Fallon v. Mayor of Baltimore

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The City Council rezoned a two-acre lot in Baltimore, on the west side of York Road running north from Gittings Avenue, owned by the Seitz family, from residential to first commercial; and neighbors filed a bill to invalidate the rezón ¹¹² ing ordinance as being for the sole benefit of the owners and to the detriment of the neighborhood, without any consideration for the general welfare and needs of the community. The chancellor found the matter to be at least fairly debatable and the action of the Council not to be arbitrary, discriminatory, or illegal, and dismissed the bill. The evidence was that York Road is a main arterial highway of Baltimore that continues into and through Baltimore County.

The Towson area, which it serves, is literally mushrooming in growth year by year, and since 1945 has increased in value per square foot more than any comparable area in the United States. York Road carries a very heavy volume of traffic, and the load has greatly increased in recent years. When zoning was adopted in Baltimore in 1931, the Seitz lot, which has a frontage of about 300 feet on Gittings Avenue and a frontage of about 370 feet on York Road, was zoned residential except the northern 60 feet on York Road, which was zoned commercial. The northern boundary line of Baltimore is just beyond the northern edge of the lot and the area between them was also zoned commercial.

The 1931 ordinance zoned much of York Road residential, although commercial areas were put at prominent intersections, such as York Road and Belvedere Avenue, which extended back from York Road, both east and west, for 125 feet. Since 1931, York Road from 42nd Street north to Towson has become almost all commercial, with only a few scattered residential strips remaining. The commercial districts originally established have been enlarged and their commercial uses intensified, as is illustrated by the department store at York Road and Belvedere Avenue, the erection of which necessitated commercial zoning for some 700 feet east of York Road. One of the few remaining residential strips runs from Eve-sham Avenue, which is one block north of Belvedere, north to Gittings Avenue, a distance of approximately 1,500 feet.

In this area, in recent years, have come to be a number of offices for doctors, dentists and chiropractors. Some of the doctors have offices in their homes; others live elsewhere and have offices in homes leased by them, as the zoning ordi ¹¹³ nances of Baltimore allow in certain residential districts with the permission of the Board of Zoning Appeals. The principal zoning examiner in the Bureau of Building Inspection testified from his official records as to the permits issued for these uses. Real estate experts testified that an influx of non-resident doctors’ offices into a residential area is a shadow of the coming event of the change of the area into a commercial one.

On the east side of York Road, literally a stone’s throw diagonally across from the Seitz property, beginning at Walker Avenue and extending over the Baltimore City line into Baltimore County, there was erected a few years ago a very large shopping center, which includes one of the city’s largest department stores and a number of other stores. In 1950 the property on the north side of Walker Avenue between York Road and Castle Drive was rezoned from residential to first commercial, and in 1956 the property also on the north side of Walker Avenue, 125 feet east of York Road, was similarly rezoned. These rezoned properties are directly across York Road from the northern part of the Seitz property and adjoin the shopping center. Immediately north of Walker Avenue on the east side of York Road is a lot which has long been zoned commercial and used as a small restaurant, on which has been recently erected a building for several stores and offices.

This commercial use is across from the Seitz lot. The real estate experts testified that the Seitz property was best suited for commercial use because inevitably arterial road frontages all become commercial, under present day conditions and trends, to serve the needs of the community, and because the house on the property, which was old, large and dilapidated, had no sales or rental market and the lot is not suitable for residential development. They further testified that there would be no deterioration in value or other adverse effect on the nearby York Road properties or those to the east of York Road if the reclassification stood, and that only the immediately adjacent property on Gittings Avenue would be slightly affected, leaving unaffected other residential properties to the west of York Road, near the Seitz lot, such as those in Cedarcroft, in which most of the protestants live. ¹¹⁴ When the present rezoning ordinance was under consideration, the Planning