Two significant fixes to Lansdale Borough’s zoning codes – both spurred by one singular development project in the heart of town – were approved Wednesday by borough council.
In separate hearings during council’s monthly business meeting, limits to density and reductions to height allowances in the
Downtown Business Overlay District, plus specifications for the use of automatic parking machines, both passed unanimously.
Neither will affect the parking or density of the Walnut Crossing Apartments project at Third and Walnut Streets, near the northern edge of the overlay district.
Eased zoning regulations in the district,
bounded generally by Vine Street, Richardson Avenue, east of Broad Street and Fourth and Fifth Streets around SEPTA’s Lansdale station, were designed to spur transit-oriented development in the town’s central core.
Maximum building heights were 65 feet, with bonuses for "green” development and other amenities up to 85 feet total. And zero setbacks were required if certain conditions were met.
Developer Ross Ziegler took full advantage of the relaxed restrictions with plans for a six-story, environmentally advanced, 77-foot building rising directly from the Third Street sidewalk near the northern edge of the district.
Walnut Crossing will offer 204 apartments on its 1.14-acre lot. At 179 units per acre, it currently represents the highest-density housing project "by far” in Montgomery County, borough planning consultant John Kennedy told council Wednesday.
One zoning amendment "will create a fixed density in the district of 50 units per acre, with bonuses up to 75 units per acre,” Kennedy said. In the original version, "the density was basically whatever you could fit onto the site” under zoning and parking requirements.
The amendment also provides for height transitions at the district’s edges, "so we would not end up in a scenario where we have somebody using all the height allowances and having a building of 85 feet literally across the street from buildings of 35 feet in some of the residential districts,” Kennedy said. The maximum height within 100 feet of the district’s residential edges, with bonuses, drops to 50 feet.
Meanwhile, to squeeze in the parking required for the number of units Walnut Crossing proposed a high-tech storage and retrieval system that stacks several cars per space. Lansdale Borough, having never been faced with the kind of machinery most often found in downtown lots and upscale center-city residences, passed a second ordinance Wednesday to allow such systems within certain standards and only by council approval via conditional use permit.
Kennedy told borough council that, while Lansdale’s Planning Commission had reviewed and recommended adoption of the ordinance, the Montgomery County Planning Commission also had reviewed the automatic parking ordinance, without further comment.
"The reason Montgomery County Planning Commission had no comment on this,” Kennedy said, "is virtually the Walnut Street project is the first facility of this type in Montgomery County, so quite frankly they didn’t know how to react to it.”
The zoning ordinance allows the systems only in the Downtown Business Overlay District and the Transit Oriented Design Overlay District. And it allows their use only in developments of 100 units or more, with no more than half of the required parking spaces supplied by the systems.
Again, this doesn’t affect the the Third and Walnut project, which has a total of 307 spaces, 272 of which would be automated.
"As council is going to see in the next couple weeks, this is a very complicated subject as the application for Third Street makes its way to you for review,” Kennedy told council. "There are a lot of issues that have to be detailed, especially in terms of emergency response and management. It’s a convenient solution for developers – costly but convenient – and I do feel that as the value of land increases, we will start to see this more and more.”
Councilman B.J. Breish asked about emergency access and fire safety in such structures. Lansdale Fire Marshal Rick Lesniak said that there were several concerns, including reaching four levels of vehicles parked underground and, with the building’s appeal to environmentalists, the potential for including charging pads for electric cars. "Electric vehicles present a large hazard to firefighters, because of the nature of the large batteries stored in the vehicles,” Lesniak said.
"If there was a car fire in the garage underground,” he said, "it would be a challenge to get down to put the fire out, and then to safely remove the vehicle from underneath the building.” Such an operation could take several hours, "with the apartment building being evacuated for all that time, if not longer.”
He added that was the reason he advocated requiring borough council’s review and approval for each project.
Several questions arose on whether municipalities could charge developers for the specific equipment needed when new systems and structures tax existing firefighting resources. "I am not aware of any fee that can be charged by a municipality for safety-issue upgrades,” said Lansdale Borough Solicitor Patrick Hitchens.
"But if there is something in particular about a property that would require certain safety measures to be included, it would not be unreasonable to require the applicant to install those measures in the development itself,” he added.
Kennedy said that the Walnut Street project is back on the agenda at the next Lansdale Planning Commission meeting, set for Monday, Sept. 21 at 7:30 p.m.
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