September 29, 2015
Contributed Art/Courtesy of JBGR Retail
Renderings of the future King of Prussia Town Center.
Twenty acres in King of Prussia that used to be part of a golf course are being transformed into what developers hope will be a modern-day town square.
Construction is ramping up on the King of Prussia Town Center, a 260,000-square-foot retail center set to open in the fall of 2016. Located at the nexus of three major highways – the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Route 202 and Route 422 – the project has already signed leases for 70 percent of available space, including LA Fitness, Nordstrom Rack and Xfinity.
But what’s the point of spending more than $100 million on retail development in a town that already boasts the second-largest shopping center in America? Isn’t the King of Prussia Mall enough?
“On the contrary, we’re going to complement what the mall offers … What we’re offering is a different experience,” said Tom Sebastian, an executive at JBGR Retail, the Maryland-based development firm behind the Town Center project.
In his mind, folks will visit the Town Center not just to shop, but also to eat and mingle. The space will be centered around a strollable, outdoor Main Street and a plaza dubbed the Town Square that will feature green space, fountains and a pavilion for live entertainment.
“It’s going to be an active space,” said Sebastian.
Free movies at night, yoga in the morning and farmers markets on the weekend are some of his ideas on how to use the space.
Plus, of course there’s food: five full-service restaurants with patio seating, including Fogo de Chao and the craft-beer-centric Old Town Pour House, plus fast-casual chains like Honeygrow.
It’s part of the larger transformation of this affluent community, representing how suburban consumers have adopted city-dwellers’ tastes. The Town Center will be part of the Village at Valley Forge, a massive, mixed-use development that has already seen the construction of a new Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia facility and Wegman’s Supermarket.
JBGR’s $100-million-plus investment seems like peanuts compared to the $1.2 billion being poured into the Village development, led by Berwyn-based Realen Properties.
"As other developers build residential buildings on the rest of the land, we’re going to create the place that the residents want to live near,” said Sebastian.
