Letters: Deeds, Not Words

Posted 10/28/21

Over three years ago, The Goldenberg Group purchased the property at 100-102 East Mermaid Lane. The property is zoned RSA-1, single family and semi-detached residences with prescribed setbacks, minimum property area, and 38’ height restriction. The zoning of the property was no secret to TGG. So why did they spend $4 million on property not zoned for their planned development?

I am asking you to judge The Goldenberg Group’s Mermaid Lane development not by their words, but by their deeds. In meetings with neighbors, TGG has mouthed comforting phrases like “heritage …

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Letters: Deeds, Not Words

Posted

Over three years ago, The Goldenberg Group purchased the property at 100-102 East Mermaid Lane. The property is zoned RSA-1, single family and semi-detached residences with prescribed setbacks, minimum property area, and 38’ height restriction. The zoning of the property was no secret to TGG. So why did they spend $4 million on property not zoned for their planned development?

I am asking you to judge The Goldenberg Group’s Mermaid Lane development not by their words, but by their deeds. In meetings with neighbors, TGG has mouthed comforting phrases like “heritage trees,” “honoring the character of the neighborhood,” and other bland marketing catch phrases intended to create a false sense of shared values. But TGG’s deeds bluntly and repeatedly contradict their own words.

What they have concretely proposed (pun intended) is a six-story, 250+ unit block that belongs somewhere other than in a neighborhood of single-family homes and lush greenery. In a meeting, TGG declared to neighbors that they “…had no plans to demolish the original Meeting House.” This was found to be untrue the very next day, with an online search of their demolition permit for the Meeting House. Their words are clearly not to be believed.

But don’t believe me, either. As you see and hear the issue of the 100-102 East Mermaid Lane property develop, learn what TGG has actually done here and elsewhere. You can search online and get the story of neighbors’ feelings about the development on Bethlehem Pike in Ambler for example, and judge if you want to entrust the future of your home — Chestnut Hill—to the Goldenberg Group. Spoiler alert…TGG, who spoke of valuing “heritage trees,” didn’t leave one twig standing on the beautiful grounds of the Ambler property. Deeds, not words.

Stephen Megargee

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