State aids Ambler revival
It gave a $4 million grant to transform a former asbestos plant into condos and offices.
A project to transform the contaminated site of a former asbestos factory in Ambler into condominiums and office space yesterday received a $4 million boost from the state.
The grant from the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program will help efforts to prepare the site for construction of the 288-unit Crossings at Ambler condo complex and the Boiler House office building.
Gov. Rendell announced the award in front of the former Keasbey & Mattison plant on Maple Avenue. It is only part of $20 million needed to clean up the site. An additional $4 million in state funds was previously awarded and more local funds are expected, said John A. Westrum of Westrum Development Co. in Fort Washington.
Westrum, Strategic Realty Investments of Wayne, and Summit Realty Advisors of New Castle, Del., have partnered to build a complex expected to cost from $125 million to $150 million.
The factory has been a eyesore since it was abandoned in the early 1970s. It is one of several contaminated sites in a borough once booming with industry, then stagnant in the wake of factory closings, and now bubbling with revitalization.
At one contaminated property, the nearby 38-acre BoRit site, a developer abandoned a plan three years ago to build a high-rise. Recent activity on the site to make way for an access road caused concern among residents, who feared the work would spread airborne asbestos particles.
The Westrum project site is more in need of aid because there is a crumbling building on the site, said State Rep. Rick Taylor, whose district includes Ambler.
The clean-up is scheduled to start by the end of this year, and construction is expected to begin in 2009.
William Clayton, a former Keasbey & Mattison employee, has high hopes and some trepidation about the project. Clayton, 74, lives a few blocks from the site and attended yesterday's announcement.
"It'll be good because you get tired of looking at an old building," Clayton said. But he said he hopes the developers will not follow in the path of some of the old factories that "came in, messed up, and then just left."