Housing Developments

A revised ordinance for planned residential development in Thornbury Township was shelved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors until more information is obtained from the Planning Commission. Supervisors Chairman Steven Bates said the board was under no pressure to pass the ordinance, which addresses the creation of housing developments in keeping with the rural nature of the township. He said the proposals would be discussed at a Sept. 17 work session. "You have to understand that we're dealing with input from a lot of different areas and have to put that all together into one ordinance," Bates said.

The Haverford Planning Commission laid the groundwork for possible future water and sewer lines at its meeting last week as it endorsed applications for two housing developments. Iacobucci Bros. Contractors received unanimous backing for an application to construct Greenview Estates, a nine-lot subdivision at Glendale Road and Fairview Avenue, even though the commissioners expressed concern about storm- water management. "We have our own watershed, but they (Haverford Township)

The countdown is on for the mailing of 1990 census forms to local households in March, but some Delaware County boroughs and townships fear a good number of dwellings may be counted out in the population tally. Local governments such as Aston, Chester Heights, Upper Chichester and Haverford have alerted the Census Bureau's regional office in Philadelphia that a large number of dwellings, mostly housing developments that have been built in the last four or five years, have been excluded from the bureau's preliminary mailing lists.

For the last five years, a development once known for crime and fires has cleaned house by evicting almost 200 families. But success at Warminster Heights has come at a price, say Bucks County Juvenile Court officials: Many of the evicted families are moving to two nearby housing developments, causing crime rates among minors there to soar. The connection between Warminster Heights and the other communities - Centennial Village in Warminster and Warrington Mews - is strong.

City officials say they will rebuild an entire neighborhood with about $192 million in public and private money, including a $35 million federal housing grant to be awarded today. Richard McGrath, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli (D., N.J.), said yesterday that Atlantic City would be one of two cities in New Jersey to receive Hope 6 grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo has scheduled a news conference for this morning in Newark to announce the grants for Atlantic City and Newark, which will receive a similar amount of money.

A township proposal to enact stricter zoning laws defining lot-size and open-space requirements for residential developments has pitted the supervisors against the Church Farm School and Toll Bros. Representatives of the school and Toll announced their opposition Tuesday at the opening hearing on the proposed ordinances, which could affect about 400 acres of prime real estate owned by the two entities. Toll and the Church Farm School took up the 45-minute time limit on the hearing.

The model home with a fieldstone facade in rural Bucks County is far larger than the average U.S. residence and too expensive for 90 percent of Americans. "Beautiful," Bob Toll said, as he opened his arms to embrace the well-appointed corner-lot house and its surroundings. "Remember the idea that smaller is better?" Toll said later in an interview. "It was B.S. then and it's B.S. now. People want size. It's the capitalist system and it has its own logic. People want more. " And Toll is giving it to them in the form of thousands of big houses that cost on average nearly $600,000 and are hugely popular with home buyers.

A subsidiary of Voorhees-based American Water Works Co. Inc. said Tuesday that it has been awarded a $3.4 million contract to build a wastewater treatment plant in Islip, New York, to serve about 1,000 people in two housing developments. The subsidiary, Applied Water Management, signed the agreement with Home Properties, Inc.    - Andrew Maykuth

It had seemed like a chance to kill two birds with one stone. The city government, which incurred $4.5 million in debt in 1994 and is expected to add at least $5.3 million to that this year, was looking for revenue. The Chester Housing Authority wanted beefed-up security patrols at its housing developments and was willing to pay city police $250,000 a year to do the job. A state Department of Community Affairs team, assigned to help bridge the gap between spending and income after the city was declared financially distressed this year, strongly recommended that the city accept the offer.

The Kennett Consolidated school board voted Monday to buy $1.5 million worth of farmland in the rapidly growing southwestern edge of the district for a new Kennett Middle School. The school, to open in 2002 with about 1,200 students, will stand on 79 acres near the Delaware line, just south of Route 41 near Newark Road. That is more than twice the 37 acres now shared by the connected middle and high schools in Kennett Square. School officials say the region is losing so much open space to housing developments, which bring more children to the schools, that they bought enough space to also build a fourth elementary school in the future.

Charles H. Diamond, 76, of New Hope, executive director of the Bucks County Housing and Development Corp., died of pulmonary fibrosis Saturday, March 17, at home. For the last decade, Mr. Diamond headed the nonprofit corporation, which manages 26 properties housing low- and moderate-income families. Previously, he had been director of La Salle University Bucks County Center, the extension campus in Newtown, headed training at Crown Cork & Seal, and was an administrator for Holy Redeemer Health Systems.

New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection and elected officials are like distracted parents who just keep giving their kids more time to clean up their rooms, even as the dirty clothes continue to pile up on the floor. The state adopted a cutting-edge wastewater treatment program in 2008 and gave counties plenty of time to implement it. The federal government gave them $1.6 million in help. That was like giving the dirty-room kid a dollar to pay her brother to help with her chores.

Besides being used to obliterate the Norris Apartments high-rise in North Philadelphia yesterday, a wrecking ball painted with the purple and yellow Philadelphia Housing Authority logo also symbolized destruction of the organization's tarnished image and a fresh start. The demolition is paving the way for PHA to build 51 high-efficiency green units that feature solar panels on the roof to heat water, Energy Star windows, low-flow plumbing fixtures, compact fluorescent-light fixtures and native landscaping.

I could see developer Carl Dranoff across the Union League's second-floor ballroom, over the heads of an overflow crowd of business folk attending the Urban Land Institute's meeting on emerging trends in real estate. At the time, we were being treated to the results of a survey of Generation Y, the 77.5 million or so 15- to 32-year-olds (two of them are mine) produced by 75 million Baby Boomers. Now, Dranoff and a host of other city developers in the room - John Westrum and Tom Scannapieco were among those I could see, as was Marianne Harris of J.S. Reinhold - have been thriving on the growing number of young professionals and suburban empty-nesters making city neighborhoods their home, even in hard times.

Gay marriage just follows a trend It's not surprising that support for same-sex marriage has increased so markedly in recent years. Generations of American children have been so carefully taught about how wrong it is to discriminate on the basis of race or virtually any other difference. They've received their lessons not only in the public schools, but from Washington, and Hollywood, and those mainstream churches seeking a more temporal validity. There are exceptions, of course, usually on the basis of political expediency.

A subsidiary of Voorhees-based American Water Works Co. Inc. said Tuesday that it has been awarded a $3.4 million contract to build a wastewater treatment plant in Islip, New York, to serve about 1,000 people in two housing developments. The subsidiary, Applied Water Management, signed the agreement with Home Properties, Inc.    - Andrew Maykuth

Gov. Christie should take advantage of the latest legal ruling in the battle over affordable housing in New Jersey to reach a compromise. Christie suffered a setback last week when an appeals judge lifted a 90-day moratorium imposed by the new governor suspending the state's affordable-housing regulations. But the judge left intact a five-member task force named by Christie to develop recommendations for providing affordable housing, which seems like a more reasonable approach to reforming the system.

Jeffrey Tubbs has found a way to survive and thrive in a difficult residential real estate market: Start small, build green, price it right, work with your neighbors, and, even better, buy a unit and live there. The result: the Flats at Girard Pointe at Third Street and Germantown Avenue in Kensington, just above Northern Liberties. The eco-friendly project of five townhouses and four condos, begun in early 2008 on an 8,000-square-foot lot bought from the city Redevelopment Authority, commands prices of $300,000 to $450,000.

IN "Immigration's Unspoken Word" (Feb. 2), columnist Stu Bykofsky calls attention to the fact that many immigrants are considered "illegal. " I'd like to emphasize that being in the U.S. without documentation isn't a criminal offense. It's a civil offense like speeding or jaywalking. People jaywalk for a number of reasons: They're late, or need to catch the next bus, or there's something happening on the other side of the street. Similarly, people immigrate to the U.S. "illegally" out of need.

Barbara Leighton Karas, 65, of West Chester, an educator, coach, and horsewoman, died Thursday at Easton Memorial Hospital in Maryland of complications from a heart attack. She and her husband had been vacationing in nearby St. Michaels. Mrs. Karas graduated from Henderson High School in West Chester, where she was on the track, swim, hockey, and tennis teams. She earned a bachelor's degree from West Chester University, where she played tennis and field hockey. She was later a member of the U.S. Field Hockey Team.