Variance

The Swarthmore Borough Planning Commission has recommended that Borough Council approve the Thatcher Park preschool playground committee's plan to enclose the park with a fence. The commission made the recommendation Wednesday evening. The Borough Council on Monday night refused to ask the Zoning Hearing Board for a variance to allow the fence to be placed at the edge of the park, which is owned by the borough, but instead told the playground committee to obtain the Planning Commission's opinion.

One vase was molded out of soil and wax, one looked like a bag made of clear vinyl, and another, made of wood, was designed to warp when water was poured in. And there were vases fashioned from pipe fittings, tree roots, recycled concrete, and florist's foam. But when the winners of Collab's annual student design competition were announced at the Art Museum on Monday, the top prize went to a vase made out of ice. Instead of a typical container, Brett Duncan's "Ice Bloom impermanent vase" featured flowers frozen right into its surface.

Pocopson Township's Zoning Hearing Board has approved a zoning variance that will allow a Lenape Road resident to build an addition that will come closer to the side-yard property line than allowed by township ordinance. At a hearing Tuesday, the zoning board granted the variance to Anthony J. and Marguerite L. Musacchio, who want to build a two-story addition consisting of a two-car garage and eat-in kitchen. Pocopson requires at least 20 feet between a house and side property lines; Musacchio's addition will be 16 feet from the property line.

A Newlin man has been granted a variance that clears the way for him for the sale and development of part of his property off Glen Hall and Beagle Roads. Resident Clarence S. Miller wants to sell 13.9 acres of his Glen Hall Road property to Alan Thomas of East Bradford. At the Zoning Hearing Board meeting Wednesday night, Thomas said he planned to build a house and move his family to the property. Miller plans to continue living on the remaining 31.9 acres. A variance was needed because a 1986 ordinance requires a 100-foot frontage on the road, and the property now has only a a 35-foot frontage.

The Morrisville Borough Zoning Board has granted a variance allowing a car repossession and processing business to operate in an existing vacant building on Harrison Street. The business, to be owned by David Hermes of Levittown, will process about 40 repossessed cars a month, bringing the cars to the facility to repair locks and clean cars when needed, Hermes said. The cars would then be shipped to other locations to be sold. Hermes needed a variance because there is only room on the lot for seven parking spaces.

The Whitemarsh Township Zoning Hearing Board has denied variance requests for two commercial developments and granted requests for two others. During a lengthy meeting Wednesday night, the board voted 4-0 to deny the request of the Seltzer Development Corp. to build an office-warehouse on the southeast corner of Butler Pike and Campus Drive. The 8.4-acre site is one of 16 lots in the Whitemarsh Industrial Campus. The land slopes 10 percent, and construction of the 70,000-square-foot building would have required a variance from the township's steep-slope ordinance.

A Downingtown couple has won approval to build a carport next to their home at the southeast corner of Washington and Whiteland Avenues. Paul and Victoria Zelesnick, who have lived in the home for nine years, want to add a 27-by-15-foot wooden carport on the east side of the house to cover the driveway and prevent rain from leaking into the basement. However, the carport would extend to within one or two feet of their property line, and the Downingtown zoning code requires that carports be three feet or more from property lines.

Exxon Corp.'s plan for modernizing a 56-year-old service station at Montgomery and Haverford Avenues has been turned down. The Narberth Zoning Hearing Board Thursday rejected Exxon's request for a zoning variance. The variance would have enabled Exxon to build on the lot even though it was about 1,000 feet short of the borough's required 15,000- square-foot lot minimum for gasoline stations. Attorney John M. Phelan, who represented Exxon at its April 30 hearing before the zoning board, was unavailable for comment.

The West Pikeland Zoning Hearing Board has denied a variance to Thomas Hughes of Wayne, who wanted to install a driveway steeper than required under the township zoning ordinance. He was seeking permission to have a 12 percent grade for 75 feet in a driveway leading to a house being built on Route 113 near Route 401. At a meeting Tuesday night, Hughes told the board that his contractor hit rock when digging for the driveway. Hughes wanted a variance from the requirement of a 10 percent grade.

The East Torresdale Civic Association will oppose a zoning variance application for a single-family housing development proposed for the northeast corner of State Road and Grant Avenue, an attorney for the association said Tuesday. Members decided Monday night, in a closed session after their regular monthly public meeting, to oppose the plan by developer George Pappas, said Richelle Hittinger, the attorney. Pappas' plan first was presented to the civic association in March, she said.

The Philadelphia zoning board will continue a hearing on whether to grant variances for an entertainment hub in Fishtown after three residents who live a block from the old Ajax Metal Co. building raised objections. "The uses are inappropriate," said attorney Paul Boni, who represents the Allen Street neighbors. Boni on Wednesday said Penn Treaty Village would require 10 variances, including relief from the North Delaware Avenue zoning overlay that prohibits nightclubs. No new date was set for a follow-up hearing, but Boni said it should occur within the next month.

A proposal due to be considered by the Cherry Hill Planning Board on Tuesday night that would have eliminated the public's right to appeal major zoning variances to the Township Council was pulled from the agenda even as residents prepared to speak against it. Township officials said they withdrew the proposed change, which drew protests from residents opposed to a 152-unit apartment complex planned at the former Haddonfield Lumber site at Brace...

Environmentalists see a fight looming in City Council over a bit of business left over from last year's zoning code reform - a bill that would determine how close something can be built to the city's rivers and streams. Legislation introduced in September would create a 50-foot buffer, or "setback," around those bodies of water - less than the 100 feet environmental advocates preferred, but a number they saw as a compromise with builders. Now environmentalists fear Council will try to reduce the setback on the city's streams - basically, everything except the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers - to 25 feet, a distance they say could harm already polluted waterways.

A Common Pleas Court judge has overturned a zoning variance that would have allowed a controversial "day reporting center" for ex-offenders in Southwest Philadelphia. The project was the city's first proposed reentry facility, part of a Nutter administration strategy to reduce the prison population and provide services to nonviolent offenders. The administration envisioned 10 such centers around the city, offering job training, drug testing, counseling, and temporary housing.

Powelton Village has every reason to top the list of Philadelphia's most desirable neighborhoods. Let's start with location. As the first residential area west of Center City, it is a brisk 15-minute walk from downtown. It boasts some of the best transit connections in town, a rich stock of Italianate villas and Victorian twins, and postcard views of the skyline. Geographically, it occupies the same urban niche as Georgetown and Cambridge. Yet no one would ever utter Powelton in the same breath as those tony enclaves.

Can you control the Zoning Board's decision on a request for a variance? If an undercover agent asked that question of a Philadelphia City Council member, the whispered answer might be, "Of course. " That's because Council members in this city have "councilmanic prerogative," a self-endowed superpower to stall or support stadiums, concert halls, pedestrian bridges, hotels, housing, museums, signs, decks, fences, and sidewalk cafes. On her way out of office, retiring Councilwoman Donna Miller is using her "prerogative" to allow a six-story building on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill that could be twice as tall as any surrounding structures.

Optimism has withered for the preservation of Autumn, a mural at Ninth and Bainbridge Streets in Bella Vista and a fixture that has drawn tourists to the neighborhood. On Wednesday at a Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting, developers who own the empty lot adjacent to the mural requested a parking variance that would allow them to build a single-family townhouse on the lot, blocking the view of the mural from the street. Several Bella Vista residents and artist David Guinn, who created the mural, have collected more than 1,000 signatures on a petition to save the mural and pledges of close to $250,000 from community members to buy the property in question.

FEDERAL prosecutors have recommended that disgraced former state Sen. Vince Fumo be resentenced from 17 1/2 to 21 years behind bars next month. Fumo, in prison since August 2009 for corruption, faces resentencing on Nov. 9. A U.S. Court of Appeals panel in August sent Fumo's case back to U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter after finding that he made some legal errors when he sentenced Fumo in July 2009. Buckwalter gave Fumo 4 1/2 years, noting that leniency was warranted because Fumo had "worked extraordinarily hard" for the public during his 30 years as a power broker in Harrisburg.

A Chester County township and school district are close to resolving a zoning dispute that has threatened a multimillion-dollar high school renovation. East Marlborough Township issued a violation in March to the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, saying a new, 58-foot-high auditorium at Unionville High School was too tall. The township says its zoning code limits buildings to 35 feet in height and wanted the district to seek a variance. The district has argued that it has a right to build the $3.6 million structure - part of an overhaul of the school - and that the township interpreted the code incorrectly.