Heavy hitters discuss Avenue's future
Representatives from three local organizations gathered Saturday morning to consider how the look and feel of Germantown Avenue should be determined, and by whom
by JAMES STURDIVANT
Chestnut Hill means different things to different people. A suburb in the city. A quaint shopper's oasis. A showcase example of the seamless meld of residential and retail, where residents can do on foot what suburbanites must accomplish in multiple car trips across sprawling townships.
On Saturday, a meeting occurred that served as a reminder of what Chestnut Hill is not.
An accident.
The three local organizations that have done the most to shape the direction and appearance of Germantown Avenue over the past half century came together Saturday to discuss the future of the Hill's main business artery. Billed as a "convocation," the meeting at Hiram Lodge between representatives of the Chestnut Hill Business Association, the Chestnut Hill Community Association and the Chestnut Hill Historical Society constituted a frank but cordial discussion of the way design guidelines for local businesses are made and enforced. More fundamentally, it concerned which group should take the lead role in making decisions that affect the commercial corridor.
Overseen by Betsy Masters, an architect and CHCA board member, the meeting included business association president Tom Ivory, community association president Maxine Dornemann, historical society president and former CHCA aesthetics committee chair Patricia Cove, business improvement district board president John Levitties and community manager Marie Lachat. Representing the community association's physical division were aesthetics committee chair Sanjiv Jain, who also sits on the CHCA and CHBA boards, development review committee chair Greg Woodring, aesthetics committee member Harriet Palmer, physical division vice president Stan Moat, and John Haak, who sits on the land use planning and zoning committee and works for the city planning commission.
Past precedents
The meeting began with an overview of work done by the community association's aesthetics committee, the prime mover in shaping the look of the Avenue for several decades. The committee's guidelines, developed in the late 1980s and approved at that time by the business association and the historical society, do not carry the weight of law. Both Masters and Cove stressed that efforts to get businesses to abide by design guidelines often hinge on individual negotiations with business operators.
Masters cited the local McDonalds as an example of successful negotiation, noting that the franchisee was not legally obliged under the city's zoning code to do anything that deviated from the usual McDonalds look.
"The net result is that we do not have a grey stucco building with aluminum frames and plastic awnings," she said. Masters and Palmer also pointed to the Citizens Bank and Wachovia signs as examples of what results from successful negotiations with corporate entities.
Less successful, according to Cove and Masters, were the committee's efforts to influence the design of the Talbot's building when it was built in the early 1990s.
Procedurally, problems can arise when guidelines are promoted in a way that alienates businesses, Cove said, as happened on one occasion when a local bank manager received a letter complaining about the color of a new sign on Christmas Day.
"The guidelines have worked. What has not worked is the perception of the way these guidelines have been maintained," she said. The comment prompted Woodring to suggest that "checks and balances" be in place to prevent individual committee members from acting inappropriately on their own.
"If the person delivering the message always keeps in mind that the person is not required by law to follow the recommendations, then it changes the approach," Jain said.
New BID on the block
Flush with new money from the business improvement district levy on local property owners, the Chestnut Hill Business Association has formed a streetscape committee that plans to study design issues on Germantown Avenue. The role of this new committee and its relation to the CHCA aesthetics committee formed the bulk of discussion Saturday.
Ivory said that there are two BID-funded studies currently going on: a parking study and a retail survey conducted by Urban Partners, which would apply "hard research" in deciphering patterns and preferences among shoppers who visit the Hill.
Levitties added that these will soon be joined by a streetscape study.
"We want to analyze the street to help bring to Germantown Avenue some of the things that the retail study says are desirable," Levitties said, mentioning sidewalk size, cobblestones and street trees as some of the Avenue's features that will be evaluated.
Lachat said that the look of the Avenue is central to the neighborhood's identity that has so successfully drawn people to live and shop here. She underscored its uniqueness by contrasting it with historical "replications" found at theme parks or Colonial Williamsburg.
"We are a replication also," Levitties replied. "Chestnut Hill is a pastiche. We made a self-conscious determination of what we wanted Chestnut Hill to be and we made it happen ... and that's what is happening now. To tinker with it is not inappropriate."
Levitties stressed that the streetscape committee includes representation from the CHCA and that "the last thing we want to do is create a business district that is not acceptable to the residents of Chestnut Hill."
The issue is where authority lies in making decisions about businesses, he said. He added that while he was "grateful" for the aesthetic committee's work in the past, it was time for the CHBA to "take responsibility" for these issues.
"If you're taking this tax money and basically reinventing the wheel with it, then you're wasting your money," Woodring said. "Make sure that people have a grasp of what's already been written."
Physical division process
Discussion of the community's ability to influence property owners prompted Jain to suggest that cutting the length of the CHCA physical division processes should be a priority.
Saying that he had a "radically different" opinion, Woodring replied that the main problem comes from those who have the legal and financial means to manipulate the system to their own ends.
"Somebody honest entering the process can get through it in five weeks," he said. Citing the recent negotiations surrounding expansion plans at the Woodmere Art Museum, Woodring said that "We made a valiant effort to come to a synthesis," but that not all neighbors have been willing to participate honestly.
"It works if people ahead of time understand the process," Haak said. Woodring pointed out that the process has been reviewed "several times."
"The structure [of the process] wasn't broken so much as the application of it," Dornemann said.
The meeting ultimately turned on a positive note, with various attendees expressing their hope that a new period of cooperation had been initiated.
"I would feel good if I could leave here today feeling that there were a closer relationship between the CHCA, the historical society and the CHBA. I have felt a chasm in the past few years," Cove said.
"I do believe we are at a juncture in the life of the community," Dornemann had said earlier. "There's a new player in the BID, and the opportunity is good."
