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NewsA dumb plan for L. Merion In Ardmore, a thriving half-block of long-standing locally owned restaurants, stores and service businesses, designated Class I historic buildings by the township itself, is to be demolished, to be replaced with mall stores, upscale apartments, and a mammoth, 600-car garage next to the Ardmore train station. The township commissioned this project without sufficient market or infrastructure analysis and was devised by Hillier Architects. This massive destruction and redevelopment proposal, which so far has cost the township more than $700,000, is dressed up in appealing rhetoric about transit-oriented, pedestrian-friendly development. A panel of the Urban Land Institute spent a week last fall studying Ardmore and interviewing more than 100 residents and business owners. The panel found Ardmore to be "a community with a rich history and an extraordinary sense of place offering a distinctive urban character in a lovely suburban setting," with "a historic and uniquely eclectic business district, featuring buildings of varying architectural quality and style that together are much more than the sum of their parts... [and that] are essential to the authentic character of the place." The panel wrote, "Authenticity is an extremely attractive element in the development marketplace today. New town center developments strive for, and often fail to achieve, an atmosphere of authentic character that distinguishes them from the cookie-cutter environments of which we all have had our fill." The panel strongly recommended against the proposed demolition and out-of-scale redevelopment, called Hillier Option B, and suggested incremental revitalization efforts, undertaken one at a time, and in a scale consonant with the existing fabric. Thousands of users of the Ardmore business district have signed petitions against Option B, 100 speakers at public hearings spoke out against it, and local civic associations organized against it and submitted alternative redevelopment proposals endorsed by the Lower Merion Conservancy and consistent with the panel's recommendations. The commissioners have dismissed this outpouring of responsible public opinion as "just a few raised voices at a public meeting," which are to be ignored. In Bryn Mawr, a moderate-income neighborhood has been destroyed by Bryn Mawr Hospital. The township planning staff's grandiose plan for a commercial-residential district around the hospital has been toned down in the face of overwhelming opposition from Bryn Mawr residents and business owners, but again, with no analysis or demonstration of market demand, a modest and serviceable community will be replaced with a mix of medical and nonmedical office buildings, parking facilities, and upscale apartments. Later this spring, the Lower Merion commissioners are expected to enact a Mixed Use Special Transit District zoning overlay ordinance that will apply to commercial districts around the SEPTA R5 and R6 stations. In addition, the state recently enacted a Transit Revitalization Investment District law that allows for properties within a half-mile of railroad stations to be taken by eminent domain and turned over to developers for redevelopment. The township has signaled that it wants to use the revitalization investment district overlay around the Bryn Mawr station and the mixed-use zoning overlay ordinance around the Ardmore, Wynnewood, Haverford and Rosemont stations. That would allow the development of towering residential/commercial complexes on traffic-compromised Lancaster Avenue, turning it into an urban canyon. Needless to say, residents are terrified. The Board of Commissioners has repeatedly been asked to slow down,
take a deep breath, and revise the township's comprehensive development
plan, which has not been updated since 1979, before proceeding with
these ambitious projects. Its response is that the Planning Department
is too busy working on all these new development projects - it will
do it later, in 2006. |
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