The township's commissioners heard a presentation of the 2025 Comprehensive Plan this week.
When they say the plan is “Comprehensive,” boy do they mean it. If you are curious about Upper Dublin’s version of that, buckle in for nearly 4,000 words geared at filling you in thoroughly!
Though its president, Ira Tackel, and one supervisor, Cheryl Knight, were not in attendance, the Upper Dublin Township Board of Commissioners did have its meeting on Sept. 10. The meeting kicked off as the staff shared the 2025 “Comprehensive Plan Update.”
With Tackel unavailable, Vice President and Ward 2 Commissioner Meredith L. Ferleger took over the reins introducing the plan’s presentation.
“For those of you who don’t know, the township has, for a couple of months now, been working through the process of updating the township’s comprehensive plan,” said Ferleger. “It’s been well over a decade since that was done.”
The plan is being compiled by what Ferleger called “the township, the township’s consultants, and a committee of residents.” She said they’ve all been “working really, really hard in getting this plan up to date.”
Tuesday’s meeting was the first presentation to update the township’s commissioners. Ferleger said the board would hear status updates, next steps, and learn how the residents can continue to be involved.
Samantha McLean, AICP, a community planner with Michael Baker International, the consulting firm that Upper Dublin hired to create the updates to the comprehensive plan, said that the presentation would include updates and progress, but also the feedback the plan has received from the community.
McLean said the plan was last updated fully in 2010, with an addendum in 2017, regarding the Greater Fort Washington District.
“So this plan, beyond being required by the state through municipality’s planning code, it is a great opportunity for the township to take a moment to reflect on the plan and update it in three key ways,” said McLean.
The community planner outlined the three categories of updating as:
“We live and work differently than we did back in 2010,” said McLean. “Climate change impacts are being seen more frequently. Household size in Upper Dublin is decreasing. Population is aging. Median Incomes are increasing.”
She said these changes will be addressed in the upcoming plan alterations. She said the team also focused on gathering information and feedback from the township’s own residents.
“The last plan did a great job with [engaging the community], and we wanted to continue to do the same,” McLean said. “We know that not all residents in Upper Dublin today were here in 2010. And, even if they were here and living in 2010, their needs might have changed.”
McLean said that an engagement survey, pop-up events, and an upcoming open house are all ways the planning team has reached out to get public input.
For its third focal point, McLean said a new model of Implementable Comprehensive Plan writing is supported by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Plan Development (DCED).
“The idea is that we want these comprehensive plans to be workable and feasible, and something you as a board can actually use,” said McLean. “In the past, these plans tended to be really hefty, sit on the shelf, collect dust, and just be a laundry list of every kind of recommendation under the sun.”
Instead, she said the new 2025 plan would “look a little different,” as it will focus on three top community priorities. The plan this time around would also include implementation plans for each action suggested. She said the team had been working on the plan throughout the last calendar year.
McLean emphasized that, while they’ve had ongoing feedback with focus groups, committee input, over 1,000 community engagement surveys returned, and an open house in June, the plan will continue to be refined and reviewed.
“This is a draft plan, not a final plan,” she said. “We will have an Open House Oct. 10 prior to the adoption process.” McLean said that anyone wishing to see all materials should view them on the township’s website here.
Todd Poole, the president, founder, and managing principal of 4ward Planning, is also a part of the plan’s consulting team. He said he focused efforts on market analysis in support of the comprehensive plan, along with a fiscal analysis of its goals.
His “Reader’s Digest version” of the studies included a simplified explanation of the area’s market, which includes not only the township itself but also a surrounding area of around 20 minutes outside of the township’s borders.
“Typically, when we’re doing market analysis, our primary market area represents about 70% of the area where live/work/play happens,” said Poole, adding there is also a small share of non-township residents that also come and go through the area. They often view surrounding municipalities to draw comparisons relative to other geographies.
Charts were created to look at Upper Dublin Township, its surrounding 20-minute radius, Montgomery County, and the Philadelphia market to compare the four unique spaces. Poole said that, while Upper Dublin was showing an “annualized change” of population increasing at 0.43%, the highest of the four, it was still relatively low, which he noted was common in Pennsylvania, if not the entire country.
“When you have flat, or even declining, population growth household change, it’s not setting the world on fire for new retail to move in, new restaurants to move in,” said Poole. However, he also noted that, even with unchanging populations, a “need for something new, something better,” can also bring in change of that nature.
Poole called families moving into the area of Upper Dublin trending to be “non-family” households, or those with only one or two persons in the shared living space, typically unrelated by birth, marriage, or blood.
“We see this all over the U.S.; it is the fastest growing,” he said of smaller household sizes. He also said that was the cause for “apartments unit projects explode all over the place.” Small townhouses and bungalows are also on the rise for similar reasons.
Projected change for the township over the coming four years was estimated to be around 0.72%, which is “moderate” in townships of Upper Dublin’s size. He said a trend many communities are seeing “growth” in occur due to “Grey Divorce.” As older couples divorce, a household once of two, married people, now becomes two, separate households, meaning a growth of one in terms of counting such figures.
“In particular we see this in the more affluent areas of the country,” said Poole.
Commissioner of Ward 1, Harm J. Scherpbier, questioned the anticipated growth. He said that, counting only the apartment complexes currently being built in the Greater Fort Washington area “plus the Goodman Property,” there are over 1,000 units anticipating tenants in the Upper Dublin area.
Poole’s study said an additional 400 households are expected to be added by 2028 in his estimated growth figures.
“That’s about a thousand right now, that I can think of right here, so I think your underestimating that estimated growth for the next five years,” said Scherpbier. “If this is what you’re basing the plan on, I think you are understating expected growth for our township in the next five years.”
Poole said that the metrics were calculated on information made available “at the time,” so may skew “slightly below, but not entirely below” estimates. He said much of the project growth in that arena of apartment complexes has occurred in the past 12 to 24 months, so it may not be entirely captured in the estimates. He called estimates “dynamic,” and always changing, even as plans are being made.
In addition to Grey Divorce, Poole credited decreasing fertility rates as another contributor to lowering household sizes. Today’s married couples are opting not to have children, or having fewer children, than previous generations, too, he said.
He said that Upper Dublin’s population is also aging, and that the older, 55+ segment is growing, as it is common in many affluent areas, because it is an expensive space to live in, meaning more financially “established” residents tend to settle there. Poole called Upper Dublin “very affluent” with Upper Dublin residents’ average incomes being “north of $155,000.”
Poole also said the study showed that, corresponding with the affluence of Upper Dublin, most of the township’s residents are well-educated, attributing to higher incomes but also a reason behind companies requiring highly educated, “high knowledge, white-collar workers,” are “clustering” in areas like the Office Park.
When it comes to office space rental, Poole said the Greater Philadelphia Market shares the issue of increasingly vacant offices, remaining unrented. He said he anticipates some being converted into housing in the future, or those that cannot, being demolished.
Upper Dublin, which is placed in a commercially bundled area called a “submarket” with Blue Bell and Plymouth Meeting, has an office vacancy of a “very high vacancy rate of 27.3%” according to fourth quarter reports from 2023.
Pulling even more recent data from August 2024, Poole said that Upper Dublin Township itself has a relatively low vacancy rate among its office products, measured at “about 11.3%” vacancy overall, but the office park proper ranking around 14% vacant, with light-industrial office spaces only being around 8.3% vacant.
Poole said they spoke with area owners who rent such spaces out.
“They feel that the office environment here will remain strong, and they also expressed concern that, if there is going to be redevelopment, that it be kept to a minimum give that you have a relatively healthy office market,” he said.
When it comes to the township’s real estate, nearly 75% of the homes are owner-occupied, which is “high” according to Poole. He said having a good balance of available housing is ideal. If you want to know how affordable those homes may be, Poole reminded the commissioners “you’re an affluent community, so it stands to reason that you have a relatively high median home value.”
According to the metrics used by Poole, housing shouldn’t cost more than 3.1 times your monthly income, comparing housing value to median income. Upper Dublin is labeled as “right at that threshold,” with a median home value in 2023 at $481,854.
“You could still use some affordably priced housing in your community,” he said. Poole said “middle income housing” is ideal, which is that affordable by “police, fire, postal workers, municipal workers … we’re not talking Section-8 housing. We’re talking about housing that is affordable for a spectrum of workers.”
Township Manager Kurt Ferguson reminded the board too, that the draft presentation does not mean a final comprehensive plan.
“This isn’t ‘it,’” he said. “It’s meant to get you all up to speed on where we are at this point.”
McLean said that Poole’s information on the market analysis was largely used to influence the Comprehensive Plan’s first section, describing “Where is Upper Dublin Today.”
“This is how we got here, what Upper Dublin is, and how the community’s assets and challenges that were identified, the assets and challenges that you want to build upon, and the challenges you want to mitigate going forward,” said McLean. “That [Poole’s study] was the foundation.”
McLean added that it is always important to reflect on the past before planning for the future.
“We don’t want to launch into tomorrow before understanding what’s going on today,” she said.
She said, with that in mind, the “bulk of the plan” is about the township’s “tomorrow.” McLean added that the plan for tomorrow “starts with a vision.”
The team working on the Comprehensive Plan focused on goals for tomorrow, but also wanted to be clear about its groundwork. They began with a Vision, created Guiding Principles, and noted areas of Focus. From there, the team was able to establish clear goals and then the actions required to reach them.
These components then combine for an implementation structure, which will guide future leaders of the township through the matters that residents’ care about most. Lastly, a section on the community’s land use is included “which kind of puts the goals” to a map, stenciling out the geography of Upper Dublin.
McLean said the township’s residents frequently mentioned “connections” when constructing a Vision Statement, meaning a combination of physical spaces to connect neighborhoods, transportation connections to ease movement, and community connections, bonding a township together in a unified way. Additionally, environmental concerns were top of mind for many residents, as were “smart development” aimed at preserving open space and redeveloping where possible.
When it came to principals, McLean said the team narrowed it down to three:
From there, the team broke the initiatives into goals. First up was Accessible Communities. That included:
Each breakdown of goals then has a corresponding implementation table, which includes rows for each “action.” Each action then has a column for milestones, lead actors/partners, funding sources, timeframe, and output for the unique row.
Additionally, a “narrative” elaborates on the actions, to provide specific details, areas of concerns, how to handle them, and so on. The plan was simply so vast, time constraints were not able to be read in full for the commissioners.
Lastly, the Future Land Use map puts the plan into a geographical order, highlighting areas this may take place.
From there, Poole also completed a fiscal analysis, which outlines how such changes will financially impact Upper Dublin. From the service costs of implementation to the revenues potentially to be added after completion, the financial aspects were summarized by Poole’s review.
He said that the fiscal analysis takes a look at the population multipliers, which take into consideration new housing and multiplying the units by the number of likely occupants. Utilizing Census data, planners can then estimate future growth.
Poole also explained that, when calculating “cost per” in terms of students or residents within a population, many simply take the total budget, divide it by the number of persons, and think that is an accurate cost per person. However, “that is wrong,” according to Poole.
He said, for example, if one family of four moved today into Upper Dublin, the township would not immediately add a set dollar figure to its budget to cover the needs of four people. Instead, economies of scale must be viewed, which take into consideration realistic capacity limitations.
His calculations do not take things like salaries, health insurance, retirements of each employee into consideration, as a single addition does not force the township to pay much more in debt service. With large groups or change overtime, of course figures will rise, but minor change does not involve the magnitude of a cost per model.
Via Poole’s analysis, two hypothetical prospective projects were used as examples. A large scale, mixed-use space would add another 413 residents, of which 48 being public school children, and 184 full- and part-time employees. The living spaces would include retail along the ground floor units, with studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments above them.
Figures of such a development would include a first-year stabilized revenue of $529,679 for the township and $2.6 million for the school district. The scenario would not anticipate a need for any future educational, public works, nor police employees. The same concept would bring a cost of $95,373 to the township, while the school district would see an additional $154,360 in costs.
In the first stabilized year, this would mean a net of $434,305 for the township, and a net of $2,473,528 for the school district, with a “first stabilizing year” meaning “at the point where the development is at its stabilized occupancy.” Poole said that is often in the second year.
In a second, strictly multi-family scenario (with no commercial businesses included), similar space would be used, around eight to 12 acres, with three- to four-story rental unit buildings. That would result in 616 additional residents, of which 98 would be public school-aged children.
The net gains for the township in the second scenario, no police or public work employees would need to be added, but a potential of six school district employees would be. After factoring service costs, a $707,819 township revenue would see a cost need of $117,040, meaning a net gain of $590,779 for Upper Dublin Township, while the school district would bring in $3,471,900 in revenue, sustain around $795,153 in cost, resulting in a positive net fiscal impact of $2,676,747.
Two additional, smaller scale projected additions were flushed out in the printed copy of the plan, but not reviewed for time constraints in the presentation.
Ferguson said that he appreciated the deeply detailed presentation provided, as it was
“Residents do bring to you all [commissioners] the impact of the decisions on what the school district would be, and I think that warrants some consideration to help put these things in context,” said Ferguson of figures and calculations used in the plans.
“I believe a plan framed in such a way is the next-level, cutting-edge comp plan that I think we desire to have here in the township,” said the manager.
McLean said the plan’s next steps will be a published version of the plan, due out in the coming week and be posted to the township’s website. It will also soon have its own site. A township-wide Open House will be held on Oct. 10, from 6 to 8 p.m. with a presentation beginning at 6:30 p.m. There will be “stations to visit” prior presenters to outlining some of the details of the plan.
“We really want to hear from the community,” she said, noting that residents often have great ideas when it comes to potential partnerships and funding sources for the implementation plans.
Once information is gathered at the open house, the steering committee will review by mid-October, with a finalized draft plan, which will then be shared again. The first step of the adoption process will be a planning commission public meeting, recommendations heading to the commissioners.
The commissioners will then open a public comment period, with 45 additional days for residents to speak up about the final proposed plan. An online form, email, mail, and in-person opportunities will be available during that time.
A public hearing, ideally near January, will be the final step in adopting the plan.
During a time for questions, Scherpbier noted that firstly, he’d like to see education brought into the Vision Statement, as the Upper Dublin Township and School District share both a geography and people. Secondly, he noted that 45% of Upper Dublin’s renters are paying more than 30% of their salary toward rent. With Montgomery County’s goal to get to that under one-third marker, he said planning for affordable housing must be more detailed in the plan’s outline.
Ferleger said she fears some of the outlined goals are unachievable for the township.
“I think the goals are great, in all of the plans that this board has adopted,” she said. “But I have real concerns with some of the goals that I’ve seen here.”
While she agreed that adding benchmarks, per Scherpbier’s suggestion, would be ideal, it still would not allow goals to be met due to the “economic realities of the township itself,” as many factors may be beyond the board’s control.
Ward 3 Commissioner Gary V. Scarpello echoed the concerns, asking “How are we actually going do it?”
“It is an absolute necessity to have starter homes and rejuvenate and build in Upper Dublin a wide selection of economic abilities,” he said. “It helps to strengthen the community.”
McLean said having the goal is a first step, which is outlined in the plan. Zoning codes, incentivizing (not mandating) actions with changes like parking reductions and making existing housing “work better” for residents.
Ferguson said there are also tax incentive programs that would not cost residents any money but could help to meet such goals.
“There are measures that would allow developers to build with one of the incentives being that the taxing bodies would get together, keep the tax as it is, and phase in the increased assessment that would happen ultimately with that development,” said Ferguson, who noted this type of concept would also involve coordination with the school district. “I’ve seen it work in areas of development, in Pittsburgh along the rivers, housing with commercial development. I’m not saying that that is a cure-all, but if the township wants to target that, there are ways that we could help incentivize besides a density credit, as well, that could allow for maybe a project to move forward if it makes financial sense.”
Ferleger said that there is not much in Upper Dublin that can be developed, in terms of open land. However, redevelopment of preexisting complexes could be on the table, not to mention potential future demolition or rebuilding projects, Ferguson noted. McLean called it “under-utilized land,” and said Upper Dublin is around 96% built-out. However, it would not mean that currently poorly used land could not be redesigned for better use.
Alison Giles, Upper Dublin Township Zoning Officer and Planning Coordinator added that many residents of the township request “ADUs” or “accessory dwelling units” sometimes referred to as an “in-law suite.” However, she said, they say the township’s current process is “too arduous” as it stands today.
“I see a lot of requests for ADUs,” said Giles. “We have an older family member living in the smaller unit, with the family living in the larger unit. So you are providing housing for two households and at a lower cost to both.”
Giles called the demand for ADUs “pent up,” with many residents unwilling to go through the process. She added such allowances for ADUs could go a long way in solving the township’s accessible housing goals.
Ward 6 Commissioner Alyson J. Fritzges suggested adding wording into the comprehensive plan that provides flexibility to the commissioners.
“I think we have to be realistic that, I think we put this in here, but we put something in the comprehensive plan,” said Fritzges, who noted a bigger fear would be having land development dry up because developers cannot accommodate rigid zoning regulations. “We have to have something that addresses the fact so that, us as a board, we can say we specifically put in there that if this doesn’t work, we have the ability to …”
She said, while saying it is a goal they have is positive, the plan would still be allowing the board to do “what they need to do” with language of such added in. She also worried if the timeline was realistic for the homestretch of approving a final plan.
“In terms of the timeline, we are flexible,” said McLean. “We don’t want to rush something just to have it out.” She also added that, once a final plan is to planning commission, the 45-day public comment period begins, and should any “substantial revisions” be required, the plan has to go back to the planning commission and restart the process.
For a full slide deck of the presentation, visit the link here. The public is invited to attend the public open house at the Upper Dublin Library, 520 Virginia Dr., Fort Washington, on Oct. 10 from 6 to 8 p.m. Questions can be emailed to Giles at agiles@upperdublin.net or you may call her at 215-643-1600, ext. 3213.
