Hotel, retail project proposed near Devon Horse Show grounds

DEVON The president of the Devon Horse Show and his business partner want to build a hotel and retail center beside the fairgrounds property, a project that could offer Devon its first taste of a town center.

Wade McDevitt and partner Eli Kahn presented preliminary plans Tuesday to Easttown Township officials.

They said Urban Outfitters has expressed interest in developing a 93-room boutique hotel and 100,000-square-foot retail center there, including an Anthropologie store and two restaurants.

The project could provide 500 additional parking spaces near the fairgrounds and plant a retail village along a stretch of Lancaster Avenue that draws 100,000 people each spring.

The 6.8-acre property has been empty since the closing of Waterloo Gardens, which filed for bankruptcy in June 2012. McDevitt and Kahn bought the property in March.

No contracts have been signed, and an Urban Outfitters spokeswoman declined to comment.

But the men are clearly excited by the prospect.

Kahn, who is developing a $45 million apartment and retail complex in Malvern, called the Devon proposal "without a doubt one of the coolest developments I've ever been involved with."

Urban Outfitters' "sense of design, their sense of merchandising, the high-end quality of their stores, their products, they truly are trying to create a lifestyle around their brands. ... And integrating this with the Devon Horse Show, which is really an internationally known and respected institution, really creates a neat opportunity to provide Devon with a village."

The horse show grounds are in Chester County just over the border from Delaware County. They host several equestrian events each year. The annual show and country fair draws more than 100,000 people.

Visitors often have to stay at hotels far from the venue, said McDevitt. And when they get to the event, he said, parking is a problem.

A dirt parking lot on the horse show property would also be paved and connected to the shopping village.

Kahn said he was not sure whether the large Anthropologie store a few miles away in Wayne would relocate.

When asked whether the partners had plans to do more development around the grounds, Kahn said, "Not at the moment. I think at the moment we're just focusing on this."

Dan Fox, Easttown Township manager, said that the project was "far from guaranteed or certain" and that permitting could take more than a year.

He said Kahn and McDevitt have proposed applying for a zoning overlay district that would mainly affect a small, currently residential, part of the property. The site is approved for three-story buildings, he said, and the developers also talked about seeking an ordinance to allow part of the hotel to be five stories tall.

Fox said the planning commission had generally positive feedback to the proposal.

"People were happy to see that it was not going to be another car dealership or convenience store," he said. "It was something different."

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