clearance, showing totals of zero. The property is located at the corner of
Tyson and Battersby in the Mayfair section of the city. As you can see from
side shot of the building the dog grooming business occupied the basement level and had a storefront
type entry again another photo the inside needs some substantial renovation for the business
office but that will occur after approvals are granted the front of the house you'll see 3001 is
the address there's a common entry for the two apartments and then inside there's separate
dedicated entries there is commercial there is trash storage area at the front of the property
in a fenced-in enclosure. Here's the two reference parking spots behind the home in the common
driveway. And just to show, there are three separate meters for the three separate units.
And then we have street views, Tyson facing Roosevelt Boulevard, Tyson facing eastbound,
Battersby facing south, and Battersby facing north. Then we have the zoning permits that I
referenced earlier the zoning map it's rsa5 and just a overhead view mayfair civic and the rec
center are to the north roosevelt boulevard is out here to the left so with regard to the mayfair
letter um excuse me mr ward but if i could just tell the board that we did receive the um letter
it wasn't sent directly to me but mr ward did forward it to me this afternoon i just sent the
board the requested provisos none of which i believe are enforceable right yeah that's what
i was asking we we understand that but
We understand that, but the vote was 8-0, unanimously not opposed.
This is Mayfair's typical,
they're more or less requests of the applicant.
Understood.
I understand. Okay. I do have Mr. Chen in the room.
I asked him to raise his hand when we started.
So if the chair needs me to have him verify and adopt,
that would be fine if not we can stipulate to that if we're willing to stipulate we will stipulate uh
you being an officer of court that your client would have adopted your testimony
that is correct thank you any questions from the board no mr chairman no
anyone else would like to testify in this case if so please raise your hand
no one else
hearing none there's no hands at this time chair thank you planning commission
good afternoon david effecto city planning commission mr chairman members of the board
the comprehensive plan recommends no change in the residential single family zoning at this location
there is documented use of a single family home with a business dating to at least 1948
at various times commercial activity seems to have been continued then discontinued
we recommend the board grant the requested use variances thank you very much mi 2021-003
111 3001 tyson avenue my vote is yes professor plaza yes thomas halliman my vote is yes
James Snell my vote is yes thank you thank you very much thank you number five on our list MI
2021-003194 814 South Front Street Mr. Steve Bertil is the attorney of record
Queen Village Neighbors Association sent a letter of opposition I don't know if we have received
the letter yet from councilman Squilla's office. Mr. Bertil is coming back in as a panelist now,
Chair. Mr. Bertil, please identify yourself and I'll swear you in. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.
Steve Bertil, B-E-R-T-I-L, Claire Harrison Harvey in Brandsburg, Philadelphia PA, excuse me,
1835 Market Street, Philadelphia PA 19103 on behalf of the applicant.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Thank you. Mr. Plaza has a few questions for you.
Mr. Bertil, do you agree to waive the reading of its refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
I can't agree to the, I can't stipulate to the accuracy of the refusal. We have three refusals.
One of them is incorrectly applied. And so I have to, for the record, bring that to the board's attention.
okay and have you uh emailed an exhibit packet with the required documents proof of ownership
proof of tax compliance copy of the refusal or referral photos and plans five days prior to this
hearing uh yes it's all the above okay and have you uh met with the rco and have a letter yes
so both okay um please proceed thank you um i just want to share my screen
okay uh good afternoon again um members of the board mr chair um as i stated my name is steve
bertill i'm here on behalf of the applicants for this 814 south front street um the applicants are
the owners, John and Bernadette Shad. I'm starting with the refusal here just to highlight why I
couldn't stipulate to the accuracy of the refusal. There are three written refusals on our notice,
which should be up on the screen now. Just want to verify that you can see that.
Yes, we can. Yes. As you'll see, what we're here seeking is the legalization of existing
roof deck on a property that was on the property years before the applicant acquired and moved
into the property in 2019. The property in question, or the roof deck in question, I should
say, was upon application to legalize it, we were given three refusals, two of which are due to the
Two of which are due to the front, the setback and the height increase that the roof deck creates.
the front, the setback and the height of
And the third one is stated as the total height due to the front setback of a pergola that's on the roof deck.
The problem here is that this third refusal, the dimensional restrictions that created the refusal are for roof deck access structures and roof decks only.
And they don't apply to anything else outside of roof decks and roof decks access structures. And they certainly don't apply to pergolas, which have their own dimensional restrictions, but just not these.
And so therefore, today, what's actually the actual refusals that are legitimate that are before the board are the first two.
Now, as I think the board knows, pergolas do have dimensional restrictions that are assessed at a building permit level, which we're going to have to go through because we're legalizing the entire deck.
But for the purposes of zoning, the only refusals that are actually legitimate are the first two regarding the roof deck.
So I just wanted to clarify that before I got into my principal presentation.
I didn't want the board going through the individual sections, but if need be, I can do that later on if the board thinks it's necessary.
Okay. So as I stated, we are here for 814 South Front Street. This is a single family home zone
that's RSA 5, occupied by John and his wife, Bernadette. They acquired and purchased and
moved into the home in 2019. It's situated here, as you can see highlighted, fronting on Front
Street between Catherine and Queen Street. The property in question shares a common parking lot
with a few other properties in the rear. Here's an aerial so you get a sense of
the sort of block cluster. The property in question is here.
And again, so you can just get to see this blank area here is a rear parking lot that's shared by
all these properties. The application here is fairly simple. There's a deck that's been on the
property since 2009 at the earliest of records that I could find my 10 years prior to the
applicant's purchase of the property. They weren't aware at the time of purchasing that there was any
issues with the legalization of the deck or the deck was done without any zoning um so they
purchased the property and as anyone would do started to enjoy the deck that they have um and
in the attempts to make you know to to make it their own they did add um a pergola for shade
on the top of the deck um about in 2020 about in the spring of 2020 um and the deck and the
pergola has been in existence all this time. Just so you get a sense of what we're talking about
here, let me just jump to, for the sake of time, photos. This is the existing property from the
street level. As you can see, that's the deck in the front pergola. This is the property from the
rear you can see that there's a parking uh like the parking lot on the on the ground level again
you can see the rear deck the deck itself is actually bi-level um the upper deck is about
30 feet excuse me the lower deck is about 30 feet off the ground and upper deck is about 34
feet off the ground here's some shots from on the deck so you can kind of see this is not something
that was shabbily done. As I stated, it's the deck has been there for 10 years. The pergola
has been there for almost two years. But again, the pergola itself is not subject to this zoning
review, but it will be subject just like the entire deck will be to building review.
Here's another shot from, so you get a sense from the upper deck, what it looks like.
and so essentially we're just trying to legalize this deck the refusals um in this area there is
an overlay um that requires an eight foot setback for the uh for the for the roof decks which
obviously is um not the case here this goes all the way to the front end of the roof
um and the roof deck access structure um because it's on the lower deck increases the height of
because it's on the lower deck, increases the height of the building by about one foot and three inches.
the building by about one foot.
And so essentially the hardship here is that this deck was in existence when they acquired it.
They didn't create the zoning issue with the deck.
It was here and they just want to continue using it and to legalize it properly.
They weren't even aware that it was an issue until L&I issued a notice of violation for the existence of the debt.
And that's when they, one, started investigating to confirm whether there was ever building permits or zoning permits for the debt back in 2009.
That took some time because we had to go through right to no request and establishing ownership.
You know, a lot of sort of procedural red tape with LNI, it needs to confirm that there wasn't any record of it actually being approved and violations were legitimate before applying for a new permit and trying to go through this process, because obviously this is something that's costly.
Once they went through that process and wasn't able to confirm one way or another, they just erred on the side of caution and apply for the permit and obtain these variances, excuse me, obtain the refusals.
And just for the record, here are photographs of the deck previous to ownership. Excuse me. That's current. Sorry. Here's photographs of the deck previous to our ownership. That's in 2019, 2017, as you can see from the screen graphs, 2015, 2011.
2009. And it may go back further than that, but that's just as far back as Google would go.
And so we did meet with the community group, the Queen Village Neighbors Association.
We did receive a letter of support in regards to the roof deck. There were concerns from some
board members regarding the structural integrity of the pergola. Now, we did inform them that the
pergola itself actually is not subject to any zoning approval right now. It will be subject
to building approval, but nonetheless, we agreed to a proviso, or we told them we're agreeing to
a proviso that will provide a structural integrity report directly to QVNA. It is something that
we'll have to provide to the city during the building review phase. We're going to have to
do it for the whole deck, frankly. But we're going to have to also do it as part of that,
the pergola is included. But we agreed, we stated that we will provide that report directly to QVNA
as well to reassure them of the structural integrity of the deck and the pergola that's
there, even though it's not actually subject to the zoning approval. In addition to that,
We did, because as I stated earlier, this property shares, is sort of an enclave of properties that share a parking lot in a sort of a common area parking lot.
And as such, we thought it was important to go and speak to the immediate neighbors in the area, let them know, even though they're all aware of the deck and, you know, for years and no one of the immediate neighbors had any issues.
um went to spoke to the neighbors informed them that it wasn't in fact properly approved by the
city um and that we were going through various requests and john and bernadette um was able
um to get uh signatures of support um by you know all the near neighbors but most importantly i
think by everyone who shares that um parking lot um with them so literally the directly affected
properties um when it comes to this deck in terms of like whose roof you can see when you're up
there um and things of that nature um in terms of air light and and quality of life all of those
all of those property owners are in support as you can see um up and down queen lane excuse me
queen street and front street um and some catherine um there's a second page of that
um and just so you can get an idea spatially of where they are you can see again this is the
property our properties in blue and all the adjacent properties that share the property
the parking lot here with us are in support um the properties here in support you may notice
that there's one property here that's not in support she or excuse me that you don't see a
dot on it's not because she's not in support this is an elderly um neighbor that john and
John and Bernadette helps out who's in the 90s she's just having health issues um and so they
Bernadette helps out who's in the 90s.
She's just having health issues.
And so they didn't.
didn't think it was kind of like appropriate to bother her with this um and then there was one
other property owner who's traveling but other than that all the adjacent property owners are
on board and in support um and as you'll see from Queen Village Neighbors Association's letter
they're generally in support um there they had concerns regarding the pergola which again
IS NOT SUBJECT TO ZONING APPROVAL ON ITS OWN, BUT IT WILL BE SUBJECT TO BUILDING APPROVAL,
AND WE ARE AGREEING TO A PROVISO THAT'S SAYING THAT WE'LL PROVIDE THE STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY
REPORT DIRECTLY TO QVMA AT THE TIME OF, ACTUALLY BEFORE SUBMISSION TO THE BUILDING PERMIT APPROVAL
PROCESS. AND SO WITH THAT, UNLESS THE BOARD HAS ANY QUESTIONS FOR ME, I HAVE JOHN SHAD
here who can raise his hand and adopt and affirm my testimony um if the uh if the um administration
could recognize him mr shad you can unmute yourself and wait for the chair good afternoon
sir please spell your first and last name and i'll swear you in
john j-o-h-n shad s-c-h-a-d do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing
but the truth i do thank you thank you mr chair uh john did you hear the testimony that i provided
to the board this afternoon i did do you uh affirm the truth for that testimony and adopt it as your
And is there anything that you feel like you need to add to that testimony?
I do not, but I am open to questions.
Thank you very much, John.
Any questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
Would anyone else like to testify in this case?
If so, please raise your hand.
I see no hands, Chair.
Thank you.
Planning Commission. Good afternoon, David Fecto, City Planning Commission. Mr. Chairman,
members of the board, the comprehensive plan recommends no change in the single family zoning
at this location. This appears to be a request to legalize a roof deck that was built without
benefit of permit. We were going to enter a recommendation against this application today,
but after hearing that the applicant inherited the deck from a previous owner, we believe that
forcing the applicant to remove the roof deck would present a hardship. We are going to instead
enter a recommendation of approval. Thank you. And Sharon, would I need to make a proviso regarding
the request from QVNA as it relates to the integrity report or is Mr. Bertil's testimony
on the oath sufficient? I don't believe that L&I could enforce that if Mr. Bertil could just again
confirm on the record that the report will be provided. Sure, I'm happy to do that.
Should I do that now? Yeah, if you don't mind, please. Okay, so for the record, the applicant
is agreeing to provide the coordinating RCO, QVNA, Queen Village Neighbors Association,
a structural integrity report as it relates to the pergolas. Thank you. Having said that,
MI 2021-003194
814 South Front Street, my vote is yes.
Professor Plaza, yes. Thomas Holliman, yes.
James Snell, yes.
We'll go to case number six on our list, MI 2021-003140
8914-54
for frankfurt avenue it's either mr knockamson or miss amazon who will be representing the
applicant upper holmesburg civic association sent a letter of support she's coming back in
now as a panelist here you good afternoon again miss amazon just identify yourself for the record
and you're still on their oath.
I'm going to say Amazon, C-L-E-M-E-N-T-A.
Last name is A-M-A-Z-A-N.
One, two, three, South Park Street,
Suite 600, 19109.
Mr. Plaza has a few questions for you.
Yes, Ms. Amazon, you agree to waive the reading
of its refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?