Zoning Issues Defined Councilwoman Miller's Career

Editor's note: This is the third in a three part series that focuses on outgoing Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, who served the 8th Councilmanic District for 16 years throughout the course of four terms. Part 1 is and Part 2 is .

Although Donna Reed Miller’s 16 years on City Council have been capped off with contentious zoning disputes in Chestnut Hill and Germantown, many are thankful for her assistance in ridding the 8th District of “nuisance businesses.”

One of the more talked-about instances involved Corner Deli, which used to sit at 6643 Germantown Ave. Neighbors complained for years that the deli was the site of public drunkenness starting as early as 7 a.m. in an area where kids walked to school. There were also complaints of customers urinating on people’s property, and loiterers dealing drugs outside.

“It was even a scary place to walk past,” said Laura Siena, who was executive director of West Mt. Airy Neighbors from 2005 to 2009. “Even to get a bag of chips, you had to ask for it through bulletproof glass.”

WMAN’s years-long fight against Corner Deli started in 2005, when Miller named Mt. Airy an area covered by the Nuisance Business Task Force, Siena said. Before that, WMAN was having trouble acting upon properties it deemed troublesome.

The establishment of the task force enabled community officials to meet with police and discuss residents’ concerns. 

“You’d bring up these issues and everybody would go home with their to-do list,” Siena said. “We were grateful to Donna for designating that area for Mt. Airy.”

Some argue that legitimate business owners should not be punished for their customers’ behavior, and that closing a nuisance business just moves trouble to another location. But residents at the time blamed the loiterers’ presence on the fact that Corner Deli sold take-out beer and stayed open too late.

Pelham Town Watch gathered signatures from residents on both sides of Germantown Avenue indicating that they thought Corner Deli threatened quality of life in the area. Councilwoman-elect Cindy Bass also signed the petition, on behalf of Congressman Chaka Fattah, whom she worked for as senior policy adviser on urban and domestic policy.

These complaints, in tandem with 2005’s Act 39—which made it more difficult to acquire a take-out beer license—forced Corner Deli to close.

To some in the 8th District, accomplishments such as this might seem miniscule—or even intrusive to private business—given the list of criticisms marring Miller’s career.

In 2005, for instance, the Daily News reported that the Central Germantown Council—which was controlled in part by Miller—spent $1.4 million in city funds over five years with little to show for it. The paper called the nonprofit “the very definition of dysfunctional,” claiming it was operated by untrained staff and secretive about its spending.

Michael Quintero Moore, Miller’s communications director at the time, countered in a letter to the editor, in which he detailed the cost of some of CGC’s projects and wrote, “... the overall climate of the district is perceived to be safer than it was.”

for using office resources to help the campaign of Verna Tyner, who lost the City Council primary to Bass in May.

Most recently, Miller’s zoning policies in Chestnut Hill and Germantown have been criticized for favoring developers over residents.

But Mayor Michael Nutter, via his press secretary, Mark McDonald, said Miller worked hard to serve a diverse district while struggling with illness. Mayor Nutter added that he knows personally of her compassion for the community, and that he saw it every day.

While Miller and her staff helped confront some issues in Mt. Airy, Siena doesn’t portray them as superheroes. East Mt. Airy Neighbors and WMAN were more active in clearing out nuisance businesses, she said. Volunteers did the grunt work and collected signatures in the hopes that Miller, when presented with the problem, would use her clout to finish the job.

“We were the ones who bird-dogged the issues,” Siena said. “It was us making hundreds of phone calls.”

“In fairness,” she added, “this part of the district was in far better shape than other parts that probably needed more attention.”