Court Opinion

ID: 9698824
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:00:42.935237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:43.675566
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
concurring.
The retributory concepts underlying Fernley,1 that communities should be somehow punished because, unlike enterprising developers, they did not foresee all the commercial and residential possibilities in their community and therefore lost their opportunity for rational development is here ended. The anomaly that owners of land could have *443more than reason would allow, because they caught the municipality sleeping, is an invidious and destructive concept for any rational planning for the health and welfare of the community involved.
The legislature2 has wisely given broad authority to courts to give no more than the circumstances require and the community can stand. I trust the court below will fully understand, in exercising that discretion, that the “Fernley ticket” to any special advantage has been cancelled.
I join the majority.
PAPADAKOS, J., joins this concurring opinion.

. Pa. Municipal Planning Code, 53 P.S. § 10101, et seq.

. The majority states that "the court of common pleas found that the ordinance did prohibit mobile home parks, rejecting the Township’s contrary finding for lack of substantial evidence." Maj. op. at 1 (emphasis added). In discussing In Re: M.A. Kravitz Co., Inc., 501 Pa. 200, 460 A.2d 1075 (1983), the majority states that the township’s determination that townhouse development was a permitted use was "supported by substantial evidence in the record and affirmed by the court of common pleas.” Maj. op. at 3 (emphasis added). And in discussing Colonial Park for Mobile Homes, Inc. v. Zoning Hearing Board, 5 Pa. Commw. 594, 290 A.2d 719 (1972), the majority states that "the court, while acknowledging that such evidence might exist, found no evidence in the record before it from which it could conclude that the burden of demonstrating the unconstitutionality of the ordinance had been met.” Maj. op. at 4-5 (emphasis added).