Devon Center Task Force hammers out zoning changes
the adjacent neighborhoods. The district will offer “public amenities and green spaces,” as well as safe walking and bicycling opportunities.
Joan Bergquist, a task force member, said “We tamper with at our peril” the zoning changes that allow Devon Yard to be built at the site of the former Waterloo Gardens. “They came to us in good faith and people worked very, very hard to get that agreement. And I don’t think we have a right to pull the rug out from under them.”
Fadem said the township will have to deal with the Devon Horse Show zoning at some point, if it is not done by the task force, which is “the down side.”
“The positive is it is a very emotional conversation,” said Fadem. “And it’s hard for the group as a whole to move on when we’re thinking of the whole area and not trying to impose something on the horse show.” She pointed out that horse show officials did not come to the meeting.
“We don’t want to look like we’re trying to do anything to force their hand to sell or change anything because we’re not,” she said.
Task Force Member James Jennings, said when they talk about the township’s heritage and cultural resources, “to me that’s the horse show. I think, that’s why the emotional connection.” If they remove the horse show “what was the point of all that?”
Some members argued that the horse show should remain part of the discussion.
“What we’re trying to do is plan for the future,” said Mike Dwyer. “If, God forbid, the Devon Horse Show does go, our job is to come up with a structure to put the best possible thing for the community in its place. Right now it is zoned for an apartment overlay district. I don’t think anyone here wants to see a big apartment get built at the Devon Horse … I’d rather see something like Anthropologie or Devon Yard (on the horse show site) as opposed to a big apartment community that’s just going to crush the schools even further with new students.”
Member Mark Stanish said that when Wayne Grafton, the horse show chairman, came to a comprehensive plan meeting, he asked for help sustaining it. It would be worse if the site becomes a concert or a wedding venue with traffic every weekend, he said.
“I had to laugh, thinking if they were trying to put the Devon Horse Show here today, most people would be here screaming about having the Devon Horse Show … that parking lot that people joke about to me is kind of my favorite part of the horse show. It seems a little rural.”
Bergquist said the “dirty little secret” about the apartment overlay was to make it impossible to build affordable housing there in the wake of the Mt. Laurel court decision (requiring each town to have affordable housing) on land that was not big enough to do it. But keeping the R-3 zoning there would be best, she said.
“It was okay, we’ll put this on paper but you’ll never be able to do it,” she said.
By the end of the meeting, the task force had agreed on recommending a 40-foot height limit for buildings and requiring 200-foot setbacks on the local roads. They would also encourage commercial uses for the ground floors of buildings with residential uses on the upper floors and pocket park or courtyard areas.
Lawyer Joe Kohn, a lifelong Easttown resident who represents 80 residents, said that he appreciated the group’s removal of the horse show from the re-zoning consideration and asked them to make that permanent. However, a rezoning of residential areas to commercial would be spot zoning and a nonconforming use is grandfathered and in Pennsylvania “rises to the level of constitutional right so the horse show is protected … the car dealerships are going to have a constitutional right to continue.”
He noted that the comprehensive plan calls for public input not to be squeezed in for five at 9 p.m. As for a huge apartment complex at the horse show under the ordinances, apartment buildings are limited to 35-feet tall with
30 percent impervious so “this is not zoned for apartment complexes” with 100foot setbacks and 70 percent open space on a fiveacre lot.
The horse show is the one place that makes “Devon a unique place on the Main Line,” he said. “If you zone that commercial,
and somebody puts in offices, a multiplex theater, fast food, it would basically look like the Acme and Target mall down the road. Devon and Route 30 would become one undifferentiated mess. That’s how you get McDade Boulevard. So that is something this community should use every opportunity to preserve.”
One man asked why a “slum gas station” on Lancaster Avenue is still not redeveloped.
Sarah Lange, former president of the horse show, wrote a report card for the task force giving it failing marks in various areas but said she appreciates the progress it made at this meeting.
She pointed out that the plan they’d discussed did not mesh with the public
survey of neighbors or the comprehensive plan. The public wants more public green space and that is the second recommendation in the comprehensive plan.
“Frankly, the 5 percent allocation (of green space that was discussed) is de minimis and frankly, against the obvious intent of the comprehensive plan,” she said.
Elizabeth Andrews called for safer pedestrian pathways to the train station.
“There is no way to get under the train tracks,” Andrews said. “If you’re going to talk about a walking community, I know you can take your life in your hands because Waterloo (Road) has gotten very busy now.”
She doesn’t feel safe going through the tunnel under the train station, she said. “If you truly want a walking community, you have to make it safer.”