Watson v. Zoning Hearing Board of West Hanover Township

In Watson v. Zoning Hearing Board of West Hanover Township, 90 Pa. Commw. 646, 496 A.2d 878 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1985), the Court, speaking through Judge Craig, counseled that when seeking to decide whether an application involves a new use or an extension of an existing one, the Court must look to the applicable zoning ordinance's structure as the chief guide with respect to how uses are categorized for the particular municipality. The Court therefore looked at how a contracting use was defined in the current ordinance to determine how local lawmakers intended to limit that use.