Mike Weilbacher hits the nail on the head again and closes 2007 with a bang. Read his column, digest it....then get involved in our community and your own neighborhood...Reprint courtesy of Main Line Times newspaper:

'Seems to be a whole lot of 'no's' going on' in LM Township
By Mike Weilbacher

Last week, while the rest of us were forgivably distracted by last-minute Christmas shopping and so probably were not paying close attention, Lower Merion’s Board of Commissioners issued a very important decision — and another in a recent string of similar decisions.

It said no. Unanimously.

But what it said no to is very interesting and bears deeper discussion. Summit Road is a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood just west of Penn Valley school with an interesting mix of new homes, older ranches, historic buildings, and some early 20th century Colonial Revivals designed by Walter Durham.

The owners of a two-acre property applied several months ago to Lower Merion to subdivide their property, allowing a home builder to take down the couple’s home and build two new ones in its place.

In the process, several mature trees would have been removed, and the neighborhood was convinced the earthmoving would have worsened an already bad stormwater situation; apparently, stormwater pours from this area and others downhill across multiple properties, so when it rains, this neighborhood is an adventure.

The property was large enough in square footage to accommodate an extra lot, but the owners still needed to receive a conditional use permit. They would be allowed to subdivide if they met several conditions.

The proposed second lot was to be a rear lot behind the first house, and largely not visible from Summit Road; the two new lots would access Summit Road from a common driveway shared with a third lot spun of this one years ago.

The neighbors were understandably concerned about several things.

For one, the two lots would be smaller in size than most lots in the neighborhood — they felt the new homes would be out of character with the rest of the community, and likely negatively impact property values. They also worried about the removal of large trees to accommodate the expansion and what would happen to stormwater during and after this construction.

I had an additional worry as I looked at an early version of the plan. The proposed new houses presented their front doors to their driveway, which came down the side of the property. Thus, the new house fronting on Summit would shun its neighbors, giving its side façade to the street.

I testified then, and still think now, that new houses need to work better at being friendlier.

So here, the new house should present its front door to the community, like every other house on the street.

Because there was already a third lot in the rear carved out of the property earlier, because the applicant never seemed to address stormwater issues, because the proposed lots were, as the township decision reads, “substantially undersized when compared to other lots in the neighborhood,” the Board of Commissioners unanimously delivered a no vote. To its credit, this Summit Road neighborhood was exceptionally well organized, keeping in touch about the steeplechase of township meetings via group e-mails and making sure the neighborhood came ou — even on a cold December night when everyone would rather be Christmas shopping.

But this strikes me as fitting into several other recent township decisions. On Righters Mill Road in the heart of Gladwyne’s historic district, the township famously denied an application to attach a wedding train of houses to a grand Gothic that dates to the Centennial, and on Cricket Avenue in Ardmore, the township turned down a bid to raze another Victorian home for a condominium complex, one that would include affordable housing as an additional perk.

There seems to be a whole lot of “no” going on.

Coincidence? Maybe. These decisions were not all rendered by the elected commissioners — some came from the appointed Zoning Hearing Board. And with all of them, a passel of citizen advisory groups — Historical Architectural Review Board, the Planning Commission, the Historical Commission, the Environmental Advisory Council — weighed in and offered advice as well, some saying yes and some saying no. (The Planning Commission apparently deadlocked on Summit Road.) And all three projects saw strong community organizing bringing boatloads of people to town hall meetings. Citizen engagement is a very important part of the new planning process.

But I think everyone who lives in and loves Lower Merion has a sense that the stakes are somehow higher now — that the weight of small but accumulating development and demolition decisions is becoming increasingly unbearable. If you’d like to make changes in the community, that’s fine, but the changes you propose need to be thoughtful, well-designed, and somehow mitigate the downside that the development will inevitably have on the neighborhood.

I think the members of these different bodies, even the lawyerly Zoning Hearing Board, while examining the decisions they render through a legal lens, are quite aware the community is keenly sensitive about issues of height, density, character, history, shade, and stormwater, and keenly aware that quality of life is a finely tuned instrument — and one can’t help but wonder whether their legal decisions take this into account.

There’s a reason that other communities in the county deride us as “Lawyer Merion.” The Righters Mill decision is being appealed by the applicant even while insiders work on a compromise. (The house has been apparently vacant and is showing signs of wear, say some neighbors.) All bets are off when the appeal is heard — this is the difficult reality of challenging land use decisions in Pennsylvania. Many projects denied by Lower Merion were overturned by county court, and the projects went through under the developer’s original plan, much to the community’s chagrin.

And the Cricket Avenue applicants apparently just moved the project down the street a little, proposing to do something similar in a nearby funeral parlor.

This addresses one community concern — the loss of a private home with good architectural chops — but we’ll see where the new condo proposal is headed.

It’s never a good thing to issue knee-jerk no decisions, and private property is still an important issue for the community.

But I think given that the stakes are higher, both elected and appointed officials in Lower Merion are letting the development community know that the hurdles we expect them to jump have become higher too.

They’re not insurmountable —see the spot where Talone’s used to be for proof — but they’re higher. And for those of you worried about quality of life, that’s a good thing.

Mike Weilbacher is executive director of the Lower Merion Conservancy. E-mail him at