One word kept coming up during a review of a planned upscale apartment complex at Sycamore Street and Richboro Road. And that word was “density.”

BET Investments, a real estate management and development company owned by Bruce Toll, attended the August planning commission meeting seeking input on its plans to redevelop the Corners at Newtown Place with a 120-unit luxury apartment building with an interior parking garage.

The plan calls for the demolition of a series of stand-alone commercial and retail buildings on Cambridge Lane and the construction of a three-story apartment building that would wrap around a multi-level interior parking garage and have direct access to a common hall and a private, outdoor pool and recreation area.

"We have a project that would require multiple variances from the zoning hearing board. Instead of seeking those variances, we crafted an amendment that we believe addresses the items of zoning relief that would be required for the project and would allow us to proceed in some fashion," land use attorney Matt McHugh told the planners.

According to the draft ordinance submitted by BET, a new use - Parking Core Apartment Building - would be added to the zoning ordinance.

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Concerned [Media, PA] community members say Media runs the risk of losing its hometown flavor. They say suburban sprawl and unchecked development is upending green space, causing housing prices to skyrocket, and making the borough less racially and economically diverse.

Areas of tree cover and homes of varying sizes have been replaced with even larger luxury homes, said resident Julie Smith, who has a background in environmental science. Local wildlife species have been displaced, she said, and the lack of trees and greenery is causing flooding to intensify and leading to the formation of sinkholes — her neighbor fell into one a few months ago, she added.

“I can’t remember how many … square acres of open space is left, and every last bit of it is vulnerable at the moment because of developers coming in. And they seem to be very well represented at council meetings, and very little seems to be able to be done to challenge them to help preserve the integrity of our town,” Smith said.

What About Affordable Housing?

Some residents of Media say the housing market there is far from affordable. According to the real estate website Zillow, the typical home price in the Media area is more than $476,000 — an 11.1% increase since 2020, as home prices surge throughout the Philadelphia region. In 2012, the typical home value was $305,000.

U.S. Census data from 2000 showed that 14% of Media’s residents were Black. By 2010, that number had plummeted to just 10%. As of 2019, only 6% of the population was Black.

Tamara Graham comes from a long line of Black residents of Media. “We’ve always been here. And we’ve always done pretty much our own thing. We’ve been generally self-sufficient through segregation — through the whole nine yards of it,” Graham said.

Although she grew up walking near creeks and hiking along the neighborhood trails, she said those opportunities are shrinking for her children’s generation.

Though it may not be the sole reason, Graham believes overdevelopment and green space loss is contributing to the lack of affordable housing and the decreasing Black population in Media.

Borough Council President Hall said he is sympathetic to the concerns about housing affordability…“One thing that I’ve learned about local government is this: It’s designed to go slowly. It doesn’t go slowly because we want it to go slowly. It goes slowly because we need input from our residents. It’s designed to get input from residents in a way that will maximize people’s opportunity to speak with us,” Hall said.

But some believe elected leaders are sitting on their hands as the pressures of overdevelopment squeeze the community.