Photograph

GOING, GOING … The Boorse Tract is located along Camp Hill Road in Oreland, a stone’s throw from the historic Emlen House (one of Washington’s headquarters) in Upper Dublin Township. Revolutionary War troops may have encamped on the property, through which flows Sandy Run Creek. The tract is one of the township’s last significant areas of unprotected open space. (Photo by James Sturdivant)

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No exceptions

The controversy over development in Springfield Township heated up again last week when the Board of Commissioners decided to proceed with public hearings on two projects that require exceptions to the township’s zoning code. An updated proposal from the Nolan Companies for the Tecce Tract, a 41-acre parcel of open space along Ridge Pike near Northwestern Avenue, will be considered at a public hearing on Sept. 28. On Sept. 14, the board plans to vote on a rezoning proposal for the Boorse tract, located along Camp Hill Road near Pennsylvania Avenue in the township’s northern section.

These two development proposals epitomize current issues surrounding zoning in Springfield Township, which has long struggled with how best to honor its natural and historic character while handling growth. The primary issue for those opposing the Tecce Development is environmental: the proposed development would put 66 housing units on a tract zoned for 47 in an environmentally sensitive area near Fairmount Park and the Schuylkill River. Opposing the Boorse Tract are those who wish to preserve a significant slice of the township’s history: a mid-18th century Georgian house built by a prominent Pennsylvanian, colonial surveyor general Nicholas Scull, along with several other buildings (including a combination home/mill) dating from the 1700s and the remains of slave quarters. The site is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The developer plans to demolish existing structures to make way for townhomes.

Without a preservation ordinance, which some activists have been calling for since Whitemarsh Hall was torn down over 20 years ago, there is little that can be done to save the Boorse Tract on historical grounds. There is on the books, however, the township’s Cluster AAA zoning ordinance, enacted in May 2003 with the stated intention of protecting what little remains of open space (“preserve natural features such as woodland, steep slopes, wetlands and floodplains”) and historic value (“preserve natural, scenic, cultural and historic resources”) in the township. On a technical level, the proposed developments exceed the density allowed by the ordinance, meaning that both will require “spot zoning” exceptions. On a philosophical level, both run counter to its intent. No compelling reason, beyond the tax revenue benefit afforded by age-restricted housing on this scale, has been offered as to why these exceptions to the ordinance should be allowed.

While another public hearing on the Tecce Tract may sound like a good idea, it is not. A hearing was already held last October, and to schedule another one simply indicates that the board is still looking for a way to sidestep the law it passed two years ago by refusing to take these proposals off the table. If the board is dead set on allowing these developments, it could at least insist, in the Boorse case, on the sort of cluster development designed to save historic lots as allowed for by the AAA designation and, in the Tecce case, on further concessions regarding density to minimize runoff and protect wooded slopes.

James Sturdivant

Lost in the flood

Last week, the neighborhood found itself in the grip of a new anxiety. Locals walked the streets warily, looking out of the corners of their eyes, wondering, ”Should I walk by those people? How would it look if I crossed the street to avoid them?”

You guessed it — the news media descended on Chestnut Hill.

The frenzy came on like a flash flood, fed by a (never substantiated) headline in the Daily News stating that the recent assaults and robberies reported in last week’s Local were “tied to gangs.” Camera crews prowled the Avenue interviewing shoppers and storeowners, apparently heedless of the fact that the teenage attackers have targeted residential streets. No matter: by Friday, Channel 6 was declaring, “Chestnut Hill Shopping District Plagued by Violence.”

Mid-summer news doldrums does not by itself explain the hyperbole.

There has long been a sense in the Philadelphia press that, as far as Chestnut Hill is concerned, anything goes. The formula for covering crime on the Hill is always the same: contrast the baseness of the act with the Hill’s affluence (“A band of teenagers has been terrorizing ritzy Chestnut Hill,” the Daily News article begins) and run with the theme. Met with criticism for sensationalistic coverage, local media can hide behind the notion that we should feel we have nothing to complain about, that we don’t know what real problems are and, anyway, should be able to take a little heat. Never mind that other parts of the city would be equally miffed by such over-the-top coverage (how would Manayunk or Society Hill react to inaccurate reports of “thugs” “terrorizing” their shopping district), and probably receive more sympathy.

The issue here is not that of whether Chestnut Hill has less to complain about than other parts of the city (it obviously does), but of accuracy and responsibility in news coverage. All Philadelphians should be able to sympathize with that.

James Sturdivant

Commentary: Toward a safer Hill

by MAXINE DORNEMANN

Representatives from the Community Association, the Business Association, the press and City Council met with police officers from the 14th precinct on Aug. 11 to discuss both short- and long-term solutions in response to the assaults on people around the Hill.

Lt. James Dambach assured the group that the police were actively working to apprehend the perpetrators of the latest assaults; they have a number of leads.

Among others ideas offered, the Local has agreed to run a series of articles on public safety. The first line of defense, Lt. Dambach suggested, however, is that people not walk alone late at night; it’s always best to go out in groups. But don’t be afraid to go out at all, he continued. This current rash of crime should not deter people from walking on the streets, but it’s always prudent to walk in a group, he reiterated. The more people on the streets, the safer the streets are for everyone.

The response team agreed to meet again within two weeks to continue the discussion of the ideas presented and to continue to work collaboratively on solutions that will contain – if not totally eliminate – crime in this area.

Please feel free to contact any of us at the CHCA, CHBA or the Local with your good ideas to make the Hill safer for all.

Maxine Dornemann is the President of the Chestnut Hill Community Association.

Opinion: A revolutionary in Tory Town

by ED FELDMAN

I got angry. After 10 years in the land of quiet desperation. After 10 years in the land of enforced tastefulness. After 10 years of well-practiced caring smiles. Of “We need people like you on the board” and “You’re a breath of fresh air.” I should have been tipped off by the phrase “people like you.” It is an accepted fact of British Colonial rule that, in order to carry out the cruelest of dictates, an even, dispassionate manner of speech is necessary. And order must be maintained. By the few. In an orderly fashion. This is the way it operates up here in Tory Town. Because in the middle of the city that created the idea of revolution and modern democracy, a fiefdom has flourished. A group of people so obsessed with their own power, yet so secure in it, protected by a combination of inbreeding and Roberts Rules of Order, that Tom Delay is envious.

The mechanism is perfect. The people who crave control get it, and the rest of us wait and get informed of their actions by their newspaper. And it was through the reportage of this journal that I came to my anger, my epiphany. Three weeks ago on page one was a small fact that triggered my outrage and a subsequent outburst at the July Chestnut Hill Community Association board meeting. The CHCA is a corporation! I must be the second dumbest Ivy-Leaguer in the country. Of course, why else would they call it a board? This explains everything. It’s the Big Bank Theory of Chestnut Hill governance. That’s why the meetings are run like corporate meetings, instead of like town meetings, that quintessential Democratic American institution. And that’s why new business is always at the end of those meetings when everyone is tired and wants to go home. The better to stifle dissent — or new ideas. That’s why the board is bent on acquiring and controlling real estate.

That’s why McDonald’s is here. That’s why the biggest obstacle to Chestnut Hill’s growth, the Bowman Properties real estate empire, remains unchallenged and unaddressed.

McDonald’s is a … corporation. And Bowman Properties is a … corporation. And those kind of people respect one another. And accommodate one another. And the less powerful corporate entities fear and defer to the larger ones. So if the money promised to the Hill by the Golden Arches through Maurice McCarthy was never given (I asked about it at every meeting while I was a board member), don’t be pushy, they’re a corporation! But if some poor schmuck wants to put the “wrong colors” on his store, send an emissary down immediately.

When I quit the board because watching the process was causing the synapses devoted to democracy in my brain to atrophy (and causing me to fall asleep), I thought I could, like so many others of you, relax. Safe in the knowledge that, with all the largest properties already given to chain stores offering crap made by indentured workers and sold by non-union labor without the slightest community protest, what else could our community corporation effect of consequence. And the answer is … the Water Tower Recreation Center. Of course! It’s the largest property they can own!

And let there be no mistake, the board will own it. They will decide how to run it, they will decide how many interlocking members (another corporate control strategy) and committees will be needed before any program, activity, play, sport or color combination can be implemented, or even planned.

Now I know the democratic counter to this rant: “If we [he] want[s] to change things, we [he] should run for the board.” Allow me to reverse that. What kind of person wants to give up any night to make changes to a neighborhood so clean, so landscaped, so well serviced, and so wealthy, that any caring person would turn their efforts elsewhere, where blight, poverty and desperation cry out for help? Someone so obsessed with their own “personal environment” that they can’t stop touching it, fussing with it, adjusting it, controlling it. The ritual behavior witnessed by psychiatrists through one-way mirrors has its community “govern-mental” version on display the last Thursday of every month.

The real answer is to remake CHCA meetings into freewheeling town meetings, where anyone can say what they want, in the best tradition of America. If the residents of the best-behaved neighborhood in America can’t be trusted with freedom of speech, who can? But that won’t happen. They won’t let it. Control abhors freedom as the atmosphere does a vacuum. So while the board does its best to turn our neighborhood into the first municipally located gated community, complete with 30 banks and a rec center run by Politburo, I’ll be ruining their meetings. Hope to see ya there. You’ll recognize me; I’ll be the one having fun with government.

Ed Feldman, a former CHCA board member, is a resident of Chestnut Hill.