LOWER MERION \u2014 Lower Merion officials say an Ardmore businessman violated township codes by painting the brick building where he was about to open his new business.<\/p>\n
But the business owner, John Paul Makilya, said he was unaware he needed additional permission.<\/p>\n
Now, the township is stuck. If they force him to remove the paint, township officials say it could damage the historic brick facade of the building at 79 W. Lancaster Ave.<\/p>\n
So, the township\u2019s Historical Architectural Review Board is recommending that he be allowed to finish painting the building, which would cause what that board describes as the least amount of damage.<\/p>\n
But when the commissioners discussed it at a building and planning committee meeting last week, they decided to send it back to the HARB for another look.<\/p>\n
Chris Leswing, director of building and planning for Lower Merion, said the HARB told Makilya that bricks cannot be painted in the historic district.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe concern is when you paint older brick, it\u2019s not like painting a fence where you\u2019re keeping water out,\u201d Leswing told the commissioners at the building and planning committee meeting. \u201cWhat happens is it keeps water in, damaging the brick.\u201d<\/p>\n
When township officials saw him painting the building, Makilya was told to stop.<\/p>\n
Leswing said the township wanted to try to get the paint removed as quickly as possible. However, the applicant declined at that time, and by the time it went back to the HARB, the paint had dried, and it was too late to remove the paint without damaging the bricks.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was when HARB recommended that the painting be completed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve also fined this person the maximum amount that we\u2019re able to do, which is a $1,500 administrative fine,\u201d Leswing said.<\/p>\n
Leswing said that trying to remove the paint, either through chemical means or power washing, could damage the soft brick, resulting in further damage to the structure.<\/p>\n
Some brick buildings in Ardmore\u2019s historic district are painted, but those were done before the historic district was created.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Sean Whalen expressed his anger over the business owner\u2019s decision to paint the building over the wishes of the HARB.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an atrocity,\u201d Whalen said. \u2026 \u201cHARB did everything right, and yet if we vote yes tonight, we are saying, \u2018Go ahead and do what you want. It\u2019s $1,500.\u2019 $1,500 in the scope of the work that\u2019s being done on this building is literally nothing. We\u2019re just telling everybody on Lancaster Avenue that you can go ahead and paint your building if you want to and completely ignore what HARB said.\u201d<\/p>\n
Makilya, who plans to open a home decor store in the space, said he submitted two applications to the HARB.<\/p>\n
One application was for the signage and to get approval for some of the facade work he wanted to do.<\/p>\n
He said he received feedback from the HARB where he was told that it looked like he was just doing maintenance work with some painting here and there.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what I did not clearly have awareness of is that the brick facade that is in question right now could not be painted,\u201d Makilya said. \u201cI also submitted a second application for my signage, which was approved, and I made a mistake, and I take responsibility for the fact that the painting of the brick facade proceeded without getting full HARB approval.\u201d<\/p>\n
Makilya said the painting was an attempt to harmonize the color of the bricks because when the building was constructed in the 19th century and when an addition was added sometime in the mid-20th century, the bricks are two different colors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI take full responsibility, but the goal was essentially to beautify the building and to harmonize the building from top to bottom so that it could actually have one color profile,\u201d\u00a0Makilya said.<\/p>\n
In the end, Commissioner Josh Grimes said he would move to table the vote since they need additional consideration from the HARB.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: June 14, 2025 at 7:38 AM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOWER MERION \u2014 Lower Merion officials say an Ardmore businessman violated township codes by painting the brick building…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[182,183,185,184,186,200,139,28,199],"class_list":["post-2563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-local-news","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township","tag-montgomery-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-mlt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}