There is a great article in the Inquirer today by Inga Saffron about the Philadelphia Zoning Board of Adjustment and how it routinely ignores and does not care about the zoning code. As an urban planner who has witnessed this type of behavior for nearly two decades, it was good to see the matter addressed by the media. While zoning and the issuing of variances can be a rather boring matter to most people, it impacts the City significantly in that a building or parking lot of any size will impact, define and shape a street and neighborhood for decades after it is built. The more strategically located the building or parking lot, and the greater the granting of a variance deviates from the zoning code, the greater its likelihood for damage to the fabric of the City. Also, the actions of the Zoning Board of Adjustment is another part of the motif of incompetent/corrupt/pay to play/nonvisionary behavior that we have come to know as the status quo in many aspects of our political life in Philadelphia.
Inga's article has three key points:
1. David Auspitz who heads the Zoning Board of Adjustment clearly has no clue about zoning or care for the zoning code or urban planning and design issues or due process. (I would add that this has been true of the most of the members of the Zoning Board of Adjustment since at least the early 1990s.)
2. Variances, which legally should only be given for non self imposed hardships are given out for a whole bunch of reasons including the whims of Mr. Auspitz. (To Quote from Inga, “[A hardship] occurs when a site's zoning classification is so out of sync with modern reality that nothing can be built there.”) While I cannot prove or make a nexus to campaign contributions and certain zoning decisions I will let the readers draw their own conclusions as to if their might be a connection in some cases.
3. Often times the opinions of people and neighborhoods in whether a variance should be given do not matter due to points 1 and 2 and the general disinterest/disregard/disdain of Mayors in this City when it comes to zoning and planning matters. As Inga points out, there is no City solicitor at the Zoning Board of Adjustment hearings (and I would add that the opinions of the Planning Commission at the Zoning Board of Adjustment have routinely been ignored and discounted for years).
While Inga does not directly state so in her article, the problem of the Zoning Board of Adjustment could be fixed in a few steps:
1. Get a Mayor who cares and understands about zoning and planning and due process in these matters.
2. Appoint people to the Zoning Board of Adjustment who care and understand zoning and planning and due process, as well as appoint at least some people to the Zoning Board of Adjustment who have formal training as urban planners, architects, engineers and other related professions.
3. Have a city solicitor at all Zoning Board of Adjustment hearings.
4. Train all members of the Zoning Board of Adjustment in a boot camp on zoning, planning and how the process should work and on what is a variance and when should it be granted.
Most of these steps involve little cost or time but require leadership from a Mayor who gets zoning and planning, and can lead and change policies in these matters.
The last issue is rewriting the zoning code, which is also critical, but as Inga points out in her article is an expensive and time consuming process, which will largely be a waste of time and money if when a new zoning code is in place, the Zoning Board of Adjustment proceeds to ignore many of its aspects and rules as it does now.
quantification
can you please quantify the impact of "the actions of the Zoning Board of Adjustment is another part of the motif of incompetent/corrupt/pay to play/nonvisionary behavior"? Otherwise, I have a hard time seeing this for more than what it is - "rhetoric"!!!
______________________________
Phillyville
Not quantification exactly
But while Tom Kelly, head of the local sheet metal workers union, was head of the ZBA, the board would routinely require applicants to install central air conditioning as a condition of getting any kind of variance. Didn't matter whether there was any rational relation between the proposed use and central air. There was an alternative school that used to rent space in the former Penn divinity school at 42nd and Spruce, and they lost their space when Penn tore it down to build the Sadie Alexander School. Calvary Methodist Church at 48th and Baltimore was willing to provide space, but the ZBA required them to install central a/c (even though the school was closed during the summer month), and the school was unable to raise enough money in a short enough time to meet that demand. The school no longer exists.
I don't know how many similar stories there are from those years, but as far as I'm concerned, one is too many.
Rhetoric, I Think Not
I actually have a degree in rhetoric (want to guess what rhetorical theories my name refers to?) and find your repeated use of the work "rhetoric" as a device to rebut valid arguments as a feeble attempt to seek to undermine presentations with which you disagree. What if I were to reply to your statement as being "hogwash"? Also, the "rhetoric" crutch is getting old, you might want to replace it with something else, may I suggest balderdash.
How is it not rhetoric? Follow me on a journey. I refer you to Marc Stier's post at http://youngphillypolitics.com/node/2017#comment-5594; and ask you to read Inga's article and the reference to the campaign contribution from developer Yaron to Rendell who supported the variance in Old City mentioned in Inga's article; and the series of debacles and convictions surrounding Penn's Landing, Abscam, Corey Kemp, Leonard Ross, Milton Street, Henry Cianfrani, Louis Vignola, Leland Beloff, James Tayoun Sr., Ronald White, Keep Philadelphia Beautiful (list incomplete).
Follow me on another journey, this time to Penn's Landing. Warning: Economic Analysis up ahead. For more than 40 years, Penn's Landing has been through a series of development proposals, yet it remains largely unbuilt. This is due to a lack of visionary behavior, a difficult site to build on, and oh well a lack of city planning. Oh, and I almost forgot political corruption that happened in 1985 and 2005, with four people going to jail. How a site located next to I-95 and on the waterfront of a major east coast city remains unbuilt upon for 40 years is beyond my comprehension, regardless of any site problems. Perhaps corruption in connection with incompetency, corruption, pay to play and nonvisionary behaviors has played a role in the failure of Penn's Landing getting developed or perhaps it is just rhetoric.
We're at Penn’s Landing. Do you hear the sound of the wind blowing through the decades of lost opportunity? Penn's Landing is publicly owned land. Around 1985 Williard Rouse proposed a $70 million entertainment and retail project. The result, an unbuilt project and the conviction on City Councilman Leland M. Beloff, a mob boss and a third party. Cost of lost project $70 million of project value, plus $115.69 million in real estate taxes over 20 years, plus $140 million in multiplier spending based on construction costs, plus (500 jobs at average of $30,000 per year for 20 years) $300 million in wages, plus $15 million in wage taxes (using 5 percent) over 20 years. That brings me to over $640 million dollars in lost spending.
Or take another failed project and lost opportunity such as the debacle at the former Gimbel's site at 8th and Market and how the City and the Parking Authority botched the deal and gave $11.5 million ($1.5 million loan and $10 million to have the Parking Authority buy part of the ground in 2002) to a major campaign contributor. All this for a $200 million project that got derailed. And oh yeah, the Gimbel's site has been vacant since I believe the mid to late 1980s. I'd run the numbers on this for you too, but assume you would call it "numbers" or something of that sort.
I think he was kidding.
I think he was kidding.
More community input and
More community input and more urban planner's are clearly needed in Philadelphia. I find it extremely vexing when is see “residential” codes being switched to allow “business”. This is an article I found which seems germane.
City looks to a leaner,
sensible zoning code
By Lauren Fritsky
Times Staff Writer
City Councilman Brian O’Neill (R-10th dist.) has spent much of his time in City Council talking to Northeast residents about zoning.
In recent years, he’s heard a lot of negative comments about the process, which causes dissension between residents and developers time and time again.
According to O’Neill, both parties share one thing in common: a sense of confusion over the inconsistency of the zoning code.
"I agree that it should be revised," O’Neill said. "The time has come. It should have been done a long time ago."
Drafting a new code could get underway as early as 2008, the date City Council set at the end of 2006 for sending a new Zoning Code Commission to the drawing board. The task force would look at making the 624-page zoning code, written in the 1960s, more manageable. The voluminous document dictates where buildings and homes go and what various physical components they’ll include.
The current zoning code contains more than 50 zoning districts for residential, commercial, recreational and industrial properties. The designations get a corresponding number to set their density.
But small changes here and there have produced a fickle system that allows for certain building qualities in some areas but not in others. Through remappings and specific requests to tweak parts of the code, rules now vary greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood.
Along with the commission, which will include Council-appointed members, the move toward a new zoning code touts redesigning the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, a largely advisory group that reviews building schemes. The changes would give the commission a louder voice in approving plans, O’Neill said.
"They know what measures are needed," he said. "They need more power themselves in planning and the development process and design review. Right now, they’re just advisory, and people ignore them."
A 2004 study revealed that 40 percent of all city projects submitted for zoning approval required variances — permission needed when building plans do not fully match with the zoning. O’Neill doesn’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.
"The variance process works well for communities," he said, adding that neighborhood approval can prevent "out-of-character" homes, which differ aesthetically from surrounding ones, from popping up.
"It’s only when the developer has to sit down with the community that they listen," the councilman said.
There has been no mention of whether a revision of the zoning code would affect the number of zoning classes or other specific design requirements. City Council hopes to feature the proposal as a ballot question during the May primary election. If passed, the Zoning Code Commission would report to work in June 2008.
O’Neill’s concerns about the proposed commission center on the lack of community voice. He fears the group might end up focusing on the needs of developers. While the commission’s membership remains unseen, he believes the proposed system changes will ultimately benefit residents.
"If what they say is true, we won’t see massive changes," he said. "It will make it easier for homeowners." ••
Reporter Lauren Fritsky can be reached at 215-354-3038 or lfritsky@phillynews.com
O'Neill Wants the Status Quo on Zoning
What Councilman O'Neill really appears to want is to maintain the status quo on zoning and use zoning to control his fiefdom (district).
1. O'Neill used his power to block an auto dealership from moving into a vacant property at Red Lion and the Roosevelt Boulevard during the earlier part of this decade, even though the property was zoned for an auto dealership and had community support for the project. O'Neill held up the granting of permits and the auto dealer had to spend a lot of time and money on attorney fees to be able to get the dealership opened due to O'Neill blocking a legal use.
2. O'Neill stated above "I agree that it should be revised," O’Neill said. "The time has come. It should have been done a long time ago." Where has O'Neill been for the last 20 plus years? He's been in City Council. What has taken him so long to realize that the zoning code is out of date?
3. Zoning variances are not the correct procedural, policy or legal method to deal with design issues. The zoning code is the way to deal with design issues. Also, as much as the Councilman, you or me may not like the design of a project, if it is allowed under a zoning code it should be allowed to be built without punishing the applicant. If a project is not allowed under the zoning code and there is no hardship, the project should not get a variance. If you want community input in the zoning process, there are plenty of ways to build that into a zoning code, such as requiring a community meeting for certain types of projects, requiring notification of all property owners within a certain distance of the proposed project, having design standards and guidelines in a zoning code, and so on. The variance process does not work well for applicants or neighborhoods; it only works well for elected officials who want to control things and zoning attorneys who get clients and billable hours. The current zoning code is a shambles and that fact that 40 percent of current projects require a variance shows a deep flaw in the code. The new Chicago zoning code dramatically reduced the number of districts, made great use of form based zoning, and was created by a broad based group.
Good points, but I don't
Good points, but I don't blanketly believe that "if it is allowed under a zoning code it should be allowed to be built". For example, a perfectly legal practice that developers have been doing is tearing down single family homes in R1 areas and erecting two or three in its place. Should this be allowed just because it is legal?
Anyway, John Runyan for mayor in 2007!!!
Flip Side to Your Position
While I agree that the development activity you mentioned and some other development activities are problematic, that it reflective of the obsolete zoning code and flaws in the zoning code that should be fixed. While a new zoning code will not solve every development/planning/zoning problem, it will bring the zoning code into present day reality and correct a range of flaws and limitations in the current code, including the one you mentioned. My belief system is that if something is bad and legal that the law needs to be fixed and not ignored or violated, especially when it involves or impacts the public. My position especially applies in my belief system when government violates or ignores their own laws. Look at the inverse of this from the position of the Zoning Board of Adjustment, they routinely believe that if a development project is good and illegal that they (illegally) can, should and do give variances to projects.