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Fri
Mar 2
2012

One Second Thought, Neighbors Not So Thrilled With New Development on Lombard St.

Last week, we told you about Lombard Estates, Noah Ostroff’s 11-home development planned for 1803-29 Lombard St., which is currently functioning as a parking lot. At the time, we were under the impression that the neighbors on nearby Addison St. were generally supportive of this project.

Parking lot

At this week’s CCRA zoning meeting, we quickly realized that this was indeed not the case. The developer’s extremely friendly attorney presented the plan to the CCRA zoning board, describing eleven new homes of varying widths. Four of the homes will be 16′ wide, five homes will be 21′ wide (with 4,100 sqft of living space), one home will be 31′ wide, and the final home will be 40′ wide (!), have three car parking (!), and 7,200 sqft of living space (!!!).

The developer handed out packets with floor plans and renderings done by Landmark Architectural Design, but we were unable to procure one for ourselves. Fortunately, someone who did emailed us photos of a couple of renderings.

Wow

Front and rear shots

These are obviously the kind of high-end single family homes that we don’t see going up in this town every day. Exciting, right? The near neighbors, however, came out in opposition, in force. There were three primary objection to the project that came up repeatedly: 1) The houses are too large, and more specifically, too tall. 2) This has been a parking lot for decades, and many people on Addison St. that have access from their rear yards to this parking lot and would lose this egress 3) The houses will be built with decks off the back that will terminate just six feet from the property line. Several homes on Addison St. come almost to the edge of the property line. This would be very close, indeed.

Are these legitimate gripes that the developer needs to address or simply an example of NIMBYism? CCRA seems to believe it’s the former, as they decided that they would not support the application in its current form.

One suggestion that might satisfy many neighbors that wasn’t mentioned in the meeting: If the developer were willing to offer underground parking, this would allow them to slightly reduce the height and greatly increase the rear yard space, providing the northern neighbors with greater light and air. In addition, this sort of large up front expense would probably force the developer to build the homes more quickly, rather than a few at a time as was suggested at the CCRA meeting. Not saying this would be a panacea, just throwing out the idea.

As far as what happens next? Who knows. The developer could go to the ZBA without community support, or they could revise their plans and come back to CCRA.

We’ll see what happens…

27
COMMENTS
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Posted in Rittenhouse | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 27 Comments
  • 3rd&Brown

    UGH. The homes on Addison have no yards so that’s the developer’s problem. They should have thought about that when they bought their houses with no yards. And who would prefer to live next to a parking lot rather than beautiful, high end homes. Some (i.e. most) people are never happy.

    Jerks.

  • guest

     I concur OMG can’t stand the NIMBYism of this city…….ant-progress …..loosers

  • Guest

    Beautiful houses, seems reasonable in scale given that most homes in the area are around 45′ or higher.
    Parking, low density, nice facades… Sounds like the usual ” I don’t want to loose my view” so I’ll make up any lame reason to be against it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=608975509 Terry Nicol

    Those houses are beautiful. 

  • Guest

     Eh, in all honesty they can build really nice houses to code on this lot.  What’s the point of having a zoning code if you expect everyone to support variances from it whenever they request?

  • Anonymous

    Townhouses just a couple blocks away from high-rises in an area that is a part of a cbd and we have NIMBys dead set against.  Its depressing how fearful of change and regressive how people in this city can be. 

  • Tom

    This part of the city is under-zoned to a degree that it inhibits development.  People in Philadelphia need to wake up and realize that no where in this city is density so high that quality of life is going to be dramatically impacted.  

  • Guest

     Sure.  I don’t disagree.  I just don’t think it should be done by variance.  Everyone in the area should have the same development rights of X feet.  We shouldn’t have everyone at X feet and a few people who have the time and money to argue at the ZBA with X+10 feet.

    When rezoning and the new plan happens come and make the argument for greater density.

  • Marius

    I hope those losers enjoy their parking lot. 

  • Marius

    “I moved to the 5th largest city in the country but expect to never have to live in close proximity to other people or ever have something tall to be built near me” what planet are these NIMBYs from? 

  • Chris

    Agreed, damn NIMBYs – There’s a huge commercial property across the street from me at 5th & Fairmount that I wish would turn into a development like this, despite the inherent negatives with any improvements.  This isn’t even a “don’t destroy green space or a mural” type argument – it’s just the definition of NIMNEBY (Not-In-My-Non-Existent-Back-Yard)

  • http://philaphilia.blogspot.com/ GroJLart

    There are plenty of places in the city where large buildings butt-up to the backs of rowhouses– a 60-foot building comes right up to my property line– its great for shade! These NIMBYs are getting ridiculous. They’re complaining about losing a surface parking lot? Morons.

  • veggie

    a 3-car garage in this location seems ridic (admittedly, that’s a personal opinion), but other than that, there doesn’t seem to be anything so offensive about this project that would draw the ire of anyone except typical the NIMBY crowd.

  • brianbrews

    The variance creates less density in this case, not greater density. That being said, I agree that these NIMBY’s are outta their minds on this one.

  • Jeffrey W.

    During an open house, I looked at a house on that block forgetting that they backed up to the parking lot. Once I looked out the back windows and realized where I was, I was like – nope, no way, no how. Havingthe that lot made the house seem so exposed and vulnerable. These guys have to be fools to be against these townhouses.

  • EricClayWarner

    I cannot wait for the new zoning code to go into affect. Bye bye variances and the power of NIMBYism. The project given its location and the scale of the neighborhood fits very well. Where do these people think they moved? Rural Pennsylvania. You live in downtown area of the 3rd dense city in the nation. You might loose your parking lot view. Get over it. 

  • Jtinurel

    I’d like to offer the parking lot across from our house. It’s only two blocks from that location!

  • Guest

    You live in Rittenhouse, CCRA.  Honestly, shut the f*ck up.  Those houses are amazing and Rittenhouse is exactly where they should be going.  Seriously, these are the kind of houses that celebrities and athletes buy and they don’t want them being built?  I do agree though that the decks are unnecessary and they kind of take away from the older look of the front of the houses to be honest.

  • Guest

    You mean the new plan being written by the exact people who don’t want to live in an actually urban, dense city?  Is that the plan you’re referring to?  “Traffic calming, vibrancy, etc etc”  They need to come out and say that they want to live in the suburbs already because that’s exactly what they’re trying to make the city into with the bike paths and taking away lanes for cars (but never taking away bike lanes of course) and pedestrian this and bike that,  greening, community space.. enough of the jargon already.  Those houses are exactly what belong in Rittenhouse.  If not them then there should be a major high-density development.  Having a parking lot there is an insult and if this thing doesn’t get built because of them well that’s flat out unacceptable.

  • veggie

     ”They need to come out and say that they want to live in the suburbs
    already because that’s exactly what they’re trying to make the city into
    with the bike paths and taking away lanes for cars (but never taking
    away bike lanes of course) and pedestrian this and bike that,  greening,
    community space.. ”

    ummm, what are you talking about? the suburbs are made for cars. sidewalks/bike lanes/ public transit are why people like living in the city. that kind of stuff comes with higher density areas.

  • Diana

    The houses are quite nice, but yes, quite tall and as usual, I think it’s just too much parking. The property line issue could be resolved by changing up the parking scheme so that perhaps not every house had a garage (or three). Any sense of the sustainability of the project?

  • WeBuiltThisCity

    While the CCRA is misguided, I do question the idea of a 7,200 square foot single-family dwelling in Center City. But due to our outdated zoning code, very little profitable development is allowed in areas of high land value, so this is about as good as we’ll get at present. Would love to see this built.

  • http://www.philadelphiaspeaks.com/forum/southwest-center-city/28681-1612-16-south-street-4.html#post474178 1612-16 South Street – Page 4

    [...] some neighbors of another nearby proposed development weren't so stoked about the proposed height: One Second Thought, Neighbors Not So Thrilled With New Development on Lombard St. | NakedPhilly Reply With Quote + Reply to [...]

  • Guest

    looks like suburban junk to me… too bad for a city with such great architecture…

  • Wsutton66

    Blame Jacob J. Hailey for this monstrosity.

  • http://nakedphilly.com/rittenhouse/months-later-parking-lot-becoming-lombard-estates-after-all/ Months Later, Parking Lot Becoming Lombard Estates After All | NakedPhilly

    [...] the spring, we told you about Lombard Estates, an 11-home development going up on the 1800 block of Lombard Street. At the time, we had just come from a CCRA zoning meeting where neighbors and the developers seemed [...]

  • http://www.city-data.com/forum/city-vs-city/1838985-philadelphia-vs-washington-d-c-more-31.html#post29235092 Philadelphia Vs. Washington D.C. Which is more urban/dense – Page 31 – City-Data Forum

    [...] expensive land they sit on. For example, here are 11 new homes nearing completion in Center City: One Second Thought, Neighbors Not So Thrilled With New Development on Lombard St. | NakedPhilly. Lots of projects like this are filling in lots and under-utilized [...]

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