144 Trees Illegally Toppled on Gladwyne Property, Officials Say

A Gladwyne homeowner and Lower Merion's government are rushing to decide how to bolster an erosion-prone slope where 144 trees have been removed this year without permission.

Nick Adams has been renovating and landscaping the 2-acre property at 1500 Monk Road since he received a Minor Grading Permit in late 2009, according to township planning officials.

However, a township engineer visiting the property this June found grading and construction being done on a slope greater than 15 percent without the additional waiver the engineer had told Adams he would need, officials said. A stop-work order was issued, but the changes already made at the site included the felling of 144 trees.

The back of Adams' property—bought from movie director M. Night Shyamalan in 2008—drains toward Soapstone Road. That area has been an erosion problem area since a significant storm in the mid-1990s, township commissioners said at their meeting Wednesday night.

Gladwyne representative Commissioner Jenny Brown and several of her colleagues chastised representatives of Adams, who did not attend the meeting, for going forward with unpermitted construction.

Commissioner Phil Rosenzweig said the notion of rewarding that behavior with a requested waiver was "very difficult to swallow," and Brown added, "It is not for this board to get you out of the trouble you got yourselves in."

Landscape architects from Simone Collins told the board their plan for Adams' property, including the replanting of 189 trees, would improve the stability and drainage even beyond its original condition. They said there had been a misunderstanding, in the applicant's camp, about the parameters of the original grading permit.

Adams' representatives sought permission to pursue further work, which the board rejected 9-2. Commissioners Liz Rogan and George Manos had wanted to table the waiver request to next week's meeting, but several of their colleagues wanted to motivate a different approach right away.

Soapstone Road resident Dennis Maloomian, who lives just below Adams' property, came to Wednesday's meeting to air his concerns.

"I'm not here to make trouble for Mr. Adams. If he wants to build Longwood Gardens for himself, God bless him," Maloomian said. "But we don't understand what he's doing."

Though Adams' representatives said county inspectors had deemed the site safe in its current condition, commissioners with fresh memories of last August's Hurricane Irene said improvements need to be made right away.

"We cannot leave that in that condition," Brown said. "One storm, and all that ends up in (Maloomian's) pond."

Without another permit for Adams' contractors, it was unclear who the township will direct to refurbish the site and what the scope of the work would be.