In front of 50, 23 and 25.
This was out there the other day.
All right.
Y'all cases everywhere.
All right.
Thank you for calling in.
We do appreciate your input.
Is there anyone else in the virtual audience?
Chair, I see the other heads up at this time.
Counsel, do you want to respond?
Yes, Commissioner, I can't really speak to the shooting on the block.
I can speak to the security concerns.
Those concerns were discussed in the meeting.
We did agree to have a security camera and to let the block have access to the camera.
I have also provided a documentation which shows that this house was legally zoned and changed over to a duplex back in 1988.
It is our intention to have apartments that are affordable for people in the neighborhood.
One of the other concerns of the community was to empty out the apartment and screen and vet the tenants closely so that we could have good tenants and individuals who will keep the property up and keep the area clean.
Thank you very much.
Cleaning Commission.
This is Ron Bednar, City Planning.
property is indicated for residential use on the city plan
our adopted district plan recommends no change to existing residential single family zoning at
this location the applicant's hardship is not supported with evidence of unique physical
circumstances or condition of the property that were prevented from being used in conformity with
the code it's a single family block comprised of small two-story rows with front porches we
recommend the request of advantage not be ran. I'm going to take this back to the board and take
it to an executive session and we'll have a conversation in an executive session and we'll
vote next Wednesday at 2 p.m. The case is closed. Can I say one more thing please? Sure. You said
sure yeah go ahead oh um this property uh does have a a hardship in our opinion it is already
converted um to a duplex uh it has been used as a duplex for many many years and uh it would be
a difficult well not difficult um it would be uh in position and uh difficult to convert it back to
a single family and that it already has two systems, two meters, two entries, etc.
Okay, thank you. Thank you for your input. We will vote on this next Wednesday at 2 p.m.
We will vote on this next Wednesday at 2 p.m.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Number 10, MI 2022-001-768-1625 North 18th Street.
Sherman Toppin is the attorney.
letter of support
United Neighbors Alliance
Civic Association
provisos
being negotiated.
Chair, Mr. Toppin is
coming back in as a panelist now.
Thank you.
Darlene, you can go out
thank you yeah there's everybody it's happened could you state your name please and spell it
for the court reporter yes my name is sherman toppen s-h-e-r-m-a-n-t-o-p-p-i-n address
1500 jfk boulevard suite 800 right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and
nothing but the truth i do do you identify your client please in the relationship to the property
Yes, my client is Gavi Atavison. He is the managing member of the LLC, H&M Development, LLC.
And our vice chair has just a few questions for you, sir.
Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to weigh the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Sherman?
Sherman, you want, we can't hear you.
Sherman.
You went dead on us.
Can you hear me?
Now we can.
Now we can.
Okay, sorry.
There is one inaccuracy on the refusal.
It's a type of graphical error by the examiner.
If you look under the refusal list, when you go to it, there's indication of rude feck.
It should be roof deck.
But that's the only thing that I notice that is inaccurate in connection with that refusal.
Okay, thank you.
Have you emailed all the exhibits and documents that are needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
I did.
Thank you. Please proceed and share the screen.
All right. You should be looking at my screen at this time.
And it's H&M Development is the owner of the property, the subject property we use as an identifier, 1625 North 18th Street.
It's actually five lots assembled with this one address.
And so I'll begin to proceed through my exhibits list.
My typical exhibit list is here.
I've got some additional things because of questions that the community had.
And I think it'll be insightful to the board to see some of the other exhibits that we've got.
So here's the refusal.
So the refusal, we have three refusals that were triggered by the plans of this property.
One, of course, multifamily.
Two, the dimensional.
38 feet was required. We are seeking to build the structure to 62 feet, and we'll explain why and
show it to you. And the third is the roof deck access features. The pilot houses, the way they're
designed with the interior stairwells, actually abut the lineup with the actual structure, the
exterior of the property. And I'll show you where that is. So we're looking for relief from the
five-foot required setback for the roof deck, we are seeking to build the building taller than
usual to add a floor to accommodate a parking garage underneath the units that we're seeking
here, the 20 units that we're seeking, and of course, then multifamily use. Notably, on the
refusal previously at this very same site there in 1912, going back 12-11-1944, the same, this
a ZBA board has granted three-unit family household living for these various lots. So if that were to
hold true to today, there could already be 15 lots, 15 properties, 15 units built on this very same
site. Today we're asking for 20, and to offset the additional lots is where we've added the
parking garage. So let's go through my package a little further. The second exhibit, Exhibit 2,
is the deed to the property showing H&M Development LLC. Third exhibit is the application
which was provided by previous counsel, Mr. Nockamson, and he has indicated that. He's
completed that. Mr. Nockamson's office also did the project information form which we're
presenting here as exhibit four. Exhibit five will bring us closer to the subject property. So this is
Exhibit 5 will bring us closer to the subject property. So this is an aerial of the lot itself. As you can see, it's indicated by a subject lot with that blue tent there in the middle.
The Alliance for Progress Charter School occupies about basically 25% of the northern part of the street.
The subject lot is bordered by Cecil B. Moore up top here, and below you have West Oxford, and then you have Bouvier on one end and Gratzel on the other side.
And so North 18th runs between. And on North 18th Street, the 1600 block of North 18th Street, as you can see from this aerial, Meade School occupies almost the entire, I guess, western side of North 18th Street.
And then there's a vacant lot. And the Alliance for Progress Charter School occupies the northern quarter of the block.
Then there's the subject lot. And then here, and we'll see later and closer in pictures below, there's an eight unit building here. And then there's another, sorry, a four and four, two, eight units of housing, multifamily housing, immediately adjacent to the subject lot.
And then there are five single-family homes. So there's only five single-families individual homes there, and the rest of the block is institutional use and, of course, multifamily.
So given the math of that, we have the composition of the block that's pretty much 60% schools, 20% vacant, 10% multifamily, and 10% single-family.
And as we go down further through my exhibits, we are seeking one variance to go to the height of 62 feet. This image that you see over the vacant lot shows where the height line would be.
The height line is consistent and matches. Well, it's taller, slightly so, to the Alliance for Progress Charter School, but it's equivalent at height to the Meade School, the middle section of the Meade School, and immediately across the Meade School, it's just one floor less.
So, there's four floors here, and that other floor makes it the same height as the Meade School on the same street.
And if you look beyond, you see buildings on Cecil B. Moore at the same height as well.
So, further down in my exhibits, the subject, this is an aerial of the subject property from the top.
And you can see that the depth of the property, the subject development that we're seeking today, will match the depth of the existing four-unit multifamily property immediately adjacent, and it will land right there on the other side of the parking lot of the Alliance for Progress Charged School.
so we always talk about what's what's how the block and how this neighborhood has developed
over time and in an area of view from 2011 will show that in in this particular area the subject
lot was vacant even back then in fact the subject line has been vacant for over 20 years and these
every site that you see with a red square has been developed with multi-families and specifically
this big one up top has been developed with multifamily of over 20 units. So again, right
adjacent in the immediate sideline is a property that we actually saw further up as a completed
project. Here you can see the development, the infill development has all been 20 units plus,
20 units plus, same type of height, multifamily on the end here and all the infill, a multifamily
in this particular block okay so that goes back to that exhibit um and i want to show
okay so this is what the the actual site looks like at ground level you can see the
the four unit apartment building to the immediate adjacent on the northern side
Now, property is zoned RSA 5, one sliver away from where at the CMX 2, we would be able to do this particular development and not need and have multifamily use just one lot in front of us.
So, we're not really changing, going too far afoot from where the existing zoning map already shows uses for multifamily.
So again, so here we are with the, we're moving into the plans now. This is our exhibit. Let's see, it's our, our plans is our exhibit 12. Here, you will see that the way this is designed is strategic to appear as a townhouse, really.
So they've designed it so that there's the mix of materials here with the balconies set back and the red brick matching the existing housing stock that has red brick fronts.
And at the level of four, there's a cornice at the top of the fourth floor, which would match the same roof line as the adjacent building.
which would match the same roof line as the adjacent building,
this four-unit building next to it.
And the fifth floor will have a different material, a darker material,
sort of offsetting that it's a little taller.
So this area that we're seeking, this extra floor that we're seeking
to go from the at-right 38 feet to 62 feet will have a different material
and giving a little bit, masking a little bit the taller nature of the building.
And going down the side profile facing the Alliance for Progress Charter Schools parking lot is this appearance.
And again, we'll have a security fence to make sure that the children don't have some safety away from the building itself.
On the other side of the building, this is the side of the building that faces the four-unit multifamily.
So in that one curb cut that we'll see later on, the cars will come into the parking garage here, and trash will be removed at the front.
This front entrance is where commercial off-street trash service will be provided.
So trash is not an issue for this particular building.
It'll be private.
It'll be off-street.
And parking will occupy the bottom floor of the building.
And this is the rare elevation view.
So looking down at the building, here is North 18th Street on the right side of your viewing.
Cars will enter here and go inside of the parking lot underneath.
As you can see on our second refusal, we're seeking relief as to the roof deck, but it's really the pilot houses that have triggered that.
The roof deck will be sort of centered in the middle of the roof, but the pilot houses, as you can see, lines up on the edge on both sides.
This is because of the design of the stairway inside. So this is so, but when you come up the pilot house, you will enter into the gated and secured roof deck area. Both pilot houses will create, will have that same opportunity.
So that's why it's this section right here that we are seeking the five-foot relief and this section here to maximize the size of the roof deck without having to make it smaller.
But yet it is a gated and secure area on top there.
So the first floor of the building, as you enter from the 18th Street, is on the right-hand side.
As you come in on 18th Street, you have eight units of parking inside the building with one van handicap accessible parking space, and you have one off-street outside parking.
That gives us the nine off-street parking spaces that we indicate on the refusal.
And again, you see the trash area, trash collection area for the tenants.
They will use this area.
We also have, obviously, bikes, a bike room to accommodate that use in the building as well.
And there's an amenity room here that could be also, when we met with the community, and we'll talk about that later, we did talk about how the community can benefit from there being this amenity room where there can be functions that can benefit the school if they had a desire to do so.
But we'll talk about the RCO and the meeting we had with them in a bit.
as you move up the four floors the all four floors have the same um appearance as you come
up to the top stairs there's five units on every floor so there's five ten fifteen twenty units as
you go up and there are each of the units i'll make this a little bigger to see a little bit
more of of what the layout looks like so there's a there's two there's two um two bedroom one three
and one three-bedroom, three two-bedroom, and one one-bedroom on each of these, on each of the
floors. Okay, hold on, let me go back. There we are. Okay, so, and the sizes of that. So here,
this is the two, this is a two-unit, this is a, sorry, three-bedroom unit here. The unit G,
it's 1,100 square foot, 1,104 square foot. All of the three bedrooms will have that. The two
bedrooms are around the corner here. So there's three of them. One is 681 square foot, 772 square
foot, and 970 square foot. So these are good sizes. And here you have 600 square foot for the
one bedroom that's in the front. So that's how each of the four floors are laid out.
I have a couple other pages of schematic unit plans laying out the layout of each of these,
which are pretty straightforward again we're we're envisioning a mix of materials breaking
up the red brick with with different composite materials to make the building more interesting
to look at just like the alliance for progress charter school which is right next which is right
on the other side of it so going into our zoning procedures here we did get the zoning notice
our zoning procedures here. We did get the zoning notice. This is a continued, this hearing is a
this is a
continuation from the previous hearing. We posted the ZVA notice on the property. Here it is on the
gate of the property. We have postings of the ZVA notice hearing. And we did send out to the
community members this notice of this public meeting for an RCO to meet with the community
groups that are in the near neighbors. We have 105 letters went out to these neighbors in the
affected area. These are the addresses of these. So we'll sort of move down through that.
And our certificate of mailing, you can see 105 letters did go out to the neighbors.
And this is just verification that we did have a community meeting. And in that community meeting,
We had a lot of discussion about the property. There is a letter of support that's there, but I did want to bring some attention to one of the persons at the community meeting that presented questions about the project was the Alliance for Progress Charged School.
There was an interest that the school had in this very lot to do.
I think they wanted to do a playground or have some other use.
And we had to clarify in the meeting that this particular property was purchased on the open market.
It was listed for sale, wide open on the market.
It was sold for $451,000 for these lots.
And so there was no inside dealing or there was no private sale of this.
but that anyone could have purchased it when it was on the market and or my client was the one
that did buy it and went through this process there was questions about whether or not and how
multi-family would work within the building so this is a picture of the multi-family unit the