Next to the Pine Street bridge, the former Depot Building still stands at the edge of the Iron Works land, close to Borough Hall. Under the current master plan, this corner changes first. Front Street, the block most people picture when they think of the Iron Works, comes last. A retaining wall and a grant deadline set that order.
Catasauqua Borough Council approved the Iron Works master plan from VM Development Group at its Sept. 21 meeting, as the Lehigh Valley Press reported. The approval brought the project out of years of drawings and locked in an order of work. That order explains which corners of town will look different in 2027 and which will have to wait.
Phase one starts at Borough Hall, not Front Street
Phase one covers an L-shaped parcel wrapped around the municipal building. Gretchen Rice of VM told council it includes the depot building, a 60-unit apartment building, 14 townhouses and parking. The Morning Call described that first phase as the land behind Borough Hall, which opened in 2017 as an early piece of the redevelopment, plus the area around the former depot next to the Pine Street bridge.
The depot is the one existing building in phase one that gets a second life. According to WFMZ, the plan calls for rehabilitating it, and VM's concept puts three apartments upstairs with a commercial use downstairs, such as a restaurant.
At council, VM's representatives said they plan to focus on residential use first, as an incubator to help bring in more business. The housing next to Borough Hall is meant to bring people to the site before any storefronts arrive.
The wall holding up Front Street
The rest of the property is phase two. It takes in the bulk of the land, including the former research and development building from the FLSmidth years and the spot where the plate shop stood until it was torn down in 2021. Phase two holds the rest of the housing and the retail space.
None of it can start until the retaining wall that holds back the ground below Front Street is rebuilt. The Morning Call reported in March that the borough had already brought in several tons of stone for the job. By September, Chad Helmer of Taggart Associates and Helmer Company told council that the wall design was underway and geotechnical field work was in process.
The finished street depends on the wall. A 2024 project description in the Lehigh Valley Press laid out streetscape work on Front Street between Bridge and Wood streets. It called for a wider two-way street, sidewalks on both sides, and a narrow two-foot amenity area with lighting and trees. The widening is meant to allow parking on both sides of the street and encourage businesses to move in. None of that can be built on top of a wall that hasn't been rebuilt yet.
A grant that expires in December 2027
The wall would matter less if there were no deadline. The Front Street streetscape is funded by a Multimodal Transportation Fund grant that expires in December 2027, and the Lehigh Valley Press reported that timing is crucial for that reason. Counting back from that date gives the sequence the project team described in September:
- November 2026: VM hopes for approval to move forward with financing and construction on phase one.
- Spring 2027: VM hopes to start phase-one work around Borough Hall and the depot.
- Spring or summer 2027: The target for finishing the Front Street retaining wall.
- Summer to fall 2027: The window for the Front Street streetscape work.
- December 2027: The streetscape grant expires.
That leaves little slack. If the wall slips into fall 2027, the streetscape has only a few months before the grant runs out. VM's representatives summed up their hope in one line to council: "Ideally, the area will look really different in 2028."
How the start date has moved this year
The schedule has already moved during 2026, and the published sources don't all match. Here is how the timeline read at each point this year:
| Source and date | What it said about timing or scope |
|---|---|
| The Morning Call, March 20, 2026 | Ground could be broken this year on a first phase of about a dozen townhomes and 60 apartments |
| Lehigh Valley Live, June 4, 2026 | Housing scaled down from 45 townhouses and 250 apartments to roughly 10 to 12 townhouses and 60 apartments, with 10,000 square feet of commercial space |
| Lehigh County project update, June 30, 2026 | First phase expected to move ahead in late fall 2026 |
| Lehigh Valley Press, Sept. 30, 2026 | Phase one with 60 apartments and 14 townhouses; work hoped for spring 2027 |
The September account is the most recent one, and its spring 2027 start is the date to plan around. The county's project page still shows the earlier late-fall estimate.
Some of the remaining pieces explain why. The Lehigh Valley Press reported that the project still needs solid contracts for funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, money procured by U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie. Grant applications submitted in August are also still pending, including one the Redevelopment Authority of Lehigh County filed with the Main Street Matters program. On the borough side, VM expected to submit the phase-one plans to the Planning Commission on Oct. 7, and the borough calendar later moved the October meeting to Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 6:30 p.m. at Borough Hall.
Helmer, who has consulted on the project for more than a decade, put the general pattern plainly to The Morning Call: "These projects — brownfield projects — I've had the opportunity to work on a bunch of them here in the Lehigh Valley. They are never easy, and they are never fast."
From the 1840 furnace to a footbridge
What gets built at the end of all this ties back to why the land matters in the first place. The property was home to the Crane Iron Works, which opened in 1840 with the first commercially successful anthracite iron furnace in the United States. It ran for about 90 years before the Fuller Co. took over. Operations continued after FLSmidth absorbed Fuller and shut down in the early 2000s, and the borough bought the land in 2013 for redevelopment.
Pieces of that history still line the 300 block of Front Street. The Historic Catasauqua Preservation Association notes the old Crane Iron Company office at 327 Front Street and the former David Thomas home as landmarks on the block. A widened Front Street with sidewalks on both sides would run right past them.
The industrial site relied on the canal and the river, and the redevelopment plans to reconnect to them. The Morning Call reported that a footbridge is planned from the Iron Works site to the D&L Trail. That link is still early. At the Redevelopment Authority's June 4 meeting, the authority's director said he had discussed hiring a consultant to draw concepts for the connection between the trail and Bridge Street, and he was looking for more funding. Of all the pieces, the footbridge is the furthest from construction.
VM is also a known name in this kind of work. The Easton-based developer converted the former Simon Silk Mill into a mixed-use development. In Catasauqua, it picked up the site after an earlier $42 million plan fell through in 2022, and the Redevelopment Authority sold the land to VM's Iron Works Development LLC for $320,000.
The next places to watch
The next step is land development. Once the master plan was approved, the project moved into that stage, and VM's stated goal is approval in November so financing and construction on phase one can proceed. Planning Commission and Borough Council agendas on the borough's calendar are where that approval would appear.
The best place to see the first phase in person is the borough's Tree Lighting on Dec. 6 at 3 p.m. at 90 Bridge Street, which is Borough Hall. The event listing says more details are still to come. The tree goes up beside the L-shaped parcel slated for phase one, close to the old depot and the Pine Street bridge, where the work is scheduled to begin in spring 2027.
If you own a home near Front Street or Bridge Street, the streetscape and Iron Works timeline will shape how buyers see your block over the next two years. Creighton Faust follows these projects closely and can show you where your home stands today and how the 2027 schedule may affect it. Request a complimentary market valuation and call Creighton today.
