Imagine it's 2020.

You take a stroll through the city's extreme northwest, north of Harrisburg Avenue, beginning near the center of the old Armstrong World Industries site.

What do you see?

Well, here are Franklin & Marshall College's North Campus baseball field and two multi-purpose fields.

You can walk all the way around the playing fields on a public trail.

Walking east, you encounter F&M's new football stadium and track.

Continuing east, you cross a tree-lined boulevard dividing the North Campus from Lancaster General's new, enlarged College of Nursing & Health Sciences.

Next to that college, you may find a medical college for young physicians.

Now walk south along the boulevard, which extends to the parking lot at Clipper Magazine Stadium.

Just north of Harrisburg Avenue you  pass through an elongated 30-acre tract filled with new mixed-use buildings featuring retail stores and offices for F&M and Lancaster General.

All of this area is tied together by a street grid that had been missing for a century.

You have just passed through the most extensive development project in Lancaster City's history — 77 acres, or approximately 13 city blocks, of new construction.

But you don't have to wait until 2020 to see much of this grand plan. Plots for the playing fields and Lancaster General's college buildings are seeded. The boulevard is paved. Trees are planted. Light fixtures are in place.

The Northwest Gateway Project is half finished.

Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster General and Norfolk Southern Railroad, project partners, are  at the midpoint of an $80 million plan to transform old industrial and railroad brownfields into a dynamic segment of the city.

By 2020, the old Armstrong site and Norfolk Southern's freight rail yard will be replaced by two bustling campuses and a variety of stores, offices and student housing.

"This is a major brownfields project," says Keith Orris, the F&M vice president who is coordinating the work. "We're putting this area back into constructive use in a way that will remake nearly a quarter of the City of Lancaster."

The project's first part — called the Armstrong phase and expected to cost  about $33.5 million — will be complete by the end of this year.

It has included cleaning up the old Armstrong site and replacing it with F&M's playing fields and a site to be developed by Lancaster General for educational purposes and research.

The second part — called the Norfolk Southern phase and expected to cost about $46 million — has begun with the cleanup of a former municipal dump along the Little Conestoga Creek  in Manheim Township, south of Harrisburg Avenue and to the west of the Northwest Gateway area.

When the dump is cleaned out and refilled with clean, compacted soil, Norfolk Southern will build a new rail yard on top of it.

The railroad will reconstruct its current yard west of Dillerville Road and remove its old yard along Harrisburg Avenue, freeing up 30 acres east of Dillerville Road. Then streets long interrupted by the railroad can be extended through the area.

Sponsors say all of this work should be done by the end of 2012. Then F&M and Lancaster General will begin building in the 30-acre tract and, a decade or so from now, the transformation of northwest Lancaster will be complete.

"I don't know of anything else that has this impact on the city," comments Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray. "For these two major players in the city to take it upon themselves to do this, when Lancaster General could have gone outside the city, is to be lauded."

Let's take a closer look at the project's two phases.


The Armstrong phase


About two decades ago, F&M officials  began transforming the former Posey Iron Works and other industrial properties along Harrisburg Avenue into its North Campus.

The Alumni Sports & Fitness Center, College Square, College Row and other college buildings followed.

Five years ago, Lancaster General joined in the plan. As F&M continued to develop to the north and east,  Lancaster General proposed to develop north and west.

The two operations decided to revitalize everything to the north of Harrisburg Avenue, turning the area into an "eds and meds" educational center for as many as 4,000 students and creating additional retail, office and residential space.

They would spend nearly $80 million in public and private funds creating the infrastructure for this plan. Then they would spend tens of millions more of their own money constructing college,  medical and other buildings.

It's an understatement to say that the first part of the project is student-driven. F&M has about 2,100 students.  The medical organization has about 700 students in nursing and allied health sciences, but anticipates expanding that number to 1,800.

"We're looking at almost doubling the size of the post-secondary college education students and faculty" in the so-called "eds and meds" area, says Orris. "You go to most academic communities, whether in small towns or large cities, they bring a real dynamism. It's 24/7 activity. It's culture. It's education. It's higher-paying jobs."

Standing in the way of creating a campus district for adjoining colleges was the 47-acre Armstrong World Industries property. So the first job was to remove the industrial buildings and clean up ground pollution. All of that is done.

On 30 acres of now clean, level space, F&M is constructing new athletic fields and a walking path for the public.  Eventually, the college will build a new football stadium as a replacement for the current stadium on College Avenue

Lancaster General is considering moving its College of Nursing & Health Sciences from Lemon and Lime streets to the remaining 17 acres of the former Armstrong site.

"We can't meet the demand we currently have for individuals who want to enter nursing and other allied health programs," explains Lancaster General spokesman John Lines. "We need more space."

Lines says the medical organization is still determining the precise location for its buildings, which may include medical research facilities, but they will be near Liberty Place.

In addition, Lancaster General is considering recommendations of a study commission convened "to identify our community's physician needs over the next decade and what options are best to ensure a sufficient number of excellent, well-trained doctors in the Lancaster community," Lines says.

A medical college is a possibility, according to a source close to the study.

The Thomas M. Armstrong Boulevard, an expansive highway split by a grassy median, divides F&M's playing fields from Lancaster General's future campus.

Named for Armstrong's corporate founder, the boulevard leads from the Clipper Magazine Stadium parking lot to Liberty Street and on to Lincoln Avenue.

Lined with elaborate light fixtures and spring saplings, it looks like a major four-lane highway. When angled parking for student vehicles is introduced on both sides, however, it will carry only two lanes of traffic.

All the groundwork for this phase  is projected to be complete by the end of this year. Orris says the project is "slightly ahead of schedule and slightly under budget."

F&M, Lancaster General and Armstrong each contributed $6 million to the first phase. The rest of the $33.5 million estimated price tag has come from local and state sources.


The Norfolk Southern phase


The second part of the project — the Norfolk Southern phase — is more ambitious, more expensive and more controversial.

It requires cleaning out a former municipal  dump in Manheim Township  — not far from upscale homes in the School Lane Hills and Barrcrest neighborhoods — and building a new Norfolk Southern freight rail yard on top of it.

F&M will swap that land for the 30-acre Norfolk Southern  freight yard in the city's northwest. That yard will be abandoned and the land will be remediated. Streets will be reconnected through the area.

College Avenue, for example, will be extended to Liberty Street. Sponsors hope to connect Charlotte and Ross streets and possibly other streets.

All of this work is expected to be completed by the end of 2012.

Phase two will cost an estimated $46 million, with F&M and Lancaster General each contributing another $6 million and Norfolk Southern providing $2 million.

The other $32 million will come from state and federal sources.

In addition to the $14 million in private money, the project has only $17 million in committed government funds. But sponsors have applied for the rest and hope that federal stimulus money might be tapped to fill any holes in the budget.

New funding has been a shifting target. For example, PennDOT turned down an application for $9,300,000 last November. But project sponsors  succeeded in getting the county's Transportation Coordinating Committee to allocate $4 million to replace part of the loss last week.

The largest portion of the $46 million — $27 million — will be used by Norfolk Southern to construct the new rail yard and disassemble the present yard.

Then F&M and Lancaster General will begin  building along the 30-acre swath. Some first floors of these buildings will contain new retail stores. Upper stories will contain college, hospital and other offices and some student housing.

This building project — which will include F&M's football stadium and Lancaster General's  academic buildings — might be termed a third phase. It will be financed entirely by private college and medical institution funds and may not be completed for a decade, according to F&M's Orris.

Then Lancaster's northwest will be "built out," with a 21st century mixture of educational, medical, retail and other enterprises replacing what once was a sprawling industrial and railroad district.

This project will far exceed in size and cost the last major multi-block redevelopment project in the city — the construction in the 1960s and '70s of Lancaster Square, which has since been largely torn down.

"This project is much more thoughtful and a lot less reactionary than Lancaster Square," comments Mayor Gray. "It will put the streets back together and create for-profit buildings and some housing. I can't see a downside to it."

RELATED ARTICLES:
• Turning an old dump into a new rail yard

• Neighbors' concerns: How valid are they?


Staff writer Jack Brubaker can be reached at jbrubaker@LNPnews.com or 291-8781.