Thoughts on suburban blight

The Lancaster Sunday News published a story about blight Sunday, but it took a different approach. It wrote about Columbia Avenue to the west of Lancaster. Folks from York County might know that stretch of road as Route 462.

This is suburbia. Except it's not the sparkling suburbia of new developments and power centers with huge big-box retail and fancy chain restaurants. This is 50-year-old suburbia, home of the county's first McDonald's and various strip shopping centers. And it's in pretty bad shape.

Between Stone Mill Road and Rohrerstown Road, a distance of less than a mile, are at least 11 vacant buildings or empty storefronts. Some are in deteriorating condition. Weeds peek through cracked pavement even at sites that are open for business.

And how did this happen?

David Schuyler, a professor of American studies at Franklin & Marshall College, offered a quick summation:

Suburbs supplanted cities; now newer suburbs supplant older ones, and the Columbia Avenue corridor is experiencing "the same difficulties — loss of long-standing anchor tenants, the leasing to lesser, more transient businesses, the 'for lease' signs, and declining property values — that afflicted downtown in the 1950s and 1960s," Schuyler said.

This hard-to-fight trend is only part of the problem. Another difficulty lies in the fact that local officials are limited in how they can respond. The story also suggests that they don't work together effectively across municipal boundaries to do regional planning.

In part because the road straddles two different municipalities, a plan is hard to come by. In addition, said John May, a Manor Township supervisor, suburban officials have few tools to tackle vacancies and blight.

"We watch this closely at the township, but there is little we can do if there is no nuisance or threat to health, safety and welfare," May said. "It is hard to watch as this Columbia Avenue corridor slowly wastes away."

This shows clearly how older communities suffer because of the current government policies related to development and zoning. And that was one of the main points for the recent Building One Pennsylvania Conference. Because until policy makers in Harriburg understand that there are hundreds of suburban townships across the state experiencing the same kind of decline, conditions will not change. And more corridors will slowly waste away.
- Dan Fink