90 Rochelle Ave. is home to a small business called Little White Dog Doggie Daycare and sits steps away from the Wissahickon Regional Rail station. If you’re not a pet owner, you could walk or drive past this unassuming address every day and never think twice about it. Little you’d realize, this property has been embroiled for years in a zoning battle which might finally be coming to its dénouement.

This property is much larger than it appears. The portion of the property that’s home to the doggie daycare contains less than a third of its total square footage, with a 38K triangular section sitting behind a chain link fence. The ongoing zoning controversy involves this rear section of the parcel; for those who might be worried, none of this will have any impact on the pet care business.

This all started way back in 2021, when developers proposed a 90 unit contemporary building with 20 parking spots. This proposal was so aggressively panned by the community that a rally was held in opposition. So the developers made some changes, reducing the unit count to 50 and bumping the parking up to a total of 50 spots. This was in mid-2022, when we provided an update, but as we told you at the time, the community vote for the revised project was a staggering 235 opposed and 4 in favor. Not great.

In 2023, a new developer came forward with plans for 48 units and 53 parking spots in a 4-story building. This proposal was again resoundingly opposed by the community, with a vote of 311 in opposition to 8 in support. Another revision which lowered the unit count to 36 did not move the needle. Finally, at the end of 2023, the developers decided to pivot, proposing 12 single family homes. Over the following 18 months, negotiations with the Wissahickon Interested Citizens Association dropped the unit count to 11 and then 10, which is where we find ourselves today. Here are the latest renderings for what will hopefully get built here:

The ZBA hearing for this project is scheduled for next month, and we hope that the board will vote to grant the necessary variances, finally ending this saga after nearly four years. While ten new homes will certainly be an upgrade over a fenced-off lot, we find ourselves profoundly disappointed by this outcome. This property is a three minute walk from a regional rail station and was a fantastic candidate for some density. Instead, we’re just seeing a batch of single family homes which will surely be listed for sale at a premium price point.

If we are to agree that affordability is an issue in Philadelphia in 2025, then we need to work together to solve this challenge. One solution is allowing for greater density, especially close to transit, as greater supply tends to reduce prices. Losing 80 units in Wissahickon isn’t going to materially change this math across the city, but it’s a microcosm of how the confluence of a an outdated zoning map, an inflexible zoning code, and an activist community can reduce a reasonable project’s density, in this case by 90%. While it’s an extreme example, we’ve seen a similar theme play out in neighborhoods all over the city. And if things continue in this same fashion, we won’t even sniff at Mayor Parker’s goal of 30,000 new units in the coming years.