POTTSTOWN — Borough council is scheduled to vote Monday on a conditional use permit that would allow the former Mercury newspaper building to be converted into 25 apartments and a small retail shop.
Dwight City Group, the same developer that is converting the former warehouse on North Hanover Street into 85 apartments, was before the borough council at the Wednesday work session for a hearing on the matter.
Although the council has 45 days to make a decision, a vote on the matter has been put on the agenda for Monday night’s voting meeting.
The building, located on the southeast corner of King and North Hanover streets, is 35,840 square feet and is owned by a limited liability company, which is headed up by Judah Angster, who is also the CEO of Dwight City Group, said attorney Mike Murray.
As always in Pottstown, the central debate revolves around parking.
Under questioning from Councilman Andrew Monastra, Murray confirmed that when the building was occupied by the newspaper, it had no parking at all. However, resident Sheila Dugan pointed out that the delivery trucks parked in the alley most evenings and that the company owned or rented a parking lot for some employees off King Street, which is behind her North Hanover Street home.
Dugan said there are already parking problems on her block, and while she is “not opposed” to the project, she is concerned the development of the building into apartments will make the problem worse.
“When I go shopping, I would like to not have to walk three blocks from my car to my house,” she said.
Legally, because the building existed with nearly 100 employees and no parking for decades, the zoning code exempts the developers from providing any, Murray said. Nevertheless, the developers purchased the parking lot directly behind the building, and it holds 25 spaces. One space will be assigned to each apartment.
Kathryn Hoffman, who is the president of the Trinity Reformed Church congregation, said she, too, is worried about the parking lot behind her church, which is directly across King Street from The Mercury building.
In addition to providing parking for churchgoers on Sundays, the lot, which the borough leases for public parking, is used “regularly” for other events at the church, Hoffman said.
On the flip side of the parking coin, resident Mike Hays, co-founder of the Montco 30 Percent housing advocacy organization, argued that the borough code requires too much parking and hampers redevelopment efforts in the borough.
At one point, the building was destined to be a “boutique hotel,” but those numbers did not work, Murray said when the company ran them after it bought the building. At another point, the developers had also proposed adding a fourth floor to the building, so that they could rent 35 apartments, but that idea has now been abandoned after pushback from borough officials and the community, said Murray.
“Evidently, that’s not what the community wants to see,” said Murray.
The apartments will be between 800 and 1,000 square feet
The 1,105-square-foot retail space will be an amenity for both the residents “to maybe grab a coffee and something to eat on their way out the door in the morning, and for the community to access as well,” said Murray.
Built in 1925, the building housed The Mercury from 1937 until the paper’s owner, MediaNews Group, closed the building in 2018 and moved all operations to the printing plant in Exton.
MediaNews Group is controlled by a New York hedge fund named Alden Global Capital.
When an Alden shell company, 24 North Hanover St. LLC, bought The Mercury building in 2013, it paid nearly $1.2 million, according to Montgomery County property records.
The building was sold on Oct. 22, 2019, for $440,000 to a company controlled by April Barkasi, the CEO of Cedarville Engineering, which owns the red brick bank building at 159 E. High St. across the street from the former Mercury building.
She had planned to turn the building into a “boutique hotel” and whiskey bar, a plan that was helped along by a $220,000 loan from the Environmental Protection Agency to help clean out asbestos tile found in the building. However, that project did not come to fruition.
