New Uses

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Where do you spend your free time or work on your hobby?

There is a concept in community planning and place making involving three separate but important social environments (or places) where people spend their time.  The first two places are one’s home and one’s workplace.  “Third places” generally include public or community places where people socialize or recreate, including places of worship, health clubs, bars and pubs, restaurants, stores, parks, community centers, etc.  Now developers are creating new third places by combining the “man cave” and “she shed” concepts with mini-storage.  These third places are known as luxury garage units or “car condos.”

The concept is simple.  Rather than renting or leasing unconditioned dead storage space for vehicles, household items or recreational equipment in traditional mini-storage units, luxury garage units are made available for purchase as condominium units and are fully conditioned. 
Continue Reading Man Caves and She Sheds Meet Mini-Storage…It’s a Thing

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, in consultation with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), is currently studying the viability of building a hyperloop tube that would transverse Pennsylvania from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg to Philadelphia and then northeast toward Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.  Pennsylvania House of Representatives Resolution 1057 authorized the Commonwealth to conduct a study for a hyperloop system that would facilitate the transportation of passengers and freight at speeds approaching 700 miles per hour in pods that move through low-pressure tubes.

House Resolution 1057 found that the concept of the hyperloop, first described by Elon Musk in 2012-2013, may no longer be a hypothetical notion, given the recent work of states and firms to study and develop the necessary technologies.  In 2018, transportation agencies in Ohio and Illinois announced a study involving a hyperloop that would connect Columbus, Ohio to Chicago, Illinois.  House Resolution 1057 explains that Elon Musk desires to build a hyperloop connecting New York City to Washington, D.C. with a projected travel time of 29 minutes with planned stops in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Continue Reading A Hyperloop in Pennsylvania: More Than Just a Futuristic Notion?

In an earlier blog post we discussed a zoning case from Lebanon County, Pennsylvania that involved the keeping of ducks as emotional support animals on a residential property.  In that case, the zoning hearing board determined that the ducks were permitted on the property as pets and that the keeping of ducks as pets was not an agricultural operation as alleged in the enforcement notice.  Last month, a zoning hearing board in a York County, Pennsylvania municipality was asked to determine whether the keeping of pot-bellied pigs as emotional support animals on a residential property is permitted.

According to an article published in the York Daily Record, a family acquired two pot-bellied pigs as emotional support animals for their son.  The family also has two dogs and three cats, and all the animals live in the house with the family.
Continue Reading Are Pot Bellied Pigs Pets Too?

In blog posts last year (available HERE and HERE), we reviewed the challenges that municipalities face in regulating short-term rentals under existing zoning ordinances that do not specifically address the use.  One case we discussed was Slice of Life, LLC v. Hamilton Township Zoning Hearing Board, 164 A.3d 633 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 2017).  The Commonwealth Court’s decision in Slice of Life was appealed and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently reversed the Commonwealth Court’s decision.

In Slice of Life, the Township issued an enforcement notice to the property owner alleging that the property was being used as a hotel or other type of transient lodging in violation of the zoning ordinance.  According to the zoning ordinance, single-family residential was the only permitted use in the underlying zoning district.  The Township’s zoning ordinance defined the term “family” as
Continue Reading **UPDATE** Regulating Short-Term Rentals – The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Weighs In

Recently, Frank Chlebnikow, AICP and I co-presented a program entitled “Finding Valuable Commercial Space Under Parking Lots” at the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors’ 97th Annual Educational Conference.  The program discussed problems (and potential solutions) many communities are experiencing due to the increasing amount of vacant retail spaces in shopping malls and big-box retail stores.  Most communities experience impacts such as a stagnating/declining tax base and operating revenue shortfalls, leading to a reduction in municipal services, loss of businesses and residents, limited property reinvestment, and increasing tax rates.  But mature, built-out suburban and urban communities must also deal with the lack of undeveloped land, aging and inadequately maintained infrastructure, traffic congestion and addressing stormwater runoff issues while complying with federal/state mandates.

One thing is certain, the traditional mall and suburban commercial corridor model (a “shopping mall”) that includes one or more sprawling, single-story buildings dominated by retail and department store tenants surrounded by seas of parking lots, is not the future.
Continue Reading Shopping Malls: This Ain’t the Dawn of the Dead

We are accustomed to seeing some accommodations for emotional support animals in the housing context.  Recently, a Borough’s zoning hearing board and the Court of Common Pleas were asked to resolve a similar issue in a zoning case.  The facts and issues in the case touched on urban agriculture issues that are becoming increasingly more common in addition to the interpretation of certain terms in the Borough’s zoning ordinance.  Like short-term rentals, emotional support animals and urban agriculture are uses that are not typically addressed in zoning ordinances, thereby leading to cases just like this.

A young boy with autism lived with his mother and grandfather in a two-family residential building on property owned by the grandfather and located in the Borough’s commercial zoning district.  The boy’s family acquired eight ducks as therapeutic pets after he had a positive experience with a friend’s pet duck.  The ducks were kept at the residential property, living outside in a fenced yard but also spending some time inside the house.  The Borough had attempted to deal with the keeping of animals on a residential property in the past.
Continue Reading When Are Ducks Pets?

In our first post on accessory uses, we introduced the value of accessory uses as a tool for permitting a land use that otherwise might not be permitted as a principal use.  We also discussed the two-part test for determining whether a use is accessory – is it (i) customarily incidental to and (ii) subordinate to the principal use?  In this post, we will conclude our discussion on accessory uses by looking at the “customarily incidental” part of the analysis.

The most important concept to remember when evaluating whether a use is “customarily incidental” to a principal use is not to assume that there must be evidence of a traditional relationship between the principal use and proposed accessory use.  All too often, zoning officers are inclined to take the position that something cannot be an accessory use because they have never seen the proposed accessory use together with a principal use.  This approach would lead to a stagnation of land uses that is not reflective of how uses evolve over time.
Continue Reading Accessory Uses Part II: Worth Much More Than a Secondary Thought

Recently, one forward thinking Pennsylvania grocery retailer opened a new Ecommerce hub facility at the site of one of its former, traditional grocery store buildings in a mixed-use neighborhood. Rather than demolishing the existing “brick and mortar” building, it is adaptively reusing the building by converting it to a new “click and mortar” facility.

For many retailers, the traditional retail approach includes a commercial building with a significant retail display and sales area directly accessible by customers selecting and purchasing their goods onsite.  But new approaches are popping up every day.  The new approach referenced above allows customers to place orders online using their electronic devices or onsite using tablets located in the building’s vestibule area.  Orders are processed and fulfilled onsite and either picked up by customers or delivered to customers via a delivery service.

This local retailer is just one example of an emerging business trend whereby “shopping fulfillment centers” are occupying vacant, former retail store buildings located in close proximity to customers.
Continue Reading Friendly Neighborhood Fulfillment Centers: Not Your Mama’s Fulfillment Centers

In a prior post on the history of zoning in Pennsylvania, Jamie Strong cited the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, stating less than a third of Pennsylvania’s 2,561 municipalities have no zoning regulations.  He wrote that, in general, it is the “more rural, less developed and less populated municipalities” in Pennsylvania that lack zoning.  As of 2015, 98.2% of Pennsylvania’s urban population was zoned while only 68.9% of the rural population was zoned.

Such is not the case in Texas, where Houston, the state’s largest city, is “without” zoning.  Houston is the butt of many zoning jokes – all of which are as dull as you’d expect a zoning joke to be.  Nonetheless, it is a fascinating case study showing us how our cities and towns might look without the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code and local land use ordinances.  (Google “pictures of Houston zoning.”)  I recently read a few articles examining the effects of how Houston has handled development over the last 100 years.  Two of the articles led me to the conclusion that Houston’s land use problems, whether real or perceived, have more to do with its historical lack of a comprehensive scheme – most notably, a comprehensive plan, than with a lack of zoning regulations.
Continue Reading Houston, We Have a (Planning) Problem