As suburban downtowns go, Paoli's is about as low-rise as they get.
From the Burger King to the tattoo parlor to the shoe shop, the businesses that line Lancaster Pike top out at two stories, or roughly 30 feet. The only structure requiring a tilt of the head is the veterans memorial flagpole, a dizzying 60 feet, give or take.
But the squat skyline of this Main Line village could soon get a lift - a silhouette that to some eyes would look excitingly urban, and to others horrifyingly urban.
New ordinances are nearing adoption that would permit buildings as high as 70 feet in the shopping district. Granted, that's 905 feet shorter than the freshly topped Comcast Center in Center City. But five stories is plenty tall enough to cast a shadow of discord over a little town.
After a cup of coffee at Starbucks last week, shopper Barbara Zitin mulled the prospect of behemoths down the block and concluded: "I don't think I'd like that."
Nobody has to like it, but across the region, small-town habitues will surely have to get used to it. For older communities whose economic fortunes long ago went flat - and there are dozens of them - the gathering consensus among revitalization experts and local officials is that the way to salvation is up.
Height lures developers with money to invest and profit to make. It increases the property-tax base. And it "brings more people," said Mayor Jim Maley of Collingswood. "[That] is what's necessary to give the downtowns a fighting chance."
Under a redevelopment plan centered on the PATCO train station, buildings as tall as 12 stories could be lording over Maley's Camden County borough. In Ardmore on the Main Line, new height standards allow seven floors, plus a "penthouse." In Willow Grove, the max is six.
If Phoenixville's Borough Council gives the nod, two 10-story condominium towers will rise along the main drag, near where Phoenix Iron Works once made columns for faraway skyscrapers.
Tall buildings already do poke the skies over suburbia. But generally, they have kept a respectable distance from the Rockwellian Main Streets that are Mom and Pop's last stand. In Conshohocken, for instance, the office towers (up to 16 stories) that brought about its renaissance are massed by the Schuylkill's banks - an addendum to the tiny borough on the hill with a July Fourth Soap Box Derby.
