Preservation group inspires

The tune is familiar:

"If there's something strange

In your neighborhood,

Who ya gonna call?"

If that something "strange" is a proposed condo development that doesn't seem to fit in, it won't be Ghostbusters getting the call.

But it might be SAC - the Save Ardmore Coalition.

Since SAC successfully led the fight to block the use of eminent domain for redevelopment of Ardmore's historic business district, it has been become an influential force on development issues along the densely packed Main Line.

"We beat eminent domain in Ardmore and since that time people have come to us and asked, 'Can you help us?' " said Carla Zembelli, a spokesperson for SAC, which was organized in late 2004.

"We've got a fan club; people read us," she said of the group's Web site, www.saveardmorecoalition.org.

That can't be good news for many Main Line developers, who under current state law and local zoning, building and planning codes often have an advantage in getting their projects approved.

As a sign of its growing influence, SAC, along with the Ard-wood Civic Association, attracted 100 people to a forum last month.

"It's rare to see such a turnout for a dry academic discussion," said state representative Daylin Leach, a speaker at the event.

"If we can get a group like SAC in every community - and that would be very ambitious - it would be much more difficult for people to develop in a way that doesn't preserve the environment and quality of life," Leach said.

Another speaker, Adrian Scott Fine, northeast regional director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said a sign of SAC's growing clout was the presence at the meeting of four members of the Lower Merion Board of Commissioners.

"It helps them to see that people do care about this issue," Fine said.

SAC describes itself as a grassroots organization dedicated to revitalization "based on community input, consensus building, sound and comprehensive planning and the preservation of our architectural heritage."

In its campaign against eminent domain a year ago, SAC used a variety of approaches: outdoor rallies, lawn signs, T-shirts, leaflets, town meetings, letters to editors, and billboard messages at the train station. The fight came ahead of elections for half of the 14-member township Board of Commissioners, said Huge Gordon, SAC secretary. SAC sent eminent-domain questionnaires to all the candidates, and Gordon said one pro-eminent-domain incumbent dropped out of the campaign because of building sentiment against the proposal.

While its first target was Ardmore, SAC is now turning its attention to other development projects in Lower Merion Township.

The successful SAC tactics are being adopted in Radnor Township, where a coalition of citizen groups and residents have formed the Save Ithan Coalition to block construction of condominiums at Route 320 and Conestoga Road in historic Ithan village.

Ted Pollard, president of the Radnor Historical Society and a member of the coalition, attended the January SAC/Ard-wood Civic forum and said, "It was a good model of how the community was pulling together."

SAC has also lent its expertise to a neighborhood group fighting a developer's plan to tear down additions to a Victorian house in Gladwyne and demolish two other buildings on the property. The developer wants to build three townhouses on the back of the 1.3 acres at 254 Righters Mill Road.

Opponents argue the house is a Class-One historic building in a historic district and the development is inappropriate to the neighborhood.

Jim Doran, one of the neighbors, said early in the skirmish he was contacted by Zambelli of SAC.

"I think from their experience, they were able to give me some pointers," Doran said. "We were encouraged to contact the newspapers and the commissioners and to make sure this was something that wouldn't go on without being watched by many eyes."

The proposal, on the agenda last night of the Lower Merion commissioners' Building and Planning Committee, was tabled on request of the developer and moved to the March meeting agenda.

Zambelli says her group is not anti-developer. "Developers are not all bad. Their project is their baby, a thing of beauty to them," she said. "They just don't see it with our eyes. That's just human nature."

Zambelli lauded the approach of developer Joe Duckworth, president of Arcadia Land Company in Wayne, because his firm "incorporates the concerns of the public into its development plan."

"Basically we are respectful as a beginning tenant of all the people who were in place before we got there," Duckworth said. "We believe that it's the only approach that leads to being welcomed and being a good neighbor."

That's what Zambelli and SAC believe is the proper approach to development.

"If we don't show active stewardship of our past and of the present," she said, "we'll have no future."