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Venerable builder reflects on boom times gone by

At 84, Richard J. Fox is still looking for the next great business opportunity. But his business is real estate, mainly office buildings. And, let's be honest, he says, the great days of suburban development aren't coming back anytime soon.

At 84, Richard J. Fox is still looking for the next great business opportunity.

But his business is real estate, mainly office buildings. And, let's be honest, he says, the great days of suburban development aren't coming back anytime soon.

"I am not bullish on the American economy," laments the developer of Chesterbrook, one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken in the Philadelphia region.

Fox hails from a day - somehow it seems long ago and far away - when developers dreamed big dreams. And in the 1970s and '80s, there was no bigger dream than Chesterbrook, located on 880 acres between the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Route 202 in Tredyffrin Township, Chester County.

What stands out about Chesterbrook a generation later was its sheer audacity. Size was one thing. Legal and political hurdles were another. It took Fox seven years of battle to dig the first shovel of dirt in 1977. Along the way, Chesterbrook foes - who feared a monstrosity in their backyards - sought congressional action to have the land absorbed into the adjacent Valley Forge historical park. The effort failed, but Congress voted anyway to acquire what was then a state park. "I am responsible for it becoming a national park," Fox said.

From scratch

Fox built what he calls the most comprehensively planned community in the state. It's a town unto itself, nearly a mile and a half square, with 2,314 housing units in 28 "villages," a shopping center, a hotel, and a corporate center. More than 5,200 people live there, and as many as 2,000 work there.

"It is a designed-from-scratch, environmentally sound, total community," Fox said the other day from One Tower Bridge in West Conshohocken. He moved there after closing his Chesterbrook office six years ago.

He controlled everything from landscaping to street lamps to a water-runoff plan that became the basis for a new state standard. About one-third of the land is open space, including Valley Creek and its historic walnut trees.

Fox handed over the housing sections to other builders, who seemed to race one another. At one point in the '80s, a dozen builders were hammering away. The last office building was completed in 2000.

Today, Chesterbrook is showing some signs of age. Shake shingles have become streaked from weathering. Community mailboxes show wear. Some windows look as if they could be replaced.

But a community association charges a monthly fee on residences for the immaculate grounds maintenance. Individual villages also have condo associations that require upkeep and uniformity.

"It's a little old, but the units are beautiful - well-kept-up," said Mark Ayer, an investment banker who nine months ago moved into one of the more upscale villages, the Ponds.

There are all types of housing, from inexpensive rentals to skylighted townhouses to half-million-dollar singles. Real estate salespeople say values have held up. David Ward, a Chester County planner, notes that the county never really had a land bubble, so it hasn't had a bust.

Chesterbrook Village Shopping Center is the one dark spot. Nearly half of 41 stores appear empty. The anchor tenant, a Genuardi's supermarket, closed. "It's a dying enterprise," said a resident of Newport village, who didn't want to be quoted by name saying anything negative.

Fox no longer has a financial interest. He sold his last piece of Chesterbrook - the 150-acre office park - in 2006. But his pride still has a stake, and he agrees the shopping center is in trouble. The center was sold recently and the new owners haven't publicly revealed plans for it.

"I go there every week because I still use the cleaners there, and I have lunch there sometime; it's not a happy situation," Fox said at his new office overlooking the Schuylkill.

'Most incredible'

A bald man with big, round glasses, he was clad in khakis and a button-down shirt. He had brought only a few things from Chesterbrook. There was a signed photograph of him with former President Ronald Reagan, whose Pennsylvania campaign he chaired in 1980 and 1984. There was a photo of Margaret Thatcher, with whom he once had "the most incredible conversation."

Fox said he wouldn't know what to do if he couldn't work. He remains on the board of Temple University, whose business school is named in his honor. He plays golf, sure. He has piloted small planes since his Navy days. And he's a grandfather six times over. But work is what keeps the juices flowing.

He does consulting, he says, and he still has two partners, Jim Hovey and Rob Lee, who are always eager to put together projects.

"We are in a period of very little activity in real estate," he said. "There are no new office buildings, at least no speculative office buildings, being built."

Fox is among the last of a breed: men who emerged from World War II into a go-go economy that flourished, with moderate recessions now and then, for most or all of their careers.

The son of a Philadelphia businessman, he grew up in Germantown-Mount Airy and graduated from Central High, Class of 1945. He was in the V-5 cadet flying program at Georgia Tech when the war came to an end.

He never finished the flying program, and when he was recalled to service during the Korean War, it was as a lieutenant (j.g.) on surface ships.

After Korea, he and his brother, Bob, started a housing business.

Over the years, Fox said, his specialty became apartment complexes. He built West Village in Philadelphia, Beaver Hill in Jenkintown, Green Valley in Plymouth, Sherry Lake in Whitemarsh, Glenhardie in Tredyffrin.

"We were among the largest apartment developers in the metropolitan area."

He also developed the Wells Fargo Center (originally the CoreStates Center) and Comcast studios at the South Philadelphia sports complex.

His conservative political bent - he's a debt hawk - got him involved in Republican politics, and he was a founder of the Republican Jewish Alliance.

Persuading Jewish voters to back Republicans was always "a tough sell," he said. The high mark was 1984, he said, when exit polls showed 38 percent supported Reagan.

"I think it will be higher this time," he said. "There is a disillusion right now with Obama, especially on his Israel policies."

His active politics are pretty much in the past, he said. But records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show him having donated $53,000 to federal campaigns since 2008.

'The peak'

Fox is chairman of Planalytics, a Berwyn company run by his son Frederic that uses long-range weather data for economic forecasts. The company advises clients what to buy, when to buy, and "when to mark it down," he said.

He claims no special talent himself for economic prognostication but says that stagnant incomes, high gasoline prices, and food inflation do not bode well for the purchasing power of American consumers. And that's not good for real estate.

"The baby-boom generation is now 50-plus, and they're selling houses rather than buying houses. I suspect that we've seen the peak in what was the typical suburban development since the end of the Second World War."

But smart development, combining all categories of housing, can still succeed, he said.

"There are opportunities for another Chesterbrook."

at 610-313-8205 or tinfield@phillynews.com.