Birmingham Township supervisors continue their work on amending a portion of the township’s zoning code dealing with historic preservation. Supervisors’ Vice Chairman Mike Shiring said the Board of Supervisors, the Historical Commission, and the township solicitor have been working on it since last June and there’s still more to do.
Shiring, who presided over the meeting for Chairman Scott Boorse who was out ill, said the township has gone through the Chester County Planning Commission comments and asked the township solicitor to incorporate them into a draft ordinance that can be found here.
“Some of these things are policy decisions for your current Board of Supervisors so we haven’t finalized things,” Shiring said.
At issue are setbacks, land use applications near historic resources, as well as defining and inventorying the historic resources in the township. He said some of the current requirements extend the application process longer than it needs to be and are unnecessarily costly.
“We’re trying to streamline this ordinance and perhaps make it simpler and more user-friendly,” he said.
He used a hypothetical solar panel or shed request as an example, saying that even simple applications like those can take longer than necessary and cost more if the changes requested were for properties near historic resources.
Additionally, he said historical resource impact studies, while on the books, are “routinely waived because they don’t bring particular value that you think it would.”
A long meandering discussion between Shiring, Historical Commission Chairman Mike Forbes, and solicitor Kristin Camp ensued concerning the distance required between an historic structure and a modern building. Should the distance be 500 feet or 200 feet?
Shiring said there have been several situations where that has become an issue. Without going into a specific case, he used his own 5-acre property on Wylie Road as an example. That property has an old tenant house as its only historic resource.
He said that if the 500-foot distance is used and measured from the far end of his property line, that would mean a neighbor might need to get approval from the Historical Commission to install a swimming pool or solar panels on their own property.
That type of restriction would apply even if the historic resource wasn’t impacted at all, he explained. Another question raised during that discussion was where to begin the measurement. Should it be from a property line or from a historic resource?
These are matters that still need to be worked out and given wording that can be understood and applied uniformly. The discussions will continue.
Several residents posed questions concerning development in general in areas near Sandy Hollow or on Birmingham Hill, the former O’Dell property. Shiring and Camp both explained that other sections of the zoning code would prevent new development across from Sandy Hollow and that Birmingham Hill is under a permanent easement and can’t be developed at all.
Shiring later said there's no timetable for completing the update of the ordinance, but anticipates 60 to 90 days more before a hearing and approval.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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