Merakey Total Health has begun tearing down two turn-of-the-century twin homes adjacent to its property on East Mt. Airy Avenue to build a parking lot for its customers.
The demolition at 29-31 E. Mt. Airy Ave. required a zoning variance, with Merakey presenting their case to the Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) on Feb. 12. A week later, the ZBA voted to approve the variances.
The parking lot also required the removal of three heritage trees, which drew some concern from neighbors. According to the Philadelphia code, a heritage tree must be at least 24 inches in diameter, and fall …
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Merakey Total Health has begun tearing down two turn-of-the-century twin homes adjacent to its property on East Mt. Airy Avenue to build a parking lot for its customers.
The demolition at 29-31 E. Mt. Airy Ave. required a zoning variance, with Merakey presenting their case to the Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) on Feb. 12. A week later, the ZBA voted to approve the variances.
The parking lot also required the removal of three heritage trees, which drew some concern from neighbors. According to the Philadelphia code, a heritage tree must be at least 24 inches in diameter, and fall under a list of 31 species.
“The main concerns from the nearby neighbors were the removal of three heritage trees to maximize the size of a parking lot adjacent to the building for better accessibility by patients and the traffic congestion at the intersection of Chew and Mt. Airy avenues, especially affecting pedestrian travel for school children and neighbors,” Linda Bell, board president of East Mt. Airy Neighbors, told the Local. “The houses owned by Merakey had been unoccupied for many years and were torn down ‘by right.’”
At the ZBA hearing, officials representing Merakey argued that the parking lot was necessary to allow their customers easier access to the building. Merakey owns a parking lot across the street, which they say made it difficult for some patients to enter the building.
One neighbor, Meg De Brito, sent out a plea to neighbors urging them to protest the project and attend the ZBA hearing.
“This would allow the removal of the 1890 twin residential buildings, made of Wissahickon schist stone, built in a line of three ‘show homes’ from the turn of the century creation of the East Mt Airy neighborhood when the land shifted from bucolic to a streetcar suburb,” De Brito wrote on her website. “The buildings they would remove begin to unravel a connective row of houses and lead to more opportunities to shift zoning in our neighborhood to a new commercial construction scale of this current bursting era of development.”
Tommy Tucker can be reached at tommy@chestnuthilllocal.com.
