Zoning update: MCC vs. St. Joe's debates progress at snail's pace

It doesn't look like St. Joe's will be playing baseball on Maguire Campus any time soon.

At the Nov. 5 continuation of the Lower Merion Zoning Commission hearing for St. Joe's, an additional five-hour hearing was scheduled for Monday, Nov. 30. Kenneth Aaron, Lower Merion Zoning Hearing Board chair, said he didn't think "anything is going to be wrapped up soon," and advised both sides' counsels that the hearing would likely have to continue into the next calendar year.

After nearly 10 hours of hearings, St. Joe's finished its initial presentation of its case on Thursday. Merion Community Coalition's counsel is now in the process of presenting its rebuttals, which started with the testimony of a noise expert.

Aside from the switch from the presentation of St. Joe's case to Merion Community Coalition's case, Thursday's hearing consisted of more of the same: more testimony for St. Joe's, more cross-examination, more residents wearing green buttons, more not-so-friendly banter between residents and lawyers during breaks in the trial, more tired sighs from the commissioners.

At this typically contentious meeting, perhaps the only portion of a testimony accepted by all parties was given by Felicia Doggett, an acoustics expert who designed the sound systems St. Joe's plans to install for the athletic fields.

In an explanation of modern sound systems controlled entirely by computers rather than by manual control, she told the opposition's counsel, "knobs are out."

More testimony about traffic, noise, and the like can be expected during further continuations of the zoning hearing.