In advance of this evening's important meeting comes an article taking the lid off Bryn Mawr. Or, should we call it TRID Village Hospital Town? And in the end, if the township had NOT caved, would the hospital have really left Bryn Mawr?
Posted on Wed, Apr. 2, 2008
Disputed Bryn Mawr rezoning up for a vote
By Diane Mastrull
Inquirer Staff Writer

For more than five years, the Main Line village of Bryn Mawr has buzzed with talk of an ambitious revitalization - of mid-rise hotels, promenades lined with outdoor cafes and boutiques, and blocks shared by offices, townhouses and pocket parks.

Yet in the business district, change so far has amounted to just a few new awnings and some fresh splashes of paint. In an adjacent working-class neighborhood, only grass sprouts on 18 lots where homes were razed almost two years ago to make way for a parking garage and rows of retail topped with housing.

Nothing the planners envisioned has been built, nor can it be. Downtown Bryn Mawr is not zoned for revival.

That could change tonight.

The Lower Merion Township commissioners are expected to endorse a zoning district that would replace 1920s-era building rules and lay the foundation for the town's new look. The proposed Bryn Mawr Village District stretches a mile along Lancaster Avenue and reaches into residential areas on both sides of the commercial corridor.

Existing properties could remain as they are, but the zoning would call for new businesses and residences to sit side by side and allow some structures to rise as high as five stories where only single-family homes are now permitted.

Two weeks ago, the commissioners appointed Carl Dranoff as master redeveloper for Ardmore, another business district the township is eager to revitalize. If they give their OK tonight, the Bryn Mawr zoning plan will be advertised to residents and advance to a public hearing May 7.

Commissioner V. Scott Zelov, whose district includes Bryn Mawr and who led an ad hoc zoning committee, said he hoped for a yes vote tonight.....The campaign for change has been a sensitive subject for many residents, since it was initiated not by them but by Bryn Mawr Hospital. The institution has been in place since 1893; with nearly 2,000 employees, it is a dominant presence in a town whose population is 4,380.

....Along with Zelov, hospital president Andrea Gilbert was on the 11-member committee of business and civic leaders that helped create the proposed village zoning district. Gilbert said yesterday that she would have preferred "a little bit more flexibility" in what could be built where, but that the hospital was "very supportive" of the plan.

So is Bryn Mawr business owner Susan Arizini, who also helped draft it. Her hope, she said, is that the new zoning will "attract responsible development . . . that will attract people to live and work and . . . patronize the businesses" in town.

Elba Doorly's fear is that it will ruin her and husband Bill's lives....More than two dozen of her Central Avenue neighbors sold their rowhouses and twins to Bryn Mawr Hospital's real estate division, which razed most of the homes in summer 2006.

Doorly's home, in her family nearly 30 years, is one of just three still occupied on Central. Seven sit vacant, presumably to be demolished.....

And we read something the other day about some candidate for office taking credit over the improvements at the Five Points Intersection? What improvements? The fact that all those upstanding Campaigning Young Republicans in off hours like to turn the traffic signals around in different directions? You know, all those college students who live "on the border"? Does anyone really know what is up with Five Points? Anymore then anyone understands why hospital systems want to build retail stores?