A pair of redevelopment projects that will reshape the face of downtown Collingswood is headed in different directions, as the borough reconsiders its plans for each.
Both sites are located at the intersection of Woodlawn and Haddon Avenues: the shuttered OceanFirst Bank and the small municipal lot fronting the former Warner Landscape and Patio.
Late in 2023, the borough negotiated a $1.375-million purchase price for the bank with the intention of controlling the scale of redevelopment there.
Collingswood Mayor Jim Maley described rejecting a handful of outsized proposals from developers, including the bank itself, that would have sought to create five- and six-story multifamily housing mirroring the Collings at the LumberYard across the street.
Instead, the mayor said, the borough would subdivide the bank building frontage to sell off as a separate commercial development, and turn its rear parking lot into a row of eight townhouses in keeping with the neighborhood context of the block.
However, as its water tower redevelopment project continues to take shape, Collingswood shifted its focus to finding ways to add downtown parking in the heart of the borough commercial district, and decided it would be better to hold onto the OceanFirst Bank lot.
“We have had a couple different proposals, maybe discussions, with developers who all wanted to put six stories on the corner, eight towns down the side,” Maley said.
“Everybody’s trying to put five pounds in a three-pound bag, so we decided to put up the front piece to the market.
“With the water tower development, we’re better off keeping that back piece as public parking and not doing housing there,” he said.
“It’s good to get another ratable in, but it’s really not the way to go,” Maley said.
“We need that parking, especially on that side of Haddon, and it’s already a parking lot. People are used to it being a parking lot; it makes sense.”
In reaching out to area developers, the borough fielded interest from Design Pro Development of Philadelphia, which initially had pursued the property when it was on the market, the mayor said.
“We had talked to them a year ago because they were trying to buy it from the bank,” Maley said. “They re-circled, and gave us this proposal. I liked it a lot.”
Collingswood would sell the property to Design Pro for $1.325 million and retain the back lot for municipal use.
Maley said the developer plans to transform the bank into a mixed-use property with first-floor commercial activity and nine, two-bedroom residential units above. One of those would be designated as affordable housing, and eight others at market rate.
While the borough finalizes that agreement of sale, the developers provided a rendering of the building elevation that commissioners presented at the October meeting of the municipal government.
The project is about three to six months away from a planning board application, the mayor said. Design Pro Development principal Logan Kramer could not be reached for comment on the transaction.
At the same time, plans for the Collingswood pocket park, which the borough sent out to bid in March, will be scaled back for want of cost controls.
“The low bid came in more than double what we were anticipating it to be; the higher bid came in quadruple what we were anticipating it to be,” Maley said, quoting ballpark figures of $550,000 to $800,00.
“We’re rejecting these bids and beginning a process of negotiation,” he said. “We’ve made revisions to the park. We’ve cut back on it, and we’ll do the decorating later.”
