Cars drive past the vacant National Auto building on Main Street in Lansdale on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. Photo by Dan Sokil | The Reporter.
Business owner, mayor spar over draft
Plenty of questions remain, as Lansdale continues to debate a possible ordinance meant to address building vacancies in town.
Council held a lengthy debate on the topic in February, as a borough business owner pressed for specifics and voiced concerns about the code.
“I don’t think this suits the Lansdale residents. If you think you’re going to squeeze a large conglomerate with $600 a year, you’re joking yourself,” said resident Chip Panico.
The vacancy discussion started in early 2022, then was spurred by the closures of the downtown Rite Aid and Wells Fargo branches in summer 2023, the longtime Wilson’s Hardware that closed in 2022, and the former National Auto store at Main and Wood Streets that’s been empty since 2017.
The town’s code committee has discussed a possible vacancy tax or fee meant to spur owners of vacancies to submit plans or sell, and in August voted to update the borough’s codebook to add a new “downtown core” area with new development options.
The code committee has reviewed how third-party companies could help enforce such an ordinance, and collect a part of the fees or fines it would establish. In December, the code committee heard from Hera Property Registry on ways that company contacts banks and courts to track down similar property owners, and in January council voted to direct staff to work with Hera to develop a draft ordinance for further talks; in February, code members said a first draft of the code had been written and was up for further talks.
During the Feb. 19 meeting, Panico — owner of Main Street’s ‘Chef Chipper’ catering — asked for specifics on a long list of questions, including how much the possible fees or fines would be, how often they’d be charged, and how they’d be determined.
Mayor Garry Herbert, who has advocated for the fee repeatedly in his Mayoral Musings column, said the current draft calls for a $300 fee every six months, and borough solicitor Patrick Hitchens clarified how it would be charged.
“It’s a proposed requirement of certain properties having to register. As a part of that registration, no different than if you’re doing a rental registration, you would have to pay a fee, and what Hera is proposing is a $300 fee, and that you would have to register every six months,” Hitchens said.
“If it’s a foreclosed property, which is what Hera typically deals with, you would have to register. In your draft ordinance, it’s also if your property is vacant, and there is a specific definition for what vacant means,” he said.
The current draft would cover both residential and commercial properties, the attorney added, and would contain exceptions that could allow an owner to not pay the fee, including properties that are actively listed for sale with a licensed realtor; under active, ongoing rehabilitation or construction, and have a current building permit; property that has been damaged by fire, and single family, owner-occupied residents where the owners are temporarily absent, such as on vacations.
A ‘For lease’ sign hangs on the former Wells Fargo building on Main Street in Lansdale on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025.Panico asked if the number is flat or based on size or square footage, and Herbert said the draft has a flat fee; the resident then asked if it would apply to multiple units on one property, such as an office building or business park, and borough Manager John Ernst said it could.
“The ordinance outlines per address, so each address would have to be registered with the borough and the provider,” Ernst said.
Herbert asked if the latest draft allows an exemption from the fee if a property is listed for lease, not for sale, and Hitchens said that’s up for discussion.
“It doesn’t currently say lease, but it was my understanding that the intent was, ‘if it was actively marketed for sale or lease,’ the idea is it would not be considered vacant,” Hitchens said.
Does that mean, Panico asked, that several downtown eyesores would already be exempt?
“So places like Rite Aid, National Auto, and the Wells Fargo bank, are listed for lease. So they would not be eligible for this fee?” Panico said.
“It would be hard to say at this exact moment,” Hitchens answered, before the code is adopted and staff and the third party firm can investigate and try to contact an owner: “We don’t know until the time at which the ordinance would be adopted.”
Panico then asked if “the ones that we want to target with this variance, aren’t eligible for it?” and Herbert said the town isn’t able to target any specific property.
“When we had first investigated this, our hope was to look at particular properties, and under the very adopt legal guidance (of Hitchens), he said ‘That’s a bad idea, you can’t do that,’ you have to expand it to be more community driven as a whole,” Herbert said.
Leasing info is displayed in a window of the vacant National Auto building on Main Street in Lansdale on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025.Under the draft, Hitchens said, any revenue from those fees would be split between the town and the third-party firm, with the company’s share covering their expenses, and the borough’s share also up for discussion.
“We have discussed channeling that toward, perhaps, economic development committee,” said councilman Mike Yetter, and EDC chairman Andrew Carroll said that group has started early talks about ways to “put those dollars onto Main Street,” by funding the town’s façade improvement grants, marketing the borough and its events, hiring a fulltime “Main Street manager” to try to link owners of vacancies with potential tenants, and more.
Marketing materials or tools to help sell Lansdale are among EDC’s goals, Carroll said, and any input is welcome at monthly EDC meetings.
“I know these things take time, but we’ve been around for a while. This is not day one. We’re going straight to fines?” Panico said.
A pedestrian walks past a vacant storefront on Main Street in Lansdale on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025.The mayor countered that the idea behind the vacancy code is to spur activity from those who flip or speculate in properties from out of town, and don’t live or work locally where they can be reached or linked to new tenants or occupants.
“I believe that we need accountability with the way Main Street is being filled, or not filled. This ordinance is not to cut down property owners who are really engaged with the community, like yourself. The intent is to focus on people who are not really engaged in our community, own property here and have no intention of doing anything with the property,” Herbert said.
Council President Mary Fuller added that talks are still ongoing at the committee level on both topics — the vacancy code at the code committee, and ongoing revitalization efforts at the economic development committee — and input is welcome at both.
“Let us know how you feel, if you’re for it, if you’re against it, what your questions are. You’re doing exactly what you should. Let us know, ’cause that’s how action gets done,” Fuller said.
Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 8:30 p.m. on March 5, the code committee meets at 7:30 p.m. that night, and the economic development committee next meets at 6:30 p.m. on March 17, all at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.
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