Number three, MI 2021-004-538-3516 North A Street.
I vote to dismiss.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is to dismiss.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is to dismiss.
Okay, that's three votes.
That's fine.
And number four, MI 2021-005-187, 2116 Gillingham Street, I have no exhibits, third listing.
Shanaz Dabadin is the owner applicant.
Shanaz Dabadin, can you raise your hand if you're in the audience?
Notion as debiting in the audience.
MI 2021-005-187-2116 Gillinkham Street, I vote to dismiss.
Thomas Holloman, I vote to dismiss.
James Snell, my vote is to dismiss.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is to dismiss.
Thank you.
And number five, MI 2022, 003-820-3725 Lancaster Avenue.
That case has been withdrawn.
So, now we're going to go to our list here. Case number seven. MI 2021-004-536-1212 South 2nd Street. Keith Okoski is the owner applicant pro se. Mr. Okoski.
So now we're going to go to our list here.
Mr. Okowski, can you raise your hand, please?
Mr. Okowski is coming in.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Mr. Okoski?
He was there. Mr. Okoski, are you in the audience?
He was there, chair. He must have got kicked out.
all right so let's we'll call that again let's go to
to number 10 and maybe he'll come back and we'll see
number 10 mi 2022 005 718 2231 north 4th street david orphanetes is the attorney
letter of opposition
from Norris Square
letter of opposition from council member
Lozada
Mr. Orfanides
Mr. Orfanides is coming in as the
panelist
Mr. Okaski I'm coming back
to you
I'll call you back in
Hi, counsel. Could you state your name and spell, please, for a court reporter?
Certainly. My name is David Orphanides. My last name is spelled O-R-P-H-A-N-I-D-E-S.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
I do, sir.
Could you identify your client in a relationship to the property?
Sure. My client is Punch Buggy Land LLC and Punch Buggy Brewing Company.
Okay. Our vice chair has just a few questions for you.
Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree with the reading of the refusal to stipulate to his accuracy?
I do, sir.
Have you emailed all the required documents and exhibits to proceed with this case five days in advance to this hearing?
uh i provided everything the one thing i didn't provide today was an extended addendum to the
agreement of sale as you'll recall this matter was originally listed for last wednesday and the
agreement was supposed to terminate at the end of february and it was extended until this friday
to allow for this uh hearing to proceed as my clients are the prospective purchasers of the
subject property. So I provided that to Hillary a little while ago today. Okay, no problem. Please
proceed to show your screen. Certainly. You see my screen? Yes. Okay. Good afternoon again. My name
is David Orphanides with Orphanides and Toner LLP here in Philadelphia. My clients are Punch
Buggy Land LLC and Punch Buggy Brewing Company. I have with me Patrick Coyne and John Riley,
who are Punch Buggy. I also have with me today Jonathan Massaro, who's the listing agent for
the owner of the subject property. And hopefully we can run through this quickly. I'll just have
them adopt my statements. What you have up on your screen right now is a photograph of the
subject property. It's a one-story masonry building with a roll-up garage door in the front
and a man door in the rear. You can see that there are lights on the front of the building
and security cameras on the front of the building. There's a vacant lot to the left of us
to the north, as you can see over here, and then a one-story building that I'm not sure what the
present uses, zoning archives show a commercial use, and as you'll see in the Sanborn maps that
I'm going to show to you, showing the historical use of this property, it may have one time been
utilized together or in common with our property for a non-residential use.
The, I'm going to be providing to you, in addition to the historical aspects of the property and the block, I'm going to be providing to you information regarding my client's proposed use of the property and neighbor support letters.
I'm going to be providing to you
I think we have 15 support letters from the immediate neighborhood, and I'll be going through a little bit regarding some of the oddities or regularities regarding the community involvement in this process.
So aerial images, our property is right here, 2231 North 4th Street.
We're just a bit off American Street.
My clients presently have their main installation or company or business at 1445 North American Street, which you can see at tab 14 of our exhibit book.
I can show you right here.
They are essentially outgrowing the space.
They need a little more space.
This is a picture of their delivery truck, which I'll speak about a little bit later.
But they're outgrowing their space on North American Street.
They've been, I think, in operation for about three and a half years.
Their story is included at Tab 4.
They started Punch Buggy back in 2016.
They're now growing out of their space.
They've been very involved in the community up to this point.
And they actually, not 3.5 years, it's 6.5 years now.
That's 2012, 2022, 2023.
And they're looking for a little more space.
They look forward to do some additional brewing, really low intensity use, no odors, no noise.
You can see the description of what they're looking to do at 2231 North 4th Street here at Tab 4.
Five new jobs.
They'll be taking delivery of ingredients once every eight weeks.
They'll only have one person working at the facility three days a week, three people the other two days.
They'll be working from 7 to 3, 7 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon.
They'll be making pickups with that small vehicle that has their decals on it, their signage on it.
On Fridays at 2 p.m., they use a local urban farmer to compost their grain.
And the four owners are all local and grew up here in Philadelphia.
There is a piece of equipment that was discussed with the community to add to their operations to make it odorless and what they're looking to do.
But they've looked in the immediate vicinity of the current operations for a property that is properly zoned for what they want to do, this small craft type brewing.
And unfortunately, everything that was available was 10 times too big and or 10 times too much money.
They're a small operation, as you can see from the at this point in time.
They obviously would like to continue to grow and they need a little more space, but not a lot more space.
And again, they're the property that they identified is located close to North American Street.
And as you'll see in the photographs that I'm going to provide in the aerials that this block, although it's presently zoned RSA 5, it was remapped.
and I have a copy of the ordinance where it was remapped
and think in 2016 or 2017 from industrial.
So you're gonna see in both the aerials
and on the photos that I have,
the aerials here at tab six and the photos at tab eight,
that the block has a very commercial aspect to it.
And in fact, there are only five or six residences
on the block and all the rest of the block
is either commercial,
which you see on the opposite side of the street
and then our property on our side of the street, obviously, or vacant land or vacant buildings.
Here's a closer up image.
Our property is right here, the vacant lot to the north of us.
That one-story building, I'm not sure about here to the south of us, there is, you'll see in the photographs, 2227 has a stop work order on it.
But I think what's important is the other properties, the commercial properties that you see here, here, and here, all have zoning permits.
And those zoning permits are included in my exhibit book at tab nine for auto body.
And you can see how this particular auto body, I think it's 22, 26 to 28 North 4th Street.
and you'll see in the photos has kind of taken over the block and are not only doing work in
the vacant lot right here, but on the street as well. So this is, although it's been zoning
classified as RSA5, it's hardly an RSA5 single family block at the present time and probably
block at the present time and probably for the foreseeable future. Here's a closer up view of
for the foreseeable future. Here's a closer up view.
the operations across the street, which I witnessed myself. And I'm not saying they're
a bad business, but you can see that here, again, here's the auto body. Here's our client's property,
the vacant lot. And then this structure is an abandoned building. It's all boarded up. It's
vacant. And then you have one residential building here, single family, and then you have one, two,
three, four, five. I'm not certain. This is the one that has a stop work order on it. I'm not
certain whether that's occupied or not. And then some additional aerial images of the props again
showing vacant, vacant, vacant vehicles parked there, vacant here, vacant, vacant, vacant,
and then vacant over here. I'm not certain what's going on down here at the corner of
Susquehanna and North Forth. It's all kind of screened off and it's a little hard to determine.
Historically, I had mentioned our property does not have any history of being residential,
except possibly back in 1917. It does call it out as a one-story, so I do not believe it was
residential, but it doesn't specifically state. But then back from 1947 on, it's all the Sanborn
maps show non-residential use. Here it shows auto, 47, 51 storage, 76 painter storage, 82 storage.
And this is where I said it shows the notation going over to 2229, storage in 85, 87, 88, 89, 92, 94, 96, 98, 2000, 2002, 2004.
So, you have a history here of non-residential use of the subject property never being used for residential purposes. Converting this building to a single-family use would not be easy. You can see here the interior photos. It's just an open masonry structure that the owner is presently using just for personal storage.
It was used for auto detailing. Prior to that, you can see the signage that was on the front of the building right here.
And again, images that I took on the street, we were just brought into the case at the beginning of, I think, last week.
But I was able to get out there. You can see plenty of on-street parking where the auto body doesn't have cars parked.
Here you can see the auto body taking over the vacant lot, using it there.
there was a zoning variance granted not for single family for non-single family residential
use across the street i did follow up with gabe deck from no marketex who i work with and have
come before this board with that project there's been no activity on the project since the zoning
board hearing so i'm not sure whether that's even going to move forward or not and i think it'd be
It's a little hard sell with this type of activity on the block to guess that there would be single family use or other residential, additional residential use here.
Guess, photos, vacant lot, trash strewn just to the north of us.
Here's that vacant building, residential building that's a couple doors up.
Then the vacant lot, this is what's next to us.
so i think you get a sense here of what the what the block is like what it's the property
has historically been used as tab 21 does have the bill that changed the zoning classification
from i2 to rsa5 the property has was listed showing that it's for commercial use the ideas
It says right here, property approved, restroom overhead doors, currently run as an auto detailer, potential art studio, warehouse space storage, and much more.
I do have the listing agent on the line.
He would testify that the only interested purchasers for this property have been for non-residential use, have all been for commercial or industrial use, not for residential use.
um the floor plans we have here um here is uh over here to the left is a roll-up door at north
fourth street trash storage you can see here's storage shelving a walk-in cooler canning and
here's the fermenting equipment um this is where the the condenser would be used this is the
condenser that had been discussed this is a tab 13 to make sure that there were no odors emitted
Again, they'll be keeping the doors shut during operations. The garage door will just be open when people come in and out, the workers come in and out, or when deliveries come in once every eight weeks, or that Friday afternoon delivery going out with the kegs to clients.
Again, they'll be keeping the doors shut during operations.
They'll just, the garage door will just be open.
There was a discussion with the community group for there to be an agreement that contract, a CBA, I guess.
I wasn't involved in those discussions to utilize this equipment, and my clients are completely in agreement to do that.
They had actually prepared this kind of contract, loose contract agreement.
It's not exactly how we would draw up as lawyers, but to show their intention.
and they had signed it in February, 2023, but it's not been fully executed with Norris Square.
As far as Norris Square is concerned, there was, I think there was an attempt over several months,
they were designated as a coordinating RCO back on October 7th of 2022.
There were efforts to have, I think, three or four meetings. There was finally a meeting
a week before last. Nobody showed at the meeting. My understanding is that North Square wanted to
continue and have another meeting, public meeting in March, but my clients and their attorney at
the time emphasized the need to have a decision, I guess, prior to last week's meeting because of
the originally scheduled closing date of the end of February. And so what was agreed upon as a
compromise was that north square would canvas the area go door to door and try to ascertain
the opinion of the community which is what their vote of six to two um comes down to six opposed
i guess those six people were people that they spoke with door to door the support with condition
is the one person with nor one of the people with north square whom i spoke with and this is that he
wanted to provide so about the equipment to make sure no odor is emitted. But my clients in one
afternoon went out, and you see this at tab two, and they secured letters of support from 15
property owners, including a number of properties on the block, both residential and non and
commercial uses or properties on the actual 2200 block in North 4th Street. So, you know,
The question is, you know, is there a vote? No, no offense to North Square. I think they were just trying to accommodate, but it does lead to kind of an odd situation where nobody is not a public forum.
We don't know. I'm not saying they said anything negative, but we don't know what actually transpired to them securing those votes that they got from the neighborhood.
And just like you can't say what happened when we went out, our people, my clients went out, but we obviously got 15 and they got six, and we've got a number on the block as well.
The notice of refusal is simply for the proposed use.
There's no proposed change to the structure itself, height or area, no signage is proposed.
Again, it does say limited industrial warehouse and distribution is the proposed use, and that's a refusal because of the current zoning classification, RSA-5. If it was still I-2, it would be permitted, the proposed use.
And again, this isn't really the type of industrial use, late industrial use you would normally anticipate or expect with that use category.
And we're more than willing to agree to provisos regarding the days of operation, the hours of operation, you know, deliveries once every other month, all those things.
They don't anticipate this growing here. If it ever gets to the point where they need larger or more intense facilities, they'd be looking for another property.
But I think this is, given the history of the property, the non-residential use, given what they're proposing, this is actually a perfect fit for this very mixed block for a property that's never been used for residential again and probably won't ever be used for residential or not in the foreseeable future.
For those residences that are on the block, this would be not very impactful, if at all, and very much in keeping with what's already there.
And again, probably much less impactful than the auto body work that's happening on the opposite side of the street and the several properties that are across there.
um i think i've touched on um again trash indoor trash commercial trash pickup they'll be using
the same company that they use over on north american street there are security cameras and
lighting in place on the facade that'll be maintained um and i think i've touched on
everything else so i think with that i would um ask my clients or at least one of my clients