The Chadds Ford Township Zoning Hearing Board Tuesday denied a request for a variance from the requirement that the owner of a bed and breakfast live on the property. The vote to deny was 3-0.
At issue was the 40-plus acre property at 1465 Smithbridge Road owned by Smithbridge Partners, L.P. with William D. Gardner as principal. Opposing the request were Kirsten Werner and Jared Leonard who live across the street at 1460 Smithbridge, about 576 feet away from 1465, according to testimony during the hearing in December.
“We are so grateful to the Chadds Ford Township Zoning Hearing Board for their service and for this unanimous decision,” said Leonard in an email after the decision.
He added that he and Werner have spent almost every weekend for two years listening to parties at the property, which he characterizes as an Airbnb.
Paul Padien, the attorney representing the applicant, disagreed with that characterization. He was specifically asked after the hearing concluded if the home had been operated as an Airbnb.
“There is no Airbnb statute used in the township,” Padien said. “So, essentially what they’re doing is they own these 490 acres [approximately] and they’re spending a fortune to protect and preserve it and they restored this 179-year-old property that was collapsing upon itself. They restored it to its glory, and we think this is an appropriate use for it. The neighbors disagree.”
He said the Gardeners use this as a short-term rental property unaware that the township had a provision that would have required permitting.
The property would not be owner-occupied, but with a property management team monitoring the site.
“It’s not an inn. It was rented to a single-renter unit, like a family. It’s a single-family dwelling and they were renting out to single users.”
However, in a letter to ZHB solicitor Don Petrosa, Padien said Smithbridge Partners, L.P. has demonstrated “a robust property management system…which includes cameras and sound recording capability. That system, he said, has an alarm set at a decibel level lower than the maximum level established in the township code, and members of the management team are on call 24/7 to monitor and tend to the property.
He also said in the letter that his client has not received a single complaint from the Leonards or anyone else since July 21, 2023.
The house is not being used currently, according to an email from Padien.
Jared Leonard testified in December that he and his wife had complained several times during the spring of 2023.
Padien added that he didn’t yet know if the client would appeal the decision since his client was not present when the decision was announced.
During testimony in the December session, there was talk about parking spaces, the number of bedrooms, and a loading area, but the decision to approve or deny the variance came down to one thing, whether the applicant proved there would be a hardship if the variance was not granted. According to ZHB Chairman Bob Reardon, the applicant failed in that.
He said much of the previous testimony from December was about noise, but that the real issue is the variance requested.
Reardon explained that a zoning hearing board may grant variances when physical circumstances or conditions create a hardship preventing the use or development of a property, but that the hardship was not created by the applicant. Additionally, the variance granted must “not alter the essential character of the of the neighborhood or district.”
He said it’s up to the applicant to prove the above conditions are true, but said the applicant failed to make that proof, and the only hardship claimed was a financial hardship if the Gardners couldn’t satisfy the township requirement. Other members of the Zoning Hearing Board, Bill Mock, and Paul Koch agreed.
Township code allows for a bed and breakfast in the R-1 Zoning District with conditional use approval, but the owner must be on site.
Other business
During a brief reorganization session, Reardon was reelected chairman and Koch was reelected as vice chair. Don Petrosa was again appointed as ZHB solicitor and Adam Matlawski was named the conflict solicitor in case Petrosa had a conflict of interest in a given case.
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.
