(Credit: Collegeville Borough)
These awards recognize the best in planning and design in Montgomery County
Freeland Square, an outstanding residential infill redevelopment project developed by W.B. Homes at 35 W. Third Ave., received a 2024 Montgomery Award for collaborative planning process, creative design, and lasting community benefits.
This 2.24-acre, 40-townhome project carefully fit a new townhome community into the existing street grid to add residential density within walking distance of the downtown, contributing to the walkability, neighborhood feel, and economy of one of Montgomery County’s iconic borough Main Streets, according to Collegeville Borough.
These awards recognize the best in planning and design in Montgomery County and acknowledge the high quality of work and commitment of communities, organizations, and professionals in contributing to these exceptional projects.
Luce Architects of Doylestown was the architect on the project. The engineer was Bohler Engineering in New Britain Township.
This is the third Montgomery Award a Collegeville Borough building has won in recent years. In 2018 Ursinus College’s Innovation and Discovery Center and in 2019, the Schellhase Commons were cited for outstanding design.
According to a news release:
Freeland Square exemplifies many townhome design best practices. Each townhome has its own garage and parking spaces, which face each other along shared alleys and are buffered from street view by stone wing walls. This allows for front entrances along an attractively landscaped courtyard with walkways connecting to the sidewalks surrounding the site. The Third Avenue frontage of the development is accentuated with a deep and lushly landscaped setback, street trees, and pedestrian walkways.
Designed to be sensitive to the scale of neighboring residences, Freeland Square was developed as ten buildings, with each containing four units only. This appealing development, which carefully fits into the existing street grid for vehicular circulation, provided new sidewalks and marked pedestrian crossings that enhance walkability, benefiting the larger community neighborhood. The creative design of Freeland Square ensures the density is appropriate for its borough context and as a transition between busier Main Street and single-family detached homes along Chestnut Street.
Lasting Community and Environmental Benefits
Transforming a former industrial site surrounded on three sides by active borough streets required thoughtful design decisions at every step of the process. Prior to redevelopment, the site consisted of large industrial buildings and parking areas and was almost entirely impervious. The designers maximized landscape areas within the site and incorporated other porous materials in creative ways, such as gravel strips between individual driveways within the alleys. This redevelopment resulted in a net gain of over 30,000 square feet of pervious area. Where the site previously lacked streetscaping or tree cover, it now includes 64 trees and over 390 shrubs, allowing it to be visually seamless with the adjacent lower-density residential properties. By dramatically decreasing the impervious coverage and increasing the tree canopy on the site, this development has reduced stormwater runoff and heat island effects, providing lasting benefits for the community.
The Freeland Square townhome development is an excellent example of how a creatively and sensitively designed infill development can blend into an existing neighborhood. This outstanding redevelopment project contributes to the walkability, neighborhood feel, and economy of one of Montgomery County’s iconic borough Main Streets.
