A judge has negated the Baltimore Planning Commission’s decision to grant a developer’s request to subdivide a landmark church property in Mount Vernon so he can sell off the adjacent church office building.
“It is this 19th day of August 2021, hereby ORDERED that the decision of the Planning Commission is REVERSED and REMANDED,” states a posting that went up on the court’s website yesterday.
The order came from Baltimore Circuit Judge Jeannie Hong, who held a hearing on the issue earlier this week.
Her order means that the planning commission’s decision does not stand and that developer and contract buyer Joseph Novoseller of Aria Legacy Group does not have city approval to subdivide Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church from the adjacent Asbury House church office building, as he requested during a public hearing on October 20, 2020.
The developer could continue to pursue subdivision of the property, but it would require further action by the planning commission and any action it takes could be subject to additional legal challenges.
Hong’s ruling marks the third time in 18 months that a Circuit Court judge has reversed a pro-developer decision by the Planning Commission, after another judge last year reversed two decisions involving investor Larry Jennings’ plans to develop properties in the Clipper Mill community in Woodberry. Jennings’ company, ValStone Partners, subsequently sold his holdings in Clipper Mill to another developer.
Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church is one of the most photographed buildings in the city, completed in 1872 near the Washington Monument on the site where Francis Scott Key died in 1843. Its sanctuary seats 900 and its rose window is modeled after the one in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Named after the first American Methodist bishop, Francis Asbury, Asbury House was built around 1855 as a private residence, acquired by the church in 1957 and legally combined with the church in 1961 to form one parcel. Both structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are part of the city’s Mount Vernon historic district.
The church building has been closed during the COVID-19 pandemic but its congregation is active and has been worshipping remotely. The owner is the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, which has been seeking a possible buyer while the congregation retains access to the property. Novoseller, from Lakewood, N. J., emerged as the contract buyer more than a year ago.
On October 22, the planning commission voted 5 to 2, with one recusal, to allow Novoseller to subdivide the property at 2 to 10 East Mount Vernon Place after he said he wanted the ability to sell off the Asbury House and retain the church for future uses he did not specify. Novoseller said he envisioned allowing the congregation to continue meeting and adding other uses, possibly arts-related, but wanted to know if he could subdivide Asbury House.
The commission approved the developer’s subdivision request even though it received 65 letters and emails from the community expressing opposition to his application. The chair of the commission, Sean Davis, acknowledged during the hearing that he did not read all of the letters.
After the commission approved Novoseller’s request, a real estate brokerage listed Asbury House for sale for more than $1 million – about the same price Novoseller offered to pay for both the church and Asbury House. The price later dropped below $1 million.
The planning commission’s decision was appealed by the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association, an action that led to the court ruling this week. MVBA members had argued during the commission’s public hearing that selling off Asbury House would make it more difficult for anyone to renovate the landmark church, because the two were interconnected.
An attorney for the MVBA, Gregory Rapisarda, argued before the planning commission and again this week that subdividing the property would trigger a number of zoning violations, involving setbacks and the number of parking spaces needed by the church and a day care program that operates in its basement, among other issues.
Under the developer’s subdivision plan, Rapisarda argued, parking spaces now used by the church would become part of the Asbury House property and potentially no longer available for use by the church or its successor.
Also, others have argued, the church would not be able to use the relatively flat roof of Asbury House as a place to install mechanical equipment that might be needed in a renovation of the church, if the property were subdivided.
During the hearing this week, Novoseller’s attorney, Adam Ruther, argued that the case should be thrown out because the MVBA did not have standing to bring it. If the case is not thrown out, he said, the judge should defer to the planning commission, which is the administrative agency with expertise in interpreting subdivision-related rules and regulations.
City attorney Adam Levine, representing the Mayor and the Planning Commission, also argued that that the MVBA did not have standing to bring the suit and that the court should give deference to the Planning Commission in its interpretation of its regulations.
In a memorandum released today, Hong stopped short of ruling on the merits of the legal arguments presented by the lawyers. In her memorandum, she agreed that the court “cannot substitute its judgment for the commission’s judgment” without good reason. At the same time, she said, the commission did not give its reasons for approving the developer’s application.
“The approval letter from the Planning Commission dated November 13, 2020 is a mere three paragraphs with only one paragraph discussing the case, and the other two informing the parties what the next steps are,” she wrote. “Nowhere in the approval letter did the Planning Commission outline its reasoning for its decision.”
As a result, “without ruling on the merits” of the arguments, “this case shall be remanded to the Planning Commission and it must make findings of fact and conclusions of law so that a court could, in fact, look at the decision and review it substantively,” she wrote.
Neither Levine nor Novoseller and his lawyers responded to a request for comment about Hong’s ruling.
