One who undertakes to make use of real estate for commercial purposes without inquiring as to whether the use is permitted by the municipality’s zoning ordinance, does so at his own peril,” the Commonwealth Court said in Springfield Twp. v. Kim . An important related decision, Pietropaolo v. ZHB of Lower Merion Township , was just handed down by the court at the end of last month, with obvious implications for zoning and land use practitioners.
In Pietropaolo , a detached four-bay garage constructed in 1930 became the focal point of litigation in Montgomery County. The appellant, husband and wife owners, the Pietropaolos, of a single-family dwelling on East County Line Road in Ardmore, zoned R-6A Residential, permitted their son and daughter-in-law to reside there in a dwelling on the property, as noted in the opinion. The son, catching the entrepreneurial bug decades earlier, utilized the garage and a paved driveway at the site for his landscaping business. In fact, he had been running the company there for 38 years until the township broke the disappointing news.
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