A yearslong zoning duel between a Bustleton resident and the neighborhood’s civic group has been delayed.
Flore Andresi, who is operating a dental implant-manufacturing business in a home at 9997 Haldeman Ave., and members of the Greater Bustleton Civic League were due to go before the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment on Jan. 15. However, the hearing, which was court-ordered, was continued, said City Councilman Brian O’Neill and Jack O’Hara, the league’s president.
O’Hara said last week that no new date had been set.
Andresi had been before the zoners in November 2012 and won their OK to temporarily operate his manufacturing business in the small single-family home.
League members had overwhelming opposed putting a business in a residentially zoned property, and after the zoning board vote didn’t go their way, they voted to appeal the decision in the Court of Common Pleas.
O’Neill (R-10th dist.) frequently opposes commercial uses for properties in residential areas and had urged the league to spend the money on the appeal.
The court saw things the league’s way - — sort of. In August 2013, the court remanded the case back to the zoners because it said Andresi had not proved hardship. What the zoners will require, whenever the hearing occurs, is that the owner prove that the property could not be used for anything else but his business.
O’Neill said he had never seen the court do something like that.
“Instead of overturning the zoning board, the court remanded the case back to the zoning board,” the councilman said in a phone interview last week. “There was no evidence of hardship to the property … and the new hearing is limited to determining where was a hardship.”
But the judges already had determined there was no hardship, O’Neill said.
Zoning attorney Shawn Ward, who represents the applicant, told the Northeast Times in 2012 that the property was suitable only for Andresi’s business and that his client wanted to sell it. ••
