Vote Delayed on Hearing for City Avenue Re-zoning Project

The City Avenue rezoning project generated a heated public debate on Wednesday night, but ended with no vote from the Building and Planning Committee on whether to recommend that the Board of Commissioners authorize a public hearing on the issue.

In other matters, there were also votes on the Ardmore Transit Center/Lancaster Avenue Rear façades and the Ardmore Commercial Façade program. And members of the Building and Planning Committee and the public spoke in support of a proposal to change the zoning requirements for the Bryn Mawr Film Institute so that the non-profit organization would not have to add more parking if it expanded its theater.

City Ave. Rezoning

The Building and Planning Committee had been scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to recommend that the Board of Commissioners hold a public hearing about the City Avenue rezoning project.  The project concerns an ordinance which proposes use changes along City Avenue in Bala Cynwyd in an effort to increase commercial development.

But the committee decided to postpone the vote until May after commissioners C. Brian McGuire, Paul McElhaney, and George Manos met with the Neighborhood Club of Bala Cynwyd on Tuesday night, McGuire told Patch after the meeting. 

“We agreed we’d have some separate meetings to talk this over,” McGuire said.

During the next month, the committee will hold the meetings informally with any Lower Merion civic associations that would like to talk about their concerns regarding the rezoning, McGuire said.

Thirteen members of the public spoke for and against the project at the Building and Planning Committee Meeting, attended by about 25 people. Board of Commissioners President Liz Rogan asked the commissioners to write down their questions and refrain from comment on Wednesday night so that the public could speak.

Janet Giuliani, a board member of the City Avenue Special Services District, said Bala Cynwyd is losing businesses because they are signing leases in other communities.

Bala Cynwyd currently has 2.8 million square feet of retail space and a 20 percent vacancy rate, while retail districts in Conshohocken and Radnor Township measure about 3 million square feet and have 16.8 percent and 10 percent vacancy rates, respectively, Giuliani said.

Merion resident Richard Gottlieb said the Giuliani’s numbers might not matter to some residents.

“What does matter to me as a resident and as a landlord is that the buildings maintain value…We want to maintain a tax base,” Gottlieb said.

Gottlieb said the traffic study conducted for the City Avenue rezoning project shows that “the traffic is coming whether we do something or if we do nothing.”

The city needs the rezoning project in order to raise new revenue to pay for road improvements, Gottlieb added. As part of rezoning project, the township plans to charge developers an impact fee to help pay road expenses.

A comment from James Stevenson, director of asset management for Federal Realty Investment Trust in Wynnewood, sparked anger from one resident when he requested a height limit in one area of the rezoning district be changed from 90 feet, back to an increased height of 120 feet.

“You’re greedy, absolutely greedy,” yelled Mary Amnon from the podium, Ammon lives behind the Bala Cynwyd Shopping Center. “No, you cannot have a 120-foot building where people live. There are children.”

Earlier in the meeting, Lower Merion Building and Planning Director Bob Duncan said the township had responded to residents' concerns by reducing the height limit of some of the buildings from 120 feet to 90 feet. Stevenson told Patch that Federal Realty currently does not have plans to put up a new building in the area despite his request.

Carl Watson, a member of the Shortridge Civic Association of Wynnewood, said individuals from all of Lower Merion’s civic associations agreed “that this is moving too fast.”

Duncan said several meetings had been held about the rezoning project, and that it was not being rushed through.

“What I’m disappointed about is those members of those civic associations are not here tonight,” said Commissioner George T. Manos.  He invited the groups to sit down with him and other committee members to discuss their issues over the next month.

“Representatives did not come tonight specifically because we learned indeed good headway was being made and did not want to interfere with that headway,” said Leigh Anne Smith, president of the Federation of Civic Associations.

Smith was initially told by Rogan that she could not speak because the public comment period was over. But members of the audience shouted their displeasure at that, and Rogan yielded.

“What we’re trying to do is support the most appropriate civic association,” Smith said, referring to the Civic Association of Bala Cynwyd and the Neighborhood Club of Bala Cynwyd.

BMFI

In other business, Duncan presented a proposal to change the zoning requirements for the Bryn Mawr Film Institute so that the non-profit organization might be able to expand in the future.

Duncan said he and Commissioner Scott Zelov have been meeting with the BMFI about its plans to expand and add a third screen to the theater.

The film institute considered purchasing additional property for an expansion, but found that it would be “excessively expensive” and hard to justify as a non-profit, Duncan said.

The only existing place to expand is on BMFI's existing parking lot, which has 25 spaces, Duncan explained. However, the existing zoning for Bryn Mawr Village requires that the theater provide its own parking spaces. In addition, an expansion would require one new parking space for every five new seats.

Duncan asked the Building and Planning Committee to consider a zoning change which would allow public parking spaces within 900 feet of the theater to fulfill the its parking requirement. The proposal was not up for a vote on Wednesday.

Several commissioners and some residents spoke in support of the proposal, with no one opposed. Zelov said the film institute has some 6,500 paid members.

“With the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, we have an incredible anchor in Bryn Mawr,” Zelov said.

Bryn Mawr Film Institute President Juliet Goodfriend was inclined to agree.

“I can barely thank you without getting emotional,” Goodfriend said.

Ardmore Transit Center

The Building and Planning Committee approved for recommendation to the Board of Commissioners a resolution authorizing the submission of two grant applications to the Montgomery County Planning Commission in the amounts of $252,000 for the Ardmore Transit Center/Lancaster Avenue Rear Facades programs and $80,000 for the Ardmore Commercial Façade Program.

The grant submissions were approved by a vote of 10-2, said Gina Pellicciotta, assistant township secretary.  Commissioners Philip Rosenzweig and Lewis Gould Jr. voted against the proposal.  Commissioners Jane Dellheim and Rick Churchill left the meeting before the vote, Pellicciotta said.

The Ardmore Transit Center grant program would renovate the rear facades of commercial properties immediately south of the proposed transit center, according to a memorandum on the grants written by Economic Development Specialist Eric Persson to Township Manager Doug Cleland. The grant request would cover 90 percent of the needed funds.

According to the memorandum, $80,000 would be available for four individual projects for the Ardmore Commercial Façade Program, which would generate an equal $80,000 match, at a minimum, from the applicants.

In another vote, the Building and Planning Committee unanimously approved for recommendation to the Board of Commissioners a resolution to appoint Neil Cain and James J. McGuire Jr. to the Board of Directors of the City Avenue Special Services District.

The terms of Cain and McGuire expired at the end of 2010 and the board requested that they be reappointed, according to a letter from Terrence Foley, president and CEO of the City Avenue Special Services District.