As promised, here is more information from last week’s court orders involving the Wawa a developer hopes to put on the 1100 block of Fayette Street. As we mentioned, the attorney for the neighbors opposing the Wawa promised to explain the orders. We also contacted the attorney for the developer, Provco Pineville, but have not received a response (if we do, we will publish that as well).

So here are more details as provided to us by attorney Dawn Tancredi of Zarwin Baum:

Provco’s two Motions pending before the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas have been denied by the judge presiding over the land use appeals with regard to the proposed Wawa in Conshohocken.

The court denied the Motion to Disqualify the Zoning Board from hearing the Substantive Validity Challenge and denied Provco’s request for Bond.  The residents’ position was that a motion to “disqualify” any members of the Zoning Hearing Board from hearing our appeal is premature because a motion to recuse any member of any tribunal must first be presented to the tribunal, and the Court does not “yet” have jurisdiction of the proceeding to the Zoning Hearing Board.  Further, the MPC (MPC is the Municipal Planning Code, added by MoreThanTheCurve.com) does not allow for a bond in zoning hearing cases, only in court.

The merits of the underlying appeals will still need to be decided (two of which are pending before the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas and one is pending before the Zoning Board).  The appeals are as follows:

• A procedural challenge of the passage of the ordinance is pending in the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas. The residents’ position is that this is a zoning remapping which requires posting and notice requirements that have not been met.  The Borough calls the ordinance a text amendment which requires less advertising.
• There is a Land Development Challenge pending in the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas. The basis for this appeal (among other reasons) is that the ordinance would not have become effective for 5 days; therefore, there was no authority to approve the land development until the underlying ordinance came into effect.
• A Substantive Validity Challenge is an appeal pending before the zoning board. The basis for the appeal is that the ordinance is “spot zoning”.

More to come as the legal process moves forward.