Kennett Square is one square mile. It has roughly 7,000 residents, a documented affordable housing shortage, and a mushroom industry workforce that largely cannot afford to live in the borough where they work. It also has only one significant undeveloped parcel within its borders, 22 acres along West Mulberry Street where the National Vulcanized Fiber company operated for more than a hundred years before shutting down in 2007.

That site has been contaminated with PFAS, so-called forever chemicals, since the plant closed, and cleanup has been underway for more than a decade. Its current owner, working with development firms Delaware Valley Development Corp. and Catalyst City under the partnership name Rockhopper LLC, has proposed building 294 residential units on the site; a mix of townhomes, stacked units, and 48 mixed-income and affordable multifamily apartments. Prices were projected to range from the upper $300,000s for a 1,200-square-foot unit to the low-to-mid $500,000s for a larger one. The project would add roughly $382,000 annually to the borough's budget and over $830,000 per year to the Kennett Consolidated School District. It would increase Kennett Square's population by about 15 percent.

On April 7, Kennett Square Borough Council voted 3-2 against advertising an ordinance change that would have rezoned the site from industrial to residential. Without that vote passing, the zoning change cannot proceed. The site remains industrial. The housing does not get built.

The council was short two members, one seat vacant, one member absent, which means the vote that killed the project for now was made by five of a full seven-member body. Whether that absence changed the outcome is unknown. What is clear is that the project's path forward is now uncertain. The developer did not comment.

The project can theoretically come back before the council. The developer can revise the proposal, wait for a different council composition, or pursue other legal avenues. But the environmental remediation still has to clear state and federal approval before any residential use is possible, and that process was already expected to take years beyond any zoning approval.

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