Redevelopment

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When I first read Lancaster County’s Places2040 Comprehensive Plan (you can read my summary of the Plan adopted in October 2018 HERE), one “Catalytic Tool” caught my eye in particular: simplify zoning.  Make no mistake, complicated zoning ordinances are not unique to Lancaster County.  In Pennsylvania, where land use is controlled at the municipal level, there is often no consistency in how zoning is regulated from one township, borough, or city to the next.  To add further complication, municipal boundaries don’t always align with places, communities and corridors.  As a result, two comparable properties located in the same neighborhood can be governed by vastly different zoning regulations.  With a system that is so fractured, how can we meaningfully work towards simplifying zoning in Lancaster County and across the Commonwealth?

To answer this question, the Lancaster County Planning Commission (“LCPC”)
Continue Reading Simplified Zoning: Paradox or New Paradigm?

Yesterday morning on the McNees Minute on ABC 27, I briefly discussed the role local public officials – such as your municipality’s council members, commissioners or supervisors – have in the development and redevelopment processes for our communities.  They play a major role in ensuring our land is developed in a smart, safe and efficient manner that provides for all the needs of a community.  I stressed the importance of electing public officials who are willing to trust municipal staff and other consultants.  In addition, I touched on why it is important to elect public officials who are willing and able to collaborate with developers and property owners.  Finally, I offered that it is equally important for developers and property owners to engage land use professionals who also are collaborative and able to work with elected public officials and municipal staff.  Having forward thinking, collaborative people in each of those roles is vitally important to the future development and redevelopment of our communities.

There are many posts on this blog that discuss or analyze the situation where a municipal ordinance has become antiquated.  We’ve discussed situations where ordinances just haven’t considered
Continue Reading Collaboration: A Better Way to Develop

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

In a world where technology and community needs frequently out-pace zoning updates, permitting zoning modifications by conditional use is an opportunity for municipalities and developers to collaborate to help ensure development projects are well designed, innovative, publicly supported and, therefore, approved.  Most people involved in zoning and development know that denied variances – (i.e., modifications of the strict application of zoning ordinance provisions) can sink otherwise well designed, innovative and publicly supported projects.  Regardless of the use, district or community, the rigid “hardship” criteria for variances, set forth in Section 910.2(a) of the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code (“MPC”), are extremely inflexible.  That inflexibility often stymies creativity and constrains innovation.  Indeed, the antiquated criteria is inconsistent with and contrary to other provisions of the MPC and, at times, the desires of many municipalities that wish to accommodate newer development innovations and trends.

Occurring more often are scenarios where variances are necessary to accommodate the preferences of the municipality and to permit innovative and sustainable mixed-use developments with design enhancements.  In such instances, zoning hearing boards, municipal elected and appointed officials, and the public all may agree
Continue Reading Requesting a Variance from Variances! Consider a Conditional Use

In January of this year, Governor Wolf put forth a series of Legislative Proposals meant to address critical infrastructure problems in Pennsylvania, including blight, particularly in rural Pennsylvania.  He called this series of proposals Restore Pennsylvania.  Governor Wolf simultaneously proposed paying for these initiatives through the imposition of a tax on the extraction of shale gas in the Commonwealth.  While many of the proposals to address the infrastructure problems were well received, the funding of the programs through a shale gas tax has been more controversial.  More information on the entire Restore Pennsylvania initiative can be found HERE.

Of interest to municipalities in the Commonwealth dealing with the problem of blighted properties is the section of the Governor’s proposal that deals specifically with that issue.  The Governor’s proposal acknowledged that nearly all communities within the state have some level of blight.  The cost of dealing with the problem varies, with small municipalities needing funding of perhaps $1 million dollars to address the issue, while larger municipalities, such as Altoona, having concluded that they need tens of millions of dollars to effectively combat the problem.    
Continue Reading Governor’s Wolf’s Plan for Addressing Blight in Pennsylvania

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