In January, a rendering showed a brand-new restaurant behind a restored porch at the old Gladwyne Market building, with the pharmacy relocating across the street into a freshly renovated salon space. By May, those two businesses had swapped addresses entirely. The pharmacy now sits where the restaurant was supposed to go. The restaurant moved into the space the pharmacy was supposed to take. Everyone who has followed this story since the packed school auditorium meeting in January has heard the official explanation: residents asked for less polish and more "quirk," so the developers scaled back.
That explanation is true, but it is not the whole story. Trace the building-by-building swaps from January through the May revision and a second pattern emerges, one that has nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with where cars can go. Every major reshuffle in this plan has followed the parking, not the porch railings.
What Got Promised in January
The outline was simple enough at first. Design firm Haldon House, led by Andre Golsorkhi and his wife Autumn Oser, presented a revitalization of Gladwyne's two-block commercial core backed by Jeff Yass, described in coverage as Pennsylvania's richest man, and his wife Janine. The team had already spent more than $15 million acquiring properties around the Youngs Ford and Righters Mill intersection. The original plan called for keeping Homeroom and Gladwyne Pharmacy in place while putting a new restaurant into the former Gladwyne Market building, and moving the pharmacy into a newly restored OMG building.
Both of those storefronts had sat empty for months. Gladwyne Market closed last fall after the building sold for $5 million. OMG Hair Salon closed around the same time, and owner Maurice Tenenbaum has said his rent more than doubled, forcing him out. Their closures were the reason speculation about a bigger plan had been building for a year before anyone confirmed it.
Every Swap Has Been About Where Cars Go
Watch the sequence of changes between January and the revised plan presented to the Gladwyne Civic Association on May 18, and the parking constraint shows up at every turn.
- The team wanted a public green between the library and Homeroom. That green would eat into existing parking.
- To replace the lost spaces, the developers proposed a new lot across Youngs Ford Road from Homeroom, at 946 Youngs Ford Road, which would require demolishing a residential property and securing a zoning change from the township, since Gladwyne's code generally discourages street-facing parking.
- Once the pharmacy needed a building with better access to that new lot, it made more sense in the former Gladwyne Market space at 357 Righters Mill Road than in the OMG building across the street.
- That freed the OMG building for the restaurant instead, a swap that had nothing to do with what the restaurant would serve and everything to do with which side of the street had room for a car to park.
- The Walter Durham-designed building that has housed the pharmacy and Homeroom for decades would still come down, replaced by a new barn-style structure sized for an expanded Homeroom.
Each of those moves got framed publicly as a response to community feedback about character and scale. Some of it clearly was. But the underlying logistics problem, fitting a green, a bigger café, a pharmacy, and a restaurant onto a two-block footprint that never had enough parking to begin with, is the constraint that actually dictated which building got which tenant.
The Zoning Line Nobody's Aesthetic Complaint Can Move
Gladwyne's downtown is zoned "neighborhood center," a designation the township put on the books in 2023 that caps commercial buildings at two stories and is currently used only in Gladwyne and Penn Wynne. Most of what Haldon House wants to do, refurbishing existing buildings, cleaning up landscaping, bringing in new tenants, is permitted by right under that code. The developers do not need a hearing to open a restaurant in the old salon space or expand Homeroom's menu.
What they do need approval for is the parking lot. Converting 946 Youngs Ford Road from a house into pavement requires an amendment to the zoning code, which has to clear the board of commissioners. That single approval, not the color of the shutters or the name on the restaurant's door, is the real bottleneck standing between the rendering and the ribbon-cutting. As of this summer, the revised plan had not been formally submitted to Lower Merion Township, and it still faces review from the Historical Architectural Review Board before commissioners get the final vote.
What Residents Are Actually Worried About
The public debate has produced some sharp, specific concerns that go beyond generic nostalgia for small-town charm.
"Because when Perry goes, I go. I get my drugs at Perry's and my gas at Joe's."
That is Ann Schwartz, a fifty-year Gladwyne resident and longtime Gladwyne Montessori teacher, describing her worry that a relocated, resized pharmacy will carry a thinner selection than the one she has relied on for decades. Ron Weiner, a retired tax attorney who lives in the Youngs Ford Place townhomes bordering the proposed green, raised a different concern after learning the developers had quietly purchased his neighbor's house to convert into that parking lot. Architect Ed Lewis, a sixty-year resident who helped found Gladwyne's historic district, has pushed the team to address practical questions before locking in a design.
None of these are complaints about taste. They are complaints about logistics, medication supply, quiet enjoyment of a shared street, and process, exactly the categories a parking-driven redesign would be expected to surface.
What's Confirmed and What's Still Moving
- Homeroom, the café run by chef Henry Morgan in the space that was once Green Bean Coffee at 358 Righters Mill Road, stays in the village and gets a larger, purpose-built home.
- Gladwyne Pharmacy relocates into the former Gladwyne Market building, with renovations already underway there.
- The restaurant, still unnamed as of the latest reporting, goes into the former OMG Salon building. Oser has said the goal is a concept "that only exists in Gladwyne" rather than an import from Philadelphia, aimed at giving the village a second dinner option beyond the members-only Guard House, which the Union League currently operates.
- The village green between the library and Homeroom, including a gazebo and a water feature referencing Gladwyne's equestrian history, is designed but not yet built.
- The parking lot at 946 Youngs Ford Road is proposed but not approved, and remains the single piece of this plan that requires a public vote rather than a building permit.
What to Watch the Rest of This Year
If the zoning amendment for the parking lot moves through HARB and the board of commissioners without significant revision, expect construction timelines for the pharmacy and restaurant spaces to firm up quickly, since those renovations are already permitted by right. If the parking question stalls or draws the kind of turnout the January meeting did, expect another version of this plan before ground actually breaks on the green.
Separately, and unrelated to the Haldon House project, Lower Merion's board of commissioners has voted to move forward on lighting Richie Ashburn Field for the Little League, a small sign that more than one corner of Gladwyne is in motion this year.
For a village this size, the difference between where a restaurant sits and where a pharmacy sits often comes down to something as unglamorous as who can find a parking spot. That is worth knowing the next time a new rendering shows up in the civic association's inbox.
If you are weighing what any of this means for a home near the village center, the Houder Nunez-Strid Team tracks these local shifts closely and is happy to talk through what they could mean for your property. Schedule a Confidential Market Consultation whenever you are ready.
