EASTON, Pa. – The Easton Planning Commission granted preliminary land development plan approval for a brownfield site Wednesday night at city hall.
The proposal involves the former Easton Iron and Metal site located 1111-1113 Bushkill Drive. The site previously served as a junkyard before being utilized as a metal reclamation center. Vacant since 2015, the site was acquired by Easton’s redevelopment authority in 2019 and then turned over to the city itself four years later.
On Oct. 9, 2024, Easton City Council approved a deal to sell the property to Foundry Development Group LLC for $1.5 million. The contract stipulated Easton would provide Foundry with $1.4 million in financing and certain due diligence provisions. The plan would culminate with VM Development Group’s construction of housing and commercial space.
Wednesday night’s agenda featured two different items for the same project, which will be constructed in phases. The first phase will commence on the south side and will feature one, four-story building featuring 21 studio units, 66 one-bedroom units and 13 two-bedroom dwellings, for 100 total units. The building’s first floor will feature 1,165 square feet of retail and office space. There will also be 117 off-site parking spaces.
The second item featured a seven-story mixed-use building located at 1111-1113 Bushkill Drive. That building will feature 32 studios, 99 one-bedroom apartments and 28 two-bedroom apartments, for 159 units. The building’s first floor consists of 1,380 square feet of retail and office space. There will also be 198 on-site parking spaces. A total of 77 of those spaces will be located underneath the building’s first level.
“This project has been a long time coming,” Gretchen Rice, a partner with VM Development Group, said.
One provision in the agreement involved an environmental contingency period which requires Foundry to perform “certain environmental work” at the property. Such work was based, in part, on an environmental cleanup plan created by the City of Easton. Should “unforeseen work” materialize, the contract states the two sides will address that “in coordination.”
“This is a brownfield site that we’ve been working on for probably three or four years,” Mayor Sal Panto said the night the deal was approved. “…The site has some really nasty things buried in it. It was a junkyard long before it was a metal reclamation center…The developer will be putting apartments there with 10,000 square feet of commercial space.”
The city also helped Foundry in securing funding from county, state and federal agencies to assist in the design and undertaking of the environmental work. To that end, Easton paid up to $5,000 to have a consultant prepare applications on behalf of the purchaser to the Pennsylvania Industrial Site Reuse Program and the Northampton County EPA Revolving Loan Fund. This was done to help Foundry obtain financing for site remediation costs.