The Hankin Group of Exton, developer of the Eagleview Community and the newly opened Hilton Garden Spot on Route 100 in Lionville (above), has stepped up to salvage a Downingtown Area School District investment that has sat idle for nearly a decade.

Though it will initially receive slightly more than half of the $22 million it paid for its 240-acre Siemens Medical Tract on Lionville Station Road in northern Uwchlan, the Downingtown district could recoup nearly the rest in proceeds from Chester County’s “gold standard” for real estate developers if The Hankin Group succeeds in constructing the residential development it hopes to put up, according to a Daily Local News report of the proposed deal.

“When the Siemens Tract was purchased in 2006, the district was experiencing an unprecedented growth in enrollment and severe overcrowding at its middle schools and high schools,” the article stated. “But in the intervening years, the district has seen its enrollment stabilize, and changes made in the configuration of schools had eased overcrowding.”

But the plans to sell 190 acres and reserve 50 for a future elementary school all hinge on a possibly “long and protracted municipal proceeding,” including a do-or-die condition that the project later obtain an industrial-to-residential zoning change.

Read more about the proposed deal and the roadblocks standing in its way in the Daily Local News here, and access previous Chesco Business Today coverage of The Hankin Group’s other headlining development plans here.