anything that the development has approved improved from your original decision back in 2019.
With that, let me ask the Anthony Ruffo Jr. to be promoted to testimony, and I'll try to move quickly through it so we can get to your question.
Just the owner or the architect?
We have both, Mr. Chairman.
Anthony Ruffo Jr. is the owner.
Okay, thank you.
Mr. Ruffo.
Hello.
Good morning.
Mr. Ruffo, could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer?
Yes, sir. Anthony Ruffo, R-U-F as in Frank, O as in Oliver, representing T.R. Gretz LP.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Please proceed, counsel.
All right, I'll try to move quickly as I can. Mr. Ruffo, did you hear my opening presentation and statements?
I did.
Are they true and accurate to the best of your knowledge?
And can you adopt then my presentation as your formal and official testimony in this matter?
So, Mr. Rufo, you are a managing member of TR Gretz, LP?
How long have you owned the property?
August of 2003.
And was it mostly vacant when you purchased it?
That's correct. It was vacant.
And what was the prior, to your understanding, was there any prior use to the property prior to your purchase?
Prior use was storage for a contractor, machinery storage for a contractor.
To your knowledge, when was the last time it was actively being used as an income-produced property, if you know?
To the best of my knowledge, about 45 to 50 years ago.
So how difficult has it been to maintain this property during your ownership?
It has been difficult.
It was acquired as a vacant property with violations and has been a security problem and criminal activity problem.
We have since gotten that pretty much buttoned up, and there's no criminal activity on the site anymore.
So if you had to estimate for the board, what would you say the cost has been for you to maintain the existing structure through its vacant status during your ownership?
Just over $1.6 million.
And then during that timeframe, was there any income derived from this property?
No, there was not.
Has this property been marketed during your ownership?
Yes, it has.
And have you had any interest in any type of industrial use for the building?
No, we haven't had – we've had zero interest for industrial use.
um as and what what what is the only interest that you have encountered for the for the for
this property um multi-family mixed use and you heard my
Multi-family, mixed-use.
And you heard my testimony about the 2019 case for this board.
You were also involved with that, correct?
Yes, that's correct.
So explain, just briefly, I covered it, but explain to the board why you were unable to make use of the building pursuant to the 2019 permit, which I actually have up on the screen.
What happened with that permit?
What happened was COVID hit. The instability of the financial markets and supply chain issues pretty much stalled the project.
And you were the individual that met with the neighbors during the current process, correct?
Yes, through both processes, yes.
Yes. And I've already informed the board, we did have a vote in support of the project from the neighborhood group, but why don't you go ahead and, if you can, summarize the changes that you made to the project as a result of those meetings with those neighbors in the current project.
the neighbors were resistant on um the driveway entrance for uh lawrence street so we
worked with the streets department and the rco uh all the neighbors to relocate the driveway
entrance and exits onto germantown avenue uh we removed the garage door on lawrence street
We added more street trees on Orange Street, reconfigured the commercial space as per their requests, and I think we had a total of six meetings, I believe, and worked well with the RCO to improve this project.
and as far as the number of units is there any flexibility on you're the developer right you've
been the person that's been presenting this project and and attempting to bring it to bear
is that right yes that's right and um the the 200 um the 200 unit count is what makes this
project economically feasible. Yeah. Go ahead. No, I'm sorry. I just cleared my throat. Excuse me.
Okay. And is the 200 units the minimum necessary for you to be able to feasibly reuse, adaptively
reuse the structure? Yes, it is. And last question. You heard my, you already heard some of my
testimony about the difficulties posed by the structure. Do you want to elaborate what is
difficult about the structure that makes it, you can't demolish it. So what is difficult about the
structure that renders this development challenging yeah well the historical designation
makes us retain the structure the structure has several multiple buildings with extremely high
ceiling heights it's it's really not adaptable for an industrial use right now and
And residential would be the only answer, mixed use.
Okay, that's all I have of Mr. Ruffo.
My only other witness would be the architect who can just provide a little bit more detail about the challenges made by the structure.
How long do you see, Mr. DeMarco, how long is the architect going to take?
I can get through him in probably five, ten minutes tops.
Okay, please proceed.
All right, I appreciate that.
Anthony Sarantanakis, if you could virtually raise your hand and be recognized, and then we'll ask you a few quick questions.
I've been allowed to speak.
Sir, could you please state your name as spelled for the stenographer?
Yes. Can you hear me?
I can hear you.
Okay. My name is Anthony Tsurantanakis. Last name is T-S-I-R-A-N-T-O-N-A-K-I-S.
We're affirmed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Please proceed, counsel.
So I'm going to get right to the point, Mr. Tsurantanakis. The board has a long list today.
Why is the existing structure not compatible with an industrial use?
Well, it's composed of a number of buildings that don't have huge footprints.
The footprints are not really suited to even a small industrial process where you need
assembly lines and you need some length.
The other reason is that the infrastructure of the building is not there.
is not there. In other words, you don't have a freight elevator. You'd have to put in a freight
In other words, you don't have a freight elevator.
you'd have to put in a
elevator. There aren't enough stairs. So just getting product in and out of the building would
be very difficult. In addition, there's really no way to bring in like a semi-truck, a large truck
into the courtyard. So again, that would be very difficult. An industrial use would really block
up the streets around it in order just to service loading and unloading from a semi
or even a smaller truck.
And you're a registered architect, correct?
I am, yes.
Is it your opinion that architecturally speaking, the best proposal to adaptively reuse the
structure is the current use?
Yes, I do believe that the best use for this is the mixed use focusing, mixed use with commercial and residential, focusing on the residential. It uses the space that's there in the existing building in the best way possible.
and uh is it is it uh briefly explain to the board why architecturally speaking even the
residential component that and the current proposal why is that challenging in light of
the conditions of the existing structure well it's because of uh the the we've had we have to
go in and make there there's going to be very interesting and unique units here uh with you
have a lot of height uh there are certain spaces in there that were the the you know that were used
for the big beer vats and big storage rooms
that have enormous amount of height
where we've had to break down the floors
into adding additional floors and mezzanines,
which will create really interesting spaces.
But it's a lot more challenging than a normal building
because we've had to go in and figure all that stuff out
and install a lot of new infrastructure and new floors.
And then we had to work with the existing window patterns
as tall, beautiful windows, but we couldn't move them.
In fact, we've added more windows that are historically accurate
in order in some of the facades that have been messed around with
to kind of make the building feel more like its original state.
So as far as the occupied area variants,
we have 89%, 80% is the minimum. If you can explain to the board, why do we need the extra
occupied area in order to pull off this project? Well, the commercial, there's a couple of reasons.
That's really about the area that's on Lawrence Street and part of Oxford Street. It didn't make
sense for Lawrence Street to have a commercial use. And also, the window pattern on Lawrence
Street is really smaller, I mean, tall, but less wide punched windows. And that did not make it
really suitable for retail in the sense that you couldn't, nor would you want to put in a storefront
system in that. You'd have to take out a lot of historic windows. So Lawrence Street is also
a small-scale residential street with row houses and other brick buildings. It didn't really seem
like a commercial street, whereas Germantown Avenue, we did everything we could on Germantown
Avenue to create a commercial corridor on Germantown Avenue, and the buildings on Germantown
Avenue were more appropriate for that. And then we turned that and we added, we also have
commercial buildings on Oxford Street to kind of extend that commercial corridor to make it turn
the corner. And I think you already answered it, but is that why you needed the variance for the
use of limited area for the non-residential street frontage? Is that why the variance for
not having 50% non-parking and residential was necessary.
And then the third factor is, of course, is the garage, which it was very important to
have a garage here, but the physical dimensional constraints of the existing site, you know,
kind of forced us to use as much of that area as possible for the garage, which of course
doesn't factor into that calculation that we got the variant, that we got refusal for.
And just to tell the board about why you have the height variance and why that variance is necessary.
Well, the height variance is necessary because we needed to have, as Mr. Ruffo explained, we needed to have the 200 units to make the project feasible.
Well, the height variance is necessary because we needed...
And we needed seven stories, given the, again, dimensional constraints of the site.
We needed to have seven stories that, in order to accommodate the number of units, we needed to put in Wing C, the new structure.
and make them, you know, make them be the right size and nice units in order to make the whole project work.
Are the variances that you have requested for this project the minimum necessary in order to achieve a feasible development, Mr.
Is that your opinion based on a reasonable degree?
Yes, it is my opinion, yes.
Your opinion based on a reasonable degree of architectural certainty?
That's right. That's correct.
all right well mr chairman i probably could do more but i understand you have a long list worth
the end so uh i'm i'm fine as far as the testimony goes and um again we have support from the rco
there's uh we completed cdr and so obviously we'd ask you to vote the project at this point um
and that's all i have as far as formal testimony questions from the board
um yes i have a question can you show me how many of the buildings have roof decks
Mr. I need help from Mr. I don't believe there are any. Let me ask, make sure that that's the case. Mr. Sarantanakis, can you help me with that?
You're muted.
Okay. Can you repeat the question, please?
How many, if any, of the buildings have roof decks?
uh there's a roof deck on uh two of the buildings have roof decks there's roof decks on wing wing
c part of the part of wing c has a roof deck and part of wing a has a roof deck i'm gonna
miss graham i'm gonna try to uh oh i'm sorry i take that back i miss miss i what i was talking
about green roofs part of part of the only roof deck is on wing c green roofs are on wing c and
wing a i'm gonna try to find something that shows that there you go there you go yeah the only the
only roof deck is on wing c right here that's right and this is this it here mr sarantanakis
that's right okay okay thank you the questions from the board
questions or comments from our attorney hillary emberson um just briefly um mr demarco i know you
for the for the taxes for this property i know you submitted proof of a tax agreement um however
i was not able to verify that that agreement is in effect and current i did try to with revenue
and it's not showing up on the the um philadelphia tax center page so we just need proof that that
agreement is current and in compliance before we can vote on this case so um let me go ahead
and go to it that so there isn't so this agreement was not um it's not it's not showing up on
philadelphia tax center from what i can see and i did reach out to a contact in the revenue
department to verify that it was it was current um and i did not receive a response unfortunately
before this hearing so we just need to to hold the vote till we have that confirmed i don't know
if you're able to now pull up a pull a tax clearance certificate um because if you did
if you were able to do that then we could vote on it but we just didn't there was nothing that
to show that this was current and in effect so all right that was that it was yeah um yeah it
was up to date because it already had started and that you know payments were being made and it was
in compliance is what i mean i i understand i would only say uh that this was very recently
signed right there's a signature in october this is the signature of mr ruffo senior
anthony jr um any additional information on this in order to try to get a vote now we can of course
we could of course submit proof later uh but is this any of that makes did you hear the comments
from if i could have mr ruffo jr uh reactivated for sure just it's been a lot to speak
uh yes i did hear um the comments i don't have any additional information at this moment
we can certainly provide what's necessary i i mean i believe that this does comply with the
code but obviously we'll defer to hillary on this and and get you what you need uh asap
okay yeah we just if you if there's either a tax compliance certificate that shows the properties
okay yeah we just if you if there's either a tax compliance certificate
now in compliance or proof of payments made that are due so far in this agreement then
we can confirm that the property just so i'm clear you want proof that payments were made on
this agreement that they are that they are current on this agreement or okay or a certificate of tax