After Aus Marburger sat through the first hearing that would change the rolling farms of Hibernia Road in West Brandywine to an age-restricted development with roughly 230 homes, he felt called to action.
Marburger, 48, printed out hundreds of fliers and knocked on roughly a hundred doors, urging the community to show up in opposition. After that wave of outreach, Marburger and other residents established an LLC, launched a GoFundMe campaign, and hired an attorney, with the goal of staving off the new neighborhood.
Across Chester County, residents have been organizing in an effort to be better heard when they push back on proposed development. There have been a number of wins for residents in the last decade, serving as a blueprint for new battles. As the state grapples with more data center applications, residents have turned their attention there, too, banding together to shut down construction.
“We’ve got a crisis of overdevelopment in these rural communities on the outskirts of the suburbs and the cities, and really, I think, it’s a county- and also a statewide issue that needs to be looked at,” Marburger said.
‘Real flashpoints’
Chester County saw some of the highest population growth in Pennsylvania between 2020 and 2024. To address that, housing has been trending toward higher-density construction. Multifamily and apartment units soared in 2024, making up roughly half of the housing stock that year, according to the county’s planning commission.
At the same time, Chester County — and many of the localities within it — is seeking to preserve open space, sending more than a million dollars in grant funds to municipalities and land preservation organizations in July. The county has more preserved private land than any other in the nine-county metro area, according to officials.
Still, residents are lining up to press for more.
While it is not occurring only in Chester County — squabbles like this have played out across Philadelphia’s collar counties — the county is somewhat uniquely positioned, with its wealthier population and its focus on open space, which is a big draw for prospective residents.
The county does not track how many organizations like Marburger’s group, Friends of Brandywine Farms, pop up.
But there have been some notable successful campaigns for community groups, such as in West Bradford or Westtown. And there have also been some hurdles. After a Chester County judge sided with a developer in July, Willistown officials are weighing how to move forward with pending litigation regarding Rock Hill Farm. Residents have been pushing back against development of that land for years.
“It’s fairly novel when it does happen; obviously, it gets a lot of interest in the public and in the press because it’s not something that happens every day,” said Matthew Edmond, executive director of the county’s planning commission. “That’s the interesting thing about Chester County is that it’s part of our civic fabric here for people to be engaged in their community.”
Residents have also organized around fighting data centers. Community members, who formed an organization to fight an approved data center in East Whiteland, recently hired an attorney to challenge it. In other communities, residents have created social media pages to share information and drive attendance at meetings — sometimes stopping projects before they started.
“Those are real flashpoints,” Edmond said. “Sometimes these big ones … they change the landscape.”
Those groups have a lot of power, said Chase Englund, founder of the Pennsylvania Small Enterprise Foundation. When a community shows up in force, the elected officials take notice.
Often, he said, opposition community groups have a clear message, and it is easy to organize neighbors around it: traffic, noise, safety, aesthetics.
It is harder for developers to explain amorphous economic benefits on the business side. That is something his organization, which advocates for small business owners, is trying to change for smaller players that don’t have the resources bigger developers do.
They have tried to find common ground between residents and developers.
“You’ve got this perception that these companies are coming in and steamrolling local concerns, and they just have they have deep pocketbooks, and it’s David and Goliath,” he said. “But the Goliaths are getting even bigger because a lot of the smaller developers just can’t put up with the amount of issues that they face because of some of these residents’ concerns.”
‘Not going to get it back’
A number of residents who have recently taken up the preservation mantle view the push to save Crebilly Farm, across 204 acres in Westtown, as the pinnacle in fending off developers.
Elizabeth Moro, who formed Neighbors for Crebilly LLC with her husband, Vince, considers it their sixth child.
It was a yearslong fight against developer Toll Bros., but one the community stuck with despite the hurdles, she recalls. They had to learn what they were doing from the ground up.
“We kind of thought we’re probably crazy for even attempting this, but when it came together, it was just unbelievable, and we cried,” she said.
In the end, the Moros were stuck with the legal bill — roughly $20,000, though the attorneys worked some pro bono hours. But the cost ultimately felt necessary.
“I think what it was for us is just a sense of, ‘This is a community treasure that once it’s gone, we’re not going to get it back,’” she said.
‘A good fight’
Crebilly paved the way for residents in Uwchlan Township, where officials are considering an age-restricted development for the 228-acre Lionville Station Road project, including 492 homes, 100 acres of open space, and a swimming pool facility that could be used by the school’s team and the public.
The development is a far cry from what earlier proposals had been: an industrial warehouse, similar to what appeared on a nearby parcel years before.
Residents learned about the initial warehouse after it had already been approved, and found themselves with little recourse. But then a second was proposed for the heart of David Fertell’s residential community. It “got everybody really ginned up.”
Fertell found assistance from someone who was active in saving Crebilly, who helped the residents find an attorney. They raised roughly $30,000 on GoFundMe. The attorney facilitated a conversation between Fertell and the developer, who “picked up his toys and left,” Fertell recalled.
The residents ideally wanted it to be open space, but could not put up the roughly $75 million to cover it. Instead, the Downingtown Area School District, which owned the land and wanted to sell it, listened to neighbors’ wishes and found a developer to turn the acreage into housing. The residents have not even needed the attorney much.
The board of supervisors has until November to decide whether to approve a zoning amendment and the plan. After years of the residents digging in, Fertell said, he hopes they approve it.
“I love a good fight, so I’m not complaining. I’m just saying it takes a lot of time. It distracts you from your business and it distracts you from your family,” he said. “We put things on hold because it was important.”
‘For decades more’
In West Brandywine, where Marburger and residents are just stepping up to bat, the board of supervisors is weighing whether to allow Toll Bros. to develop roughly 115 acres into an age-restricted development.
At the August conditional-use hearing that kicked Marburger and other residents into action, they cited concerns over the strain it would put on medical services following the closure of Brandywine Hospital, as well as environmental impacts to the wooded and wetland areas.
The residents’ attorney attended a September hearing for the property and was granted a continuance until Monday.
“[Developers] will basically throw all the legal resources they have at that township, which is why a lot of times if you don’t have a citizen group that’s willing to put up legal opposition, you can’t rely on the township solicitor in most cases to be able to stand up to the attorneys of a Fortune 500 company,” Marburger said.
Scrimmages like this one are playing out across the region, said Edmond, from the planning commission.
“These battles have been happening in our region for decades, and they’ll probably happen for decades more,” he said. “Even though we have fewer land to develop than we did 50 years ago, people will still battle over the things that matter to them, and that’s OK. That’s part of democracy, too.”
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