And yet, in the end, a tentative agreement was finally reached after the parties turned to a model being used increasingly across the country to create win-wins for everyone involved.
First, this is who gets what in East Vincent:
The township gets a new 36.5-acre park.
The farm's historic farmhouse and tenant house will be restored.
The developer, the David Cutler Group, gets to build six houses on the site - down from the 72 originally proposed - and the right to build 40 others elsewhere in the township.
And the Reiff twins, both now deceased, have one of their wishes fulfilled: the release of a multimillion-dollar windfall to the Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio, an annual summer gathering the Reiffs attended religiously. They made the festival's organizing committee their estate's beneficiary.
"It is an amazing success story," former Supervisor Christine McNeil said of the agreement.
Key to the outcome is a technique called the transfer of development rights (TDR), which removes development from an area targeted for preservation to one designated for growth. Once viewed by many planners and officials as too complicated to work, TDRs are gaining increased attention as the number of successes grows nationwide, from the New Jersey Pinelands to Washington state's King County/Seattle area.
The goal of TDRs is to manage growth but also to fairly compensate landowners and protect their property rights, according to Chadds Ford planning consultant H. William Sellers.
Just as each property can have mineral or water rights, it also comes with development rights, Sellers said.
