Rural board in Chesco fights congregation's development plan

When members of West Philadelphia's Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship dream of retirement living, they envision a place not necessarily known as an Islamic getaway.

But 108 acres in southern Chester County could soon become that, depending on which way the legal winds blow across the meadows of East Fallowfield Township.

While the 350-member congregation has owned the property for more than two decades, only a small shrine has been built there. Inside rest the remains of the group's eponymous founder, a Sufi Muslim mystic from Sri Lanka who came to Philadelphia in 1971 and stayed until his death in 1986.

The private road to the mausoleum, or mazar, is traveled by pilgrims, and a dozen or so member families who live nearby and tend the grounds.

The fellowship, however, has long had something bigger in mind for the parcel: a clustered development of 43 carriage-style homes for its retirees.

The project was moving into the final planning stages when, in 2009, East Fallowfield's supervisors suddenly objected. In just the last decade, the township's population mushroomed by 44 percent, to 7,400. The addition of high-density housing on downsized lots would, they argued, be another assault on the area's treasured rural charm.

The congregation has since been locked in an un-Bawa-like battle with the board over competing visions for the site.

The case sits now in Chester County Court, where the supervisors are asking for the overturn of rulings by the township's zoning hearing board that would have cleared the way for construction to begin.

Fellowship president Emanuel Levin referred all questions to West Chester lawyer John E. Good, who said the members were surprised by the suit. The project was in the works for years, and had the imprimatur of an earlier generation of supervisors.

"It just makes you wonder why there's an opposition all of a sudden," Good said.

There is no mystery, according to Christopher J. Amentas, elected to the board of supervisors in 2008 and now its chairman. A land-use attorney, he decried his predecessors' "lack of detail and scrutiny, perhaps, and standards" when they embraced the Fellowship Farm project.

"Cookie-cutter types of developments," he said in an interview, threaten "the rural nature of the community."

Until recently, the township did indeed seem a welcoming second home for the followers of Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen - mostly white converts from Christianity and Judaism who practice vegetarianism and typically do not wear Muslim garb in public.

"I haven't really heard any kind of negative comments" from the East Fallowfield citizenry, said member Sandra Ostrander, who has lived on a small cul-de-sac abutting Fellowship Farm for nine years.

Muhaiyaddeen, whose life was shrouded in mystery, taught self-exploration and selflessness as a way of understanding God. Having come to Philadelphia at the invitation of a female devotee, he took up residence in a University City rowhouse in the early 1970s and began disseminating his Sufi spirituality, largely to college students or recent graduates.

In 1984, his flock built Pennsylvania's first free-standing mosque, at 5820 Overbrook Ave. in the Wynnefield section. Among Philadelphia Muslims, it came to be known as the "hippie mosque."

The Chester County outpost was opened in 1987 to hold Muhaiyaddeen's remains in rustic tranquillity.

The East Fallowfield supervisors at the time fashioned a special ordinance to allow the addition of clustered housing as members reached retirement age, according to Good.

Because the lots could be smaller than the township's prescribed half-acre minimum, the homes would occupy just 25 percent of Fellowship Farm. The rest would be open space. It was a concept that would catch on in the development world more than a decade later.

"Back then," Good said, "[the supervisors] thought it was a good idea."

Over the years, the congregation fanned out into the region. Many moved to the Main Line and South Jersey to raise families. By 2002, it was time to think about kicking back in Chester County.

It was then, Good said, that members discovered an error in the way the ordinance was written. They could not meet the setback requirements and still fulfill the open-space obligation.

They went to the township's zoning hearing board and got a variance on the setbacks. By 2009, it had expired, so they asked for, and got, another.

The supervisors struck back in court, contending in essence that the zoning board was out of line in granting the variance to the congregation.

For two years, the sides tried to reach a settlement. In September, Judge Ronald C. Nagle finally heard oral arguments.

The case raises a question that has been debated again and again across this region, and indeed the nation: What types of development best preserve rural areas?

Amentas, the supervisors' chairman, wants the fellowship to build by the rules. The homes would be placed 35 feet apart. Instead of 43 of them, there then would be room for 23.

That plan "is not going to preserve rural character," countered Patty Elkis, associate director of planning at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.

In general, she said, denser development better protects open space, and minimizes its impact on the landscape.

But the case is no longer about just development. Last month, the fellowship asked the judge to dismiss the supervisors' suit, contending that the board had decided to file it in a closed meeting, in violation of the state Sunshine Act.

Amentas said the supervisors did nothing wrong, because they conducted only a straw poll, not a formal vote, to initiate the litigation.

He also said he thought the township and the congregation were close to resolving their differences.

Good does not share his optimism. Regardless of how the suit plays out, the Fellowship Farm project is far from liftoff. Site and land development plans would need to be approved - by the board of supervisors.