Chadds Ford Business Association members and guests heard a lot and said a lot about the loop road that still isn’t completed despite it being approved six years ago. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the members said more about the latest obstruction to completing the last leg of the loop. Ultimately, the CFBA is looking for ways to help get the road built.

“We’re a dying community,” said Mary Marines, a Chadds Ford resident and a member of the CFBA Board.

Wayne Megill, also a Chadds Ford Township resident and a developer, was equally strong. “They’re willing to let Chadds Ford rot,” he said. “Chadds Ford will fall.”

The comments came after a presentation about the loop road and a possible solution to getting the road built, a solution that never even made it to the supervisors.

That final leg of the loop around the intersection of Routes 1 and 202 is known as the Hillman Drive Extension. It would connect the two state roads via Hillman Drive through the Chadds Ford Business Campus owned by the Henderson Group. Henderson still wants to complete that loop, but the COVID pandemic stalled the project, and the company is millions of dollars short of what it needs to do the job, according to Henderson’s president and CEO Brian Coyle.

Coyle told the group that his company has $2 million in grants from the state but still needs an additional $5 million to finish the loop. To raise that capital, Henderson proposed constructing and renting a 240-unit, age-restricted apartment building for the 21-plus acre lot the company owns at Route 1 and Brandywine Drive across from Hannum’s Harley Davidson.

“The idea for the 55-plus community was an offshoot of trying to make [the Hillman Drive Extension] a reality,” Coyle said.

But that idea was shot down when the township Planning Commission declined to recommend approval to the Board of Supervisors. The property is in the PBC Zoning District, but residential use is not permitted in a Planned Business Complex District.

“We proposed amending the PBC District text to allow age-restricted living as a conditional use,” Coyle said. “We went to the Planning Commission. We got some feedback from them. At some point, there was a vote taken and they unanimously decided not to recommend the plan to the supervisors.”

Chadds Ford’s zoning ordinance allows for an office building or retail on the site, and a supermarket was approved years ago, though that was never built. But either one could go in without any zoning change.

Coyle said the apartment complex would generate less traffic than shops or an office building, maintain more green space, and have less impervious coverage. Henderson would also build a trail and sidewalks so residents could walk to the Painters Crossing shopping center.

Megill interjected that he’s been dealing with the township as a developer for many years and referred to both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors as being “so focused on not being Concord Township that they’re willing to let Chadds Ford rot.”

He went on to say that people want more convenience, want things such as shops within walking distance.

“If you want more convenience, things have to get denser. This mindset of nothing ever changing is so ingrained in the governance of Chadds Ford Township that we can see it in the village, that the nicest business in the Village of Chadds Ford is a Sunoco Station.”

Megill added that his personal opinion is that “Chadds Ford’s going to really fall hard, in the next seven years, and then maybe we can build it back if there’s anything left.”

And he called Henderson’s apartment plan “…smart development. Build the loop road, put the density in, and let’s create progress. Let’s move forward.”

Both Mary Marines and Joe Lafferty, president of the Chadds Ford Business Association, asked what the CFBA could do to help.

“Where do we go from here,” Marines asked. “How do we reintroduce this? It’s exactly what this community needs. It needs more people. It truly does. How do we start over again?”

“I don’t know,” Coyle said, “but this [discussion] is a start and I’m interested in keeping this going for you who might be supportive of the project.”

He added that it was important for people who are supportive to show up at meetings, talk with other people in the community, including supervisors, and find out what they think about a given proposal, and why they think it might be good or bad. But the idea behind the apartment plan is not dead.

“Not everything gets done on the first go-around,” Coyle said.