Now that Crafton Borough’s new zoning code is in place after years in the making, one big question remains.
What happens next?
The borough council last month approved the 130-page code, which is the product of more than three dozen public meetings and much consternation on the part of some residents.
And those 38 meetings, council President John Oliverio said, don’t even include all the borough council meetings where the topic was discussed.
“Lots of public input went into it,” Oliverio said.
Mike Tedesco, the borough’s economic development director, said that technically the new code is an updated amendment to the previous code because its “roots language” is based on that old code.
“But the changes are pretty wholesale,” Tedesco said a week after the code was approved on Dec. 11. “I call it a new zoning code.”
Oliverio said the code hadn’t been significantly altered since its adoption in 2004. He said a number of regulations had changed since then, and having the code reflect those changes was important, Oliverio said.
But he also said a key reason why the borough wanted to update the code was to encourage business development in the community, which he said would result in much-needed revenue for the borough.
“Once you have a good business climate, that encourages more people to come to the area, to spend money and help to grow the community,” he said.
Oliverio said the goal is to maintain Crafton’s charm and identity as what he termed a “quaint community” but at the same time spur some development to help build the tax base.
He said one needs to look no further than neighboring Carnegie as an area that has seen an uptick in business in recent years.
“People come into the community and utilize the businesses,” Oliverio said. “And that helps the tax base.”
Not everyone is convinced that the new code will benefit Crafton in the long run, though. Cody Sheets, who expressed his concerns about the way the new code was taking shape at several public meetings, said he doesn’t view the code as a “complete failure.”
“I think it relaxes some barriers, per se,” he said. “I think that some of those are good things. But it lacks protections for people who live inside developments. It lacks renter protections.”
Sheets also borough leaders did not consider cumulative impacts to things like public safety, infrastructure and schools that might come with development resulting from the code changes.
“We have no idea how it’s going to affect our school system, which is already strained as far as the elementary school is concerned,” he said.
Tedesco said some community members were mistakenly concerned during the process of updating the code that the final product would trigger wholesale changes.
“For those who are no in the business of urban planning and running cities and understanding how codes work, there was just a lot of confusion – which I understand,” he said. “The impression was that when the (new) zoning code passed, we would have developers at the door doing all these crazy things that the community doesn’t want. But that’s not the case whatsoever.
“The (previous) code was actually more expansive and destructive to Crafton’s character than the new code. But if you don’t read the code every day, it’s hard to understand the differences.”
Tedesco said he doesn’t anticipate a huge demand for new construction in Crafton, largely because it’s essentially built out. “We’ve had one new house built in the last 15 years,” he said. “During the last 20 years, there’s been roughly 20 demolitions to two new houses built.
“We’re demolishing more things than building over the course of time. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a market in Crafton. There is demand for real estate activity in Crafton, but new construction is a horse of a different color.”
The community does have several areas that could see development under the right conditions and if property owners were willing. One of them is the Crafton-Ingram Shopping Center, half of which is in Crafton and the other in neighboring Ingram.
Oliverio said most of the center, whose groundbreaking occurred in May 1957, is owned by one entity. “We’ve met with the property owner several times but it’s their choice of what they want to do,” he said.
Tedesco said there are several approaches that the property owner could take, if they were so motivated, to bring the center more in line with today’s prevailing line of thinking. That is, to make it more walkable and less reliant on cars.
Tedesco said urban planners in the early 1950s were gearing everything for vehicles, but by the late 1990s and into the 200s, “the narrative shifted away from that approach. And people started to think that communities designed for walking are for more livable than communities that are vehicle-centric.”
As for the Crafton-Ingram Shopping Center, Tedesco said, the property owner could start to convert to a more pedestrian-centric approach “in chunks” or they could make wholesale changes that would allow for a more pedestrian-centric approach but retain some strip mall characteristics for portions of the center.
Sheets, who operates a barber shop adjacent to the shopping center property, said he’d like to see something developed on a portion of that property.
“I stare at that thing every day and it’s an asphalt desert,” he said, referring to the expansive parking lot.
Sheets said a mixed-use type of development would be welcome and “could make people who normally wouldn’t come to Crafton come to Crafton.”
Sheets said another piece of property that could see development is the Linden Avenue athletic field area, near Walgreens and across from Crafton Park. Oliverio said that property is partly owned by the borough and partly by Carlynton School District.
Sheets said he’s concerned that the new zoning code “says to the community, ‘Come in and develop here.’ Development of that land is a good thing for Crafton, but the question is, what gets built there? What’s best for Crafton? I’m afraid we’ve relaxed oversight on how this will develop.”
Sheets said the fact that that Linden Avenue property is so close to the shopping center makes it that much more important.
“These are two areas that will have an opportunity to pay dividends for decades to come,” he said. “We have to do it the right way.”
For his part, as the borough’s economic development director, Tedesco said he’s optimistic about Crafton’s future.
“There is definitely demand for business and residential development within Crafton,” he said. “A lot of it revolves around the products that Crafton has as a community. It’s an alternative – a single-family historic alternative to places like Lawrenceville or the Strip District and still within the historic ring of metro Pittsburgh – 15 minutes from downtown and 15 minutes from the airport.
“One of the things I need to do better in my position is engaging with the development community and letting them know Crafton is on the map.”
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