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Site of past
development battles
expected to be serene this time
The highway
intersection where civic activists seeking to revitalize
Claymont made their first stand is about to again become a focus
of community attention, but it now appears likely it will be the
site of cooperation instead of conflict.
Two redevelopment projects are
planned for properties on opposite sides of Philadelphia Pike at
Harvey Road, Brett Saddler, executive director of Claymont Renaissance
Development Corp., told a meeting of the Claymont Design Review
Advisory Committee. The owner of one and the prospective owner
of the other have both been in touch with him and have declared
their intention to work with the committee within the framework
of the area's 'hometown'-zoning guidelines, he said.
Town & Country Shopping Center is
in for "a major facelift" as part of a plan by owner James
Petrucelli to enlarge the drug store which is its anchor tenant.
Meanwhile, the building on the east side of the pike which most
recently housed Rogues Den, and before that a ballroom and a
furniture store, is under contract to be purchased with the
intent of being town down and replaced by or converted into a
four-shop center. Saddler said he is not at liberty to identify
the prospective purchaser and developer.
Those projects are significant,
he said, because the intersection is where people traveling
north on Philadelphia Pike, leaving northbound Interstate 95 or
approaching from western Brandywine Hundred first encounter
Claymont.
Recognition of the commercial
value of the location resulted a few years ago in controversial
development plans for the rebuilt McDonald's restaurant and the
Wawa gasoline station and convenience store which now stand
there. In both cases the disputes led to compromises regarded as
more-or-less satisfactory. More significantly, the disputes
spawned both the Claymont Renaissance movement and 'hometown'
zoning which appear to have favorably reversed the economic
fortunes of the community.
Saddler
also reported at the meeting on Feb. 15 that Michael
Saltarelli, the Catholic bishop of Wilmington, and Thomas Cini,
his chief administrator, have "agreed in principle" to the
purchase by American College of the conference center on
Philadelphia Pike near Commonwealth Boulevard and the portion of
the Holy Rosary property on which it stands. Details are still
to be worked out, but Saddler said the deal not only will
provide the college with a permanent campus but also create an
endowment by which the parish will be able to maintain the
viability of its parochial school.
County Councilman John Cartier
said he plans to seek 'historic overlay' protection for the
conference center building, a former convent once the home of
the Worth family, which founded the mill that is now Claymont
Steel. Saddler said the college is agreeable to the designation
and noted that its affiliate in Dublin, Ireland, was responsible
for preservation and restoration of the home of playwright and
novelist Oscar Wilde.
Saddler said that Wilmington
College also is interested in having a Claymont location. It
plans initially to offer four evening courses in the Claymont
Community Center but eventually wants to find a site for a
campus to accommodate a relatively large number of students who
come from Philadelphia and Delaware County, Pa.
The advisory committee
unanimously agreed to endorse a plan by Bik Ying Lau and Linda
Shau Fun Ng to remodel a property on the pike adjacent to
Atonement United Methodist Church, formerly a shop, into a
professional office with a second-story residential apartment.
They previously had proposed locating a Chinese restaurant
there.
The committee's recommended
approval for granting variations from the Comprehensive
Development Code's provisions governing the number of required
parking spaces and driveway setback was made subject to several
minor modifications to the property.
Carolyn Mercandante, of the
Claymont Historical Society, noted that the building also has
some significance in local history. It once was a caretaker's
home on the Raskob estate, which now is the Archmere Academy
campus.
During discussion it was noted
that the proposal came to the committee unaccompanied by a
Department of Land Use staff report. Mary Grace Novak, the
department's liaison with the committee, said that practice has
been determined to be "inappropriate" and discontinued following
an
embarrassing situation in
which the staff report recommended and the Hockessin Design
Review Advisory Committee agreed to also recommend disapproval
of a plan for a commercial bank in that community only to be
overruled by the department.
County Councilman Robert Weiner
agreed with Novak that both the preliminary staff report and the
committee action are advisory and that the 'hometown' zoning law
was not intended to compromise the legal authority of the
department and County Council in land-use matters. The Hockessin
committee, Weiner said, "acted outside the scope of its
authority."
Cartier told the advisory
committee that, following County Council's approval of the
updated comprehensive plan in March, four committees will be
formed to draft legislation to implement its proposed changes in
development policies. The committees, which will have community
representation, will deal with economic development, affordable
housing, 'smart growth' and transfer of development rights.
In the past, he said,
comprehensive plans have been adopted and then left on the shelf
until the next time to revise them came. "We want to do more
than that with this plan," he said. "We're going to get back in
the business of letting the [economics] law of supply and demand
work."
Weiner said the comprehensive
plan that will come before Council represents "a shift from
[suburban] sprawl to 'smart growth'" which favors providing
village-like communities oriented to walking and use of public
transportation.
Cartier also told members of the
committee not to sweat the all-but-certain increase in the
county property-tax rate. He said it will likely amount to
"somewhere between $5 and $10 a month" more on the average
residential tax bill. Although that would indicate an increase
from the current rate in the range of 17% to 34%, he said
"percentages aren't important" when the actual dollar amount "is
not a ruinous type of increase."
The alternative, he said, would
be drastic cuts in such things as police protectin and
paramedics service. "Both the [county] executive and Council are
working hard to cut all the fat out of [the coming] budget ...
{but] we don't want to compromise vital services," he said. |