New Council member is continuing fight over height and density of development in North Philly

Councilmember Jeffery Young will continue a lawsuit brought by former City Council President Darrell L. Clarke against the Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA), arguing that it unlawfully granted a variance to a proposed apartment building on North Broad Street.

The Byzantine case was a part of Clarke’s larger crusade against the ZBA, which he claimed consistently flouted the law in favor of developers’ requests for greater density and height allowances.

After the former Council president’s retirement at the end of last year, Young is now the representative for the 5th District and has decided to continue the case.

“That [case] was something the prior Council member was asked to do by the community, and as the member of Council who now represents that same community, I’m just continuing that,” Young said. “I know parking was an issue, height was an issue, density was an issue. All the things under the zoning board’s purview.”

At the heart of the matter is a 225-unit apartment building proposed in 2019 for 1451 N. Broad St. by the Bock Development Group. The site is largely vacant, with the exception of the one-story Mount Olive Holy Temple in its northwest corner.

Crucially, the land is also zoned in a fashion often meant for robust neighborhood commercial corridors — think of Germantown Avenue and South Street — but only allows a height of 55 feet.

The Bock Group sought a variance to allow them to build a 19-story tower, which they argued made sense for a development on one of Philadelphia’s central thoroughfares and subway lines.

“If you look at the context of Broad Street, where else would you want to have a building of that size and dimension,” said Carl Primavera, a zoning attorney with Klehr Harrison who is representing Bock. “The height limit there isn’t even 60 feet. That would be a huge underutilization of the land.”

In 2020 and 2021, the board voted to allow the developer to build at a height three times what was allowed by the underlying zoning.

In 2022, Clarke sued the ZBA claiming that it had “erred as a matter of law and abused its discretion.”

Although some local community groups were supportive of the project, Yorktown neighborhood groups protested that it would be destructive of their neighborhood’s character. During the same period, Clarke also initiated lawsuits against other multifamily developments in the area.

“This project puts high-density housing adjacent to a well-established community of low-density housing,” Clarke’s lawsuit against the variance for 1451 N. Broad reads. “This proposed development, intended to be student housing [despite technically being open to the general public], does not protect the desirable and historical characteristics of the Yorktown neighborhood.”

But the Court of Common Pleas did not weigh in on Clarke’s argument because the legal case got hung up on a procedural question.

It was found that Clarke himself did not have standing to appeal the ZBA’s ruling as a district Council person. He could pursue the case only if he appealed on behalf of all of the City Council as a body. Clarke passed a resolution naming himself Council’s representative in the case, but the court ruled that he needed an ordinance.

Clarke appealed that decision, which will be argued before the Commonwealth Court on April 11. If that case is decided in his — now Young’s — favor, the question of the legality of the ZBA’s ruling will be taken up again by the Court of Common Pleas.

If the Commonwealth Court rules against Young, Primavera said that it would be too late for the Council member to pass an ordinance to give himself standing.

The Bock Group says the development is still on the table, despite 2024′s much more challenging construction environment. But it all depends on the outcome of the court case.

“We can actually pull the permit if we want, but you’ve got to be careful because if you pull something and the appeals court goes the other way, then you’re screwed,” Tom Bock, president of the Bock Group, said in an interview last week. “I just want to make sure it’s squashed, and I don’t know if Councilman Young pushes this or he doesn’t.”

Young is definitely pushing it. The resolution that passed Thursday makes him Council’s representative in the zoning case in Clarke’s place.

Young also gave a short speech at the end of the Council session — which his spokesperson said was unrelated to 1451 N. Broad — about the city’s zoning laws. It echoed points Clarke had often made.

“The city doesn’t force developers to go to the ZBA to develop projects,” Young said in his speech. “Property owners seek variances because they want to build, develop, or use their properties in a manner that the law does not allow them to do. Let’s put that clarity out there for folks.”