is it 7 or 7 and 3 quarters
good percentage of the that's a certain percent for three quarters of the basement
it has to be at least that that's cool yeah michael that kind of went left um access to
the rear yard is it just the first floor unit yes sir okay and they have access to the basement
They do. And the second floor unit, there is a small vented trash closet.
The questions.
Questions for our attorney, Hillary Anderson.
Just clarification, Mr. Anastasia, your client, Ms. Thomas, did you say she was part of Dant Realty or she purchased the property from Dant Realty?
She has nothing to do with the realty company.
nope she she purchased it from them okay because all the information that we have says they still
own the property i did i don't know okay do you have can you pull up the deed that was in your
exhibit packet yeah okay i'm sorry she's doing business as dan realty my apology okay she is
okay i just wanted to clarify she purchased right there you go yes she purchased it from a real
There you go.
She purchased it from a real estate company, but not Dant.
estate company, but not
She's Dant.
Got you.
All right.
Thank you.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
No hands, Mr. Chair, raised.
Planning Commission.
Thank you, Chairman, and good morning, David Fecto with the City Planning Commission.
Chairman and board members, the comprehensive plan recommends a change in zoning at this
location from RSA 5, residential single family, to RM 1, residential multifamily. The city rezoned
this neighborhood in 2017 in a community-supported map change. At that time, the property was zoned
RM 1, and the civic associations requested RSA 5. This property appears to have been converted
without the benefit of permits through no fault of the appellant. The City Planning Commission
recommends the board grant or proposed use variants for two dwelling units. MI 2024-001-329-2330
North Free Street, I vote yes. Michael Johns, my vote is yes. Charles Gaston, my vote is yes.
Tana Graham, my vote is yes. Zion Wind, my vote is yes. Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes. Thank you.
you um let's go back to mr shirmer
mr shirmer
And Mr. Chair, Mr. Shermer in the interim did submit proof of posting for today's hearing, updated proof of tax compliance and photographs showing that while a meeting was not held,
They had advised the neighbors that they could connect, advising the neighbors about today's zoning hearing, as well as the meetings that he referenced in his prior testimony.
Thank you. Mr. Shermer.
Mr. Shermer.
all right let me try again good afternoon Mr. Chairman and members
I think you were sworn and you know you why don't you start your presentation
okay uh as I said before unfortunately uh Isabella Fitzgerald was the chairman of or
actually was the state rep and also the RCO she passed away during the pendency of our appeal
which means we did not have an RCO meeting I did put through to have RCO meetings on Monday and
Tuesday day before day day before and we had no information nobody signed up uh this is basically
a property was built in, according to the L&I records, 1941. It was built as a two-unit.
It's been licensed as a two-unit. Mr. Schirmer, why don't you share your screen?
I am trying. Oh, you're going to need to share your screen.
And again, I don't have a prompt to share the screen, which is...
So, Mr. Shermer, we're going to go on to another case.
We'll come back to you at the end of the day and see if you can't get that done.
All right.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, sir.
All right, number 17, MI 2024-002-123, 1524-38 Germantown Avenue.
Richard DeMarco is the attorney.
We were joining as a panel shortly, sir.
There's a letter of support from South Kensington Community Partners.
There was a CDR required and completed in July of 2024.
good morning mr chairman morning mr demarco could you please state your name and spell
for the court stenographer yes richard demarco last name d-e-m-a-r-c-o
Yes, Richard DeMarco, last name D-E-M-A-R-C-O.
We're affirmed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I swear.
Could you identify your client, the relationship to the property, sir?
Yes, T.R. Phila LP there. Mr. Rufo Jr. is with us for testimony.
Vice Chair has a few questions for you.
Counselor, do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal or stipulate to his accuracy?
Yes, I can.
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that's needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
Thank you, counsel. Please proceed and share your name.
Mr. DeMarco, Michael Johns has recused himself from this hearing.
Okay, fine.
I'll go ahead and share the screen, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Good morning.
This is a matter that was actually heard by the board five years ago in 2019.
This board granted numerous variances for the adaptive reuse of the former Gretz Brewery property.
It's a historic property.
There's been historical commission approvals for both the original case and the current case.
The main reason why the current case is before you is simply because when the owner pulled the zoning permit for the project that was approved by this board five years ago, the pandemic hit and the owner could not pull off the development of the property and the permit.
He did get an extension, but the permit expired per the code provisions.
But the proposal before you, it was presented originally as the identical proposal to the prior case, which this board granted unanimously back in 2019.
So let me just get out of the way that we would, of course, argue that the decision that the board made five years ago is res judicata.
the proposal is identical, with the exception that it has been improved significantly from
the original proposal through the meetings with the neighborhood group, which were extensive.
And there was a change to the curb cut, which we'll talk about in more detail, which
really, I think, was asked for by the neighbors. It was moved from the Lawrence Street side to
germantown avenue i'll show that on in a moment um so additionally with additionally for legal
argument purposes just to get it out of the way because i i know you want to move quickly um we
have dimensional variances as well we would suggest that those were subject to the hertzberg standard
the main and let me show the refusal now we'll go through the variances very quickly
The main use variance is over here on my screen. It's the IRMX, Industrial Residential Mixed Use Zoning. There is a requirement that the ground floor frontage have at least 50% non, other than you can't have more than 50% not residential, not parking.
But what you'll see is because of the unique configuration of the existing structure, it creates a challenging aspect.
And we put the commercial or non-residential wherever we could and wherever it was viable.
So there's commercial uses along the first floor, but we don't meet the 50% standard.
But as you'll see, when our architect testifies, we really did the best we could considering the structure that we had.
The other three refusals are, and we're not refused for density, we're not refused for parking, but we are refused for FAR.
But I think you hopefully you'll agree with me that if you see it right here, it's a requirement of 500 percent FAR floor area ratio.
We're at 504. So we're really, really just barely above the requirement.
So we would suggest that's a de minimis issue. But we also I'll skip over here.
we do have an occupied area variance. 80% is the requirement. We're at 89%. But as we go through
the testimony, I think you'll see that that is necessary and clearly necessary in light of the
fact that the development is so challenging and so unusual. And we're also keeping a very,
while it's been empty for decades, through no fault of my client and the prior owner, it was
empty. The building is a beautiful building, but it has certainly suffered over time and lack of
use. So obviously, we're going to be arguing that the hardship is caused by the existing structure.
The remaining variance is a height variance. However, I want to point out
The remaining variance is a height variance.
However, I want to point out to the board that even though it looks to be a substantial height variance,
the existing structure is many portions of it are already over the 60 feet.
We have a variance for 60 feet because we do have additions to the structure that do extend to 75 feet.
But many parts of the existing structure are already over 60 feet.
And in fact, the smokestack is over 100, I believe, 105 feet, maybe even 110 feet.
But Tony, our architect, will provide more detail about that.
So that's the refusal.
Again, we met extensively with the neighbors.
We have their support.
I do want to go through some testimony because it is such a significant case.
I'll move as quickly as I can.
I think the only other thing I wanted to point out before we get to that is, oh, and let
Let me, of course, point out, here's the zoning board's prior case.
This is the calendar number of the 2019 case, 36341.
CDR has been completed.
And, of course, you see here the L&I agrees the permit was expired, and that's why we're here.
Excuse me, I misspoke.
I said T.R. Phila-Elpe.
It's T.R. Gretz-Elpe, my mistake.
But they're all here, and Tony Rufo, Jr. is here to testify.
All right, let me just show a couple pictures.
It's a very unusual intersection.
It's the intersection of really four streets, really.
These are older pictures.
The building looks much nicer than it does.
This is dated to August of 2019.
It's actually a lot nicer.
Let me show you that real quick.
Oh, this is our change form.
We did move the curb cut, as you'll see, when we get to the plans.
So we took care of that.
So here's the, as you can see, the existing structure is a little bit better shaped than
those older photos.
This is how it looks today.
This is our site plan.
And there's the smokestack right there.
Here's the very interesting architectural features.
This one, this particular building, we're keeping.
And again, Mr. Chairman, there's a lot of money and time and effort that have gone in
to preserving the structure and, of course, beautifying the structure. We are keeping the
structure. We're not demolishing. Obviously, we're not allowed to anyway because of the historic
nature of the property. But obviously, significant resources go into maintaining that structure.
Obviously, a developer would prefer to demolish and build anew. It's much more efficient to do
that. But because we're keeping this historic and really interesting structure, obviously,
we're going to be arguing that that creates a hardship. Here's the new curb cut coming off of
Germantown Avenue. It used to be over here on Lawrence Street. Obviously, that was very
controversial and upsetting in the earlier case. But even though we did get support in the earlier
case, we still engaged with the streets department and agreed to move the curb cut to right here
along Germantown. And we have streets department approval for that. You'll hear the architect,
and that's over here, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. Here you have the streets department
stamp. But it took some meetings and we got cooperation from the streets department and
they agreed to that significant change. And I'll get Tony Ruffo on in a moment. Let me just show
you a couple quick. So there's commercial use along here, along that. Let me go back to the
site. This is where the commercial will be along Germantown Avenue. There's commercial retail space
here and here. I'm sorry, that's the curb cut. The curb cut actually interrupts our ability to
provide the commercial, but we have commercial along here. Obviously, it's not viable down here
along Lawrence Street or this portion of Oxford, but we don't, the community did not want that
anyway. Let me show the unit count. Oh, here's the parking. We do have 42 parking spaces. We
are not refused for parking. We utilized some of the bonuses in order to provide that.
The layout's a little bit challenging, but there's a turnabout within the first floor,
and that's how the parking will get in and out. This is all new. As we said, we worked with the
neighbors. The neighbors were very upset with having the curb cut on Lawrence Street, so it
was moved here, and we made it work, and we worked with streets, and that's where we're at right now.
Let me show you the unit count with the square footages.
Here you see the unit counts here.
We don't have any unusually small apartments, although some of the studios are a little bit small, but they all average over 500 square feet.
We added some three-bedroom units.
The neighbors wanted some nicer units.
nicer units. We agreed to that. Now, let me say this about the total, the 200 total.
We agreed to that.
Now, let me say this about the total, the 200 total.
The original project that this board heard back in 2019 was originally 227 units, and that was
reduced, and we lopped off a story on one of the additions in order to bring down that density.
So we did already reduce our density. This is the lowest density that we can afford in order
to pull off a feasible development in light of the extra cost that's needed to preserve the
structure and deal with the it's very monolithic there's very large beams large thick walls and
you know i'll get to the testimony now because um our architect can can really discuss that really
quick um let me show some of the renderings so you can see exactly what we're dealing with
Wing C is most of the addition.
There's an addition here, again, all approved by historical.
But wing C is mostly new.
The existing structure is wing B.
There's some building on top, but we're mostly keeping the existing elements on wing B, wing A.
This piece at the corner of Germantown and Oxford is brand new, as are these floors here.
but this is all existing here and again we see is all new all right so let me go to um and this is
the old zoning permit that has been expired as you can see we the zoning board information is here
this board heard the case voted unanimously there were no appeals um so obviously we feel that if