January 5, 2004
Every community has a distinctive presence, a character all its own. In order to preserve the substance of our older communities, new, innovative zoning is necessary.
On Monday, January 24, the Center for Sustainable Communities at Temple University Ambler, in cooperation with Thomas Hylton, author of Save Our Land, Save Our Towns, will continue a series of seminars to explore new ways to revitalize older towns and boroughs throughout the region.
The first seminar, Innovative Zoning: Planning Communities, will be held from 6 to 9 p.m., at the Springfield Township Building, 1510 Paper Mill Road, Wyndmoor. The second will be held on Wednesday, January 26, from 9 a.m. to noon, at the Delaware County Intermediate Unit Education Service Center, 200 Yale Avenue, Morton. The seminars are free and open to the public.
“Almost every zoning ordinance in southeastern Pennsylvania would not allow for the creation of a town like Doylestown, which has proven to be a high-quality community to live with high property values. The zoning ordinances that exist try to separate uses — residential here, commercial here, industrial here — which forces everyone to get in their cars to go anywhere,” said Dr. Jeffrey Featherstone, Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities and Chair of the Department of Community and Regional Planning at Temple University Ambler. “Municipalities should consider adopting zoning and regulatory provisions that also allow mixed-use developments and smart growth. Clearly, forcing conventional single-use zoning on older, mixed-use communities doesn't make a lot of sense.”
Such innovative zoning is already at work in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where according to Hylton, “conventional zoning was irrelevant.”
“We’re already built out. What we needed to do was fix up existing areas and use existing buildings,” said Hylton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who is also the Chairman of the Pottstown Planning Commission. “The prior zoning established arbitrary side yards and set backs that made it extremely difficult to redevelop. Today, we are seeing lots in Pottstown that have been vacant for 50 years having new life breathed into them — new construction that is of higher quality that matches the existing structures within the community.”
According to Hylton, typical zoning is most often aimed at bare land, not existing infrastructure.
“What we are trying to do is maximize the redevelopment of established communities. For older municipalities such as Norristown, Ambler, Lansdale, Doylestown, Perkasie, Bristol, and Media, it is essential to focus on redeveloping existing buildings and filling in tracts in established neighborhoods,” he said. “Most of the older communities in southeastern Pennsylvania have lost population. We’d like to see it come back.”
During the seminars, Maureen Guttman, President of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Institute of Architects, will also shed some light on the “Existing Building Code,” part of the recently adopted statewide construction code that, according to Hylton, encourages the rehabilitation of older structures.”
“It makes the re-use of existing buildings a lot more predictable, easy, and affordable,” Guttman said. “Ideally, code enforcement officials will be able to get on board with municipalities trying to redevelop their older buildings.”
Under existing ordinances in many towns and boroughs, unless a developer is willing to take a building and essentially start from scratch, ensuring the building meets code is an extremely difficult task.
“That’s a leading reason why the upper floors of thousands of commercial buildings from Norristown to New Castle have remained vacant for decades — it hasn’t made economic sense to bring them up to code. The new building code gives local municipalities more control over their destinies,” Hylton said. “Towns now have the opportunity to make their code enforcement officers partners, rather than adversaries, in the process of renovation and restoration. If towns want buildings to be safe and healthful, they must find ways to help property owners fix them up.”
The Center for Sustainable Communities began the Innovative Zoning series on November 22 at the Heritage Conservancy in Doylestown, Bucks County. The first seminar was attended by 60 people from a diversity of wide-ranging locations, including Burlington County and Cherry Hill Township, New Jersey, Lehigh County, Kutztown, and Allentown. This seminar series has been made possible by a grant from the William Penn Foundation.
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