At last night's SHCA Board of Directors' meeting, about 20 minutes was given
over to Magali Larson of the Woodland Terrace Homeowners' Association and
Tom Lussenhop on behalf of Campus Apartments, on the topic of "The Campus Inn."
Magali asked the Board to be sure its zoning committee honored its written
mission statement of encouraging residential use in the area, asked that SHCA
protect the people who had built their lives around the community as a diverse
residential neighborhood, and warned that if they set a precedent by
supporting this project -- how could they go against the people who purchased
the
empty lot on the SE corner of 43rd & Baltimore (on the park) who have been
talking about a tower at that site.
Tom went through a complicated explanation of why valet parking was just as
good as on-site parking -- violating the basic principle known as Occam's
Razor (which every erudite Nobel Laureate associated with the Penn Real Estate
Dept knows as "Pluritas non est ponenda sine necessitate" and the rest of us
bezonians can think of as "if it's unnecessarily complicated, something's wrong
with it"). In response to questions, Tom told two fibs and sidestepped one
issue by clumsy evasion:
1. Fib #1. When asked about the date set for the Zoning hearing on the
request for a variance, he said none had been set. The truth is that the
hearing has been scheduled for May 6. It's inconceivable that the guy who's
been
living, breathing, and sullying his reputation on this project with such
intensity wouldn't know this.
2. Fib #2. Tom claimed that he and his colleagues had met with the Union
representatives who've been coming to the community meetings, and
everything's pretty much settled in a mutually agreeable way. Unfortunately
(for Tom),
the Union people were in attendance and stated that although they had met,
nothing had been settled at all.
3. Evasion: Tom was asked why this site is the one on which they're
focusing, considering all the problems and contention arising from it's being
basically inappropriate for an 11-story 120-room hotel, when Penn now owns and
is about to start developing a huge tract to the east of the campus -- which
would be more convenient to HUP and CHOP. His response (you couldn't call it
an answer) was that two hotels were already being planned for that area (what
does that say about the need for Campus Inn?), but that they were off
sometime in the future. He also muttered something about shopping -- implying
that
this big mixed use development wouldn't have enough to meet the needs of
"extended stay" hotel guests.
Respectfully submitted,
Alan Krigman
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