ZBA Hearing - January 22, 2025

But this is really part of what the church wants to do is reward and honor those seniors who have been an important part of the church.

So that's where we're talking about right here.

Let me just get to some of these other pictures here.

Again, this is the church building itself.

the refurbishments. That's the inside. And then we get to the school building here on Lindley

Street, the 57,000 square feet. There's three levels. We're not changing anything on the

exterior. Level one, level two, and level three for 28 units. Here's pictures from the inside of

the complex, from the parking field. You're looking towards Lindley. This is the church

building. This is the school building. This is the gym and rectory I was talking about.

And now here's pictures looking at it from different perspectives.

Lindley, which is where the 57,000-square-foot building fronts.

This is one of the main means of egress into that parking field off of 4th Street, and there's a secondary egress point.

Here is that large parking field, which accommodates church services on the weekends and operations during the week.

They also have shuttle buses that they use for part of the operations of the church.

And then here, as we go into the building itself, there's three levels.

It looks like, if you've been into any school building, it looks like a classic Philadelphia, whether it's public or archdiocese school.

Here is that first level, the bathroom, the hallways.

Here is what it looks like now on the first floor.

with the hallways, with the assembly space, and with some offices that exist when it was a school building.

Here are some of the classrooms that still look very similar, a very solid building.

Here is the second floor, again, windows, classrooms, classrooms, hallway, bathroom, again, into the second floor.

Part of this would also be some area for the church to have meals, and that's also part of the residential to really create a sense of community from the residents who are part of the church and the church itself.

And then here is the site plan.

Again, no changes.

It's just an adaptive reuse, 57,000 square feet.

The subject building is here shaded in the red.

Building A is the church.

building c which is not part of this is the the rectory and then building d which is that

which is that gymnasium building and then just the large parking field that you see here means

of egress off of off of fourth street and as well as in this this back area here

close-up of the site plan again and then and then turning to see here

you might want to make that bigger yeah yeah I know here is the here's that first floor

lower level there's six units again there are studios and one bedrooms with different means

of ingress and egress to the outside you know we just think these are really good units for

for the proposed residents and again we're just taking those classrooms breaking them up into

the rhythm that we thought was that worked we have our project architect Ian Smith who is

very experienced working with historical buildings and we can certainly talk about

how these units were were designed and developed to keep the program of the pastor

Here is the second floor. This is 11 units. I don't know if I can make that big enough here. Right here are the one bedrooms, the studios. This is along Lindley here. Again, these are the one bedrooms and studios here with windows out to the outside.

there's a existing space here that would be used as part of an overflow

sanctuary for the church as part of it's also of its religious services and

It's part of it's also of its religious services. And then this is the second floor, third floor, you want to call it. Again, another 11 units with, again, a mix of studios and one bedrooms with a dining area here that, again, is part of the communal space for the church.

then this is the the second floor

But these units, these residents are church members and obviously looking to participate in that in that in that dining room area here and can talk about this.

We're adding two elevators that aren't part of this right now to make this accessible for the for the over 55 residents that we're seeking and that we talked about with the community as part of their letter of support.

with provisos. Here's just a breakdown of the different spaces within. Again, six in the first

floor, 11 units in the second floor, and 11 units in that second floor, third floor. And then here's

the elevations. This is on Lindley, the first floor here, second floor here, and the third floor

here. No changes to the building itself. And again, adding in elevators to make this accessible

for those residents as part of what we're really looking to do here in this kind of very unique

application that I haven't seen anything like this in many years. Here's elevations from the

other side. Here's some of the cross sections. There's only a small unit, a number of units

in that lower level first floor. And then here's the other building sections from the two floors

and then the lower level.

And as far as our refusal,

the only refusal we have is for use.

And this is really a classic hardship.

We've got a 57,000 square foot

former church building

that former school building

that is vacant.

And the way the zoning works here,

the only other use we could have

would be to have a single one one single family unit within that prop within that building but in

fact we couldn't even do that because in rsa5 you can't have multiple uses uh on a property so that

would be the school and any residential you can't have multiple structures that would be this former

school and the church um and if this was rm1 because of the lot area you would have approximately

250 units. We're talking about 28 units here. And we have a zoning memo and certainly want to

reserve time to go through each one of the criteria in the zoning memo once the board has had a chance

to ask any questions that they might have for me, for Ian, our project architect, or David Gantz,

who is our operation managers of the church. But really a classic hardship here. And that this,

because we're not adding any floors, we're not adding any other mass,

seems to be a minimum variance in keeping with the surrounding areas

in terms of light and air and other of the zoning criteria.

This is our application for appeal, project information form,

our letter to the community,

and proof of mailing, posting photos that you see here.

our zoning. And again, RSA 5, there's almost nothing you can do on RSA 5 except for single

family, which really creates the hardship here. This is the deed. This is that we showed we have

no taxes due. And this is our zoning memo that we want to reserve time to talk about that. Again,

once the board has asked any questions.

We both believe-

Why don't you bring your client on

to adopt your testimony?

Have the architect ready

in case there's questions for him.

Sure, sure.

And again, I just wanted to point out

the letter of almost unanimous support

from the 42nd Ward letter.

We have that.

Democrats, they asked for some provisos

that we've been told the board cannot put

on any approval that we get.

So with that, I'm going to again,

see if Pastor Gino Jennings

is in the virtual audience.

Pastor Jeddings, if you're now available,

I know you're doing a medical emergency,

if you could please raise your hand.

Anything?

I see no hands raised at this time, too.

So Brett, you're an officer of the court.

We'll take your testimony.

Sure.

Questions from the board.

I have a question.

How many of the parking spaces are reserved

for the residents in the building?

Yes, thank you.

I should have had a note for that.

What we're looking to do is we don't we don't expect that many of the residents will need parking because of.

We don't we don't expect that many of the residents will need parking because of the mass transit that they're because of, you know, a lot of them tend to be a little bit older and use those shuttle buses that we have.

But what we will be doing is any any of those units, those 28 units that do need a parking space will be allocated a parking space.

you know that large parking field there that that should provide significant parking okay

and then my last question is in terms of outdoor space for the seniors we're in that plan is there

some type of outdoor space for them to congregate yeah we have we haven't you know I can certainly

asked, there's a large, there's a beautiful, as you come around on 5th Street here, as part of

the church property, there's a beautiful outdoor area here. Let me see if I can get a better picture

of that. Yeah, right here. We've got this almost like park-like area out here on 5th Street that's

been perfectly maintained with landscape out there that we would hope would be an area that

residents could use out there and provide some outdoor area.

So it's not like clearly delineated for residential outdoor use?

Well, they would certainly have access to it. And again, these are church members,

so they would feel comfortable using that outdoor area because the church has events

already out in that outdoor area. So it's not like they would feel that they can't go there

because they're not part of the church and that there are some you know a non-accessory use to

the church okay my follow-up to that is so that means they will have to bring out their own lawn

chairs or something like that or would you be providing benches and tables and stuff like that

yeah so it can be a purposefully uh planned out open space for the 28 units oh it would it would

It would absolutely, we would look to have lawn chairs and, you know, amenities out there for the residents themselves. Absolutely.

Other questions?

Other questions?

Yeah, I think I agree with board member Graham. Maybe you can pull up the site plan.

And I think having a senior facility here is, it's a beautiful project, but making sure

that there's some defined outdoor space for seniors, I think is critical in these neighborhoods.

And so I would look to, you know, the development team to really kind of address that because

this is not just a senior building in the middle of a neighborhood, it's a campus.

And I think it should be planned as such.

um and and to that point what are the other buildings going to be used on um used as on the

site yeah let me let me do this i want to also uh promote our project architect uh ian right now ian

smith uh who really worked on the kind of the master plan here with with the with the church

himself. Why don't we bring him on, Brad? Mr. Smith?

Yes,

which has been promoted to penalists.

And the other question I have is

two other questions, and I think

I'm done. How is

the project being financed?

Are there any public funds

associated with it? And

how, I don't believe that

the church can restrict

renting only to

church members. I think

discriminatory laws

you know require that you can't do that yeah let me i i i don't believe that i don't believe that's

the case um as a as a private as a private church entity um but let me let me first ask

ian to come on here ian i'm here can everyone hear me yes mr smith state your name then spell

for the stenographer my name is ian smith and it's spelled i-a-n-s-m-i-t-h do you swear or

for him to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth yes please proceed counsel yeah

and you've heard you've heard a lot i know you work closely with the church kind of on this

on this vision um to to provide senior housing for church members um can you talk a little bit

about kind of the vision and the goal that the pastor had um to make this this a reality in the

plants that you show today yeah yeah absolutely so i mean let's think of this first um in a wider

view sort of a 10 000 foot view this is a campus that is owned by the church organization um and

the church organization um and in some ways each of these buildings is to support sort of this

in some ways each of these buildings is

Thank you.

this institution that they are sort of you know running from this um property and primarily when

we start to think about this i think in some ways i know you know we're very focused on the

the refusal um item but primarily we may have mischaracterized the sort of a proposal from the

start, right? Primarily, this building, its primary use is to support the church function

as an overflow space and a commissary to support food. I would say 60% of the floor area really

supports that. We think about this as a multi-use building structure. The residential would be an

accessory to the primary use of this second building,

sort of adjacent facing Lindley Avenue, right?

And we're thinking about this as a campus as opposed to separate fund

generating sort of, you know, things, right?

The purpose was never to generate funds to sort of make this proposition

solvent. The purpose is to service the mission of the church, you know,

to satisfy its many constituents that um are participants of the church so in some ways

i want to make sure that we understand the perspective of this as opposed to the typical

um ian and let me say the a and listen i i think we understand where you're coming from but i think

if you would could you concentrate on the questions that mr john's brought well i'm trying

to get to the character of the vision like so these these aren't these apartments weren't to

serve the public in the sense of putting out notices and renting it to people it's a support

mission like people within the mission so why don't we talk about where's the outside area that

would be available for the seniors yeah so so when it comes to the outside area for the seniors

it um part of their i mean when we we characterize the seniors we said generally speaking these

people have done mission for the church for many years, right? They've been doing service

over 10, 15 years, and they're coming to a point in life where the church wants to take care of

them, right? And the issue is that they're going to have a relationship with the church and have

this social connection with regard to the activities that occur on the premise. So their

their relationship to an outside space i think in some ways is is a misdirection with regard to the

answer with regard to what they're the interest of you know they're being a part of this

wonderful mission and i i know though they have access to this outdoor area here on on fifth

street here absolutely but yeah they have access to the entire camp absolutely yeah that's all

that's all they're asking i just wanted to i just wanted to confirm that that we would be

using this outdoor. We've got this beautiful, well-maintained, well-landscaped area that's