How Marc Kaplin's 'Pit Bull' Mentality Has Shaped Suburban Philly For A Half-Century

When Marc Kaplin began working as a land use attorney in the early 1970s, the Philadelphia suburbs were mainly a smattering of rail-oriented bedroom communities punctuated by farms and a few aging industrial outposts.  

The co-founder of Blue Bell-based law firm Kaplin Stewart helped advance some of the most transformative projects that turned the suburban region into a sprawling economic powerhouse that now competes with Philly head-on.

He led a suit for the Village at Valley Forge development that set a zoning law precedent in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He shepherded the 849-unit Blue Bell Country Club, the state’s first golf-centric luxury subdivision, through a winding entitlement process. And he advanced several mixed-use projects that have created walkable environments in the region’s far-flung exurbs.

“He’s been a staple in the real estate world, [in] Philly and the suburbs,” said Hansen Properties CEO Bud Hansen III, a client of Kaplin's. “His name is synonymous with development.”

At 82, Kaplin spends much of the year at his second home in Delray Beach, Florida, and this fall he will be inducted into the Greater Philadelphia Real Estate Hall of Fame. But he has no plans to hang up his briefcase. 

Kaplin is spearheading a legal battle with the West Whiteland Township Board of Supervisors after it rejected his client Abrams Realty & Development’s proposal to convert the Exton Square Mall into a 700-unit mixed-use complex.

During the case's oral arguments this month at the Chester County Justice Center, Kaplin relied on hearing aids as his hands appeared to shake at times, but his signature reedy voice was as strong as ever.

“I like what I do,” the attorney told Bisnow of his desire to keep working. “I put puzzles together for people. … It keeps my mind going.”

J.G. Petrucci Co. founder Jim Petrucci, who has known Kaplin for 25 years, said the attorney is renowned for his extensive legal knowledge and aggressive tactics.

“My first impression was that he was a pit bull,” the developer said.

While he displays that demeanor during public hearings, he has a much softer side that he showed his staff, said Wendi Kapustin, who worked at the firm for 37 years before retiring three years ago. 

“He had to be tough, but in the office, he was a pussycat,” Kapustin said, adding that Kaplin sometimes makes fun of himself for being short, and his booming laugh echoes through the office.  

Kaplin says he enjoys his job, but it hasn't come without sacrifices, like working late into the evenings at municipal land use meetings.

“You’ve got to work all day and then work all night also,” he said. “It can be a strain.”

The attorney has maintained that pace over five decades because he is as “passionate about his craft” as anyone Petrucci has seen over his career.

“In our business, you see a lot of flashes in the pan,” Petrucci said. “A lot of people come and go, whether they’re builder developers or any of the vendors. Some people get a hot streak and disappear. There are a select few that have sustained success and are really committed to doing business the right way. Marc would be the poster child for that.”

Urban Roots To Suburban Shoots

Kaplin grew up in a Mount Airy row home. His family owned and operated the clothing store chain House of Bargains, which eventually expanded to 65 locations across seven states. 

He studied accounting at Temple University, got a law degree at Villanova University and quickly fell into zoning work before becoming the solicitor of Whitpain Township, which includes the unincorporated community of Blue Bell.

“I moved to Blue Bell in 1972, and it was farm country,” Kaplin said.

But by the 1980s, those days were numbered.

“The development was moving out in this way. It was moving past the first ring of suburban townships,” he said.

That spread of development would come to define the next few decades of Kaplin's career.

One agricultural property that presented an opportunity for builders was the old Strassberger Farm, a 352-acre parcel at the corner of Morris Road and DeKalb Pike.

Hansen Properties bought the land from another developer in 1988 and brought on Kaplin as its attorney, but getting it entitled for a 210-acre golf course and the 849 high-end homes Toll Brothers ultimately constructed wasn't an easy process.

“For a project of that scale, it was difficult to convince people to change the zoning, because they liked the farm fields,” Kaplin said.

The attorney said his strong relationship with local lawmakers is what ultimately allowed Hansen to get the project entitled.

Hansen, whose late father hired Kaplin for the project, said it was significant on several fronts.

“It’s the first residential housing mixed-use community with a golf country club in the state of Pennsylvania,” he said.

While projects like that were common in Florida and Arizona at the time, they were a novel concept in the Keystone State. Toll Brothers had never done one before, but golf-centric communities have since become a core part of the homebuilder's strategy. 

Kaplin isn’t afraid to take a hard-line approach if he can’t get a project across the finish line amicably.

That is what happened with the mixed-use Village at Valley Forge development, which the attorney and Realen Properties ultimately escalated to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2003 as part of a decadelong legal battle.

The project, still under construction, is ultimately slated to include 3,000 residential units alongside 400K SF of walkable retail.

The 130-acre site, developed as a public golf course in the 1920s, was part of a broad swath of Upper Merion Township rezoned for agriculture in the 1950s.

Other uses, including warehouses, office parks and the King of Prussia Mall, were eventually permitted on most of that land as the municipality was engulfed by suburban sprawl in the subsequent decades. 

But lawmakers wouldn’t budge on their effort to preserve what was by then a defunct golf course, even after Kaplin and Realen President Dennis Maloomian spent two years crafting a redevelopment plan the builder said would retain most of it.

“The Township rejected every request, insisting that the agricultural zoning was necessary to preserve open space, despite allowing intense development of all the properties surrounding it,” Maloomian said.

As the duo pivoted toward a lawsuit, Kaplin came up with an argument centered on “reverse spot zoning,” which is when a municipality creates additional development restrictions for a parcel that aren’t in line with the uses surrounding it.

That convinced the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to rule in Realen’s favor in 2003.

“Marc was at my side from the very beginning as we initially campaigned for and, failing that, subsequently challenged the rezoning of the golf course property,” Maloomian said.

“I couldn’t have done it without him, and in all fairness, neither of us could have done it without [Kapustin], Marc’s remarkably talented paralegal,” he added.

Kapustin began at Kaplin Stewart in 1986 as a paralegal, and the firm paid for her to obtain a master's degree in community and regional land planning at Temple University so she could support clients on that front. 

Over her tenure, she saw the firm expand from around a dozen people to roughly 60.

She said the Valley Forge case stands out as one of the most important projects the firm worked on during her tenure, along with a series of developments it pursued for Wolfson Group in which it wrote new zoning ordinances to pave the way for Walmart-anchored shopping centers. 

“They were big projects,” she said. “They took years.”

Making The Suburbs Walkable

At this point in his career, Kaplin’s cases have drifted even farther from Philly as zoning battles have become protracted. 

In addition to a slate of Lehigh Valley industrial projects that have become increasingly controversial among residents, he has spent a great deal of time backing mixed-use developments in the far-flung exurbs of Chester County.

Kaplin’s fingerprints are all over West Whiteland Township. He is particularly proud of Main Street at Exton, a mixed-use retail complex that began coming online in 2002.

These days, much of his work is focused on Abrams Realty & Development’s quest to turn the vacancy-riddled nearby Exton Square Mall into a similar mixed-use destination.

Kaplin represented the developer in suing the township’s Board of Supervisors in November after they rejected ARD’s master plan proposal. 

Kaplin argued the project is essentially by right. The attorney spent hours meticulously outlining his client’s position during a series of late-night municipal meetings with West Whiteland lawmakers before filing the lawsuit.

The subject matter was gruelingly technical, but Kaplin spoke about it with a consistent level of passion that made the project seem deeply personal.

“The law in Pennsylvania goes back to the Magna Carta,” he told Bisnow earlier this month before rushing off to his daughter’s Passover Seder.

“I believe in property rights. I believe that people have a right to use their property.”

Lawmakers ultimately rejected ARD’s proposal in what Kaplin has characterized as a violation of their own zoning code.

He said moves like that have become increasingly common in recent years as residents with antidevelopment stances have become more involved in the municipal land use process.

“As there is more opposition, it takes more and more expertise to put the package together, to put the right professionals together, to know how to maneuver through the system,” Kaplin said.

“You’re on trial as if you’re in court because the record that you make before the municipality is going to be transmitted to the court, and you better have made an excellent record,” he added.

In that context, Kaplin said it is even more important to be honest and upfront with clients.

“If somebody brings you a proposed development on a property that it’s not zoned for, you have to tell them that you may not be able to get it developed,” the lawyer said. “You’ve got to be honest with people, because the land development process is expensive and time-consuming.”

The proposed Exton Square redevelopment was made possible by the long-term decline of a property that came online in 1973, just one year after Kaplin moved to Blue Bell.

Over his long career, the attorney has witnessed a full life cycle of suburban construction in a region that was once a blank slate. And he is now part of figuring out how its increasingly limited developable land can be used most efficiently.

While Kaplin said many malls have been “decimated” by e-commerce and the fall of department store chains, he added that most have “wonderful” central locations at the intersection of prime arterial roads.

“Those malls are going to get redeveloped over time, and they’re going to be different,” he said. “Indoor malls don’t work.”

Many of the communities around them still have a demand for new retail, but users are also seeking medical space, entertainment destinations, and a wide array of dwellings, including apartments, townhomes and senior living facilities.

The end product is something that may have been perceived as alien in 1970s Blue Bell. The human scale and mixed uses of ARD’s plan might even have more in common with the Philly neighborhood Kaplin grew up in.

“When you put all of that together in one place, you make for a walkable community,” he said.