From the perspective of a city planner, locating the Lancaster County Prison at the Kreider Farm site gives me tremendous pause and brings images of opportunities lost.
The 78-acre site is located next to Greenwood Cemetery just south of Lancaster city on a peninsula surrounded by the Conestoga River on three sides.
The Conestoga River is perhaps the greatest environmental and economic asset of the Lancaster metropolitan region, envisioned the right way. Not recognizing this value comes at our peril. The long-term success of the region depends upon using our land resources in ways that are both strategic and inspirational, in ways that incentivize people to both stay here over time and come here anew, by choice.
âThey re like, âOh, thereâs a farm in there?ââ Kreider said.
A proposal to build a new 1,200-bed county prison on the sprawling property, next to Greenwood Cemetery and just south of the city, is the latest attempt to develop this well-situated land where others, at least over the past 50 years, failed.
It remains an open question why builders never got to this land just a seven-minute drive from Penn Square and zoned for residential use. That the land is tucked away behind a cemetery, out of sight and out of mind, may have played a role. But interviews with Kreider, local officials and real estate professionals suggest a number of factors, including limited road access, the prohibitive cost of building infrastructure like sewers, the quality of the soil for large-scale construction and, at least for the past 15 years, a family reluctant to sell.
The Lancaster Township nursing home facility long known as Conestoga View, site of the sixth-highest number of COVID-19 deaths among nursing facilities in the state, has a new owner.
A spokesperson for Lakewood, New Jersey-based Imperial Healthcare Group, LLC, confirmed Tuesday the company has bought the nursing home and will keep the facilityâs administration in place, but declined to provide any further details.
The purchase price was $29.8 million, according to property records filed last week.
The 446-bed nursing home also appears to have a new name. A person answering the phone at the nursing home facility Tuesday said the site had recently changed its name to Lancaster Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The Conestoga View website was down on Tuesday.
With a hardhat atop his head, Kevin Erb stood at a project site Friday afternoon, gesturing to show off a field of newly planted greenery covering thousands of square feet in the middle of Lancaster city.
But the project engineer wasnât leading a tour of the newest city park or community garden. In fact, he wasnât even on the ground.
Erb was one of several construction officials to climb a ladder to the roof of a new fire station under construction on West King Street, where work is likely to wrap up by the end of the month.
The departure of Lancaster County Prison from the east side of Lancaster city may open a rare redevelopment possibility, community and city leaders said Wednesday, but one that comes with sizable challenges.
âObviously this is an exciting opportunity for the city and especially the east side neighborhood. Here is Lancasterâs chance to transform a critical area, historically associated with pain, into a positive asset and extension of this neighborhood,â said Marshall Snively, president of the Lancaster City Alliance, a nonprofit that promotes the cityâs growth and stability.
The potential redevelopment opportunity surfaced Wednesday when the Lancaster County Commissioners announced they hope to move the 625 E. King St. prison to a 75-acre farm in Lancaster Township along the Conestoga River. They have not discussed what would become of the old prison site should the move come to fruition.