Court Opinion

ID: 9703859
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:10:45.06273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:52.350188
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Judge Doyle:
I respectfully dissent and would affirm the order of the trial court.
As found by the Zoning Hearing Board, this appeal involves one-half of a double dwelling (twin) home with *18a party wall between, situated at 517 West Main Street in the Borough of Waynesboro. The owners’ application for a building permit was to “remodel second apartment.” The application described the work as: “install new kitchen on second floor—relocate doors on first floor.” In fact, there had never been two apartments in the building, nor had two families ever lived there. It was only after the permit had been issued and the Koziels installed a new kitchen on the second floor that the building contained two dwelling units.
Under the zoning ordinance, such a conversion of the dwelling in this zoning district was permissible provided that a special exception was obtained and the lot area would not be less than 4,500 square feet per family. No special exception was ever sought or obtained, and the lot did not comply with the area requirement. Between the time the building permit was issued and the time the work was completed by the owners, the borough changed zoning officers, and it was the new zoning officer who informed the owners that they were not in compliance with the ordinance and were not entitled to a variance on the basis of a vested right.
The law in Pennsylvania regarding vested rights is fairly clear, and our Supreme Court in Petrosky v. Zoning Hearing Board of Upper Chichester Township, 485 Pa. 501, 402 A.2d 1385 (1979), held that a property owner who seeks to acquire a vested right as the result of a permit issued in error must establish five elements: (1) due diligence in attempting to comply with the law, (2) good faith throughout the proceedings, (3) expenditure of substantial unrecoverable funds, (4) expiration without appeal of the period during which an appeal could have been taken from the issuance of the permit, and (5) an insufficiency of evidence to prove that individual property rights or the public health, safety or welfare would be adversely affected.
*19Although the trial court found that four of the five elements in Petrosky were satisfied, a conclusion that I would be willing to accept only arguendo, it further held that the owners obtained no vested right because substantial unrecoverable funds had not been expended by the owners. I would agree with that conclusion. The cost involved here, $2,869, consisted of $2,309 in fixtures and $560 in labor and the owners conceded that most, if not all, of the fixtures could be removed and that much of the labor improved the value of the house as a whole.1 I would conclude, therefore, as the trial court did, that this small sum of money was not so “substantial” that it would entitle the owners to a vested right in a variance.

 This Court applied parallel reasoning in Township of West Pikeland v. Thornton, 106 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 560, 527 A.2d 174 (1987). Therein, the trial court stated that the landowners expenditure of $5,000.00 in the construction of a garage intended for commercial use constituted substantial unrecoverable funds. We found, however, that the garage was a structure usable for residential garage purposes in conformity with the zoning requirements for that district, and that the injunction requested by the township would bar only the commercial use. We therefore concluded that the $5,000.00 did hot constitute substantial unrecoverable funds. See also Appeal of Crawford, 110 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 51, 531 A.2d 865 (1987) (even though appellants spent substantial funds on improvements, they would suffer no hardship if the variance was denied because the garage and other improvements erected were consistent with permitted residential use). By contrast, in Three Rivers Youth v. Zoning Board of Adjustment for the City of Pittsburgh, 63 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 184, 437 A.2d 1064 (1981), we found that there was a substantial expenditure of unrecoverable funds where Three Rivers spent over $93,500.00 to purchase properties for use as group homes in reliance upon the code enforcement administrators recommendations and further expended substantial funds in renovating the buildings to meet ordinance requirements.