggets of interest from last night:

• The Pottstown Land Bank has been reviewing its policies and before presenting them to council, is looking for input from, among others, the citizens of Pottstown. They can read them and provide comments here, through a link on the borough website.

  

  PAID's new website application.

• Speaking of websites, Peggy Lee-Clark, the executive director of the the borough's economic development agency, Pottstown Area Industrial Development Inc., gave a presentation on PAID's new website application. If focuses on commercial and industrial properties that are available, particularly in the new opportunity zones created in the tax reform passed by Congress. Within those zones, investors can buy properties or invest in businesses and by-pass capital gains taxes for 10 years.
• In addition to voting on a new contract with the Montgomery County Planning Commission Monday for planning services, council will be asked to approve a second contract with the county planners. This one will make use of a federal grant to look at and perhaps change the zoning along Keim Street in preparation for what Keller said is the expected start of construction on a new Keim Street Bridge in 2020.
• And, in case you didn't notice the photo above, a certain North Pole resident made his way to Pottstown a little early to wish council and all of the borough a Merry Christmas:

And with that, here are the Tweets and other video from the meeting.

Tax Hike Cut to 9.5%

Business is Bustin' Out All Over Pottstown

Photo by Evan Brandt

This shows the location of the proposed new urgent care center at the intersection of Route 100, King Street and Shoemaker Road. They would like to begin construction as soon as possible.

The roller coaster ride of business news and revitalization efforts in the borough took an upswing Wednesday night when borough council heard about two proposals for two new businesses which want to put up new buildings in the borough.

One, known as Patient First, is part of a chain of 43 urgent care medical centers that has been in business for 43 years and promises to bring 50 jobs into the borough.

"We're looking to hire locally," said  Carl Wright, founder and president of The Wright Group, which will construct the building.at the site of the former Chinese Food restaurant across the parking lot from Ollies Outlet and Just Cabinets.

The Wright Group, which is also building the Hanover Square townhouses at the former Mrs. Smith's factory site, will lease the building to the urgent care company for 20 years or more.

"So we're talking about a long-term commitment," Wright said.

Patient First was founded 32 years by Richard Sowers, an emergency room physician who realized that many of those patients who came to the emergency room for treatment did not have life-threatening conditions and could be held instead by an "urgent care" practice, Wright said.

"It was a revolutionary idea at the time, but now they are everywhere," he said.

The business -- which operates nine similar centers in Greater Richmond, Va.; eight in Greater Hampton Roads, Tidewater, Va., and the DelMarVa Peninsula; 14 in Greater Baltimore; six in greater Washington, DC; three in eastern Pennsylvania; and four in central Pennsylvania -- will be open every day of the year, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

This (fuzzy) photo shows an existing Patient First building.

Councilman Dan Weand, who is also the chairman of the borough planning commission, praised the proposal.

"We had the pleasure of working with a well-prepared and congenial developer," he said.

"It's going to be a beautiful building," said Council President Steve Toroney, who also serves on the planning commission.

Eleven waivers were required to move the project forward. 

Council is set to vote on a preliminary/final site plan approval at Monday night's meeting.

A second new business is also poised to be approved Monday night.

Haggerty Steel, located outside Phoenixville, is looking to expand and to do it here.

"We're looking to grow, that's why we're coming to Pottstown," said Tom Haggerty, who was at Wednesday night's council meeting representing his company.

Haggerty Steel is a "fabrication and welding company," Haggerty said, adding "we would like to break ground in June."

Noting his company had just received its bank finances, Haggerty said "the next eight weeks are very critical, I would like to move in by October or November."

He said the company has eight permanent employees, and he would like to add more, but said that the company at times employs many more, depending on the size of the bids he wins for contracts.

"We're expanding so we can bid on bigger projects," he said.

Borough Solicitor Charles D. Garner Jr. told council the company is looking to build a 9,000 square-foot building on an undeveloped 1.25-acre plot in the Circle of Progress, adjacent to the Pottstown Municipal Airport.

He said the planning commission recommended site plan approval for this project as well.

"We think you will be a great addition to Pottstown," Weand said.

Asked by Mayor Bonnie Heath about his experience working with Pottstown, Haggerty said "it's been very easy so far and the staff has been great. I found it very easy to do business in Pottstown."

Later in the meeting, Toroney praised the job being done by Steve Bamford, Pottstown's economic development point man and the executive director of Pottstown Area Industrial Development Inc.

"I want to thank him for the great job he's doing," Toroney said. "We've just seen two great things occuring here in Pottstown and Steve has been a big part of making that happen."