Real estate ‘pit bull’ Marc Kaplin says Exton Square Mall pushback is an ‘anomaly’
From the downfall of the indoor mall, to the rise of data centers, Kaplin has seen it all in the region over decades fighting for developers.
Marc Kaplin takes “pit bull” as a compliment when it’s used to describe him. The longtime real estate lawyer who has championed property rights for developers in the region takes it to mean “aggressive, prepared, knowledgeable.”
He’s using that tenacity right now in court, battling over whether his client’s plan to redevelop the recently shuttered Exton Square Mall into a mixed-use town center can go forward despite the town supervisors’ denial.
For decades, Kaplin, 82, has been behind dozens of regional development projects, with clientele spanning the Delaware Valley, into the Lehigh Valley, the Poconos, Delaware, and New Jersey.
Kaplin’s interest in real estate law kicked into high gear when his family moved to Blue Bell in 1978, near Wings Airways. It was still “a prairie” with little development, he recalls. The airway owners wanted to expand the runway, challenging the township’s ordinance. He was hired by a group of neighbors to oppose it.
That led to his role as township solicitor for Whitpain Township in Montgomery County in the early 1980s. Eventually, he moved into development: First working for his landlord, Bud Hansen of Hansen Properties, which became one of the biggest developers in Montgomery and Chester Counties.
When Toll Brothers started, Kaplin was there. He’s represented the home construction company for more than 40 years. Other clients, like retail developers Wolfson Group, have also spent decades alongside Kaplin.
With the closure of the Exton mall, and his client’s proposed redevelopment plan still in the courts, Kaplin spoke with The Inquirer about the downfall of the indoor mall, the challenges of building more affordable housing, and the rise in AI data center development.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
You’ve worked in the city and the suburbs. Where is it easier to get projects done?
They’re both extremely difficult and getting more and more difficult for different reasons.
Philadelphia, if you don’t have a by-right project, you’ve got to go to the neighborhoods, the RCOs [registered community organizations]. You got to spend a lot of time, and it’s more political and satisfying people, than it is complying with every small [thing].
Not only do you have to make sure that all the I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed in the suburbs, you got to know what to look for.
There’s often community pushback in development projects. What are you hearing now when communities oppose a project?
Just seems like everybody is against almost everything for a variety of reasons. Everybody complains about traffic. That’s the biggest thing. It’s ‘We’re here, we live here, we don’t need any more stores. We don’t need any more of this or that.’ But a lot of times you get a mixed bag.
Now the Exton mall, we got very good reception to the Exton mall. It’s only a small group of people who are against the redevelopment of the Exton mall.
Does the pushback to Exton Square Mall feel representative of larger trends in the region?
It’s an anomaly for a project like that. When you look at the malls that are in really bad shape, townships are reaching out and want them redeveloped. Montgomery Mall. Plymouth Meeting Mall. Some over in New Jersey. I’m working on the Berkshire Mall up in the Reading/Wyomissing area, and we’re getting tremendous cooperation.
These malls are 1,500-pound gorillas. They killed tax base, millions and millions of dollars that were coming in before. … I can’t give you a logical reason why two supervisors in West Whiteland are putting up this fight. I’m waiting for a judge to make a decision.
We’re pretty optimistic that we’ll be able to go ahead, but it ain’t over until it’s over.
You’ve been quoted as saying ‘indoor malls don’t work,’ but we are seeing some success in King of Prussia and Cherry Hill. What do you think sets them apart from places like Exton mall?
They are the super regional malls, and they do work, and Simon controls many, many of them. They work, but the Plymouth Meeting Mall doesn’t work, the Exton mall doesn’t work, the Willow Grove mall doesn’t work, and many, many more.
There’s a whole long history of why that’s so. There were, in the ’60s and ’70s, department stores we no longer have: Wanamakers, Strawbridge’s, Snellenburg’s, and on and on. … And then you had J.C. Penney and Sears, and it was much easier way back then to get three large anchors. Then the Kmarts came along, and the Walmarts, the big boxes that didn’t have all of the infrastructure. The common operating expenses are much less, because you have all interior halls — heating, air-conditioning, and all that.
Why do you think Main Street at Exton, a mixed-use shopping center that opened in the 2000s, has been such a success?
Because it’s run by the best operator around. That’s my client, Steve Wolfson. It’s had a[n] … anchor for now over 20 years.
In Exton, there was about a 10-year period when there were two supervisors who were against everything. So you didn’t see a great deal more development, but the Main Street at Exton used the new urbanist approach 22, 23 years ago and made huge improvements to the roads. There are great roads there, and it was right in the path of development.
Are there any cases or projects that have shaped Chester County as we know it today?
Exton has always been called the crossroads of Chester County. You’ve also got the Hankin Group that has done all the development in Chester County. … You had very big companies come in — Vanguard — and you had good school systems and relatively decent roads. I think it’s just the continued outward development from Philadelphia.
Many suburbs are facing affordable housing crises. How do you predict municipalities will overcome NIMBYism when it comes to those projects?
It’s a very, very, very difficult problem. There are very few places in the entire country where it’s been solved. New Jersey has the most extensive program in the country to cause the development of affordable housing … that’s really the Mount Laurel doctrine, and where the townships are required not only to make affordable housing available, but also to make it happen.
The market cannot create affordable housing without governmental help. Just can’t be done. It’s not enough land. Regulations are enormous, expensive.
It’s a societal problem that can’t be solved just by municipalities and homebuilders and homebuyers.
Do you think all of the proposed data centers will actually get built?
I’m involved in a couple of data centers. … At first the communities were dead set against more warehouses, particularly up in the Lehigh Valley, and then when this particular community heard ‘data center,’ they were ecstatic — for a whole variety reasons: very little traffic, very few people in schools, high-paying jobs, and now there’s this national swell attacking data centers.
The data centers we’re seeing now, in one fashion or another, are creating their own energy. So my own particular opinion is that it’s just blown up, overblown, over-exaggerated, and we’re going to need all this computing power as we move into the next technology age.