With apologies to John Donne, the poem reference just popped into my head.

I find it somewhat ironic that I just posted within the past few days a post cautioning about allowing Chester County to be swallowed by rampant development . And well here we are, with a story in The Daily Local about one of the kings of plastic houses, Toll Brothers.

The long and short of it is, now I know what that itty bitty zoning notice was about on Little Connestoga Road that I saw within the past few months.

How saddened am I by this news?  A lot, actually.  Among other things, although I don’t know Chester County really well yet, I think this is proposed rather close to the Byers Station Historic District. This is all being proposed in Upper Uwchlan, a municipality I know nothing about.

I am pretty sure when the hot air balloons landed on 9/11, they landed within a Toll Development – maybe even Byers Station.  It was a very Welcome to Stepford feeling with rows and rows of houses exactly the same.  From the air, they looked like Lego buildings.  The field we landed on had something to do with the development’s septic.  I don’t know much about this stuff, but that was what I was told when I asked why everything had a wafting odor of rotten eggs – you know that icky sulphur smell?

Anyway, I am very troubled by all this development.  Not just because once open space and agricultural-use land is gone, it’s gone, but also because Chester County is so very beautiful.

I don’t like plastic houses.  I don’t think developers should be allowed to continue to contort Chester County into a series of homogeneous plastic communities with no spirit, no soul, zero individuality.

Here’s the article I found today.  Below it is a very interesting one from the Inquirer in 1987 which talks about the Frame property now in play….when it was a cattle farm and they were worried about then proposed plastic house developments causing the farm to flood.

Again, this is all happening in Upper Uwchlan Township.  I guess Upper Uwchlan sees its future as being composed of 100% recycled plastic material?  Will they be substituting grass for Astroturf too?

When is enough development enough in Chester County? Where do communities draw the line?  What do you think about development in Chester County, especially in this economy?

What happens here is bog turtles are discovered? (And by all means, if you have seen bog turtles around here, by all means speak up!)

And based upon the article I found in the archives of the Philadelphia Inquirer, when did this Frame family go from their position back then of concern about development, to becoming part of the problem?

Toll Bros. wants to build 67 new homes

Sara Mosqueda-Fernandez