Lancaster City Council approves rezoning of former YMCA site

Lancaster City Council members Tuesday approved the rezoning of the former Lancaster Family YMCA site to allow for the construction of a new medical office building and parking garage.

Council members also began consideration of a bill that would take a portion of a parking lot by eminent domain as part of plans to expand City Hall.

The rezoning changes the former YMCA site at North Queen, East Frederick and North Prince streets from a residential designation to "hospital campus."

Lancaster General Health, whose parking garage lies just across North Queen Street from the site, plans to construct a five-story, 175,000-square-foot administrative office building. Some 550 employees now working in rented space in Burle Business Park on New Holland Avenue would be shifted to the new building, hospital officials said.

A six-level, 632-space parking garage would be built adjacent to the office building, at Prince and Frederick streets, to serve the employees.

The zoning change came over the objection of Design Lancaster, a group of architects and design professionals, who urged council members to consider rezoning the area to "mixed use," to also allow residential, commercial and retail uses.

In a position paper distributed to council members, Design Lancaster warned of construction of structures that are "monolithic and incongruent with the scale and architecture of surrounding blocks." Those structures create "urban dead zones" which discourage pedestrians, the group argued.

Such was the case with the construction of Lancaster General's existing parking garage across from the YMCA site, they said.

Yet, council members and city officials noted there have been several public meetings where the group could have raised concerns prior to the vote. Also, there will be city Planning Commission and Historical Commission meetings where the building designs will be addressed.

Architect David High, Design Lancaster moderator, said his group would attempt to attend those meetings.

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Lancaster City Council approves rezoning of former YMCA site