CONSHOHOCKEN — Conshohocken officials and the Montgomery County Redevelopment Authority (RDA) are seeking a comprehensive plan from prospective developers to purchase the borough-owned Verizon building at 402 Fayette St., then lease it back to the borough as office space for borough employees and the Police Department.
The request for proposal (RFP) published Monday would allow a developer to lease 45,000 square feet of space in the building to other office tenants while reserving 20,000 square feet in the three-level building for borough operations.
The developer is required to “include an adaptive and commercially viable reuse of the existing historic Washington Firehouse” at 15 West Hector St., “including the restoration of the exterior facade.”
The three-story, red-brick building, built in 1874, includes an attached, one-story “apparatus” building and a 15,768-square-foot vacant parcel.
“The borough is excited about the RFP,” Borough Manager Francis Marabella said. “If everything is met in the proposal, it would give a single home for the administration and the police. The Verizon building would be back on the tax rolls generating real estate tax income from the rentable space.”
Conshohocken owns the Verizon building and the historic firehouse, while the RDA owns the apparatus building and the vacant parcel.
The RDA has more flexibility in working with developers than the borough does, Marabella said.
“We (the borough) either have to bid a project or auction off the building,” Marabella said. “The RDA has experience in redeveloping properties. They do this across the county and they have contacts with developers.”
Borough officials purchased the Verizon building for $3.25 million from the Verizon Corp. in September 2007. Council rejected several purchase proposals, including one for $3.25 million, in December 2008. A proposal to replace the roof of the building for $408,000 in November 2010 was tabled by council.
“We bid the building twice over the term that we have owned it,” Marabella said. “We did get a bid each time but it was not a qualified bid and the price was not acceptable to borough council.”
Marabella was enthusiastic about the potential development of the vacant parcel near the corner of Fayette and Elm streets.
“It is a prime site for development. As you come into Conshohocken, that is the first site that you see there,” Marabella said. “We have always gotten requests from developers about that lot.”
The RFP requires the developer to provide a public meeting space for council in the Verizon building and “a plan to accommodate on-site parking for 3.5 cars per 1,000 square feet of rentable space, with exclusive and secure parking for police vehicles. In addition, the plan must provide for a drive-up sally port and for separate and secure police entry into the building.”
Marabella said that if a developer has a plan to create a parking garage in the lowest level of the building, it would reduce the rentable square footage in the building and lower the required number of parking spaces. If the building was redeveloped with the full square footage in the building, the formula would require 227.5 parking spaces. He said a developer could also propose a parking garage over the parking lot that could satisfy the off-street parking requirement.
The Verizon building has 49 existing parking spaces at the rear.
The RFP also requires a developer to provide 300 additional parking spaces “available to downtown Conshohocken businesses and residents/visitors.”
“The redevelopment plan must provide for the dedication and maintenance of a significant public open space or other public amenity and for the dedication of not less than 300 new publicly available parking spaces,” the RFP states.
“This could require a developer to acquire other land,” Marabella said, “to satisfy the borough requirement for 300 parking spaces in the downtown area.”
Another complicating factor is that the borough has an office lease for its administration workers that runs until August 2015.
“The proposal must provide for a means to extinguish the borough’s present lease obligations and to accommodate transition of all borough offices to the Verizon building without financial penalty to the borough for early termination of its existing lease,” the RFP said.
A July 3 pre-proposal site inspection has been scheduled for prospective bidders. Questions from the developers to the RDA are due on July 8, and an addendum to the RFP will be distributed on July 9. The proposals are due on July 24 to the RDA.
The award of a development agreement by the RDA and Conshohocken council may be made on or before Aug. 14, according to the RFP.
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