left side, which is kind of the plan, which is the south side with a slight extension of the roof to
cover that window and then another pickup window on the north side plan north um uh for service
this is all to serve or the um the walk-up window is to serve the existing courtyard which extends
across the back of both of these buildings right now to the rear which is which is the left
thank you
is there antonio yeah do you want to bring your client on please there should be antonio gonzalez
Mr. Gonzales
Hello? Mr. Gonzales
please state your name and spell for the stenographer
if you would turn your video on please
please state your name and spell for this stenographer
antonio gonzalez a-n-t-o-n-i-o g-o-n-z-a-l-e-z do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the
whole truth nothing but the truth yes i do please proceed counsel um antonio have you heard my
testimony today do you believe it to be true and accurate and do you adopt it as your own
yes yes thank you questions from the board yes is there an elevation of the takeout window
the proposed takeout window are you talking to me or the attorney thank you either maybe the
architect architect whoever has the image to pull it up i don't know that there is an elevation in
this set yeah typically correct me if I'm wrong that would get provided for the building code
portion of this could be but yeah i mean you're i think we're trying to just understand
what the takeout window is going to look like from the exterior so to be clear and I can I
could describe it to you so the restaurant you would come out the back of the restaurant into
an enclosed outdoor area yard courtyard and the the two takeout windows are only accessible
by either going through the restaurants into that outdoor area because that's what's
yeah so currently they would be accessible through the rear of the property to your point
there is a courtyard back there with seating on the property um i believe antonio you can
you can access the space from inside 120 but that you'd have
You can access the space from inside 120, but that you'd have to kind of walk all the way through and then outside to go to the takeout window.
The idea is that for people who may want to sit outside but don't want to eat inside the restaurant, they can just approach the takeout window to be able to obtain food and either sit on the property, eat it or take it home.
um whatever's more that that part we get i think we're trying to figure out how do people access
this outdoor space courtyard because the plan you're showing has no fence or gate access
so i guess yeah yes is it only open to the folks that are going to the restaurant right yeah like
do you have to walk through the restaurant to access this takeout window antonio can you answer
that no actually you can come in through the bar which has like three entrances to come in
and it's a door in the rear and you can go to the yard or in the yard there's another door
that you can actually come from the pavement inside the back okay so there's the door that's
just not shown on this plane okay i think does this help
i'm just trying to get the rear photos i understand what you're asking
yeah i'm trying to can you point out in this photo what is the rear courtyard
is this go ahead it's on the side of um howard street rear howard street that's fountain street
Okay. So this is the front. Let me just see if I can go to the aerial. Because this is Howard on this side. Can you see that?
Howard's on this side of the street.
so there'll be an access from howard street into the yard where folks can go to the access the uh
the window takeout window correct okay and then for access to the takeout window or to the
restaurant no patrons will be coming through the entrance at 122 diamond street no okay
Okay. Other questions?
Yes. What are we doing about venting for the takeout restaurant?
I know it's not technically a zoning issue, but it is of concern.
Yeah. Venting for the restaurant will probably be through the sidewall of 122 over towards 120.
So not onto neighboring properties, but onto Mr. Gonzalez's own property.
Okay. Not through the roof.
We haven't explored that yet because we haven't gotten to CDs, but given that there's apartments above, I think it's unlikely that we'd want to go through the roof.
If you notice in the drawings, the 122 property extends further than the 120, so there's an opportunity to go through the sidewall and vent through the sidewall, but not over a street and not onto an adjoining property.
or vent to the sidewall and up above the roof and up above the roof of course right okay all
right thank you questions from our attorney hillary emerson
just to clarify is the proposed restaurant for the entire first floor or just the first floor
rear i was a little bit confused if it was covering the entire first floor because it
there was an empty space at the front that wasn't being used it's the ground floor rear of the
structure is what we have in our application okay and what about the front part of the ground floor
i believe that that's used uh antonio can correct me if i'm wrong i believe that's
used to access the four units above the property correct
okay yeah there's four multi-family units on the right so but there's like a large aside from the
hallway there's like a large space there in the front is that like common area mail room is that
what that is it's the stair tower it's circulation yeah okay stair tower in the drawing though is
actually to the to the left so there's no images anywhere of the first floor of this building
we have no interior photos of the first floor of this building
there is a handicap accessible bathroom in that space in the behind the
kitchen and that's that's for that's for the folks that are in the restaurant or is that for
the folks i guess the folks there in the yard is there a demo plan of the original apartment
to convert it to a takeout restaurant yes there is rachel there's a demo plan uh the top plan on
that drawing sheet's a demo plan okay let me share a screen again
drawing sheets a demo plan okay let me share screen again
Thank you.
right so that accessible bathroom powder room or whatever restroom is for oh it's for it's for uh
it's for staff
it's only for staff well it's an intended i mean i guess that's maybe a question for uh
mr gonzalez but it wasn't my understanding was that it would be for staff yes
the the existing restaurant already has bathrooms that are served uh at the 120 uh the 120 address
yeah yeah i see that
any more questions about that
questions or comments from the audience questions or comments from the virtual audience
planning commission there are no hands here
thank you chairman and good morning david fecto with the city planning commission
chairman and board members the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the rm1 residential
multi-family zoning at this location the city rezoned north square in 2021 in a community
requested map change at that time the zoning of this property was r was rm1 this property has a
documented residential history with no evidence of prior commercial use there is no unique physical
condition or circumstance of this property that would prevent it from being used in strict
conformity with the zoning code the city planning commission recommends the board deny the proposed
use variance for a takeout restaurant council do you want to make a quick comment on that
yeah um i would just mention that uh as we kind of discussed a little bit we're going to be
consolidating these properties so that they're going to be contiguous and work together there's
no ability in the current space to provide for takeout. And it's a heavily supported and heavily
used commercial restaurant and amenity that's supported by everybody on the block and in the
community. It's added a lot of value. So it just will allow for some additional support for the
restaurant and also to provide food and stuff for the neighborhood and the community as well. So
I do believe in the comprehensive plan. I have to bring it up. There was a discussion, I guess,
in the lower north plan envisioning transitioning obsolete land and residents a little bit more
residential commercial and industrial uses so um we are still keeping in context with the four
residential units above for rm1 but adding sort of the expansion of an existing business to help
help it you know continue to provide value in the community and and it's a modest adjustment we're
not converting the whole building we're not getting rid of the residential we're just adding
an extra component to help support the commercial use directly adjacent and they will become one
property just has taken us a while to get the survey and do the consolidation process as i'm
sure the board is aware so we were doing that in two phases all right thank you mi2024-005-661-122
diamond street i vote yes michael johnson my vote is yes cheryl gaston my vote is yes
tanetta graham my vote is yes i win my vote is yes ishmael shaheed my vote is yes thank you
Council. Thank you. Chair, if I could recommend a five-minute break for the board and staff. Thank
you. Okay, we're going to return. Case number five and six we will hear together. MI 2024-005-740-2431
east huntington street and number six mi 2024 005 743 24 2433 east huntington street jennifer
betzillo is the attorney um the old civic association did not have members at the
meeting to take a position and there's a letter of deferral from council member squilla
jennifer bazitlo has been promoted good morning council good morning hi could you please state
your name and spell for the stenographer and could you please put yourself on video
i i believe i have my video we see you now we see okay all right uh may state your name spell sure
it's jennifer bazitlo j-e-n-n-i-f-e-r last name is b as in boy a as an apple
Z as in zebra, Y, D as in David, L as in Larry, O as in Oscar.
Right.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
i do you do identify your client in relationship to the property sure my client is alex uh sakov
Do you identify your client in relationship to the property?
My client is...
who is the owner of both of the properties and our vice chair has just a few questions sure
good morning counsel do you agree to waive the read another refusal or stipulate to attack
yes both have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that's needed
to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing i did thank you counsel please
proceed and Sherry's. All right let me just move this over here. Okay so like I said we're here
today to talk about 2431 and 2433 East Huntington Street. I'm going to go through our exhibits but
the proposal is pretty much just to subdivide these two existing lots into four lots. So we
have here are refusals. The only refusals is for the size of the lots created. Here's the deed
showing the ownership of both properties. Let me get to the second one. There's the second one.
And that there is on 3-1, there's only the taxes from this year owed that are not due yet. And on
three three there's actually um an overpayment um so we're good on the taxes um the rco letter
will come back to the rco meeting but basically we sent out all the notifications and no one came
to the meeting which is why there's no opinion from either the rco or the uh councilman's office
here's our zoning map uh that shows where we're located here in an rsa 5 district by a park
And this is also, this IRMX is a large apartment complex, which we'll show later.
Here you can see the two lots and basically how they are now.
They've been vacant for quite some time.
There's a little bit wider view.
We'll come back to this, but this is a list of all of the properties that are in like this block of housing.
So on this block face on Huntington and this block face on Harold that are under the 960 square feet requirement.
These are our postings front and back on both properties.
And there's the property from the ground from Huntington Street.
And there's the property from the ground on Harold Street, surrounding area on Huntington Street and across.
And then we'll come back to these ones on Harold Street.
But I would just like to point out that, you know, on this street, we have an auto body garage, a lot of garages and not a lot of on this end of the street houses facing there right now.
and then these are our subdivision plans which basically showed that we're taking these two
existing lots and cutting them in half equally so that one would be facing there would be two
lots instead of just two large lots there would be four lots two of them facing Huntington
and two of them facing Harold so let me just go back and start the my primary case here so
So what exists now are these two vacant parcels. They've been vacant for a while. 3-1 right now is 1,583 square feet, and 3-3 is 1,533 square feet.
So we have some pretty large street-to-street lots right here, and our proposal would be to divide them in half.
So for 3-1, that would make each lot a little under 792 square feet, and for 3-3, it would make each lot about 766.5 square feet.
So these lots, if they were subdivided by right, would need to be 960 square feet.
So our proposed lots are smaller than required by about 17 to 20 percent. However, what I'm going
to discuss is that this size lot is actually much more, the smaller lots are much more in line with
the other parcels on this block um than having these large um you know over 1500 square foot
lots um and sub uh so let me go to the plans again I just want to show you those plans
and so here you can see this is where the one lot would be subdivided and then
this is where the other lot would be subdivided um so let me go to this list
So let me go to this list. So I did an evaluation of all of the properties just on these two block
so i did an evaluation of all the properties
faces. So basically the properties that are located in between Huntington and Harold Street
in this block. And we have a total of 32 parcels on this block. And of those 19 are under 960
square feet um it ranges from um about 462 square feet to 958 square feet with a lot of them being
right around the same size lot as we're proposing in that mid seven like 760 um to 800 square foot
range um that's kind of at the bigger end of these smaller lots honestly um of the six there's six
other parcels that are um street to street on this block only three of them are single family
we have another vacant lot we have a six unit apartment building and then we have that one
story large commercial building that's an auto centric business auto repair um
so the plan would eventually be to build a single family home on each of these lots
Alex is going to eventually live in one of those homes.
But again, right now we're just proposing the subdivision.
And if those houses, when they went to get billed, needed any further variances, we would obviously be coming back.
So why do we want to subdivide them?
First and foremost, like I said, these are really long lots.
and when you look at the aerial view of the area you can see here that you're if you build a normal
size house on these lots you wind up basically with nothing along harold street um and harold
street actually suffers for this i i don't live in this area anymore but i lived uh very near to
this property for a long time and if you look at this end of harold street kind of from the auto
body shop, these are the commercial buildings here, all the way down, and you go to the photos,
one second here, there's not really any eyes on this street, and it suffers for it.
When you look here, you can see that, you know, you have garages, you have auto repair,
and it faces a park. And the lack of interaction on this block honestly causes problems with
with vagrancy, dumping, that sort of thing.
By subdividing these parcels, we could have two more single family homes with families
facing this end of the block and engaging with the block in a way that, you know, someone's
backyard or garage wouldn't provide.
So besides being able to build a house on a lot much closer to that smaller lot size
that, you know, has been changed to have reasonable size homes on it.
We're also adding the added benefit of putting more eyes on the street on this side of Harold Street
or this end of Harold Street with neighbors that will actually be able to engage with the property.
So we did go to the RCO meeting.
I sent out 95 letters with certified mailing and no one came.
Um, so, uh, I talked to the person who was the board member who was there.
Um, Orca's policy is basically the board doesn't decide.