Home Office

Names can be deceiving. Just ask Rich Holmes of Aston. Eight years ago, Holmes took over a rent-a-car franchise in Media with three employees and 10 cars, mostly compacts and subcompacts 10 years and older. Since then, he has increased his staff to 10 employees and his fleet to 70 vehicles - sedans, minivans and trucks large enough to move a five-bedroom home. He operates Rent-A-Wreck at 120 E. Baltimore Pike. "We did a tremendous amount of advertising - radio, cable, newspapers, Yellow Pages and fliers - to build up the business," Holmes said.

My best friend has an office in a sleek, modern building in Cherry Hill with a sensibly large desk, lots of shelves, an ergonomically correct chair that's good for her back, and a wonderful secretary who sees to her paper chases. I have an old farm table that was seized like some pirate's booty at a yard sale 20 years ago and that occupies a corner of our family room. My "secretary" is an answering machine that works well in good weather, but seizes when it's damp, kind of like its owner's lower back.

Over the objections of a neighbor, the Springfield Township Zoning Hearing Board will allow a licensed psychologist to treat clients in her Erdenheim neighborhood. Laura R. Lipkin, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology from Temple University, applied at the board's Monday meeting for a special exception to set up an office in her Harston Lane home. Clarence Bix, who lives two doors down the street, said he was concerned about setting a precedent in the quiet neighborhood of split-level homes.

This was one police raid Milton Milan wasn't invited to. The flamboyant 37-year-old mayor of Camden, who has been known to accompany cops on raids and arrests in his impovershed city of 87,000, yesterday found himself the target of a criminal investigation. FBI and IRS agents, accompanied by local police and a drug-sniffing dog from the county sheriff's department, descended on Milan's office in City Hall and his recently remodeled three-story home in East Camden early yesterday morning armed with search warrants.

Paralyzed behind walls of snow, thousands of homebound people yesterday tried the next-best thing to going to work: They reached for their phones. Using computers with modems, fax machines and online services, many workers - including this reporter - spent the day plugged in. They checked e-mail and voice mail, dialed into office computer networks, monitored news, downloaded documents and tried - between shoveling snow and amusing the kids - to get some work done. "I don't normally have a home office, but today I've set one up," said Audrey Ashby, director of public relations for Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, speaking from the kitchen of her home in Wayne.

The Marple commissioners granted preliminary approval Monday night to developer Claude deBotton for a 90-acre subdivision plan between West Chester Pike and Lawrence Road. DeBotton received general approval for the project in March 1991 after nearly seven years of public debate and five lawsuits against the township. The development will be the largest ever built in Marple. The subdivision plan discussed Monday night maps out the precise location of the project's 147 townhouses, 420,000 square feet of office space and 4.6 acres of commercial space.

Is the trend toward home offices overblown? Are rooms dedicated entirely to work the biggest waste of space since the advent of the living room? You decide. In its first-ever look at home-based businesses, the Labor Department has found that about 6 percent of all households - 6.1 million, to be exact - operated businesses out of their residences last year. But running a business out of your house is one thing; working at home is something else. For example, the Labor Department said the workweek of self-employed people averages only about 23 hours.

A Lansdowne dentist is seeking to convert half of a three-story twin home at 10 Runnemede Ave. to a medical office on the first floor and one-bedroom apartments on the second and third floors. After 29 years of using the twin as a single-family residence, Barbara and Robert McIlhenny want to sell their home to Dr. Stephen W. Grosse because they say they "cannot any longer enjoy our home" due to increased traffic from an automatic bank teller machine across the street. A condition of the sale is that the McIhennys and Grosse obtain the zoning variances needed to allow Grosse to proceed with his plans.

The scenario is becoming a familiar one for the Conshohocken Zoning Hearing Board: A small business seeks a variance to convert a stately home on a main street into a business office. A real estate agent testifies that the property does not interest families because it is too expensive to heat and too close to main street traffic. A group of nearby residents pleads to retain the residential character of their neighborhood. Only the names were different at the board meeting Monday night, when Main Line businessman Alex Pronzato appealed for a variance to convert a house at 1101 Fayette St. into an office for his construction-management business.

With the work-at-home revolution well underway and the information superhighway under construction, there's no shortage of newspaper and magazine articles devoted to setting up a home office. But by focusing primarily on high-tech equipment, almost all of them miss the point: A home office need not - nay, should not - be a genetic clone of the corporate ideal. Just because you're bringing your work home with you doesn't mean you have to bring the office home, too. Whether you're a telecommuter, a part-time moonlighter or a full-time entrepreneur, the important thing to remember is that, at home, and perhaps for the first time, you have an unparalleled opportunity to civilize your own workplace.