uh mr primavera you want to have your client on now or you want to try to find the architect here
uh well let's just uh yeah i think i better put larry on first um maybe it's a technical difficulty
try the architect again mr mckeown if you're in the virtual audience can you please raise your hand
Chair, there's no one by that name with their hand up.
Mr. Mavera, would you want to bring your client on and let him testify?
Yes, and I'll have Melanie call, Larry, in case he's disposed elsewhere.
I was going to say, Mr. Chairman, I don't know where we're going with this, but I suspect that we're going to go well into another 20 minutes or half an hour.
I understand what your list problems are, and I just wanted to be frank with the chairman about it.
Okay, thank you.
We're going to try to move this along.
Mr. Pisano, could you state your name and spell for the court reporter?
Doctor?
I can't believe it.
I can't even.
You know what?
We have Larry on, so I'm sorry for the confusion.
Let's just go right to Larry.
Where's Larry at?
Larry, could you state your name and spell for the court reporter?
Lawrence McEwen.
L-A-W-R-E-N-C-E.
McEwen, M-C-E-W-E-N.
Yes, please.
Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
And Mr. Primavera, could you have him give us a nice short overview of where we're doing with this?
Yes. So, Larry, let's just focus in on, in particular, the nature of the refusal and why we are not able to comply with the lot with requirement and the efforts that you have gone through to really try to manage the situation in a code compliant way to the extent possible.
I think that's going to be the key. Before you do that, if you want to just briefly go through your credentials, your CV is in the record, and your familiarity with the property in Chestnut Hill, and then go right into what we would call the focus on the refusal and the dimensional relief we seek.
You still want me to go through a very quick overview of the slides here, just in five minutes?
So let's combine it together.
So as you go through it, let's just really focus on, you know, why we are struggling to meet the full lot with requirement and what your proposal seeks to do to accommodate a dimensional variance to alleviate that hardship.
All right. So I'm a practicing architect. I've been licensed in the state of Pennsylvania since 1981, had my own practice for 25 years after working with several other firms.
I've lived in Chestnut Hill since 1990, since 1993.
I've been on the Land Use Planning and Zoning Committee since 2006.
I've co-chaired the Development Review Committee.
I'm a member of the Board of Directors of Chestnut Hill Community Association.
I am the 2011 awardee of the Chestnut Hill Award for Volunteer Community Service.
So I've worked in the community.
My office is in Chestnut Hill.
I want to make it clear that for this issue, I am clearly an applicant.
I'm on the other side of the table, but I'm very familiar with the process.
And over the 29 years I've been on Land Use Planning and Zoning Committee, we've reviewed many, many properties.
This property is 58,000 square feet.
The next largest property on that block is 27,600 square feet.
Our attempt is to divide the properties approximately equally using the two-thirds rule strategy that was used to create the property right next door at 8420 Prospect Avenue, one of the protestants of the project.
Now, our property is 183 feet wide by 300.
Our property is 183 feet wide by 365 feet deep. And although we're proposing 50 feet because we believe, as Carl said, that's the best balance, if we were to go to the 75-foot width, there would be only a 24-foot by 3-foot section of the property where we would not have a 15-foot side yard for the existing house.
In other words, there's only one projecting element of that existing house that projects into their side yard if we were fully compliant with our 75-foot-wide frontage.
So that's a 0.12% part of the site for which we are asking this relief.
So we couldn't mind.
Can I mention something here a minute?
Why don't he show that the slides as he's talking? I don't want him to talk about it, then go back and do the slides. Do it all one time.
Absolutely. Can I share my screen?
Shall I join as a panelist then?
Chair, he's been promoted to panelist so he can share his screen now.
That's fine. Thank you.
Okay. Can everyone see this?
We can.
OK, so here is the project bound by the East train line on the back, Prospect Avenue on the front, properties between it and Gravers Lane on the left.
So subdivision, as Carl's mentioned, a garage for the existing house and a garage for the house for the new house.
Here's the existing house. Here's the here's the assessment of property sizes on the block.
You can see that the next largest one is across the street.
Here is an as-of-right scheme that we could do.
This is 75 feet wide on the street.
That would be one way of approaching this.
Here is how that would be.
That would be, we could carry that back even as far as this one element back here.
It obviously places a new building on the street.
this is a three-story sort of outline of what could be built as a bright as a three-story piece
it does affect the trees in the front it affects the views to the historic house here
as an alternate for that our preferred scheme is to do this flag lot which is what Carl showed you
which actually is 50 feet wide this would actually result in no changes at the street
because instead of a new driveway, we actually would reuse the driveway and extend it of the
existing house. This then would be the current and future view of the property. As all the
neighbors would see from the street, there would be no visual change in the property.
Here's the site plan as it was presented to for the zoning review. This has actually been marked
with the number of trees that will be removed. There are 100 trees on this property. Three of
the trees here would be removed for the driveway in either scheme because we would extend a driveway
back to a garage if we did the house in front. Only one tree is removed for this new house in
the back, the central structure here. One tree will be relocated from the garage to be moved
towards the neighbors. This was the original plan. This is the stormwater management, which shows
how we're managing stormwater to protect the neighbors and maintain existing runoff.
The results of the review with the zoning with the L&I are that the stormwater PWD approved the stormwater plan.
Everything about the house, the new house is in both garages is in total compliance dimensionally.
All the easements were approved.
We just have this one refusal.
So here's the slide I want to talk to you about.
This is in green, this is what we propose to do because we feel it's the best balance of property between the two houses.
However, if we wanted to be compliant, this is the 75, the red line here is the 75 foot required frontage width.
And that only, when most people bought their house, the two thirds rule was in effect that only in 2017 was changed.
This is through a conversation I had with the planning commission.
But if we did this, there's only this one little place here on the whole site where we would be three feet shy of having a 15 foot side yard setback for the existing house.
So, again, on a 58,000 square foot property, we have 72 square feet of this property right here where we have that dimensional problem and we need the relief.
We could ask you just for three feet of relief and make a 72 foot wide.
we could ask you just for three feet of relief and make a 72 foot wide flag. We believe again
that the 50 feet is the right thing because it's in the spirit of the code that has existed for a
long time. Larry, let me just point two things out. One is, if you tore down the pink area,
you would then have the setback that would work correct yes but we could do that but that happens
to be one of the nicest features in the house and nobody is nobody is you know so we yeah we went
through that and that's why that's why land use planning and zoning committee supported it because
they realized that was a that was a you know that that's all we're talking about on this and that
would be a hardship and then second of all wait a second it seems to me it seems to me mr chairman
that the witness should testify rather than the lawyer and that's why you have the witness
testifying and i think this is just improper so mr prevera let let i think the witness is testifying
let let him finish okay okay good so just to show you a little context uh along the railroad tracks
This is a standard thing that happens. Here's the way 8420 right next door was spun off from 8430.
In the next block, we have two flag lots on Crittenden. Again, deep properties against the railroad tracks.
Here are another couple of examples here right off of Bethlehem Pike.
There are also on Summit Street a couple of driveways that have easements.
They're not created as flag lots, but there are eased driveways that lead to properties in the rear that don't have street access.
So this kind of flag lot treatment is a strategy that allows property to be developed in reasonable
size lots.
And again, here are the two lots we would have.
Again, these would still be the two largest lots on the block.
So it's not like we're trying to squeeze something through here.
Here's a view from the street of the driveway.
Here's the shared driveway next door.
That's 8420 there, 8430 to the right.
Here's a standing seam roof at the entrance to this house.
This is what we would use for the garage.
That would be where this yellow line, this yellow tape on the ground is.
Larry, why doesn't the existing house have a garage?
Oh, well, the existing house doesn't have a garage because in about 1975, the previous owner of this house subdivided into three additional lots,
one of which has the 8420, the one next door, which was then spun off as a flag lot, that is
that house, the basis of that house is the carriage house from 8410. So this house has
not had a garage for the last 50 years, 45 years. So one of the garages we are providing is to make
up for the fact that the garage was spun off. Correct. When we go on. So here's so that this
garage will pick up on the way the house looks visually. So it's tied into that house. And that's
that's that. So here again, here's the way we started out. And then after we met with neighbors
and took a look and we take the entire house out on the property, we realized that if we would move
this garage closer to the existing house and make this driveway come tight against here we can move
this garage away from the neighbor's property we could actually end up with really 30 to 40 feet
of space in here in which all these are existing trees here these are all new trees this is
existing some new trees that would be replanted here so that is the way the that's the we move
this away so our garage is actually farther away from the property line than the adjacent existing
two-story house. Here's just it gives you a sense of the space between the existing house over here
on the right and our house. Again this is some of the just the extent of landscape screening that
we've gone into here. This is what you'd this is the view of the existing house. This magnolia would
be relocated and moved over so basically there would be quite a bit of screening there. The
entire width of the house here is 20 feet wide, and they're 50 to 65 feet away from that. This
slide shows you from the railroad tracks, again, how far away we are from the existing houses. This
is the reverse view of what you just saw. That's 65 feet from the main portion of that house.
Over here, we're 133 feet from the house at 319 East Gravers, and almost a football field width
away, 145 feet away from the main body of that house. Now are they both protestants? They are
both protestants. Here's the view. This is the corner of our living room right here at this
tape on the ground. These are the trees that you look through. These are some of the trees.
These are the trees that you look through. These are some of the trees. We're going to put a new tree here as well. Here's a bit of that. And then we try to do a rendering to show what the house looks like from the adjacent property. But basically, there is no house there because of the trees. That's the view from the neighboring property.
We're going to put a new tree here.
there are other trees on the property we didn't include in the rendering, but those are where
the trees are. So just in summary, this was supported by the CHCA board by a nine to six
margin, supported by the committees. It fits into the pattern of development along the railroad
tracks cited to minimize visibility from the surrounding properties. It is not a property
that can be seen from any public way.
All views of the historic house and existing landscape
are then preserved by this strategy.
Stormwater has managed to protect neighbors.
And as Carl mentioned,
a lot of these properties have 85% or so open space,
but our new lot will be 92.5% open.
All right, so Larry, in conclusion,
uh you've worked hard or have you worked hard to try to find a plan that would be
as conforming as possible without having any adverse impact on any adjoining property
i just object to what he's doing is leading his witness
so i think i've already i think mr feinman i've already stated that we have
work with the house, you can see from the sight lines that the house is actually that this existing
element on the neighboring house here is as high as this end of our house. So basically,
they're looking over. This house is really not obstructing a lot of their view. And there's all
this tree screen between here. We've asked repeatedly to meet with both neighbors to discuss
landscape kind of treatment um they have not agreed to meet with us on those on those terms
they've they've wanted to offer to buy the property but that doesn't get us that's that's
not that's not what we're after this is our proposal which we believe is in the pattern
of development in chestnut hill on this block and in a reasonable development that doesn't
impact the neighbors so i i think i think he spelled it out pretty well mr thank you yes i
have nothing further than you can i just ask a couple questions if you would if i can absolutely
um may first of all just so the board is perfectly clear your proposal is to build a new house on
this ground plus two garages and i think that just calls for a yes or no answer
excuse me our proposal is to subdivide the property into two lots
lot one has the existing house Mr. Feynman we will have a garage on the existing house
on lot two we have so can I just interrupt you for one second
could you answer his question give it again two garages and one house is that correct
on the two lots yes okay so you're going to build two garages in one house as of now no
garages exist there and there is no house that exists now let me just ask you this
you might not like what could be done but as a matter of right as a matter of right
And this calls for a yes or no answer. You could you could build on this. You could subdivide and build on a lot. Is that correct? You wouldn't have to come before this board.
that's correct that's correct okay now as I understand what's going to happen and since
you've been involved with these people for a long time Mr. Pisano and his what Dr. Pisano and his
wife live in the house that you've shown the stone house maybe you can put that back up so
that the board can see that. They live in this beautiful stone house. Is that correct?
Yes. And what Mr. Pisano's plan is, is that as he's gotten older, he's come to the conclusion
that he doesn't need all of this house to live in isn't that correct yes and what
he wants to do is have you build what you've shown and i'm going to refer to it as a little bit
what you've shown, and I'm going to refer to it as a little bit different, not stone,
different
different.
but somewhat modern home, and the two garages, and he wants to move into the new home. Is that
correct? Yes. And what he wants to do further, just so I'm clear, is that he wants to sell
the big stone what i'm going to refer to as this lovely stone home he wants to sell that