You may have also heard criticism of the new County Justice Center on West Market Street as an example of what the Borough should avoid. WCJIM is not inclined to argue with that, although he wants to see the scaffolding come down and the street trees mature before solidifying his thoughts. Recently though, he has had to restrain himself when the chatter includes "Borough Council should never have allowed that to happen." To refresh everyone's memory, here's how the Justice Center came to be.

Their opposition was a loose coalition of downtown business owners and local history buffs who organized around the "Citizen's Business Alliance" led by Holly Brown (currently Council member from Ward 1). Several members of the Historic Architecture Review Board also played a key role including Roy Smith (currently on the Planning Commission and board of the Business Improvement District), Joe Martino (still on HARB) and the late Paul Rodebaugh, a well-known local author. Although it was not at all clear at the time, their prospects improved in 1999 when Democrats established a fragile 4-3 majority on Borough Council as newcomers Diane LeBold (Ward 2) and Paul Fitzpatrick (Ward 6) joined veterans Anne Carroll (Ward 4) and Bill Scott (Ward 1), plus three Republicans -- Shannon Royer (Ward 5), Anne Duke (Ward 3) and Mary Zimmerman (Ward 7). Throughout 1999 and 2000, County Commissioners Colin Hanna and Karen Martynick steadfastly promoted a $70 million plan to build two buildings in the center of West Chester. The tallest -- six stories high -- was proposed for "the Courthouse block" bounded by Gay, Church, Market and High Street, while a four-story building was planned for the northeast corner of Darlington and Market Streets, next to the county-owned Dague Building. Their plan received support from the Daily Local News (DLN) and President Judge Howard F. Riley Jr., who regularly offered quotations to the DLN on the need for more courtroom space, the need to keep all of the courts in a single building, and why that building had to include historic courtroom #1, located in the historic courthouse.

The opposition began in the summer of 1999 with a request that the Commissioners provide retail space on the first floor of whatever they built. The rationale: it would make the town center more friendly to pedestrians, which would benefit local businesses by bringing customers to town. Although the Commissioners expressed approval of the idea in public, they offered no promises. As the discussion continued, the rhetoric became more heated.

A month later, the two Republican Commissioners and Judge Riley announced a new version of the two-building plan which was larger, cost more ($73.5 million), preserved no historic buildings and offered no first-floor retail space. The lone Democratic Commissioner (Dinniman) defended the need for more space to accommodate the courts, but recommended putting everything in one building on W. Market St. On October 6, the editorial writer of the DLN split the difference, accepting the two-building plan and the demolition of the historic buildings, but adding "the county's decision against setting aside any ground-floor retail space in the planned six-story building is unfortunate."

At this point, the Borough Council asked the Historical and Architectural Review Board (HARB) to get involved. Led by Joe Martino, the HARB's new chair, it conducted a study of ten threatened historic structures and found that they included not only Joel's, but also one of West Chester's earliest African- American-owned restaurants and several other buildings of lesser significance. Meanwhile, the CBA (including Barbara McIlvaine Smith, now State Representative) presented a plan for a single building on the W. Market Street site and urged the County to sell its storefront buildings on the Courthouse block so they could be returned to private retail use.

County officials fought back, arguing that delays were costing them money (the price tag rose to $75 million by February 2001 plus $5 million for the parking garage), and claiming that downtown retailers couldn't afford to rent space in the new building even if the County provided it. Then on February 8, 2001, Commissioner Martynick told the Philadelphia Inquirer (PI) "The commissioners have their back against the wall ... We could move offices out of town, but no one wants to take that step."

The threat to move out of town was a major escalation of the rhetoric, recalling a similar decision made in 1989 when the County decided to move much of its support staff to the Government Services Center on Westtown Road, more than a mile from the center of the Borough. According to critics of the decision, it turned West Chester into a ghost town, and they blamed it on an earlier Borough Council's unwillingness to accommodate a different set of County Commissioners.

For critics of the opponents, Martynick's comment was a rallying cry. The Commissioners began to claim their opponents in the Borough for delays that were increasing the project's cost to $80 million, while Judge Riley branded their opponents' plan unfair to the county's taxpayers and declared "I can only bend so far to accommodate West Chester's peculiar needs." Commissioner Hanna labelled the opponents' proposals as "retrenchment" and charged: "What you want to do is reduce the county's presence on the courthouse block by 30 percent. (PI, February 14, 2001).

WCJIM missed Monday night's meeting, but read Brian Fanelli's report in the Daily Local News ("Committee recommends rec center," January 10, 2007) and heard from enough participants to know that he got it right. A mixture of people, including a number of the Save-the-YMCA folks, showed up to argue in favor of the Borough purchasing the YMCA property after the Y completes its move to East Goshen. The discussion included talk about the costs and the future of the Melton Center on E. Miner Street, and the committee decided to continue the discussion at next Tuesday's work session.

WCJIM attended Tuesday night's height discussion and stayed for the entire meeting, which started at 7:30pm and finished up after 10pm. Here's the short version of what happened: More than 70 people attended, including a group calling itself the "Neighborhood Consortium." They presented a 45-minute presentation (including handouts, computerized slide show, and expert speakers) supporting the HARB proposal to reduce heights to 45 feet throughout the Borough and offer a limited 60-foot height option district in the center of town. Then the Business Improvement District announced through its Executive Director Malcolm Johnstone that they have reduced their proposal for the height option from 135 feet to 90 feet, and they endorse the proposal offered last month by PZBID chair Carolyn Comitta.

Next professional land planner Ray Ott (whose other credentials include five years on Borough Council, a term on the planning commission and lots of work on the Borough's historic district), endorsed most of the Comitta proposal with one change (a 90-foot height option along Gay Street) and explained it in terms of an original line of reasoning -- looking at parcels that could be developed, rather than trying to rationalize a particular building height. He also provided a map which showed that once the HARB-protected historic properties are eliminated, only about 2% of the land area in the town center is eligible for redevelopment, including the Mosteller parking garage, the Wachovia and First National Bank parking lots, and parking lot on W. Market Street opposite Mich's Gym.

Finally Carolyn Comitta reviewed her proposal and noted some changes that eliminate areas on the western fringe from the 90- foot height option district. After she finished, other people offered comments on whether to alter the boundary of the current height option districts, whether the public interest is better served by making approvals subject to Borough Council or Zoning Hearing Board review, and Ray Ott's proposal to replace the on-site parking requirement with a "parking fee" assessed on new projects, to be applied by the Borough to creating parking elsewhere. Towards the end of the meeting, Roy Smith, a member of the Borough's Planning Commission and one of the leaders of the movement to save the Courthouse block back in 1999-2002, suggested a return to the 1987 height option limit -- a uniform 80 feet throughout the town center. The meeting ended with a promise to resume the discussion at the February PZBID meeting.

In contrast to Tuesday's well-attended meeting on height, only two citizens showed up to offer comments at the public hearing for what is destined to become West Chester's 26th restauant liquor license. The applicant, Dina Mingrino, showed up with a pair of lawyers plus her landlord, Stan Zukin, to request a liquor license for her Italian restaurant Limoncello Ristorante, which she intends to expand from 7 N. Walnut Street to 7-9 N. Walnut Street. After the usual assurances that the license would only be used for fine dining in a "family-oriented" restaurant, the applicant (and mostly her lawyer) answered questions from Council members and the Mayor about hours of operation, number of seats, types of entertainment, drink specials, and other issues based on the Borough's rather unfortunate experiences with some other applications.

When it came time for comments from the public, only WCJIM and one other person spoke. The other person expressed confidence in the applicant and support for the application, but WCJIM asked some fairly pointed questions about the applicant's experience selling liquor in college towns (none), why families would wish to purchase alcohol until 2am (wants to keep the option open) and more. After that, the five Council members present heard the lawyer's closing statement, deliberated briefly, had the Borough solicitor read a list of eleven conditions on the operation, and then approved the license transfer.

The application did introduce one innovation. According to the property owner, Stan Zukin, the restaurant's lease includes a clause that levies a "percentage rent" equal to one percent of the gross sales of alcohol, to be paid to the landlord as long as he turns it over to the Borough to pay for police and other services related to the sale of alcohol. In a different world, this would take the form of a "per drink tax," but that is currently illegal in the State of Pennsylvania (although at least one of our area representatives is working on changing that). As the Borough solicitor explained, this could not be made a condition of approval of the license, since it depends on what is essentially a voluntary contribution by the landlord, but if it works out as explained at the hearing, it could become a model for behavior by other liquor license holders.

Nonetheless, it was clear that at least one Council member would have been willing to deny the transfer, and expressed frustration by asking, "Where were the residents?" It is also worth noting that of the two Council members who did not attend, one (Scott Smith, Dem, Ward 7) had informed Council in advance that he would be out of town, but the other (Steve Bond, Rep, Ward 2) simply did not show up, even though the restaurant is in his district. Most surprising to WCJIM was that the Borough's neighborhood activists put so much more time and energy into building height limits than alcohol permits.

Perhaps that will change later this month when Borough Council holds a public hearing for what may become our 27th restaurant license -- Bar Blue II at 142 E. Market Street, on Monday, January 29 at 6:30pm. Meanwhile, Borough residents should probably hope for the success of Limoncello and the "percentage rent" idea, since if their business fails, the next liquor license owner might not be so accomodating.

What they provide is sewage, of course. Like all modern wastewater treatment plants, the Goose Creek plant relies on live bacteria to convert raw sewage into something that can be rendered harmless by subsequent treatment. When the University is out of session, the volume of sewage reaching the plant declines, the bacteria go hungry and start to die off. The same thing happens during the summer when the problem is aggravated by dry spells that reduce the amount of liquids entering the plant.

West Chester is not alone with this problem. Recently, the State College newspaper reported that Penn State's winter break reduces sewage flows by as much as a million gallons a day, which leaves the bacteria "ravenous. ... so hungry that they begin eating one other." Then, when the students return, the bacteria population can fall too low to handle the subsequent surge in sewage. ("Send holiday leftovers down the drain" in Centre Daily Times, Dec. 29, 2006).

The State College article ended by urging residents of that town to flush an old piece of rotting fruit down the drain to feed the bacteria. That won't be necessary here in the Borough, since the flow of sewage is already returning to normal. This story does illustrate, however, the complexity of what is meant by "the impact of the University" on West Chester.