and so and so yeah and the the street could be closed and then um the property of the in the
middle of what is at the moment the green off street would be become part of his property and
the other property on the other side of the street on power street and so we were just questioning
all of that and we never got clear answers on that and we didn't get the description from the
streets department all right thank you thank you mr hunter so are you for the project or against
the project we are as i'll let it says we're opposed to it all right thank you and mr chair
and i'll wait until everyone's yeah wait let's see if anyone else talks out is there anyone else in
the virtual audience yes sir rebecca froggett i've allowed them to speak hi could you state
your name is spelled please for the court stenographer yes rebecca frogett r-e-b-e-c-c-a
f-r-o-g-g-a-t-t do you swear for him to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth
yep are you a neighbor i am i live on granoff street okay are you for the project or against
it against the project okay could you sure in a short sentence tell me why okay um i'd like to
start by mentioning I never received a letter. I'm not sure what that letter was. The way I found
out about this construction was a sign all the way at the end of the street, which is fine because I
guess that's where the property is. Pretty much everybody on that petition that lives on Green
Off Street, three of those four people have a driveway. Only one person on the other side of
the street does not. So really they would be the people impacted by losing those. It's actually
three spots at the end of the street and there is really no sign saying that you cannot park there
um i'd like to mention too like this um cliff it's really a steep drop off it's not so much
a slope it's very much a drop off and i'm not sure how you could build something well i think i think
i think that's why we're going to do additional studies right or you could just skip it i don't
think we need a house built down there i think it's okay okay well okay thank you all right
Thank you, ma'am. Is there anyone else?
In the virtual audience.
Chair, we have
Darren Hardiman.
That's my client, Mr. Chair.
That's his client.
Do we allow him to speak again?
I mean, I think
you have something to say different than me.
Okay, sure.
Thank you for letting me back in. Just wanted to try to address some of the things that were said, and I'm sure that Alan's going to address some of those things as well.
With regard to the off-street parking, this came up in a meeting, and I'm glad that Ms. Froggett actually brought it back up that the two parking spaces at the end of the block are legal.
Well, because it's an open street, it is a throughway. So in order to access the property that is to be built, or in order to access my property in general,
those two cars would not be able to be there because they're technically in the middle of
the street. So that's not legal parking. Because it doesn't say no parking in the middle of the
street, doesn't mean you can. It doesn't say no parking in the middle of the street and a bunch
of streets in the city of Philadelphia, but you can't stop there and stop traffic. Aside from that,
with regard to the streets, we did have a meeting sometime back, and I'm sure that Alex or maybe
Even my architect, Adam DeCant, has the email that went out to John Hunter and his team.
And it was the same email with those two street proposals or proof from the streets department, because we've had that for some time now, that said that the street was open.
That didn't just come up the other day.
And with regards to L&I, we do apologize that L&I didn't pull out those refusals.
We do apologize that L&I didn't pull out those refusals, but that's nothing that we can do
but that's not
about that. We got those refusals back from L&I as soon as we could. I actually sent an email
really ripping L&I, but I send it always to the top to Mr. Pietro saying that we didn't have
these and it made us look disingenuous in our meeting. We have absolutely no reason to want
to come before the board without the board knowing fully what we were here for, having all the
refusals and not having to go back through this process again. With that, I conclude, and Alan,
I think he can probably finish up. Yeah, and really quickly, Mr. Chair, we've devoted a lot
of time for our presentation. I really appreciate it. I always try to be short and sweet, but
Mr. Hardiman, when you sent that petition or circulated that petition,
that was this weekend when we had the updated refusal.
so anyway you don't have to answer that but the other thing is the habitable space
um mr hunter brought it up again it's just really difficult when he keeps bringing up things that
we again we confirmed with with the city planning commission so which has nothing to do with with
with this variance uh request uh and then finally i would like to share my screen one more time
there mr hunter brought up the fact about ripco street that it doesn't matter it's not within the
affected area there are multiple addresses on here all ripco street they're all within the affected
area so when i asked mr hardiman to to canvas the neighborhood and get signatures in support of this
project i didn't just say randomly go get signatures i said go look at the petition look
I mean, look at the affected areas that the city believes is affected.
The 200 block of Ripka is one of those blocks.
So that's why Mr. Hardeman got a number of addresses on that block.
So I think that's, oh, and then all this stuff about like whether it can be built or not built.
A lot of this stuff deals with the geotech, deals with building permit issues.
If we're lucky enough to get past this in terms of the ZBA giving us a variance, we will have to address many of those issues at the building permit stage.
We're not going to get a building permit unless L&I feels comfortable that we're going to build a safe structure.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you.
This case will be resumed on Wednesday, October 18th, 2023.
Mr. Chair, Mr. Chair, Mr. Chair, this is Hillary.
So we didn't get through everyone in the audience.
There was still one more individual.
all okay that person has been allowed to speak mr chair hi could you state your name please
and spell for the court stenographer um my name is kevin smith i'm the uh president of
manioc neighborhood council okay do you swear or spell your name first for the court stenographer
kevin smith k-e-v-i-n-s-m-i-t-h all right do you swear or affirm tell the truth the whole truth
nothing but the truth? Yes, I do. Proceed. A couple of quick points. Mr. Nkomsen has conflated a lot
of the parking in Manioc. This is a dead-end street with no sort of geographical or circulation
connection to other parts of Manioc. So it's an isolated, it's its own thing. There's no
interaction with the parking issues in Manioc is a wider thing.
The street itself is row houses and twins.
The row houses have side driveways.
The twins do not have parking.
And so the discussion here is on front-loaded garages.
There are no front-loaded garages on this street.
um and i would also encourage the board to take a close look at the room or the foyer and the
the claim that it's habitable space require regardless of what uh were the discussions
with l and i uh it's a door leading to a stairway and coat closets etc and lastly um
So, Mr. Nacombson made an untrue statement about our notice.
We send an email to our membership, and we post it on our webpage.
And we did that.
People were not dependent on the webpage, and I believe the letter directed people to our webpage to find out information on the meeting, and it was posted there.
That's it.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much for calling in.
So, this case will resume on Wednesday, October 18, 2023, after an earth-moving plan has been submitted to the Board and the Planning Commission. The resumptive hearing will be limited to a discussion of the steep slope criteria.
The resumptive hearing will be limited to a discussion of the steep slope criteria in the zoning code
and for the Planning Commission to provide their recommendation on the application with a response from the applicant.
The record is otherwise closed.
Thank you, Mr. Nackensen.
Thank you. Have a great day.
MI 2023-001-328-4237 Lancaster Avenue.
Brandon Sabrin is the attorney.
good afternoon again mr mr saverin you've already been sworn just state your name for
the record brandon saverin could you identify your client a relationship to this property
yes um so i have two clients one is the islamic cultural preservation and information council
And the other is, in his individual capacity, their director, Abdulrahim Muhammad.
That's because the property consists of several parcels.
ICHPIC owns two of them.
Mr. Muhammad owns two of them.
We have a letter of support from HOPEPHL, and we also have a letter of support from
Councilmember Gauthier, which is a pretty long issue.
We'll probably read that into the record later.
Our vice chair has just a few questions.
sir. Good afternoon, Counselor. Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate
to its accuracy? I agree to waive the reading, Mr. Vice Chair, but there is one, I believe,
inaccuracy in the refusal, so I don't stipulate to its accuracy, and I can talk about that in a
minute. Understood. Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that is needed
to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing? Yes, I did. Thank you. Please
proceed and share your screen. Okay, thank you very much. I'm really going to try to keep my
comments brief because I do have a couple witnesses that I'd like to call. So the property in question
is on the 4200 block of Lancaster Avenue. It's outlined in the black box on the screen here in
Exhibit 5 in my binder. It consists of four parcels. As I mentioned, two of them are owned by
the organization that is developing these parcels, the Islamic Cultural Preservation
and Information Council. And two of them are owned by its director, Mr. Muhammad.
But they're going to be consolidated if you grant this approval today. And let me show you what
we're trying to build on these four parcels. So this is what I think is a magnificent design for
what is going to be a five-story building shown on your screen right now. And these are also in
my exhibit binder. The building is going to have ICPICS sort of community center museum and offices
on the ground floor, which will feature a cafe open to the public and four floors of apartments
above. And this property, once it's consolidated, consists of 7,200 square feet. So it's a large
property. And sort of my general theory of the case when we go to the refusals in a moment is
that for what my client is trying to do here, it doesn't fit within the sort of constraints of the
zoning code. But this is an appropriate space for a larger development in that it is right in the
center if if the board members know lancaster avenue in this sort of mantua belmont area this
is like main street and this is where we want um cultural uses and affordable apartments you know
on our main commercial thoroughfares not off on side streets where they disturb residents so this
is this is a great location for this project i'll really quickly show you our zoning plan
um it contains um some technical elevations as well as the site plan um basically the site plan
speaks to what we're going to do upstairs which is have 34 apartment units um and I'm going to
have the architect walk you through floor plans in a moment but um just know that we do have a
code compliant zoning plan submitted. And I will just go to the refusal and show you our letters
of support. And that will be the end of my remarks. So here's our refusal. It says, as it
always does in the capitalized text, what we are attempting to do on the property. So the first
The first paragraph is just describing the consolidation.
paragraph is just describing the consolidation the second
The second describes the project that I just stated, the cultural center with cafe and offices on the ground floor at the 34 apartments above.
And here are refusals. So working from top to bottom, we are permitted 21 dwelling units without any variances
because we are committing in our application to make four of the dwelling units
rentable, affordable to folks making 50% AMI or less adjusted for the number of individuals in
their household. And because we're making that commitment, we triggered the mixed income housing
bonus at the low income level. So that means that 21 of our 34 units are permitted by right,
but we still need a variance for 13 additional units. The second refusal is for height. This is
where I think the examiner may have erred. When you trigger the mixed income housing bonus in the
CMX2 district, you get an additional seven feet of height permitted. So rather than 38 feet,
I believe we're permitted 45 feet. But in any event, we're at 62. And the last refusal is for
bike parking. So in the shortest form I can offer, because I did give you a memo of law as
exhibit one in my binder, what are the hardships that sort of enable this? Well, CMX2 is a tough
designation, particularly when you don't have any bonuses, 38 feet height, unless you're going to
sort of do relatively low ceilings. You can only get three stories out of when you're talking about
a mixed-use building with higher ceilings like ours. And that's just not supportive of the cost
of this development, which is so beneficial, as you'll hear from the developer, the owner,
and all sorts of community members. What we're attempting to do here warrants a bigger investment
than the code allows. We financially and physically just can't make it work to have a cultural center
open to the community if we're constrained to a 38 feet building and, you know, less than 34
dwelling units. There is such a dire need for affordable housing and all of these units beyond
just the four that are going to be deed restricted to be affordable will be affordable to normal
working folks, which you'll hear about in a moment. We haven't committed to more than four
on the refusal because beyond four, there's no zoning implications, but the entire project is
geared towards affordability. And again, in a smaller envelope or with less units, it just
doesn't pencil out. We can't provide the uses we want to provide. And finally, on the bike parking,
you know, when you're dealing with a mixed use project and CMX2, you have to have covered bike
parking. That would have taken away space from the functions we want to provide on the ground
floor. The alternative would have been to maybe do something covered outside of the building,
but I have personally too much experience with L&I and community members where they don't want
that to eat up the open space outside the building. So we may install that later, but we're not
committing to it in this application, and that's why we have a refusal. And then I'll just show you
are a letter of support from the coordinating RCO, which is HOPEPHL. And then we have,
in my few years of doing this, what might be the most impressive roster of letters of support from
other organizations, and I won't read them, I'll just sort of name them, PHA, and you'll hear more
about PHA's potential involvement in a second. But you have beyond that, the mayoral administration,
the Director of Neighborhood Initiatives, Ms. Brown, offered a letter. You have a letter from
State Senator Vincent Hughes in support of the project, a letter from House Representative
Eamon Brown in support of the project, support by Jamie Gauthier, of course, the District
Councilwoman for this district, from Harris Steinberg, who is a design professor in leadership
at Drexel University, and also letters from several of the non-coordinating RCOs, which include West
Belmont Civic Association, the People's Emergency Center, and the Mill Creek Community Partnership.
So that's it for me. I promised I'd keep it short. What I'm going to do is pull up the
proposed floor plans and ask that the board promote John Arend, who is our architect,
to just give you some highlights off of those plans.
Is Mr. Arendt in the audience?
He's been about to speak.
Sir, could you state your name, please, and spell for the court stenographer?
Sure. This is John Arendt. That's J-O-H-N-A-R-E-N-D.
Sure. This is John Arendt. That's J-O-H-N-A-R-E-N.