Star six to unmute, Mr. Tom.
No, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Virtual audience. Any comments from the virtual audience?
There are no hands, Mr. Chair. Planning Commission.
My name is Ron Bednar. First name Ron, R-O-N. Last name Bednar, B-E-D-N-A-R. I'm with the City Planning Commission.
You swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Proceed, sir.
The property is indicated for neighborhood commercial mixed use on a city plan or adopted district plan recommends no change to the existing zoning and dislocation.
The applicant's hardship is not supported with evidence of unique fiscal circumstances that would prevent it from being in conformance with the landscape requirements of the code.
We have no record of a landscape waiver permit.
Therefore, we recommend the request for variance not be granted.
Thank you.
MI 2023, 001-327-6212-22 Market Street, I vote yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Thomas Holliman, my vote is yes.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you, thank you.
Number five, MI 2023 001 271 1400 South Edding Street.
Sherman Toppin is the attorney.
recommendation of support from the Tasker Morris Neighbors Association
good afternoon could you state your name please and spell for the court stenographer sir
oh yes my name is Sherman Thompson um I'm just is there Mr. Chairman just to let you know
um david orphanetes who is with the office of orphanages and toner may be in the gent in the
office to present this hearing um you want me to come back to it uh i don't is he not is he not
present yes he's present do i make him thank you please bring him on yes
Yes, Mr. Chairman, are you going to do this?
Yes. So our office submitted the appeal and is handling this matter. Mr. Topping will need the submission on behalf of our office.
Yes. So our office submitted the appeal and is handling this matter.
Mr. Toppin.
All right. Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court stenographer?
Certainly. David Orphanides, O-R-P-H-A-N-I-D-E-S.
Right. Do you swear a firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Could you identify your client in relationship to the property?
Certainly. My client is Crossover Properties 3 LLC, and they are the owner of the property.
All right. There's a recommendation of support for this in the Tasker Morris Neighbors Association. Our vice chair has just a few questions.
Certainly.
Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to wait the reading of the refusal and stipulate to with accuracy?
Yes, I do, Mr. Shahid.
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that are needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
Yes, I have, Mr. Shahid.
Thank you. Please proceed and share your screen.
Thank you.
Okay, hopefully everybody can see my screen and minimize some of these things here.
All right. Again, the property we are here for this afternoon is 1400 South Edding Street.
It's property located on the southwest corner of Reed and South Edding Street, just below Grace Ferry Avenue.
As you can see from the photograph here on the cover sheet of our exhibits that were submitted, it is an existing two-story structure.
The last zoning permit is for a residential dwelling unit on the second floor and a commercial unit on the ground floor.
You can see from the photograph, the ground floor is set up for a typical corner commercial operation that historically have existed in Center City, Philadelphia, going back hundreds of years.
and continue to exist throughout these neighborhoods.
However, I think this board has seen plenty of these cases come before them.
These ground floor commercial units embedded in these commercial
or in these residential neighborhoods just can't make it as commercial operations.
And applications have been submitted to L&I.
Appeals have been taken to the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
and variances have been granted to utilize these ground floor units as additional residential
dwelling units. In fact, in the immediate vicinity of this neighborhood, and we have copies of a map
and zoning archives in the materials that we have today, there are 12 properties in the nearby
vicinity of the subject property that either RSA 5 or CMX 1, like this property, this property is
zone CMX1 again, where variances have been granted by the zoning board for the use as a two-family dwelling.
The proposal that we're here for today is to, and you'll see in the photographs and the plans that I'll provide,
is to demolish the rear one-story portion of the building, to leave the full two-story remaining,
and on top of that existing two-story to erect a third floor, and upon that we will have a roof deck.
Again, the proposed use is for a two-family dwelling. There are three refusals.
One of them is that the roof deck pilot house needs anything, any portion of a pilot house that's more than five feet or 42 inches tall needs to be set back, not only the five feet of the deck setback, required deck setback from any street frontage, but an additional five feet.
because the property is only five feet, 10 inches wide.
And because we're a corner,
because we're a corner, we have two street frontages
and we have to be set back.
And because our pilot house is more than 10 feet,
we have to be set back at 10 foot,
total 10 feet from both street frontages.
And we have no problems making that
from the Edding Street frontage
where the property fronts, the narrower portion.
But because the property is pretty narrow
at only 15 feet, 10 inches wide,
We don't have enough width for the additional five feet on top of the five feet for the roof deck to set back the pilot house. And you can see that refusal. We're about two feet six and 15 sixteenths of an inch short. It's a minimus variance. And one that, again, as the chairman stated, it was variance along with the other two variances that were supported by the community group.
The other variance involves the required nine-foot rear yard depth in CMX1 when bounded by RSA5 properties.
As I indicated, we're taking that one-story portion off.
The existing two-story building is eight feet, eight inches from the rear property line.
There's also an alley beyond that that runs behind the properties parallel with South Ending Street on the block.
um so we're four inches short um the existing building and when you take off the one story
So we're four inches short.
the existing bill
portion at the rear is four inches short of the nine feet required we i guess could set back the
addition the third floor addition an additional four inches but that creates a both a construction
and a maintenance hardship and so we've just proposed the third floor at the same depth as
the two floors below, which again, leaves only eight feet, eight inches to the rear of the
property line. Again, a de minimis variance, and we feel it's a hardship and unnecessary to comply
with that. And then the other is the use variance. CMX1, when it's bounded by RSA5 properties,
I like to call it zoning TOFU. It takes on the residential characteristics of the properties
that abut it. Since the CMX1 property is abutted by RSA5 lots, only one residential dwelling unit
is allowed. You're allowed any number of commercial or non-residential uses at the property,
so long as none of them take up more than 2,000 square feet of gross floor area. However,
again, because we're bounded by RSA5, the limitation for this particular CMX1 property
is only one residential dwelling unit, so we have a variance that's necessary for the two.
Again, we have, we've gone through, we've mapped out other two family dwellings in the property
at tab six. These are all the properties that we're aware of that we pulled these zoning
permits for. There's probably more than this, but you can see that there were a couple C1s,
which is what CMX1 used to be, that are apparently granted as a matter of right before the current zoning code,
a number of CMX1s that were granted variances, and a number of RSA5s that were granted variances.
And we have all those zoning archives in our exhibit book, but I'm not going to go through all those.
Again, as indicated, our property is located in a residential neighborhood.
Here you have it clouded. You can see it's located at the corner of Reed and Edding Street.
And here's another picture from the north from the from with Gray's Ferry to our back.
And you can see it's all residential, having a commercial operation in this neighborhood, particularly with Gray's Ferry.
So located so close to it where you do have an abundance of commercial uses, the shopping centers that are there, the shopping center that's there and other commercial uses that are coming along.
long that either are being utilizing using utilizing that space there's no need for a
commercial operation at this location or in this neighborhood existing photographs we've already
showed you some of these and here I've clouded the one story portion to be removed here's the alley
to the rear to the west of our property that runs behind all the properties on our side of the 1400
block of South Edding Street that will remain the gate that's there is going to remain we're not
to touch it that gate's not part of this application because it's not on our property
and then additional views down reed street and you can see um all residential
across the street and down reed and then um down um down heading street
we don't have a height variance um other than the rear depth variance we do not have
a um dimensional variance then the rear depth in the pilot house the plans that were submitted to
L&I are included at tab 10. And again, you can see that we are simply removing the one-story
portion, takes up all of, goes to the rear, pretty much to the rear of the property or to the rear
of the property. We're now opening up with the demolition of that, all of this open area and
ground and rear yard area for use of the occupants of the property. And you can see here the roof
deck that set back the minimum five feet from each frontage on Edding and Reed Street, and then the
pilot house. We're permitted up to 125 square feet. It's because it's such a narrow building,
not doing a straight run up to the pilot house, which then necessitates of being wider or boxier,
more of a square, but we're substantially below. We've made it as small as possible. We're smaller
than what could be allowed as a matter of right in order to make it work, but again, it just
encroaches slightly into that additional five-foot setback requirement. We did send out a 14-303
notice for the community group meeting that was held on Tuesday, April 18th at 7 p.m. with the
coordinating RCO that was identified by the Planning Commission. Their certificate of mailing,
214 pieces of mail, went out to the list of addresses that were pulled from the Planning
commission's website we did post the property both frontages with the notice for today's hearing
and then again the letter of support from um from the community group uh is attached at tab 14 of
and then again the letter of support from um
our exhibits uh that letter dated april 18th from the task of morris neighborhood association
and with that um i would just have uh garrett lister who's my client representing a crossover
who is crossover properties 3 llc and representing that uh the ownership entity um to raise his hand
to be sworn in and identified
so he can adopt my statements.
Sir, could you state your name, please,
and spell for the court stenographer?
My name is Garrett Lister,
last name L-I-S-T-E-R.
Do you swear or affirm
to tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do, sir.
Proceed, counsel.
Sir, Garrett, did you hear the statements
that I made to the zoning board this afternoon?
Yes, I did.
And are they true and correct
to the best of your knowledge?
yes they are and would you adopt those statements as your own yes i would thank you very much
chairman we rest all right questions from the board
no mr thank you no mr chairman thank you no chair questions or comments from the virtual audience
i do not see any further hands mr chair any commission this is ron bednar city planning
the property is indicated for neighborhood commercial mixed use on a city plan or adopted
district plan recommends no change the existing zoning at this location applicants hardship is
not supported with evidence of unique physical circumstances or condition of the property that
would prevent it from being in conformance with the use requirements of the code therefore we
recommend the request of variance not be random. MI 2023-001-271-1400 South Edding Street, I vote yes.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes. Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes. Thank you, counsel. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman. That concludes my business. May be excused. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Have a
great day. All right. Number seven, MI 2023-002-336-251 Greenall Street. Alan Nocklipson is the
attorney. There's a letter of opposition from the Manny Young Neighborhood Council.
applicant has provided a petition and support signed by 18 neighbors
Mr. Nockamson he'll be rejoining as a panelist
Mr. Nockamson, how are you, sir?
Could you state your name, please?
Yes, Alan Nockamson.
Spell it, please, for the court stenographer.
A-L-A-N, last name is Nockamson, N-O-C-H-U-M-S-O-N.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Would you identify your client in relationship to the property?
Yes, my client is the owner of the property, 251 Greenog ST LLC, and their virtual audience is its member, Darren Hardiman.
So, talking to Hillary, this case will be resumed on Wednesday, October 18th, after an earth-moving plan has been submitted to the board and the planning commission.
The result of 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 applicant with the response from the applicant's record
would otherwise be closed. You're okay with that, right?
So we're going to hear the case and then we'll, we'll come back.
That's my understanding, Mr. Chair.
Right. And I understand that planning has asked to defer giving their position
to until they see the plan. Right.
That's my, that's my understanding, Mr. Chair.
Okay, so our, our vice chair has just a few questions.
In afternoon, counsel, do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that are needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
Yes, we have.
Thank you. Please proceed and show your screen.
Thank you.
all right so i'm here to present 251 greenock street uh as you can see this is well this will
be a single family home we hope uh with a front-loading garage uh and we're here uh
And we're here basically for the parking, I would believe.