What Is Going Up at the Hershey West End

The western edge of Derry Township is going to look different in ten years. The ground between Waltonville Road and Bullfrog Valley Road, about 245 acres of it, was owned by the Hershey Trust Company, which first showed a plan for it in 2017. Milton Hershey School took over the project in 2025.

In December of 2025 the township supervisors granted conditional use approval for the updated plan. In May of 2026 they approved the land development plan for Phase J. The school has said construction could begin as early as this summer, and as of September the first neighborhood has been designed, with floor plans expected this fall.

People ask me about it constantly, usually some version of whether they should wait. Here is what is actually known.

The plan got smaller

The master plan the township approved in 2019 called for more than 900 residential units, apartments among them. The plan approved now has about 250, all of them for sale, single family homes and townhomes. The apartments came out. The open space went up.

That matters more than the raw numbers suggest. A neighborhood of owner occupied houses fills in differently, and more slowly, than a plan with rental apartments in it.

It is phased, and phases take years

This is not two hundred houses appearing next spring. The West End is a multiple phase build that has been discussed since 2017 and is expected to fill in over a long horizon. The hotel piece is already done: Hershey Inn and Suites opened on May 1, 2026 at 1300 West End Avenue, four storeys and 130 rooms, including seven family suites.

The rest arrives in pieces. If you are standing in a house today wondering what will be behind it in three years, the phase plan is the document that answers that, not the rendering.

What it does to the rest of the township

New construction at the west end gives buyers another option at certain price points, and some of them will take it. What it does not do is replace what the older parts of Derry Township already have. Mature trees. Sidewalks that go somewhere. A house that has already been through twenty winters, where you can see what held up.

For sellers near the west end, expect buyers to have walked a model home before they walk yours. They will have seen new mechanicals and a warranty. The answer to that is not to compete on newness, it is to be straight about what your house is and what it has been through.

What I would actually check

Drive Waltonville Road and Bullfrog Valley Road at the hour you would really be driving them. Construction traffic is real and it lasts years.

Ask which phase sits behind the lot you are looking at, and when it is scheduled.

If you are buying new, read what is and is not included, and price out the things that are not.

The medical center is the reason

None of this is happening because Derry Township ran out of room. It is happening next to the Penn State Health campus, where the demand comes from.

If you are moving in for a job at the medical center and trying to decide between something new at the west end and something older in Hershey or Hummelstown, that is a real decision with real tradeoffs, and it is worth driving both before you decide.