matter. I have highlighted the support with the proposed provisos, which the applicant would agree
to. I'll read them if I may briefly. Stormwater runoff incurred by the structure will be
infiltrated within the subject property. Lighting shall be designed so that there's no light
spillage beyond the boundaries of the subject property. And the agreement with the near
neighbor at 410 East Evergreen will be honored. I'll get to that in a moment. There's also a
letter of support from the Chestnut Hill Conservancy, which echoes what I just read
into the record. And here is a private agreement with the near neighbor at 410. David and Valerie
care very much about peaceful coexistence with their neighbors, and this private agreement
achieves that. In addition, David and Valerie,
In addition, David and Valerie went and spoke with many of their neighbors.
These are all near neighbors on these pages, and they have lent their full support for this project.
Mr. Chairman and members of the board, the proposal will fit into the surrounding neighborhood, as evidenced by the support of the RCOs and the neighbors.
The variance would represent the minimum variance to afford relief and the least modification
possible of the regulation at issue.
The grant of variance relief will not increase congestion in the public streets, increase
the danger of fire, or otherwise endanger the public health, safety, or general welfare.
Once again, the existing single-family residential use would continue.
This will not adversely affect transportation or unduly burdened water, school, park, or
other public facilities.
There are no environmental issues. Valerie Mayer is here at the appropriate time to adopt and affirm.
We're ready for that. Thank you. Valerie, would you kindly raise your virtual hand so that you may be recognized by Chairman Bergman?
There she is. Hi, Valerie. Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court stenographer?
Yes, good afternoon. This is Valerie Mayer, V-A-L-E-R-I-E, and the last name is spelled M-A-H-E-R.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do, sir.
Proceed, counsel.
Thank you. Good afternoon, Valerie. Have you been present for the entirety of the virtual hearing in this matter?
Yes, I have.
And would you adopt and affirm the testimony that I've offered as your own?
Yes, I do.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Chair.
Questions from our attorney, Hillary Emerson?
Yes, Mr. Chair, just one brief note.
Thank you.
I just want to know that the provisos that have been requested by the RCOs
are unfortunately not enforceable by the zoning board.
Thank you.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
I see no hands, Chair.
Planning Commission.
Thank you, Chair Bergman, and good afternoon.
David Fecto with the City Planning Commission.
uh mr chairman and board members the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential
single family detached zoning at this location the proposed structure is harmonious with the
surrounding properties and the city planning commission recommends that the board grant the
proposed dimensional variances for an accessory structure thank you mi 2023 002 850 400 east
evergreen avenue i vote yes thomas holliman my vote is yes james snell my vote is yes
ish yeah i'm not going to vote on that chair because i came in on the table okay fine fine
uh council you have your votes thank you thank you mr chairman members of the board have a good
afternoon all right you too uh number six mi 2022 007 615 4554 wayne avenue brandon saverin is the
attorney there's a letter of non-opposition from solo germantown based on revised plans
and letter of support from the 13th ward rco
Brandon Saverin has been promoted to panelists.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon. Could you state your name, please, and spell for
the court stenographer? Yes. So this name includes the word Phila as an abbreviation
for Philadelphia. So my client is the owner of the property. No, no, state your name first,
That's right for the court reporter.
Thank you.
And spell it, please.
Yes, my name is Brandon Sapp.
That's spelled B-R-A-N-D-O-N.
And then S as in Sam, A, V as in Victor, R-A-N as in Nancy.
Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Could you identify your client and relationship to this property?
So the property owner is my client, and the property owner is an LLC named R-A-M, then Fila, then Community, and then the number 10, LLC.
okay and our vice chair has just a few questions do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal
And our vice chair has just a few questions.
Good afternoon, Counselor.
Do you agree?
and stipulate to its accuracy yes i do have you emailed in all the required documents that are
needed to be required to proceed with this hearing five days in advance uh yes i do
thank you please proceed and share your screen thank you
Okay. Good afternoon, members of the board. I'm going to start my presentation with some photos
of the property as it currently exists, and then move on to the refusal and the plans.
So at exhibit nine of the exhibit binder that we submitted, this is a street view photograph
of the property. It is the vacant lot in the middle, which is, I believe, a lot that, as I'll
show you, has been vacant for over 10 years. So my clients bought the property in this form a
couple of years ago. And if you see, these buildings have sort of like, you could call it
addition but a piece that sticks out on the first floor from what is otherwise a three-story building
that's sort of universally true here and and through our proviso plans that is what we are
proposing to build a similar looking structure that would have three dwelling units
in exhibit one of our exhibit binder which is a memo of law i authored to the board
This is an aerial photograph from atlas.philo.gov from 2012.
And this is many years before my clients purchased the property.
And you can see that the property is still vacant.
So, again, not a hardship that was self-created.
I'll get into the hardships in a moment.
But one of them is the duration of the vacancy of this property.
And in the rest of Exhibit 1, which I won't go through in full, is a memorandum I authored to the board about why we believe our proposal satisfies all of the requirements for a variance under the Philadelphia Code.
Exhibit 2A is our refusal. So here is the refusal. I'll zoom in a little bit and pardon the poor image quality.
Um, so originally we had applied to, uh, construct a three story structure that would have five
dwelling units, um, through the engagement with the RCOs, um, we decided to reduce the proposal
to three dwelling units. Um, and the RCOs also pushed us to conform the shape of the building
in the front, um, to its neighbors. And we have done so, um, as I'll show you in a minute.
The only refusal was for use. Even the original proposal did conform to all of the dimensional requirements of the code, and the revised proposal also continues to conform to all of the dimensional requirements of the code.
The only refusal is because we are proposing three dwelling units and we are in a single family district.
Although, as I'll show you in a moment, the overwhelming majority of other structures on our block of Wayne Avenue also contain multiple dwelling units.
Exhibit 2D is our original zoning plan that was submitted to L&I.
I won't spend too much time on this since it's been changed, but the elevation on it shows you what the original proposal looked like.
In Exhibit 3, we have a rendering of that original proposal, which looks like this.
And working with our architects at KCA, we changed the project such that now it looks like this.
So if you remember that photo of the rest of the block, we're going to have basically what those buildings next door have, we're going to have a first floor that meets the street line, and then there's going to be a significant setback of, I'll get the distance in a moment, but I think about a dozen feet, that pushes the second and third floor back, just as is the case with our neighbors.
So here at Exhibit 2E is our proviso zoning plan, our revised zoning plan.
It has an updated elevation, and the site plan shows that the upper two floors of the building have been pushed back.
The depth of that setback actually varies because the street meets all of these buildings at a diagonal,
but it looks like the setback at its widest point would be about 14 and a half feet.
The setback at its widest point would be about 14 and a half feet, and at its shallowest point at about 11 feet.
There would be a terrace that's set back from the street on top of that setback, which would be accessible to the occupant of the second floor dwelling unit.
So the building would have three dwelling units, as is now proposed, and I'm going to show you the floor plans of the interior.
That would be in Exhibit 4.
Here are those floor plans.
A couple things to point out.
Each of the three dwelling units occupies an entire floor.
There is no roof deck on this building.
There is just the small front terrace that the second floor will have.
And there is also access to the rear yard by the first floor dwelling unit.
There is not a full basement.
There is only a small basement in the front of the building planned, which is purely for mechanicals.
It is not a part of one of the three dwelling units, so certainly nobody would live down there.
It's not going to be part of anyone's home. It's just for building mechanicals.
We have support from the coordinating RCO, which the chairman mentioned.
I believe that letter is at the very end of our exhibit binder.
Um, and, uh, we also have, um, non-opposition from one of the, uh, other affected RCOs.
Um, and I think finally, just to touch on, um, the hardships in, in a moment that compel us to
develop, uh, three dwelling units as opposed to one. So one of those things, uh, as I mentioned,
is that this property has been vacant for over 12, uh, sorry, over 10 years since at least 2012.
And I actually don't know this for a fact, but for all of that time since 2012, or if not, at least a lot of it, the zoning code has compelled single family use at this location.
So what that tells you is that the market has not responded to that zoning restriction.
No one has stepped up to build a single family home in that time.
And we believe that that's evidence that the market does not support a single family home here.
Nobody can use a single family plan to attract the financing necessary to construct a new building.
Another element of the situation, which you could call hardship, you could call it a factor that means that we're not going to harm our surroundings as well,
is that if you look at our side of Wayne Avenue and in my memo, I actually have a list of
all of the other buildings on sort of our block of Wayne Avenue. And I think a block or two on
either side, the buildings, I mean, I'm not going to tick through every line here, but if you look
at these buildings, four, six, two, eight, Wayne, three residential units, the next one, four
residential units, the next one, three residential units. So almost all of these buildings have
three or more dwelling units. There's a few instances of one or two dwelling units, but
we are totally within context, sort of in like the median of this range by proposing three
dwelling units. And my final argument is the hardship is that there's actually significant
documents on Atlas about the history of this property, and it has never featured a single
family home, according to Atlas. In fact, the building that was there before its demolition
contained three units. Now, two of those units were residential and one of those units was
commercial. But as far as we're aware, there were at all times that there was a building on this
property, three units on the property in some combo of residential and commercial. But that's
what we're proposing to go right back to. A three-unit building just as always has been there.
So that's my presentation. I'm going to see if my client's available to adopt my testimony, and we're happy to take questions.
Mr. Severin, what's your client? Is it Matan?
Matan, yes.
Matan, okay. Matan will be allowed to speak.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court stenographer?
Matan, please unmute yourself and wait for the chair.
yes matan shmuel m-a-t-a-n-s-h-m-u-e-l you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth
nothing but the truth i swear uh counsel proceed thank you um matan did you um hear my testimony
in your zoning case this afternoon yes i did um was it true and accurate to the best of your
Yes, I did.
Was it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief?
knowledge information.
Are you authorized to speak on behalf of the LLC that owns this property?
And would you adopt my testimony as if it had been your own testimony?
Okay, thank you.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
Questions from our attorney, Hillary Emerson?
uh just one quick one mr chair um mr saverin um we received uh both the letter of support from
the 13th ward as well as the letter of non-opposition from solo germantown with a
couple of provisos um one being interior trash storage another being interior mailboxes and
mail storage um can you um advise us of your client's position on those that request yeah
yes we're agreeable to those two provisors
questions or comments from the virtual audience
i see no hands chair planning commission thank you chair bergman and good afternoon
david effecto with the city planning commission chair and board members the comprehensive plan
recommends a change in zoning to commercial mixed use at this location the comprehensive
the plan's recommended zoning is to reinforce Wayne Avenue as a commercial corridor. The
proposed multifamily use brings this property closer to this goal than the current zoning
would allow. The City Planning Commission recommends that the board grant the use
variance for three dwelling units. Thank you. MI 2022-007-615-4554 Wayne Avenue. I vote yes
with proviso. Revised plan, one-paged, stamped by ZBA, October 4th, 2023. Interior trash storage
and interior mailbox and mail storage. Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes with proviso.
James Snell, my vote is yes with proviso.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes with proviso.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you.
All right. Number seven, MI-2023-002-911-5127 Irving Street.
Alan Nockamson is the attorney.
There's a recommendation of support for three dwelling units.
Mr. Nockamson.
Mr. Nockamson is backing as a panelist.
Could you identify your client and the relationship to this property?