They let the neighbors decide.
And since no one was there, they took a, they just said they couldn't reach an agreement.
Um, so the neighbors were notified.
Um, no one came.
Um, I use the same mailing company, proof of mailing, all that sort of stuff that's been
sent to the board.
um i know that my client did talk to some of the immediate neighbors um prior to that meeting who
were fine with the proposal um but again i don't have anything written from them and they didn't
come to the meeting so right now i would just say that we have you know these properties that have
been vacant for a long time they are you know um long and you know the kind of choices are to
subdivide and build two houses facing each road or you wind up again with kind of a wasteland back
on Harold with no one engaging in it. So while these are slightly undersized lots they are very
much in line with the existing lots on this block as shown by this list here and we haven't heard
any complaints from the neighbors about it either so I think with that I would just ask Alec to
raise his hand so he can adopt my testimony.
Do we see Alex?
It might be Terra, T-E-R-R-A, that's his company.
No, I see Alex in the audience.
Okay, great.
Hi, could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer?
Could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer?
Good morning to everybody.
Can you hear me?
I can hear you very well.
Just state your name and spell for the stenographer.
Can you see me?
I can see you too.
Okay, beautiful. Good morning. My name is Alexander Sachkov, A-L-E-K-S-A-N-D-R, Sachkov, S-A-C-H-K-O-V.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Counsel, please proceed.
All right, Alex, did you hear my testimony here today and believe it to be truthful and accurate?
Yes, I did.
And would you adopt it as your own?
And I just asked, have you talked to any of your neighbors prior to the hearing today?
uh so the neighbors to the right uh while you see the picture right now they i've been knowing them
for quite a bit i would say five six years and the neighbor on the right so they never had the
problem uh for me to build in the four homes so the neighbors on the left i'm not sure if they
even live in there i think it's a an empty house and the neighbor in the back of the left that's
the storage and then it's uh car garages all right thank you i just wanted to make sure that
the board knew that you you haven't been ignoring your neighbors yeah i pretty much know the whole
entire block over there okay thank you questions from the board uh yes did you say that they would
uh eventually be single-family homes correct correct thank you all the questions the ultimate
goal is to do two single-family homes on them so it would be four total single-family homes two
on huntington and two on harold okay so you're looking to do four four units on this so yeah
they would be single-family homes so what what will what's the and what width of the new lots
the width is compliant um because we're not changing the width there's two lots right now
and the width of the existing lots are not changing.
Let me just get to the plan.
Hold on one second.
So this is, I think this is 3.
24.33.
Yeah, so 15.3, and then that's not changing.
And then let me just get to the other one.
One second, sorry.
is 15 10
and so the subdivision i guess i'm a little confused so so we're we're subdividing these
two lots correct front to back so there's here's your goal is to put a lot on the on that back
street correct there would be two lots on the back street because right now we have they're
two separate lots right now we're just presenting them together it's two four three one and two
four three three and so each one of those lots would be subdivided so that there's one parcel
in the front and one parcel in the back and the hope would be to put a single family home on each
one of those lots so for a total four individual single family homes and so the only thing else
that fronts on that back block are garages is that what i'm hearing so on this side of it yes
there is rears of properties let me just get to the overhead view one second
um so if you see here these two properties have kind of um parking spaces in the back this is
vacant um and then when we go down over here we have some commercial buildings that
front on Harold. One second here. So you can see over here, you have some garages,
backyards, commercial buildings. And then when you go further down on Harold, though,
towards this, the other end of the street, that's where you have the smaller subdivided lots.
And that's where you have homes facing Harold. And as you can see, that end of the street isn't
cluttered with you know um cars and garbage and things like that um so you would have more people
interacting with this side of the street across the street you know what the uh the zoning
classifications are for those uh garage sure let me get to the zoning map one second i do have that
um it is rsa5 so this whole block is zoned rsa5 i believe all of those have been there
for a long time in grandfather day and however okay got it so hopefully
So hopefully as the neighborhood might continue developing, they would also be developed into single-family homes.
Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe not.
All right.
But it is known for single-family homes on that spot.
Got you. Thank you.
Other questions from the board?
Yes. So two of these houses, eventually, are going to front on this side,
side where there's the commercial use and then there's the other ones that will front on the
other street. Correct. So what are we going to do about any kind of rear yard space depth? How is
that going to work? So I guess we don't have plans yet for these houses. Alec isn't a large-scale
developer. He already lives in the neighborhood, is looking to just develop these parcels,
um one of which for him to live in uh so we you know didn't go through the expense of
developing like plans for this parcel until we knew we could subdivide it um but again if there
was any sort of issues in terms of creating enough um rear yard space or unoccupied area that would
require another zoning variance and we would be before the board again gotcha and they are quite
long lots, so it's 100 feet, so even the newly created lots would be about
50 feet each, which is a pretty normal-sized lot
in Fishtown. I mean, most people want some kind
of outdoor space, I mean, even if they aren't necessarily
using it too much.
They would need to be
code-compliant in terms of rear yard, or it would require another variance.
Gotcha. And then these houses that are going to face on the street where you have this commercial type use, the auto repair use. So basically those two houses would be wedged in between garages?
there's other um there's there's the rear of other um parcels here hold on one second okay
um so this this this block is kind of so hold on one second this this house right next to it
to the left that's residential and this is residential um where the red car where the
red car is residential the one where the black car is residential um this uh if you go even
further down here that's also residential we have another vacant lot which is zoned residential
it's just in the middle of the block there's some pre-existing commercial uses
kind of where you see these black buildings here so we have a separation right now where
we have rear rear yards of some single-family homes here then we have more single-family
homes here and there's a little bit of a commercial um use in between but those are also zoned
residential all right thank you questions or comments from our attorney
not at this time mr comments from the audience
questions or comments from the virtual audience i see no hands thank you planning commission
thank you chair bergman and good morning david effect with the city planning commission
chairman will testify for both properties the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the
rsa-5 residential single-family zoning at this location the city changed the zoning maps in old
richmond in 2017 in accordance with the comprehensive plan at that time these block faces had been
zoned single family since the 1970s the appellant proposes to create two undersized lots
one on huntington street and one on herald street the area of the lots on the 2400 block of east
huntington street range an area from approximately 750 square feet to 1 000 square feet the area of
the lots on the 2400 block of herald street range an area from approximately 490 square feet to just
over a thousand square feet so the appellant's proposed lot sizes match the character of each
block face the city planning commission recommends that the board grant a proposed dimensional
variances for lot area thank you so number five mi i'm going to vote them both together number five
mi 2024-005-740-2431 east huntington street and mi 2024-005-743-2433 east huntington street
I vote yes to both.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes to both.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes to both.
Tanetta Graham, my vote is yes to both.
Tanetta Graham, my vote is yes to both.
Tyone, my vote is yes to both.
Tyo Nguyen, my vote is yes to both.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes to both.
Counsel, please stay on. Thank you, by the way, but please stay on.
So, number eight, MI 2024, 005-750-4247 Westminster Avenue.
There's a recommendation of opposition from the West Belmont Civic Association.
vote was six in opposition. An applicant provided 23 form letters of support, seven from the block,
and there's also a letter of opposition received from a neighbor on the block.
Counsel, for the record, could you please state your name?
Sure, Jennifer Bazidlo, B-A-Z-Y-D-L-O.
And you've already been sworn. Could you please identify your client, the relationship to this
property? Sure. My clients are the owners of the property, Angela DiPrimo, DiPrimo Bucci and
Michael Bucci. Okay. Our vice chair has a few questions. Sure. Good afternoon, counsel. Do you
agree to waive the reading of the refusal or stipulate to its accuracy? I will agree to waive
the reading. I can't stipulate to the accuracy. I believe the refusals are correct, but some of
the language describing the project is incorrect at the top. Understood. We'll go through that as
go through your presentation um have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits as
needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing yes i did and then i also
submitted some supplemental documents on monday as well understood please proceed and chase me
sure give me one second let me get the correct presentation up here all right um one second i
seem to have put my notes in the wrong place okay so um i'm here today on behalf of angela
and michael buchi who are the owners of the property they also are a design build team
through their company gspace um so they are also the architects um on this project as well um
so i'm just going to go through our exhibits really quickly uh we have our refusal um so
I'll just address this now. It says use for change in use from household living single family
dwelling to two family dwelling unit. We already have a permitted two family dwelling and that's
not the refusal. The refusal we received is for the increase in occupied floor area for the two
units above the 10% allowed by the code. So I just want to make sure that we're clear that this is
not a change in use this is an increase in floor area for the use um and I'll go through that more
later but and then the second refusal is for um setback requirements above the second floor so
this is a third story addition and I'll show how this is kind of while it's technically correct
we have a lot larger than a 5.1 foot setback um all right so this is the deed I sent separately
um i'm just realizing now it's not in this packet i can pull it up for you in a second but
the board should have that it was sent in um tax compliance
please proceed okay sorry i didn't know there was a question um tax compliance again we only
have this year's taxes owed which aren't due yet um this is the letter we'll obviously be coming
to talk about neighbors. And then these are our letters of support from the block. All of these
letters are from the notification radius of people that were notified for the hearing.
Here you can see we have a zoning map. I think it's important to note that this area was remapped
recently within the past couple years. So when my clients purchased this property,
It was RM1, and that's why they have a permit for two dwelling units already, without a variance.
So here's the aerial view of our property.
It's right here.
These lots are in the process of being developed right now.
They're no longer vacant.
And here's our previous use permit for two family household dwellings.
That was issued in 2019.
and here is a construction permit because they did need to do some construction already on the
property as it wasn't structurally sound when they purchased it so there's another that so
photographs there's our zoning notice posted this is the existing front of the property
the existing rear and this is the condition of the property when my clients
purchased it in 20 a few years ago in 2018 and
a few years ago in 2018 and you can see some of the work they've done to just really secure
this property and make sure it had extensive water damage the roof was falling down
it was purchased at sheriff's sale and it was in a really neglected state at time it was purchased
this is the street we'll come back to some of these photos and these are some other nearby
third-story overbuilds and full third stories that are by right. This is a view from 43rd Street
into the block of Westminster. Ours is the second house that's in there right now. As you can see
on 43rd, that kind of backs up to it. We have a full third-story building and there's permits on
this currently vacant lot to also have a full three-story building up to maximum height as well.
this is another edition and we'll come back to that photo. Here is our plans. We're going to
talk a lot about these so I will be zooming in and talking about it. And then I think for right
now I just wanted to show you a rendering. This is our proposal with the rendering for the third
story edition and this is the difference of what it would look like if this was a buy write project
as opposed to what we're proposing. So let's talk a little bit more in detail now that you have an
overview of what's going on. So 4247 Westminster is a 1,280 square foot parcel. It has the existing
two-story structure on it right now. My clients purchased this in 2018. It was significantly,
as you saw in the pictures, water damaged. It had been vacant for quite a while and quite neglected.