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Luxury apartments finished near Lansdale SEPTA station; stores and restaurants coming

The project has been folded into the borough’s plans for revitalization and development over more than a decade. Officials have paid particular attention to building dense retail and residences near the train station.

Madison Lansdale Station, a new, 182-unit luxury housing complex in Lansdale.
Madison Lansdale Station, a new, 182-unit luxury housing complex in Lansdale.Read moreCourtesy of Alexa Vecchione

The Madison Apartment Group, a Newtown Square-based multi-family housing management business, has finished building Madison Lansdale Station, a 6.7-acre mixed-use complex in Montgomery County that includes retail and high-end housing.

Madison Apartment Group, which is under the umbrella of the private equity real estate fund manager Equus Capital Partners, bought acreage next to the Lansdale train station in 2017. The Lansdale Parking Authority, which had planned to use the site for parking, sold the land to Equus for $1.9 million after SEPTA built a 680-space garage nearby.

In November of that year, Equus began building 182 apartments in what was touted as a luxurious, “thoughtfully designed, vibrant community.” The remainder of the complex has 15,000 square feet of retail space for boutiques and restaurants.

The project has been folded into the borough’s plans for revitalization and development over more than a decade. Officials have paid particular attention to building dense retail and residences near the train station — Lansdale’s de facto epicenter — which connects the three-square-mile borough to Philadelphia’s Center City.

Madison Lansdale Station is the newest such project.

“Demand has continued to surge for the luxury community, which has welcomed its first residents and is already nearly 50% leased,” Equus said in a statement.

The complex’s housing ranges from studios starting at $1,450 to two-bedroom units as high as $2,018, according to its website.

The development at 325 Madison St. sits prominently in the borough’s historic downtown, which, like other communities, struggled after World War II to retain its status as a commercial hub. In subsequent decades, borough officials approved the demolition of 60 dated buildings downtown with hopes of bringing in mid-rise development.

Developers constructed the five-story Century Plaza, a building used extensively for community get-togethers. But more expansive development plans fell short and the borough continued to struggle as the Montgomery Mall opened three miles away in North Wales, pulling more business away.

Then the borough focused on creating a robust parks system, bringing more than 120 acres of public open space to a neighborhood historically known for railroad and industrial businesses that included a manufacturer of horse-powered farm equipment, metal foundries, and a flour, grain, and seed mill.

Since then, the borough has worked to revamp abandoned industrial buildings, in part by bringing in mixed-use development and modern, multi-unit housing. Lansdale, with a population of about 16,600, had mostly single-family and twin homes.

Madison Lansdale Station, Equus said, is a six-building complex. The apartments — in keeping with a trend of increasingly elaborate amenities packages for residents — offer lounges, a billiard room, and an indoor pet spa.