East King Work Planned For October

Four-thousand volt power lines were once enough to run the small municipality of Malvern, but the East King Street redevelopment project will require installation of higher-capacity equipment.

PECO recently nixed plans to bury power lines under the north side of East King Street, saying the project would require more juice than the borough's current 4,000-volt grid can handle. The new 34,000-volt lines will have to be strung along utility poles. Those poles will be significantly taller than the current ones they'll replace, according to borough manager Sandra Kelley.

At its meeting Tuesday night, Malvern Borough Council approved a revised conditional use application that reflected the changes to the electrical grid. That means the plan to construct nearly 200 rental units and a strip of street-level retail space is moving along on schedule, according to the developer.

Eli Kahn, of 237 King Partners LLC, said he and his partners hope to receive the final land development approval in September and have all the paperwork in order for a late-October start to construction.

"Groundbreaking will probably consist of demolition," Kahn said. "We'll invite borough officials and whomever, and start the bulldozers."

The first tenants could move in 20 months after construction begins.

The project will include 400 new parking spaces, many of them underground, and 24,000 feet of retail space. Kahn said he's been in talks with retailers, but that more progress needs to be made before any of them commit to move in.

"We've got to get it going, so retailers see that it’s real," Kahn said.

The construction will take place on East King Street between and , wrapping around two twin homes whose owners refused to sell.

Kahn said that working around those remaining lots would not be a major impediment to the development.

"It is what it is. Malvern got developed over a 300-year period. Nobody had a perfect situation, and neither will we," he said.