Downzoning causes anguish for landlords

By RACHEL HOGAN
Collegian Staff Writer

Richard Gesell and his wife, Lilly, do not have time to fight the Planning Commission and the State College Borough Council. But if they want to keep their Beaver Avenue properties as rentals, they might have to.

The Planning Commission is discussing "downzoning" the R3 district along Beaver Avenue into an R2T zone, which would restrict the number of rental properties allowed. R3 zones allow multifamily units and apartment complexes, while R2 zones are residential districts with one building per lot.

The proposed R2T zone will be a transitional zone, allowing some room for rental-housing development, said Carl Hess, planning director. The transition zone allows two buildings per lot but would not permit multifamily units -- such as apartment buildings -- unless they already exist.

But Richard Gesell said the rezoning seems unconstitutional to him.

"I bought a property on Beaver Avenue in an R3 zone. When you buy something, you expect it to be maintained,' he said.

To prevent the rezoning, the Gesells gathered several of their neighbors and set for the Planning Commission meeting last Wednesday. And they were successful, Lilly Gesell said.

"We have to keep fighting this. If nobody showed up, it would've gone through," she said.

Before the meeting the Gesells explained the effects of the downzoning to every property owner on the 500 and 600 blocks of Beaver Avenue, Richard Gesell said. All but one property owner who was "too tired to fight the borough" signed a petition against the rezoning.

Hess said the Planning Commission is responding to those complaints.

"We've been working on this for a year. We're shrinking the area to be rezoned," he said. On the table now is a plan to leave both sides of Beaver Avenue R3, and to begin the rezoning to R2T behind Highland Alley in between College Avenue and Beaver Avenue.

"If we don't provide an area for student housing close to campus, students will be dispersed and the problem will be dispersed," Hess said.

But Gesell said he thinks the neighborhood associations are supporting the rezoning on Beaver Avenue as another way to restrict students.

"The neighborhood associations are so anti-students. By downzoning me to R2, I might lose my license to rent to students," he said.

Now students do not cross through "true neighborhoods" to get to campus, but they will have to if the rezoning passes, he said.

But Jamie Felinczak (senior-philosophy) said she thinks the residents' only objections are based on money.

"Nobody is concerned with where we walk. (Landlords) are just concerned about losing money," said Felinczak, who lives on Beaver Avenue.

The building that Felinczak rents is a duplex, so there are renters next door, she said. Students living in this area are important, but nobody is considering who will be helped and who will be alienated, she said.

"The students are primarily the people running this property out here," she said.

But Holmes-Foster Neighborhood Association President Anita Genger said residents are not concerned about student traffic in the neighborhoods, or about small, student-rental properties. They are concerned about property owners consolidating several lots, tearing down the existing properties and building apartment buildings, Genger said.

"What is needed in this borough is more housing for families," Genger said. "Families would come if they had more certainty that they knew what was coming in next to them."

But Lilly Gesell is concerned because she said she thinks her properties will be devalued if rezoned.

"Nobody is going to want to buy our property as a single-family because of traffic going through," she said.

The borough is "creating a mess for themselves," because of specifications placed on the rezoned properties, Richard Gesell said. He added that his properties are all 50 feet wide with 7,500 square feet.

In an R2 zone, a property must have 10,000 square feet and 75 feet of frontage, he said.

"As an R3, we're OK. But by downzoning, we'll be in violation," he said.