number 17 right
number 17
mi 2026 004 084 2815 north 2nd street um is this sean whalen's case yes oh there he is i
even see you here. Yeah, well, this is listed as a reconsideration. Is that what we're
talking about, but there's just a regular hearing. Am I right? Just a regular hearing.
Reconsideration was already granted now when we're just hearing. Mr. Whalen, could you
please state your name and spell for the stenographer? Certainly. Sean Whalen, W-H-A-L-E-N.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do. Okay. Can you identify your client and relationship to the property?
Yes. I am the attorney for the owner and applicant, the LLC, which is…my notes aren't coming up, so I apologize. The LLC that owns the property, I think it's EG…
It's EGPA Investments?
EGPA Investments. I apologize.
Okay, last week it was a hockey team. If I remember. Yes. All right. I'm all over the map. Our vice chair has a few questions. Good afternoon. Have you submitted your documents and exhibits 5 days in advance of this hearing?
Yes, I did. And do you wait to read another refusal and stipulate to us accuracy? Yes, I do. Okay. Thank you. You can share your screen and proceed with your case.
Thank you.
uh so this is 2815 north second street um i understand there there was some prior confusion
So this is 2815 North 2nd Street.
with this matter i can tell you there's nothing all that interesting about it we have unanimous
support from the rco so i'll be brief i don't need 14 council up here to argue with me about
everything you're going to do it yourself i'll argue with myself it's uh
sometimes that's how you get the best arguments right uh well you have 16 minutes if you're
interested i don't it does not appear that i'm a panelist so that i can't show you the screen
make sure he's a panelist team do you see the uh invite now mr whalen
i have zoom but i don't see any i don't see a panelist invite
yeah i did uh i did promote you to uh panelists i don't know about there
i can try one more time okay please do yeah because i don't have the share screen option at
the bottom let me know if the invite has come to you it has not
Can someone assist with Mr. Whalen, please?
it's happened once before i think it actually might be because
of the time we're at the end of your session
we can't skip and go to the next one so
there we go I got the invite
All right.
So hopefully now you can see my screen.
We can, we see your screen.
Okay. So as I was starting to say before, this is 2815 North 2nd Street. The reason why this is coming up, maybe as a reconsideration, is that there was some confusion with my client who's not English as her first language.
sure she she believed that she was speaking with the rco right she was emailing with rcozba
dot or at phila.gov right so the case got dismissed i i got brought on to revive it
now we're right here as i must be heard so uh again the the issue is very tame today
then she'll be able to understand when we yes yeah she can understand sure um so what you're
What we're seeing right now is the Atlas City map. This is an aerial. We have we front on North 2nd Street and go all the way back to Pale Thorpe Street.
There is no request for additional development or increase in height with this project.
So what you can see now, 2815 again is this highlighted portion. We go all the way back front to rear.
the only other property similar to us previously was 2813 that went you can see goes all the way
back this is the deed map this board granted about a year ago I think a subdivision to subdivide
there's a double wide garage back here that now is its own property we have an existing
building at the front and a single car garage at the rear. So again, the zoning map actually
is very pertinent here. We are zoned RSA 5. I could not figure out.
We are zoned RSA 5.
I could not figure out why this happened,
but only 2815 and 2813 are on the entire block of North 2nd Street are zoned RSA 5.
Everything else is zoned RM1, the entire length of it.
Again, 2813 already came in for a variance.
And 2815, the highlighted one where we are, again,
So again, if we were zoned RM1, we would be by right and not be in front of you.
So again, we have one refusal, which is for household living of four units in an RSA 5 district.
Again, if this were RM1, we have enough.
We are actually 1461 square feet.
So we actually have enough to have four units by right if we were RM1 like everything else on that front's on 2nd Street.
The issue arises because my client purchased the property two years ago and was provided at closing a four-unit zoning permit.
So she bought it understanding the property was four units.
We have determined the property has been vacant for at least 15 years, maybe 20-plus years.
I'll show some interior photos, but it's pretty rough inside, so we can't determine to capture Board Member Wynne's first question when she's going to come at me.
We can't decide right now how many units or what it was last built as in the interior.
You can see in a couple of photos we have, there's like a random toilet sitting in a room that looked like it probably was the living room or something of the sort. So we just don't know exactly what it was.
So again, my client purchased this property with a 2015 buy right zoning permit that was stamped in 2022 by the department of L&I stating that it was in fact a true and correct zoning permit.
What happened was my client went to proceed and reached out to LNI that she was going to proceed about a year ago with actually, you know, improving this property into four units.
And LNI told her that her zoning permit was not valid. It had been expired and was not there.
So essentially what we're doing is trying to legalize the prior four unit zoning permit so that she can proceed with what she thought she was buying.
again not sure why the aerial maps do this the red dot is actually not on 2815 it's on 2817
we are the one just below that you can see we have an existing three-story building at the front
we have an existing one car deep garage at the back and there is open space in the middle
again this is this is the property right there we have behind us an open surface parking lot
and you'll see so again this is this is the the status of the prop of the um of the property
here's the original property it's right here it actually has uh two separate doors going up to it
It only has one functional set of staircase at the moment.
This property and everything to the south are three stories.
The property adjacent to us at 2817 and everything to the north appears to be essentially two stories.
Again, everything is on one on this side of the block. This is the east side of the block.
The west side of the block is all industrially zoned and has.
So you can start to see there's a commercial warehouse here that appears to be vacant and has been for some time. A lot of vacant land. This is to the north. This is to the south of us. And what we have directly across from us, again, is this is some kind of auto use. It was active, but I couldn't find permitting for it to determine exactly what it is.
So this is, I'm standing at the front stairwell of our property.
This is now Pailthorpe Street. Pailthorpe Street is a single-family residential two-story block.
It's almost entirely built out. I think there's only one vacant parcel on that block.
So it makes sense that everything that fronts on Pailthorpe would be RSA 5 single-family.
this next to us is the two car garage that was just subdivided off as a separate parcel by the
board about a year ago this roll top garage door is our is the back of our property
and again that's just a better image of where it is this is the back of our property we're
a better image of where it is this is the back of our property we're attached on both sides
attached on both
again there's no new height or massing envisioned for this project
so these are these are the interior photos as you start to go in that doorway
here again is the one that i was saying there's there's a toilet right by a window which appears
to be probably a prior living room everything is stripped and in very bad condition
again we couldn't find the last indication of what the use actually was although every property
adjacent to us is divided into multi-family units so that's why on second street just to be clear
on second street everything is multi-family units depending on the size the larger projects are
three and four uh the three story i should say buildings are three and four units the two story
buildings all appear to be two units although i can't guarantee because i couldn't find records
proving all um so again we're going through and just while i'm describing this just to
to state uh we do not have uh plans developed for this yet we're just trying to uh this is
This is this woman's first project, first investment property in the city that she was purchasing, obviously kind of went sideways on her.
The envisioned position is going to be that there's going to be no basement living.
That's where the mechanicals are going to be. The basement will be accessible by everyone, so it will have some kind of storage.
maybe uh she hasn't determined yet if every bill every property will have or every apartment rather
will have in unit washer dryer or if the washer and dryer will be communal in the basement
but that's going to be the unfinished basement there will be a uh a two bedroom on the first
floor two studios on the second floor and a one bedroom on the third floor is how she has it
currently laid out four four uh again sure the first floor is going to be one two bedroom oh
okay all right i got it i might have i might have yeah i thought of those i apologize okay yeah so
there's going to be one unit on the first floor one unit on the third floor and two units on the
second floor um is how she has it laid out obviously this is all subject to an architect
coming in and saying you know this is the layout that works this actually is a building plan um
So I can't, I can't attest that, you know, four units will fit and it might have to be dropped to three, but she purchased it as a four unit so that's why I'm here to kind of legalize the prior four unit building.
We met with Hase.
We had actually a pretty good turnout, especially for an August meeting, and they voted 10-0 in support.
actually the only concerns that they had is they have had some building fires in
that neighborhood and so they they put a condition in here that we have on all
upper floor units we have a rollout emergency ladder at the door at the
windows we agreed to that and we also agreed that what we will do is we will
put a door opening in the rear of the existing garage because right now that's
a solid cinder block wall at the back so you have you enter from 2nd Street
You have the existing building at 2nd Street. You can go out to a rear yard off of 2nd Street. And then that one car garage that I depicted shown off of Pale Thorpe is actually just a solid building by itself.
We did agree with Jose to open a doorway in the back of that garage wall so that people in the event of an emergency could get through the garage out to Pale Thorpe Street just for fire safety.
And obviously, when this goes forward, this is going to have to meet all – there's no grandfathering here.
This is going to have to meet all current fire codes.
Four units have to have fire?
So, yes, the building will be sprinkled.
But they want –
They want additional considerations, yeah.
So, again, just to be clear, this will have to meet all 2026 fire code requirements.
There's no question about what it gets to do or not do based on prior use.
Again, we can't determine the prior use.
But it does have multiple doors. It does have apparently, you know, multiple multi-unit layout. So Hase was fully in favor. They voted 10-0 in support.
And then this is, that's the extent of it. That's with all the documentation.
So, yes, Lenny Santos.
Thank you.
she told me earlier she was on so we were joining us a panel shortly council mr chair
i would just say it's kind of hard not seeing what you think the apartments look like
and i understand this may be her new at this but it's kind of hard to sit here and figure out
especially the second floor how those two small apartments look like so i'm not i don't i i think
most of the people up here might struggle a little bit without having any plans at all
i understood and i thought you might uh might i suggest that we wrap up everything today yeah we
can leave it open and i'll go back to her and say we need to support well okay you know provide plans
all right could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
hi could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
what's her name uh lenny oh hi hi could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
yes i am lenny santos and i'm here on behalf of the applicant owner of 28 15 on 2nd street
what's that again what does that mean she's on behalf of the owner the owner is an llc and she
is here as the representative of the llc okay is she the owner of the llc the owner of the llc is
candida ortega taveras she does not speak english and oh okay yeah she can't adopt your testimony
but you can call her as a witness uh legally sorry mr chairman yeah legally i would disagree
with that but i'm happy to proceed okay um so i mean what we would have done is have an interpreter
Right. Right. For for the owner. Right. And if if she owned this in her individual name, listen, why don't why don't we do this? I think you know where we stand. Right. OK. That you have to come back. And why don't we do a resumptive hearing. OK. All right. One twelve eight twenty six. Because I can't say to planning, what do you think of this one? There's really nothing to look at. Right. Well, yeah, I understand the position. I'm not arguing. No, no, no. I know.
position but i i do think and and obviously i've done this a lot with you guys normally i would
bring plans and i would have except for the fact that there was already a buy right permit for four
units yeah i saw that but then it just seemed to disappear right so all i'm saying is why don't you
come back you know have a degree of plans that we understand and then bring the owner or or another
member of the LLC. And then what we'll do, and if there's a problem with English, we'll have
the interpreter here. Like we did twice today. Right. Given the length of delays here, is there
any way we can bring this back? So I would say I wanted to go with 12-826 now, 930. And what I
would do is I would check to see if there's an opening anywhere. And Ian just put his head down
because he hates when i do this you know he's in the back shaking his head at me now um but we we
would see if there's a possibility to bring her back a little bit early but then again you need
some time to to put something together right i do want to state for the record i do think that even
though the rco already uh weighed in on this and sent a letter that without seeing any uh proposed
plans that there should need to be another rco meeting if plans are no okay i just i will still
say for the record i do think that it's hard to make a decision when you can't see what is being
proposed board member when when we get plans i'm happy to share them with the head of the rco right
and obviously she can then that they can bring forward any issues that they may have but we
wouldn't have it so so you had the date and you know we'll we'll pick it up where we left off okay
okay all right chairman can i just i wanted to put on the record it looks like you have parking
on the property correct yes garage right one existing parking space uh in the existing garage
that is not part of this um appeal correct okay so if you're going to do something to
you want to legalize that that's going to have to be a separate application correct okay i just
want to make sure because you kept mentioning you have the parking space but this is just a change
of use no i i apologize if i may spoke i did not intend to say that i have we have a parking space
We have a one, we have an existing one car garage or single wide garage is what I said.
We do not have.
And that's the garage you want to open up the back door so people can escape from the house.
Correct.
So, so I, I agree with you.
I was not talking about a parking space and I apologize if I'm mistaken.
Thank you.
All right.
So thank you very much.
Right.
And is there anyone in the audience whose 930 case has not been called?
uh mr chair i do not see any hands raised for any matters thank you everybody see everybody at 2 p.m
Mr. Chair, I do not see any hands raised with any matters.
Thank you.
and mr chair excuse me for uh one last note just uh if anyone is here for case number mi2026001790302
market street that case will be heard at the start uh at two of two around two o'clock thank you
Does anyone dislike what Ian Haggerty is right with it?
Thank you.
Thank you.