Downingtown and Flooding

Flooding in Downingtown has always been an issue but over the past 20 years or so it seemed to get worse. About 7-8 years ago Eli Kahn Development Co. spent about $130,000 to help the Borough construct a storm water basin at the corner of Whiteland Ave and Lincoln Ave. The borough had received a partial grant from DEP to construct a basin and we kicked in the balance. The need for this basin was partially because so much water was coming North under the train tracks from the Boot Rd. vicinity. The Borough had the Army Corps of Engineers do a study that uncovered this “gaping hole” in the system. This was actually a real hole someone had cut into a pipe on the Norfolk Southern rail bed in E. Caln Township just west of Skelp Level Rd. This hole had been diverting water from a 180 acre drainage area that for decades went west along the tracks directly down to the Brandywine River and now ran into this hole and through several pipes into the heart of downtown Downingtown. How and why this hole was cut became less important than getting it fixed. Over five years and thousands of dollars in legal fees we helped the Borough through negotiating a resolution with Norfolk Southern. In the 6-8 months since the project was completed, this water no longer flows into the Borough, and there has been a decrease in flooding in the low areas in the Borough and further downstream in the residential neighborhoods of Downingtown’s South East side.

Eli Kahn Development is proud of the buildings in Downingtown that we own and have renovated. Our buildings house companies that employ many hundreds of people in and around the borough, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual school and property taxes and help create demand for retail and restaurants along Rt. 30. We love being a part of the Downingtown Community.