Tag Archives: East Whiteland

failure to launch in east whiteland

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East Whiteland agenda

East Whiteland has a Supervisors’ Meeting this evening.  Did they send out the agenda a week ago? A couple of days ago? With reasonable notice to township residents?

NOPE.

East Whiteland Township sent out their monthly meeting agenda at 10 a.m. this morning. That is NOT truly open government or sunshine friendly.

And what do you get when you click on the link for the meeting agenda which should have been sent DAYS ago?

This:

failure to launch1

And this:

failure to launch

I tried it first on a tablet, then on a computer.

East Whiteland, what we have here is a failure to launch.

Question: Am I reading the sunshine laws right when it comes to meetings? Aren’t residents entitled to more notice than they normally receive?

sunshine law

Good thing I know how to noodle around the website – I found an amended agenda:

6 8 16 amended agenda

Agenda Page 1

Agenda Page 2

Agenda Page 3

Hmm People’s Light and Theater want to build a bigger bread box err banquet facility? Does that mean the food and service will improve? We gave up on the restaurant and trying them for holidays as it was not worth it no matter how lovely the setting.

Swedesford Square Apartment? Jesus H Christ East Whiteland are you TRYING to become King of Prussia overnight?

And Linden Hall? Why should they get waivers from anything? They can’t even restore one historic structure.  Putting mesh fencing around it is not saving it. And those townhouses are tragically ugly and cheap looking.

linden hall and the developer(s)

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Nightmare traffic. Pretty much daily.  
Does anyone see any actual restoration of Linden Hall? 

NOPE.

Supposedly the developer has an “obligation” to restore the old historic structure, as I presume that was part of the application and conditions of approval, right? But does the developer have to restore the actual Linden Hall?

  I still assert no, because there is nothing in East Whiteland that would make the developer do the restoration, you only have their word. And well, can it be said developers can promise a lot of things at times when they are trying to get projects approved?

All I see is demolition by neglect, don’t you? They haven’t even mothballed the historic structure in an effort to preserve it during construction of the butt ugly townhouses. And quite frankly I am still not sure that the foundations on one side are properly filled in. There is only so long that foundation walls that are a couple of centuries old are going to survive if they are just dug out around and exposed without anything to ensure their survival.

That historic structure which should have been protected years ago is totally at risk. The property is only seen by developers as the money the plastic (and fairly expensive) townhouses will generate. To a municipality, new development = some ratables but that is never as much as you think it will be and a one off, correct?

 

What do residents get out of the whole proposition? In my opinion, not much. 
None of us move to Chester County for plastic mushroom Tyvek wrapped housing, we move for the beauty , history, and the open space. The farmland, a better way of life. But how is our life better if acre by acre Chester County is been gobbled up by developments?

Has anyone seen how close that one development is to St. Peter’s in the Great Valley? Does anyone care?

Developers don’t care about what makes life special to those of us who live here, if they cared about cornfields and old houses and forests and fields they wouldn’t buy so many and plow them under for plastic mushroom Tyvek wrapped townhouses and McMansions. 

 
Traffic is absolutely ridiculous on Route 30 anywhere near Route 352 and Linden Hall. 

And today it was downright dangerous because there were so many frustrated drivers who were just throwing themselves into reverse and doing U-turns in the oncoming lanes of traffic to escape the traffic. Headed west on Route 30 (Lancaster Ave.) you can’t make a left turn onto 352 at this point. That also makes for a lot of confusion and great inconvenience to motorists.

It is bad enough that most of this new development looks cheap and all crammed in, but what’s even worse is everyone has to put up with the pain of the development occurring.

And what will all this development that falls within the Great Valley School District do? How long before the school district is completely over crowded? Does the school district even have any contingency plans or projections for this? Because it’s not like all this development is for empty-nesters.

I had to go through this intersection of Route 352 and 30 twice today. Each time I spend a minimum of 35 minutes trying to just get through a very short distance. As residents of Chester County, our time is worth something. It would behoove East Whiteland to not only sit on the developer about the restoration of Linden Hall actually occurring instead of just the abuse to the structure, but actually sitting on them so people can get through the darn intersection and that stretch of road.

Linden Hall just sits there and looks more sad by the day. Traffic just gets worse by the day.

  

grande dame has hope for future

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In a matter of minutes, less than half an hour, Loch Aerie had a new owner.  CZ Patel of New Jersey.  I was standing there when he said in a soft spoken voice that he was interested in converting Loch Aerie to a hotel.

That is welcome news to all who were worried about her facing a wrecking ball.

New Loch Aerie owner CZ Patel speaks with reporters after winning auction

New Loch Aerie owner CZ Patel speaks with reporters after winning auction

 

The room was packed with residents, bidders, reporters, and even folks from other historic commission members from other Chester County municipalities. I am not sure if anyone from East Whiteland Historical Commission were present, although one member was quoted in Kristin Holme’ follow up article.

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Here is the link to Kristin’s Inquire article and my byline courtesy of VISTA.Today. I was really honored the VISTA.Today editor reached out to me.  I have poured my heart and soul into covering Loch Aerie the past few years.

I look forward to when I can cover Loch Aerie in her next life as a hotel.

Hotel owner bids $710,000 to win historic Chesco mansion

Updated: APRIL 22, 2016 — 1:08 AM EDT
by Kristin E. Holmes, Staff Writer

 

Update: The Grande Dame of Lancaster Pike Loch Aerie Has a New Owner

Posted By: Lance Knickerbocker Posted date: April 22, 2016

By Carla Zambelli

 

Here is a LINK to auction photos I took yesterday.

loch aerie has a new owner

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to cowards who run over dogs and keep driving 

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Dear Cowards who hit the dog on W. King Road this afternoon:

Here is the dog you hit.  She’s a pretty little girl isn’t she? She is beloved to her humans and right now she’s at an emergency vet fighting to stay with her people.

Yes, she got out. It was an accident, it happens. But you hit this precious little dog and kept driving! How can anyone with a heart or soul or a conscience do that? How could you have not stopped and pulled over?

What is wrong with you that you did not stop? 

Everyone else around you stopped.

You know you hit this dog and you kept on driving.  

Accidents happen, it’s how you deal with them that makes all the difference.

Please contact East Whiteland Police Department and own up to this. At least to apologize to the family. 

To anyone else who is reading this post:

This little dog was hit on W. King Rd. mid afternoon this afternoon. If you know anything or you have any details on whomever it is that hit this dog please contact East Whiteland Police Department. 

It was an accident, a horrible accident but the kids who went into the road to get the dog could have been hit by traffic if other people hadn’t stopped.

God bless the nice couple who stopped and helped the mom and her children get the dog to an emergency vet.

We are all hoping that St. Francis is watching  over this beloved pet and she continues to hold her own. We asked that any animal lovers out there whisper a little prayer for this sweet little dog.

And to those who travel back-and-forth on W. King Rd. please slow down. No one pays enough attention to the speed limit and it is so easy to fly from the edge of Immaculata’s  campus out past the Little League field. Next time it might be a human being who is hit and we don’t want that.

Now that the weather is nice W. King Rd. is dangerously busy seven days a week, especially when there are activities like all the Little League games. 

People are in too much of a hurry. 

Slow down… please.

And again, if anyone knows who hit this poor little dog please contact East Whiteland Police Department. It’s the right thing to do. We should still live in a world where occasionally people do the right thing.

Thank you.

if you have this book you have an illustration of loch aerie

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If you have this Little Golden Book – A Child’s Garden of Verses illustrated by Eloise Wilken then you have an illustration of Loch Aerie from the rear that was done originally around 1957! The book is still in print today and you can buy it on Amazon for your children or grandchildren.

That is the cool thing about this old mansion which had its last open house before the April 21 auction today – the more I write about it the more people contact me to tell me about things where the mansion is pictured or featured in.

I can find almost nothing about the Lockwood family but I keep discovering things about the mansion.

Loch Aerie apparently has inspired artists, photographers, and illustrators since she was built.

Praying for a conservation/preservation minded buyer.  This old gal deserves more then a haphazard developer who won’t care.  There is enough of that going around these days already.

#thisplacematters  

this is progress?

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Ann Pugh Farm todayIt was marketed as a “Main Line Classic”. A “Historic Estate Property.”  Only in the end it was just another demolition in the march of new development in Chester County.

It was the Ann Pugh Farm

pugh farm then

And then it wasn’t.

pugh

The property was idyllic. And updated. It was in short, amazing.  But although historic, there was nothing in Tredyffrin Township, Chester County to protect it. I wrote about it twice, Tredyffrin Community Matters wrote about it.  At the time both blogs took an enormous amount of guff for doing so.  We were being mean and unfair and so on and so forth.

A quote from one of comment leavers on Commuity Matters at the time:

You are losing sight of the issue, is it preservation, or is it simply opposition to new construction?

I thought Pattye Benson summed up everyone’s thoughts who were distraught at what we felt was wanton destruction when she replied:

Not opposed to new construction — just support the preservation of our community’s historic resources.

 

And that is the truth.  You can’t save every old mansion, house, farm, barn, and storefront.  But we need to preserve more in our communities than we are.  We need balance between the old and the new and progress should not erase our history. (Speaking of preservation, check out Savvy Main Line’s shout out for a preservation buyer for Chester County’s La Ronda known as Loch Aerie in this week’s column and news round up.)

The friend who sent me the photo of the Ann Pugh replacement today remarked that whomever built the house might still have their former home on Pugh for sale? I have no way of knowing, and do not really care but what I will never understand is living down the street from something that was as beautiful as Ann Pugh Farm and then tearing it down to make your mark on the landscape, can you?

The other thing I find so sad with all of this is the fact that in the two years between Ann Pugh coming tumbling down and today, Tredyffrin has not changed the way they protect historic assets in their township.  After all, if they had, perhaps the Old Covered Wagon Inn in Strafford would not be at risk for demolition, right?

And the thing is that Tredyffrin Township is home to some amazing historic preservationists that are active and visible in the community.  But when zoning and planning and ordinances don’t match up and the Municipalities Planning Code of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania do not match with a community’s desire to protect at least some of their history and architectural heritage what can you do? (The short answer is not much and you have to get lucky.)

I keep hoping East Whiteland will wake up before it’s too late.  As a municipality they are facing essentially wanton commercial and residential development, and it is not necessarily what the majority of residents want but does that matter? The East Whiteland Historical Commission has made a couple of public utterances lately, but what exactly is there to back up what they are saying?  Do they have a game plan? Or are they just beating their chests because they were awoken from their relatively inactive slumber?

Or they love their history and work to preserve it actively like East Goshen and Willistown? Like the beautiful and historic homes lovingly preserved in the Boroughs of West Chester and Kennett Square? Wouldn’t you love more preservation like Historic Sugartown, Goshenville, and Yellow Springs Village?

West Vincent is another municipality in the throes of development. There residents are worried this once idyllic township is disappearing one development at a time and where you used to smell the smells of crops and live stock, on a sunny day if you are close enough, you smell plastic. The new plastic smell of tract houses and development with no soul. In West Vincent residents are wondering what it would take to get the zoning found in Willistown and Charesltown townships and other places in Chester County where they wisely added lot size requirements to their codes in an effort to at least retain some of the open space if they can’t save the old houses and farms.

People in West Vincent are terrified over huge tracts of land like Bryn Coed.  Bryn Coed is roughly twice the size Chesterbrook was amassed to be before original development, correct?  And it is an estate in more than one municipality, right? So what happens if Bryn Coed gets developed? Or is it more like when? It is a huge amount of land for people to be caretakers over in today’s economy, so I am just being practical as I do not see it surviving and neither do most people. But what will it become? The new Chesterbook? A Bensalem lite?

And that is the problem throughout Chester County: there is not enough to save the history and barely enough to hang on to some of the open space.  If we all do not come together in this county, what we love about Chester County will literally cease to exist.  And what of the farming? What happens when you develop away all of the farms? Or add chemical plants where they once stood?

It’s a lot to think about, but we must. We have an opportunity in a Presidential Election Year to demand more transparency from candidates for every level of office when it comes to open space preservation, land conservation, environmental conservation, farming, development, historic preservation.  Ask the candidates. Whether running for a local supervisor to Congress, to State House to State and U.S. Senate it doesn’t matter who you are, ask the candidates the tough questions and make them earn their votes.

It’s time to #SaveChesterCounty before what we love is all gone.

went to loch aerie again today

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DSC_3507I know, I must be pretty boring since I am stuck on this old mansion.  But I can’t help it. i love Loch Aerie. Or Glen Loch. Or Lockwood Mansion depending on what you know her as.

DSC_3538I went through today with a writer I know and a writer and historian. We explored Loch Aerie again, listening to tales people had to tell. There were people there today who had been in the house over the years.

DSC_3426Among the first people I spoke with was a gentleman whose brother was the motorcycle gang member who was shot on the front porch.  Apparently the brother had rented Loch Aerie along with a woman described as a “Campbell Soup Heiress”. The woman’s last name wasn’t Dorrance, however. And no, I can’t remember what her name was. IN fact I found out she wasn’t an heiress per se but her father was an Executive VP of Campbell Soup.

DSC_3347I saw the marks in the floor today a motorcycle had left.

Then there was the very much older lady who counted all the little steps up to the top of the cupola.  I spent some time up in the cupola today myself. The views are amazing.

There were people who had lived or grown up near by, people who were just curious and a lot of people interested in the property looking Loch Aerie over.  Truthfully the house was packed the entire time.

DSC_3451I smiled quite a few times because I overheard people saying they had come to see Loch Aerie because they had seen it on this blog.

April 21st is the auction.  I hope the right buyer finds her in time.  This really is a truly remarkable piece of American Architecture. Today I noticed details I did not notice last week.

And for all of those people who say “but it is next to the Home Depot” when you are inside, you forget. Everything else just melts away and there you are in this spectacular mansion of a bygone era. And I was pleased to learn from a volunteer from the Chester County Historical Society that there are a bunch of photos at the Historical Society of Loch Aerie when the Lockwood Family lived there.  I am thinking a field trip might be in order.

Follow THIS LINK TO TODAY’S PHOTOS.  And remember, #thisplacematters

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loch aerie open again tomorrow – last “open house” before auction

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Loch Aerie FlyerTomorrow is the last “open house”  or public viewing of Loch Aerie / Lockwood Mansion / Glen Loch Mansion before the auction on April 21st. So that is tomorrow Wednesday, April 6, 12 pm (noon) until 2 pm. If you know of a preservation buyer, tell them!

The auction people are very nice and gracious, but you do have to stop at their registration table and fill out a form so they know who is in the house. It’s no big deal, but it is an old house. Wear sturdy shoes or good sneakers, this is an old house with many rooms and floors and stairs.

Since the signs went up, the news of Chester County’s La Ronda going to the auction block has spread like wildfire, even making the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Historic Properties for Sale List (CLICK HERE)

I would caution people that there is still opportunity here for Loch Aerie to be saved.  This is very different from those of us who watched La Ronda fall in Bryn Mawr .  No one knew what danger La Ronda was in until Lower Merion Township found out about the desired demolition. By then it was too late. And it was insane, the person who purchase dLa Ronda demolished her just because he could.  He even had a preservation buyer prepared to buy the house and move it to another location. La Ronda was replaced by an absurdly pretentious McMansion with a hockey rink and history was lost.

La Ronda was an amazing example of Addison Mizner’s work and was at that time (2009) one of the last remaining examples if not the last example in this area.  His mansions used to dot the East Coast up through New York State if I remember correctly. And in the end with La Ronda even the seller and owner were at odds over salvage rights.

La Ronda was an amazing property. I was lucky to be able to photograph her from outside her gates before she fell. I was  there like like dozens of others on demolition day. I took photos as tears ran down my face at the sheer waste of something so amazing. Even local commissioner were there and crying. It was awful . It was a house that was beloved by her former community, just like Loch Aerie is today. And just as symbolic and recognizable which is why people sometimes call Loch Aerie Chester County’s La Ronda.

The clock is ticking but not all is lost. Loch Aerie just needs a preservation buyer and not a developer who is land greedy who will buy her for the 6 acres in total she comes with and let her rot as opposed as to just lie fallow with a caretaker in residence.

Loch Aerie has stood there on her hill and watched Chester County change.  This mansion has survived Home Depot being built, turnpike and other highway expansions, motorcycle gangs and general ignorance.

Addison Hutton is one of the finest architects that ever worked or lived in Philadelphia. Loch Aerie is fanciful and lyrical in her Swiss Gothic style. Her original gardens were designed by Charles P. Miller, the landscape architect who designed Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. The gardens are all but gone and the difference between this spring and some other springs I have seen Loch Aerie go through seems to be that some of the last remaining foundation plantings are but memories.

You can read the report that the Chester County Historical Society compiled for a Historic Buildings Survey in the 1950s for The Department of the Interior by clicking HERE.

You can read author Thom Nickel’s Huffington Post essay on Loch Aerie by clicking HERE.

I will note that East Whiteland Historical Commission has a meeting tomorrow evening – 4/6/2016 from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm.  Supposedly they will be discussing Loch Aerie although no agenda is posted as per usual. they also never seem to post any meeting minutes. So I can’t tell you what they are doing but they certainly have not gotten out in front of this.  Or if they have it’s a secret they keep from everyone.

We can’t save every old house, barn, mansion, structure but we should save some, right?  The crime here is just like with the Old Conestoga Inn in Tredyffrin, the Strawbridge House next to the boat place on 30 in Malvern, or Linden Hall on Route 30 in Malvern at the base of 352 and countless other structures all over, there is nothing legally keeping any of them from being torn down. The drawback to living in Pennsylvania, which is a heavy private property rights state (which of course given the eminent domain for private gain all over the state for decades is somewhat contrary in and of itself.)

But the thing is this: Pennsylvania needs more meaningful historic preservation. And there need to be more financial incentives available to preservation buyers. Other states in this country have them.

Pennsylvania also needs an overhaul of the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code (“MPC” or Act of 1968 P.L. 805 no. 245 as Reenacted and Amended).  This weighty tome is the bible which guides zoning and land use on local levels. This what your local elected officials will lament prevents them from preventing development/density and so on and so forth at times.  Legislators will tell you the MPC is flawed, heck they even did a comprehensive report on it around 2002-2004.)

Communities around Pennsylvania desperately need balance and even protections from development. What defined a suburb and exurb in the past may no longer fit and how does historic preservation in communities fit in? The truth is historic preservation is more of a nice option in Pennsylvania rather than the occasional requirement.

Sorry, don’t mean to put you to sleep, but I feel quite passionately about preserving our open spaces and history.

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Loch Aerie is a symbol to us. A symbol of the rich history and past, homage to a time gone by, an example of legendary architecture which has withstood the test of time and is still so beautiful. And Loch Aerie could be a private home again, or an adaptive reuse. It would be a fabulous boutique hotel and there is a need. I could see a small hotel with a chic restaurant on the first floor.

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Even artists have been captivated by Loch Aerie over time.  In a garage sale group I bought a print  done by Chester County artist named  Christopher Schultz.  Schultz used to present the land and wildlife of the Brandywine Valley in his watercolors and prints of his watercolors.  What I got was Loch Aerie. Apparently the print was popular 15 to 20 years ago.  I have never seen anything else by this artist, and I bought this print because it was of Loch Aerie. Not terribly valuable but pretty and spoke to me because of the subject matter.

Loch Aerie speaks to me as she does to so many of you. She needs a preservation buyer. She deserves to be saved. But someone has to want to and be able to afford to do it.  Here is hoping and praying that somewhere preservation buyers are thinking about this. It would be criminal for Pennsylvania to lose this treasure.

#thisplacematters

Thanks for stopping by.

 

loch aerie/lockwood mansion in frazer up for auction in april. will it be a goner?

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Loch Aerieloch aerie 2

Does anyone care what happens to Loch Aerie? I was alerted to this today and couldn’t believe it, but it’s true! Max Spann Auctions are selling the old gal off April 21st in an auction.

I am so sad.  East Whiteland always seems to want to seek it’s own identity as a community but here we go again – one of the other most iconic structures, Loch Aerie is seriously at risk.  Do you really think anyone preservation minded will step up in the 11th hour? It is a nice thought but folks like the ones saving the iconic Farmers and Mechanic Building in West Chester are few and far between.

East Whiteland, are you ever going to wake the heck up and save part of the history that surrounds us? Is everything supposed to become a strip mall or housing development or office park?

Linden Hall is classic demolition by neglect at this point. And oh yes there is that demolition by neglect ordinance brewing but what will it accomplish? As one of my readers said just today:

The ordinance is ONLY a start. A 5 year period of no building permit as part of enforcement would be better than one year. One year is a “blink” in development. You are absolutely right- a monetary fine is useless. The supervisors need to recognize the urgency of this ordinance or it will be too little too late as usual. Thanks for staying on this story!

But what good is staying on a story no one seems to be paying attention to? I hear the new supervisors are all into affordable housing but the joke of it is none of the approved, planned, being built,  and yet to be built living units are truly affordable housing are they? People are snide and say East Whiteland’s idea of affordable housing are trailer parks, but other that the William Henry Apartments and the trailer parks, what is actually something that even falls into the category of affordable housing that is being proposed?

HOW ABOUT SOME ACTUAL HISTORIC PRESERVATION?

Never mind. Everything has a high price tag and none of it seems to include conservation buying or active historic preservation.

If there is a preservation minded buyer out there interested in Loch Aerie, carpe diem….Sadly I just do not think such a buyer exists.  And here is the page for the East Whiteland Historic Commission:

historic commission

That screen shot was taken a few minutes ago. What do you see? NADA. Nothing. Zilch.

I really hope someone will step in and save Loch Aerie. Realistically (again)  I just don’t see it happening. But cheer up, someone will build some more “carriage homes” or “luxury singles” somewhere.

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