Source: Montco.Today Lance Knickerbocker

With a total of approximately one billion dollars being pumped into the development of King of Prussia, officials are hoping it becomes the suburban trifecta where people can live, work, and shop.

Upper Merion is a rare suburb, the business hub of which employs 56,000 day workers, far more than the township’s 30,000 residents, writes Suzette Parmley of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The biggest single project in play is the mall’s massive corridor that will connect the old Plaza and Court and house a number of luxury retailers, part of a $250 million expansion that opens in August.

However, a cluster of luxury apartments, stores, and restaurants is also sprouting nearby at the Village at Valley Forge and the $100 million King of Prussia Town Center. According to Parmley, the latter is KOP’s attempt to drop a fully realized Main Street into one of the region’s densest networks of highways.

“It’s a tremendous amount of construction,” Eric Goldstein, executive director of the King of Prussia District, the area’s catalyst for economic development and job growth, told Parmley. “It’s an exciting time to be part of this. The stars are aligned.”

Furthermore, Upper Merion Township is about to get its first new office building in a decade and its first family housing construction in nearly two decades.

The investments now underway should attract 4,000 new residents and 2,000 new office jobs.

According to Parmley, the building surge is notable because past development was segregated with retail in one area, commercial in another. The new projects, however, are more mixed-use, making them walkable, where one is able to live, work, and shop all within one neighborhood.

Click here to read more about the economic development of King of Prussia in the Philadelphia Inquirer.