Station Park Eyes Flood-Prevention Upgrades

Since spending $9 million late last year to move Hatboro's 40-acre office complex Station Park from foreclosure onward, new owner Alliance Partners has now set its sights on extensive flood-prevention protocols.

Max Ryan of Alliance Partners and engineer Dave Gibbons shared conceptual ideas this week with the Hatboro Borough Council regarding how the company could devise better stormwater management to prevent flooding both inside and outside of the business park.

The hope, Ryan said, is to "manage what's eluding the site."

As it stands now, Gibbons said the existing 24-inch pipe where water is discharged is full during a so-called two-year storm. Storm severities are determined by the likelihood of their occurrence. A 2-year storm, for instance, has a 1 in 2 chance of happening each year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A potential solution, Gibbons said, is to "shave off" the last parking stalls, extend the other concrete channel back in order to "create as large of a basin as we can."

"We can go pretty far down before we hit any kind of groundwater," Gibbons said. "We're going to try to create as much volume as we can."

The basin would be planted with buffering he said and would be fenced off. In answering a resident's question related to concerns of kids playing near it and potentially getting hurt or drowning, Gibbons said at most four feet of water would be in it once "we hit the hurricane type of event."  

Ryan told Patch after the brief presentation that he expected the flood-prevention measures to be put in place within the next few months depending on other improvements and when permits are issued. While Ryan said he did not have an exact cost, he said the "value is significant."

In addition to stormwater upgrades, Alliance Partners told Patch earlier this year that the redevelopment company planned to create a focal entrance to the business park, rework and lease out a vacant 100,000-square-foot space and revamp a former full-service cafeteria into a grab-and-go cafeteria for the complex's roughly 250 employees.