Therefore, we recommend the granting of this variance.
Thank you.
Alan, this is 42nd Street, right?
Both cases?
No, this is North 7th Street.
Yeah, 2120 North 7th Street, Secretary Plaza.
Thank you.
Calendar number MI 2021-001-407-2120, North 7th Street, my vote is yes.
My vote is yes.
My vote is yes.
All right, good luck.
Yes, Secretary Plaza, speaking about North 42nd Street before I'm wet off,
I did talk to the board's administrator about rescheduling those matters for 715 and 717 North 42nd Street.
Thank you. Okay. Let me call it in, too, so we can continue. I don't think we put it in the record.
So calendar number MI 2021-001-420-1715 North 42nd Street and calendar number MI 2021-001-421-1717 North 42nd Street will be continued.
Thank you.
But we have a date, sir, Secretary Plaza.
You got the date?
Miss Sunkett?
August 17th at 9 30 a.m. We agreed upon it. Okay. August 7th, you said? 17th at 9 30 a.m.,
which is a Tuesday. Thank you. So they will be continuing to that date. Thank you. Thank you.
Have a great day. You too. Calendar number MI 2021-001-361-2601 Home Avenue.
we have stephen pollack with his hand up he's being promoted to panelists now
thank you mr pollack please identify yourself for the record
Mr. Pollack, could you please unmute yourself?
good good afternoon um Mr. Plaza Mr. Holloman and Mr. Snell Stephen Pollack on behalf of
Nazareth Hospital I have with me uh my associate Mr. Pollack can you spell your first and last
name for the scenario Stephen with the ph s-t-e-p-h-e-n Pollack p-o-l-l-o-c-k
Dan, can you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, for nothing but the truth?
And have you, do you agree to wait the reading of its refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
And do you, have you emailed an exhibit packet with the required documents, proof of ownership,
proof of tax compliance, copy of the refusal or reflux, photos and plans five days prior to this hearing?
Yes, I have.
Thank you. Please proceed.
Okay. I have with me, Mr. Chair, members of the board, before we get started,
First, I have Gregory Duran, who is the director of facilities for Nazareth Hospital, and I also have my associate Nico Rialbuto, who will be sharing the screen for me because, as I say, my left hand and right hand don't know how to share a screen.
So if we could advance them to speaker status, that would be great, Ms. Sunkit.
Thank you.
Mr. Ragabuto has been promoted to panelists so he can share his screen.
Okay. And Mr. Duran also, just so he can be available and be sworn in.
Okay, so we only need to promote the individual who's going to share the screen. The other individual will unmute when necessary.
Okay. I just wanted to introduce him at this point and have him on the record so that when I do state things, he can adopt it.
Okay. I just wanted to introduce them at this point and have them.
But okay. We have, if we could bring up our exhibits. This is a request not for a residential property. This is for Nazareth Hospital. This is our wayfinding project.
Nazareth Hospital has become part of the Trinity Medical System and needs to redo its signage.
This is a copy of the refusal.
We have pre-marked Exhibits A1 through A12.
I have an exhibit list, and I will spare the board reading in every one of these exhibits,
but I will ask that everything be included as if read into the record.
This is our refusal.
If you go to the bottom of the refusal, Nazareth Hospital has been here before for signage in 2008.
You see notes to the ZBA 1, 2, and 3, 2010 and 2008.
The reason because even before the new code, this was zone residential.
If you look at it now, we're currently RSA 2, which is zone residential, which only allows 15 square feet of signage.
This is a hospital.
A hospital is a, this is an existing hospital. Even today, an existing hospital is considered a special exception use that's allowed, of course, by the board's special exception. But we're here for the wayfinding system. If we can, we can go to our signs to show you the site plan.
so you'll get an idea we're dealing with our main logo sign on top of the building tower
our freestanding you've got to go all the way to pages 27 and 28 you go if you can get there
we go here here's and i don't know if we can make it a little smaller but uh
if you see the the a and the b sign the a sign is going to be the freestanding uh message board
the b sign will be our logo sign on top of the tower and then the signs one through seven
are wayfinding signs that will show you what they are go to the next page
and you will see this is the proposed freestanding message board that'll be right along Home Avenue
showing you both sides. This will be a way for us to give messages to what new programs are being
done or services being offered at the hospital and also gives a way to tell people where to go
in case of an emergency. Go to the next page and that's just another side look at the property
and that proposed sign here is the new proposed this is the exit there's the existing sign
that says nazareth the new sign that's proposed is we're just basically changing sign faces
for this sign but we've become part of the trinity health mid-atlantic system and
we are asking for permission to just change the sign face and if you can go
just another one um then if we can go to our we'll show you the other signs that are monument
signs these are the signs one through seven which are just wayfinding and here it is we have
signs one through seven are similar signs to this a double a a monument sign that directs people
to the emergency areas and everywhere on the property so we did go in front of the
home circle civic association and I don't need to give you any more interpretation than the letter
was a unanimous vote of support for this project and the wayfinding so therefore we believe that
and we all have all our letters to the RCOs our certificates of mailing we give you some photos
if you want to see what it looks like a little bit real quick let's go to that second package
that we have, Nico. And if we can show, this is what the existing digital message board is right
now. You saw what we're going to change it to. That is what the existing logo sign looks like
right now. And you've seen what we've proposed. And with that, members of the board, I would like
to call on Gregory Duran, who is the director of facilities for Nazareth Hospital, to come to be
allowed to speak.
Professor, if you don't mind, you can, you know, finish out this
hearing and then I'll get on to the next hearing.
I was going to see I was going to see if I could suck you in the
vote this one, Mr. Chairman, but okay, no such thing. Okay.
OK. All right. Is Mr. Duran available?
All right, it's Mr. Duran available.
What is his first name, Mr. Pollack? Gregory. Greg. Gregory.
You can unmute yourself and speak now.
There's a mute button or microphone on the left, lower left, Greg.
Hopefully you'll.
Or are you on your phone?
are you finding him your vet or no
his name is there and i am on my side but he's not unmuting himself so we're having technical
difficulties we can just keep going forward why don't we do this if you don't mind i'll just
jump in for this we'll stipulate mr pollock you being an officer of court your client would have
adopted your testimony. I most certainly do, Mr. Chairman. With that, and the inclusion into the
record of all our exhibits, including the actual exhibit list, and the letter of support from
Home Circle Civic, we request that the board look favorably upon our request for the necessary
variances so again i'll yield to uh confessor plaza since i was not part of this uh hearing
thank you thank you is there anyone else here that would like to speak in this matter
hold on there there's a lisa curry miss curry you can unmute yourself and speak now
yes good afternoon um good afternoon ma'am can you please identify yourself for the record
spell your first and last name? Yes, my name is Lisa Curry, L-I-S-A-C-U-R-R-Y.
Can you sort of tell the truth, the whole truth for nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do. In fact, Mr. Chairman, it's very good that Lisa jumped on. Lisa is the
community liaison and government affairs representative for Nazareth Hospital. So
Lisa, we'll ask you the question we asked Greg. Could you listen to all the statements I've made
into the record today? Yes, I do. And are they true and accurate? Yes. And do you adopt that
as your testimony? Yes, I do. Okay. So I appreciate you hopping on there, Lisa. You were able to
negotiate getting on. You're welcome. Thank you. Is there anyone else?
there are no hands at this time thank you does the board have any questions
no no planning commission
good afternoon board nicole ozumir planning commission staff this proposal is to replace
existing signage with new branding for a long-standing use and accordingly we have
no objection to the granting of the variance. Thank you. Calendar number MI 2021-001-361-2601
Home Avenue. My vote is yes. My vote is yes. My vote is yes. All right good luck. Thank you Mr.
Thank you. Thank you, Confessor. We'll go to the next case, number 12, MI 2021-001411, 3527 Frankfurt Avenue.
Harrogate Civic sent a letter of opposition, as did Councilman Mark Squilla.
Chair, we have Ms. Pritzker, and she's coming back in as a panelist.
Good afternoon, Ms. Pritzker.
You'll identify yourself, spell your full name.
You're still under oath from earlier today.
Unmute yourself, Rachel.
Oh, sorry.
Rachel, R-A-C-H-A-E-L, Pritzker, P-R-I-T-Z-K-E-R, 1635 Market Street,
East 1600, Philadelphia, PA, 19103.
Yes, sir.
Rachel, do you agree to wait the region of its refusal
and stipulate to its accuracy?
Yes. And have you emailed an exhibit packet with the required documents, proof of ownership, proof of tax compliance, copy of the refusal or referral, photos and plans five days prior to this hearing?
Yes. And have you met with the RCO and have a letter? Yes. Thank you. Please proceed. Thank you.
Okay, this is 3527 Frankfurt Avenue. As you can see from the refusal, this project proposes the
use of an existing structure for a two-family household living on Frankfurt Avenue. The only
for two-family household living on Frankfort Avenue. The only refusal we have today is for
refusal we have today...
the use for two-family household living. I'm just going to go down to the site.
That might be easier just to show on Atlas. This is a site on your screen. It's the third one in
from the corner. As you can see, this is on a little bit of a blighted block of Frankfort Avenue,
which is supposed to be a commercial corridor. That's why you have a bunch of CMX1 on the
corners. You have some CMX2 and some RM1 as well, in addition to the sort of spurts on
Frankfurt Avenue of RSA5, although again, Frankfurt Avenue is supposed to be a commercial
corridor. Not only is the corner vacant and boarded up, which is a CMX1 property, but so is
the directly adjacent property at 29. It's been boarded up for quite some time and is causing
additional issues on the block. Aside from our property, which we're proposing to have as a
two-family dwelling in order to have this property stay in the family, provide more affordable
housing, and a little bit more of a reasonable layout for the interior of the site, there are
also additional properties on the block that are already duplexes or two or more units that are
also Zone RSA 5, specifically 3519, 3522, which is across the street, and 3525, which is directly
adjacent property, is also two-family. If we were to keep this as a single-family home,
it's quite large. These properties are quite long as well. The buildings are quite large also. I can
show the aerials um and just would be a lot larger um and not as affordable or price conscious
especially because the property needs uh significant renovation into the interior of
the property directly across the street you have all all rm1 if this property was zoned rm1 given
it's almost 1200 square feet the lot we'd be able to easily do three units by right without any
bonuses so again we're asking for actually less than that which is just two units um in order to
be able to meaningfully rehab this site provide more price conscious housing uh in this neighborhood
and also help to incentivize you know additional commercial and density on frankfort avenue which
is a commercial corridor again so um this is the front of the building um i also uh want to mention
that although um harrowgate we met with them and although harrowgate uh sent a letter of opposition
I have information from the RCO on the screen indicating that only three of the actually 13 votes were near neighbors.
So the majority of those who were in opposition, which was 10 people, actually don't even live within 250 feet of the property on the same block face.
As such, my client went and spoke with all her near neighbors, those who also have duplexes, as you can see from the letters.
And she got 14 signatures in support of this project from 3525 Frankfurt Avenue, Apartment B, 3523 Frankfurt Avenue, 3519 Frankfurt Avenue, 3522 Frankfurt Avenue, which I'd mentioned is also a duplex.
that's apartment one uh 3524 frankfurt which also has two units um 3536 frankfurt which has
multiple units 3536 frankfurt avenue second floor 3513 apartment one also multi multi-family
and then uh on atlantic street this is the directly adjacent block um that she was able to
obtain signatures as well. Again, a total of 14 letters of support. I also believe that there's
a near neighbor to speak in support as well of the project. So again, this is similar with what's
going on the rest of the block. It is a commercial corridor. This is not a small side street. This is
Frankfurt Avenue. And we believe that what we're proposing is a lease modification and is also not
and overuse, again, with RM1 directly across the street, you could have three units on this site
by right. And some of that zoning is sort of hindering the ability to meaningfully build
reasonable single-family homes on the RSA 5 properties, given the direct adjacency to a lot
of RM1 as well, the ability to do all that by right. I'm going to just stop sharing my screen.
I believe my client is here as well. And also, there may be members on the block who are here
to speak in support of her application.
Your client's name?
Carmen.
What's her last name, Rachel?
It starts with a B.
Okay, I see her.
Okay, I see her.
Ms. Bengo Chia, you can unmute your...
Ms. Bengochea, you can unmute yourself and speak now.
Good afternoon, ma'am. Please spell your first and last name and I'll swear you in.
Good afternoon. My name is Carmen, C-A-R-M-E-N, last name Bengochea, B-E-N-G-O-C-H-E-A.
You swear for them to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Thank you, Ms. Preacher.
Thank you. Carmen, can you just explain to the board the efforts that you made to speak with
the near neighbors and also wanted to just make sure that some near neighbors that you spoke with
are also in attendance to speak on in support of the project? Yes, I, when I was told that I
needed support from the neighbors, I went door to door and asked the neighbors within adjacent