The Empty Building That Will Decide What Gladwyne Village Feels Like Next Year

Walk from Homeroom's front door on Righters Mill toward the library and you cross a piece of Gladwyne that is quietly being rewritten. Not by a developer with a bulldozer, but by a design firm with a rendering, a billionaire couple with a checkbook, and a village that cannot quite decide how it feels about either. The single building at the center of it, the former Gladwyne Market, is empty. What goes inside will do more to change daily life in 19035 than any zoning line on a township map.

If you already live here, you have probably seen the plywood, heard a neighbor mention Haldon House, and wondered whether the pharmacy is really moving. This is the short version, with the specifics that matter and a few that have not made the group chat yet.

What $15 million already bought

The public unveiling happened January 8, 2026, in a packed school auditorium. Andre Golsorkhi, founder and CEO of the design firm Haldon House, presented plans for a village center he is calling Gladwyne Square. He also confirmed what several neighbors had suspected for months: the project is backed by Jeff and Janine Yass, and the group has spent more than $15 million acquiring multiple properties in and around the village core.

That number is worth pausing on. Gladwyne's commercial center is small enough that $15 million does not buy a stake. It buys the block. The practical consequence is that the people who own the buildings and the people making the design decisions are, for the first time in a very long time, the same people.

The plan itself, as Golsorkhi laid it out and as Savvy Main Line summarized it, is not one project but a bundle:

Two things are notable about that list. First, most of it is legal today. Chris Leswing, Lower Merion's director for building and planning, told the Inquirer that refurbishing buildings, cleaning up landscaping, and bringing in new businesses are generally permitted by right, meaning no township approval is required to proceed. Second, the piece that is not legal by right, converting a private home into a street-facing parking lot, is the exact type of change Lower Merion has spent decades discouraging. The township generally requires parking to sit behind buildings, a rule designed to prevent a strip mall aesthetic on Main Line commercial roads. To pave the Youngs Ford parcel, the Board of Commissioners would need to amend the zoning code.

The watering hole question

The most consequential decision is the smallest building. Golsorkhi has said, plainly, that he wants the still-unnamed restaurant in the old Gladwyne Market to replace the Old Guard House as the village's local watering hole. The Old Guard House is currently operated by the Union League. The new spot, per the presentation, is meant to be approachable but elevated, family-friendly, pizza and salads and cocktails, with prices Gladwyne's teachers and firefighters can afford, and a wraparound porch restored to the building's late-1800s footprint.

Whether that pitch survives contact with an operator is the open question. Chef-driven restaurants at that price point are hard to make work in a village with roughly 4,100 residents in the 19035 ZIP, which is the population count from the 2020 census. The economics depend on weekday lunches, private events, and a willingness to draw from Penn Valley, Bryn Mawr, and Villanova. If the operator solves that math, the village walks to dinner. If it does not, the building sits.

For context on what has already worked at a smaller scale: Homeroom, Chef Morgan's café in the former Green Bean Coffee space on Righters Mill Road, has become the daytime anchor since opening. Morgan is a Lower Merion native and a veteran of Philadelphia's CookNSolo restaurant group, and Homeroom's seasonal breakfast and lunch menus source from Urban Roots Philly, Kneehigh Farm, Bart's Bagels, Merzbacher's of Germantown, and Ox Coffee. That combination, a returning local chef with a serious sourcing network in a village of 4,100, is the model Gladwyne Square is betting the restaurant slot can extend into dinner service.

The petition, and what it is really about

A petition asking Lower Merion to hold a public hearing and pass protections against private consolidation of town centers had gathered nearly four dozen signatures by late January. The number is modest. The concern is not.

Read closely, the objection is not to a new restaurant or a green space. It is to the fact that one family, however civic-minded, now owns enough of the village to decide who leases and who does not. Golsorkhi has said no national chains will be allowed and that community tenants including Gladwyne Pharmacy and Homeroom will stay. Those are choices, not zoning categories, and choices can change. Residents pushing for a public hearing want the terms written down before the buildings reopen.

If you own a home in the village, the practical stake is straightforward. Foot traffic patterns are about to shift, and where the pharmacy actually ends up will matter more to your Saturday morning than any rendering.

The rest of the map is moving too

Focusing only on the village core misses three other changes worth tracking through the rest of 2026.

Richie Ashburn Field at 1799 Youngs Ford Road. The Lower Merion Board of Commissioners voted to move forward with a memorandum of understanding for lights at the field. The 60-foot baseball diamond has been a daylight-only site since it was named for the Phillies Hall of Famer whose family lived in Gladwyne. Lights change what evenings sound like on that stretch of Youngs Ford, particularly in spring and fall, and change how the fields at Gladwyne Park get scheduled.

Waverly Heights at 1400 Waverly Road. The retirement community submitted a preliminary land development proposal to demolish seven semi-attached villas and replace them with three buildings, two identical three-story buildings of 12 units each plus a 12-unit addition to the existing Blair Apartment Building. That is a net increase of density on a Waverly Road parcel with additional parking requested. Separately, Carlton Commons, the dining room inside Waverly Heights, was profiled in January by the Inquirer, which described it as effectively one of the best restaurants on the Main Line that most residents cannot get into. Access requires being 62 or older with a one-bedroom entry starting at a $336,000 down payment, or being invited as a guest. Chef Tiernan changes the menu every three months.

Riverbend Environmental Education Center on Spring Mill Road. The 30-acre preserve remains free and open to the public dawn to dusk every day, which is easy to forget when the news is dominated by construction. Riverbend's 2026 calendar includes the Summer Solstice event on June 18 with a wine garden, bonfire, s'mores, and a hilltop sunset walk at 8:30 p.m., a Nature Strong Camp Out for families with tweens and teens on June 6, and Preserve Summer Camp running June 8 through September 4. It is the quietest thing on this list and the one most residents will actually use.

What to watch, if you live here

Three specific inflection points will tell you which direction the village is heading:

1. The name of the operator that takes the Gladwyne Market building. Chef, group, and concept will signal whether Gladwyne Square becomes a walking village or a curated one.
2. Whether the Board of Commissioners entertains a zoning amendment for parking on the 900 block of Youngs Ford Road. If it does, the village is trading a house for a lot. If it does not, the plan gets denser on foot and thinner on parking.
3. Whether the pharmacy move to the OMG building actually closes. Golsorkhi has said it is not yet a done deal. It is the most important test of whether long-standing tenants really stay put on new terms.

None of this changes what makes Gladwyne feel like Gladwyne. The 24 mills along Mill Creek are gone, the Historic District designation from 1980 is not, and Rolling Hill Park still houses the Lower Merion Conservancy office where the land-preservation story that shaped this place is still being written. What is changing is the block you walk to on a Friday night. That is worth paying attention to, whether you are here for another two years or another twenty.

If you own a home in Gladwyne and want a candid read on how these village-level changes affect your specific block, or you are thinking about the timing of a move within 19035, reach out to Jordan Arnold for a confidential conversation or a home valuation. The village is small enough that these details matter, and local enough that they should not have to be guessed at.