Last night, the Borough Planning Commission worked from 7pm until after 10pm to hear applications related to four new development projects, and to review changes proposed for the requirements to build tall buildings in the Town Center. They attracted a crowd for the first two projects, which both involved the construction of hotels.

The hotel proposals

The first proposal is by Brian McFadden, who did not attend the meeting. His staff presented plans by the firm of Bernardon Haber Holloway (designers of the Justice Center on W. Market Street and 121 N. Walnut St.) that showed a seven-story building (plus one floor underground) on the parking lot located west of the Philadelphia Inquirer building (formerly the Warner Theater). McFadden plans to tie the new structure in with the existing buildings on the west side of N. High Street between Prescott Alley and Chestnut Street. The basement and ground floor of the new building will be used to provide 54 parking spaces, the second through fourth floors will hold 60 hotel rooms, and the fifth through seventh floors will have 40 condominiums. All of the buildings currently facing High Street will be preserved, and the Inquirer building will be converted into the lobby of the hotel.

The building will stand 86 feet tall at its highest point, which is above the new limit of 75 feet for Town Center buildings, but less than the 90-foot limit that is allowed for buildings that include at least 25% residential and/or hotel uses. At this point, the proposal calls for a mix of "single" condos measuring about 400 square feet and selling for around $180,000, and "double condos" measuring just over 800 square feet that will sell for $250,000. The hotel rooms will contain roughly 450 square feet and are expected to rent for around $200 per night, although the presenters emphasized that all of the dollar amounts are tentative.

Several of the other conditions needed to build up to 86 feet generated discussion, included the shadow cast by such a building, its effect on traffic on Prescott Alley and W. Chestnut Street, and parking. McFadden's proposal calls for 54 spaces on- site, an includes a request for the use of 130 spaces (120 for the project and 10 to replace lost parking behind the Inquirer building) in the Borough-owned Mosteller parking garage. Mike Perrone, the Borough's building codes official, pointed out that the Mosteller garage is due for replacement in the near future, and that could delay the start of McFadden's project. [View the developer's description and drawings of the project.]

After an hour of questions and discussion, the Planning Commission voted 5-0 to recommend approval of the conditional use (to build up to 86 feet) with the conditions that McFadden receive a variance for his design from the Zoning Hearing Board to avoid the need to include a building setback on the Chestnut Street side, and that he provide an additional shadow study for a 45-foot high building for comparison with the shadow study of the proposed building. Then the Planning Commission voted 5-0 to recommend approval of the land development plan on the condition that the applicant provide brick sidewalks in front of the property along Chestnut Street (the Borough just installed brick sidewalks on the High Street), he receives permission to use at least 120 spaces in the Mosteller parking garage, and he provides additional details on the plans. The two recommendations from Planning Commission will go to Borough Council, which will hold a conditional use hearing on this project on Wednesday, December 12 at 6:30pm at Borough Hall.

The second hotel proposal of the evening came from Stan Zukin, who owns the Rite-Aid property at the corner of Walnut and Gay Street, and the property under Spence's Restaurant just to the west. Zukin wants to build an 89-foot tall building (with eight floors and a basement) containing 24 condominiums on the top two floors, 100 hotel rooms on floors three through six, a new site for Spence's Restaurant plus meeting rooms on the second floor, a rebuilt Rite-Aid plus other commercial space on the ground floor, and a health club in the basement. This proposal will preserve the Spence's restaurant facade and convert it into the lobby of the hotel.

The plan includes several unusual features. It includes features designed to make the building "LEED certified" (i.e. environmentally friendly), although one of them -- the use of geothermal temperature control -- will require the drilling of more than a hundred wells in the building's vicinity, and Zukin said that some of them will have to be on the Borough's parking garage site. In an effort to recreate the look of the Eagle Hotel, which stood on the Rite-Aid site until about 1970, the design calls for a balcony cantilevered over the sidewalk along Gay Street and part of Walnut Street. To provide a connection to the Mosteller parking garage, as well as to increase the size of the building, the design also calls for the upper floors to extend across Prescott Alley on the north side and tie into the parking garage. The design provides no on-site parking, and instead relies on an agreement to use at least 124 parking spaces in the Mosteller garage (Zukin said he will request 200 spaces).

Near the end of the second hour of discussion, the Planning Commission voted to recommend approval with the following conditions: obtain approval for the design from the Historical and Architectural Review Board, get a variance to dispense with a building setback on the Walnut Street side, and obtain agreements from the Borough to allow the balcony to extend over the sidewalk, to allow the building to extend over Prescott Alley, to drill geothermal wells on the Mosteller garage property, and to construct a foundation wall on the Mosteller garage site to support the building extension.

Borough Council will hold a conditional use hearing on this project on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at 6:30pm at Borough Hall.

The rest of the meeting

As most of the audience filed out of the room, the Planning Commission kept on working. The third project was a proposal to tear down and rebuild the structure at 215 N. Walnut Street, next to Evans Street and across from the YMCA. Most Borough residents recognize this building as "the upholstery shop" owned by Jim Mahan. It has been purchased by Van Grofski LP, (owners of the building next door at 101 E. Chestnut Street, plus 107 E. Chestnut Street located nearby). The Planning Commission found no problems with the preliminary plan, and voted 5-0 to recommend that Borough Council grant both preliminary and final approval as long as the Van Grofskis installed a brick sidewalk in front of the property, add a street tree, and meet any concerns raised by the Borough engineer.

That led to the fourth project of the evening, a proposal by Market Street Ventures (a.k.a. Tony Stancato) to convert a non- conforming industrial site on W. Market Street into twelve condominiums. Six will face Market Street and six will face Wollerton Alley on the south side of the property. Most of the neighbors concerns appear to have been addressed at a meeting held by the developer two weeks ago, and the two neighbors who stayed for this part of the meeting expressed qualified approval for the project. [Disclaimer: WCJIM lives about two blocks away from the site, and although he did not attend the meeting with neighbors, he received a detailed report from a participant.] The neighbors raised question about the project's impact on parking in their neighborhood, about traffic patterns in Wollerton Alley, and how development along the alley will affect access to parking spaces located behind houses in the 400-block of W. Miner Street. Answers provided by the developer and Mike Perrone appeared to provide satisfaction.

The developer also agreed to construct and pave a private alley along the west side of the property to grant access for residents of S. Brandywine Street to their backyards. He said he is discussing an agreement with the neighbor on the east side of the property to allow her to keep a fence and landscaping that encroaches onto the applicant's property. Finally, Stancato described a plan to manage stormwater on the site that will simultaneously solve a long-standing drainage problem on S. Brandywine Street.

It was nearly 10pm when the Planning Commission voted 5-0 to recommend approval of the project's preliminary plan to Borough Council, subject to compliance with the Borough engineer's report and an amendment to the plans showing the addition of a pedestrian corridor in the middle of the property. [NOTE: The applicant will have to get approval for a final plan before construction can begin. That will probably occur early next year.]

The remainder of the evening was spent on two items. First, in order to avoid meeting on Christmas Day, the Planning Commission will combine its work session and voting session into a single meeting on Tuesday, December 18. Second, the Commission reviewed zoning amendments designed to modify the criteria for conditional use approval of tall buildings in the Town Center. But WCJIM did not make it to the end of that discussion, so this report will have to end here.

The PHEAA board consists of twenty members -- eight selected by the State Legislature, eight by the State Senate, and four by the Governor. It was created in 1964 to administer the "Pennsylvania State Grant program" which is funded by the state legislature (i.e. tax dollars), and to provide loans to Pennsylvania students who want to go on to college, either here or out-of-state. The loans must be repaid, while the grants do not.

The program is huge. The agency employs about 2,700 people, and in 2005, the Centre Daily Times of State College reported that the PHEAA managed assets worth about $57 billion and received $428 million from the state ("PHEAA asks for protection of records," September 8, 2005). In 2006, the Agency's portfolio grew to $67.2 billion according to the Centre Daily Times ("PHEAA leaders get 5.9 percent raises," January 18, 2006), and provided "grants, scholarships and discounted loans to more than 600,000 students" according to the Philadelphia Inquirer ("Student loan agency raises Rendell's ire," March 9, 2007). By way of comparison, about 110,000 students attend one of the fourteen state universities that include West Chester University. By 2007, the Agency's assets had grown to $84 billion ("PHEAA expenses at issue" in Centre Daily Times, March 3, 2007).

Criticism of the PHEAA became intense in 2005 after it refused an offer from "Sallie Mae," the nation's largest student loan business (PHEAA is third) to purchase PHEAA for $1 billion dollars. A bipartisan group of five state senators accused the PHEAA of exercising a monopoly on student loans in the Commonwealth, and introduced a bill in July 2005 that would have removed barriers to competition from other agencies. A month later, the Harrisburg Patriot-News broke a story which accused the PHEAA board of squandering $136,000 on a retreat, The story spread quickly and even prompted the Daily Local News to publish an editorial that began "State Rep. Elinor Taylor and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency she chairs should be ashamed of themselves. So should those whom the agency lavishly wined and dined recently at a luxury resort in western Pennsylvania" ("Weekday getaway wasted $136K in student loans," August 2, 2005).

The Local mentioned Representative Taylor (R-156) because she joined the PHEAA board in 1977, served as its chairperson from 1995 until she retired in 2006, and was honored when the PHEAA named its headquarters after her in September 2003. That same month, the Harrisburg Patriot-Times, offered its own criticism of the PHEAA and Taylor:

Two months later, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the CEO of the PHEAA, Richard Willey, was Pennsylvania's highest paid public official, earning $469,900 in 2005, up about seven percent from 2004. That was about three times what Governor Rendell made. Six vice-presidents each made about $330,000, or about twice the governor's salary. The article observed that just the bonuses received by those executives totalled $852,835 - "enough to give the maximum individual grant of $4,500 to 189 college students." ("Pa. official's salary jumps 7%," August 18, 2006)

The rest of 2006 provided a war of press releases as PHEAA officials defended their salaries and expenses, while critics cited reports like that from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, which gave Pennsylvania a failing grade in making higher education affordable ("State grants get boost from PHEAA" in Daily Local News, September 13, 2006). In a 5-2 ruling in November, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ordered the PHEAA to release its spending records and to pay part of the reporters' legal fees. The PHEAA appealed that decision in December,

As 2007 got underway, CEO Willey was quoted in the Centre Daily Times complaining that the PHEAA was not getting enough money from the state ("PHEAA seeks more state funds," February 28, 2007), but the board finally began to release its spending records after the State Supreme Court ruled against them. That triggered more news reports about "trips to lavish resorts as far away as California, ... [c]harges for hotel rooms, elaborate banquets and transportation, ... bar bills, golf outings and spa treatments" between 2000 and 2005 (Centre Daily Times, March 13, 2007). Later that month, the PHEAA board began to discuss revisions to its expense reimbursement policy, and adopted a new code of ethics in late April.

Meanwhile, State Senators John Rafferty (R-44th, Collegeville) and Dominic Pileggi (R-9th, Chester) introduced separate bills to bring the agency under stricter legislative control, and State Auditor General Jack Wagner added a promise to audit the PHEAA back to 2004. Yet in August, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the board awarded more than a half million dollars in bonuses to the top PHEAA officials ("PHEAA gives executives half-million in bonuses," August 23, 2007), at the same time the Centre Daily Times reported that the agency spent more than $400,000 in its failed attempt to prevent the release of their records ("$400,000 down drain," June 1, 2007). In October, the audit revealed that PHEAA paid $7.5 million in bonuses to more than 300 employees since July 2004 -- including $1.1 million in August 2007 alone -- and CEO Willey announced that he would resign ("Student-loan chief quits under fire" in Philadelphia Inquirer, October 5, 2007).

Change is definitely in the air at PHEAA. Last January, Rep. William F. Adolph, Jr. (R-165, Springfield), who has served on the board since 2001, took over as its chair. In October, the board appointed PHEAA vice president James Preston as the interim director. Now Senator Dinniman has joined the board. Hopefully, the new board members, plus the new ethics and reimbursement policies, will leave more money for Pennsylvania students to go to college.

To call attention to the organizations that work in our area, State Senator Andy Dinniman hosted a conference on "Sharing the Harvest" at the Valley Forge Christian College chapel in Phoenixville last November 19. WCJIM missed it, but he heard from eyewitnesses and got to read some of the literature that was distributed that evening. The speakers discussed local initiatives concerning feeding the poor, people with disabilities, health care issues and access to transportation. Local groups also set up information tables so that the attendees could obtain information and offer to help out.

There are a lot more organizations -- more than 70 in all -- present as exhibitors at the conference. An even longer list appears in a resource guide called the Help Book II published by the Phoenixville Community Health Foundation with a grant from Open Hearth Inc. of Spring City. This list of headings gives an idea of the range of social problems that exist in Chester County and the scope of efforts to address them:

None of the agencies that address thos needs can function without help from individuals. Sometimes, that means donating money or time, but it can also mean recognizing a neighbor or relative who is in need and finding out where to get help. To make that easier, there is a web site called Referweb that offers an on-line database of local organizations. It's worth a browse just to see which ones you recognize, and if any of them inspire you to help out. If that doesn't work, then check out the Chester County Department of Human Services.

As Senator Dinniman likes to say, "Fifty or one hundred years from now, we will not be judged on how wealthy we have become, but rather on what we did with the wealth with which we have been blessed. We will be judged on whether we have shared this bountiful harvest with all."

The next item was the 2008 proposed budget. The conversations regarding the proposed real estate tax increase (7.5%) and sewer rate increase (15%) have been going on since last August, and have been thoroughly covered (see Borough Budget Battles Start Early This Year, Something's Gotta Give (2008 Budget Process) and Budget Magic), and the Daily Local News has published about a dozen stories on Chester County municipalities who are preparing to raise taxes because the state legislature altered the "Emergency and Municipal Services Tax," among other reasons. That did not hasten the approval of the budget. Instead, Council listened as several members of the audience (none of whom attended any of the earlier budget meetings) criticized the increase, then voted 6-1 to approve the budget and new real estate tax rate (Smith, D, 7th ward, opposed). They also voted 7-0 to increase the sewer rate, which is intended to finance system upgrades mandated by the federal government.

[NOTE: If you're reading about this issue for the first time, keep two things in mind. Borough spending will increase by less than two percent this year, but the state-mandated tax structure for municipal governments requires a property tax increase of more than three times that amount to cover it. Also, as Finance Committee chair Sue Bayne (D, 4th ward) explained, the increase is equal to $55/year (or just over $1/week) on an average house in the Borough which is assessed at $119,000.]

By this time, it was after 10pm, and there were still six items left to go. Relatives and friends of the outgoing Council members had prepared a small party to follow the meeting -- they left the room to formulate a "plan B" since several people had to get to work early the next morning. Meanwhile, Council took a short recess before addressing the next item -- the Public Safety Committee's recommendation that the Solicitor file a protest to the application to transfer a liquor license to 142 East Market Street (near the corner of Market and Matlack Streets). This item is part of the fallout from two earlier votes -- one in which Council rejected the application by current Rex's Cafe owner Don Moore to bring a second license into the Borough from Mortonville so he could open a new club on E. Market Street, and the decision to allow that license to come instead to the current Rex's site for use by a Thai restaurant.

The second decision freed up Rex's license to move across the Borough by a process which is subject only to Liquor Control Board scrutiny. In other words, under the state's liquor code, Borough Council does not have the right to block the move. As the owner of a playground (John O. Green Park), Council does have the right to file a protest with the Liquor Control Board, as do neighbors, schools, and churches within 500 feet of proposed site of the liquor license. Most have done so, but Moore's lawyer argued at length why Borough Council should not file a protest.

This item provided the only "star moment" of the night, because TV's "Bam" Margera and his spouse Missy sat with Moore to show their support. Comments from Moore's lawyer also mentioned that Margera is an investor in proposed enterprise. Earlier in the evening, a Fox-TV video crew filmed an interview with Moore's lawyer and shot a few seconds of the audience, but left long before the item came up for discussion.

WCJIM toughed it out until 11:30pm, but with a neighbor expecting a ride home, plus a full schedule of events scheduled for the following day (i.e. today), he finally packed it in. By then, Council had voted 4-3 to continue their protest (Brown, Christy, Fitzpatrick opposed), but was preparing to address Comitta's request that they discuss whether to withdraw their protest.

On the way out, several people told WCJIM "you can't leave" but he responded, "Yes I can, but this is the last time for the next four years" since he will take office on Borough Council on January 7. Although too tired to give it much thought at the moment, expect him to be thinking about how to move things along a bit faster at future Borough Council meetings.