Tanetta Graham, my vote is yes, with proviso.
Ryan McAdams, my vote is yes, with proviso.
Ryan Wen, my vote is yes, with proviso.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the board.
Please allow me one quick liberty to introduce to the board a student from the Penn Cary School of Law.
Professor Wendell Pritchett's student, Shana Kahane, is observing today.
and we thank the board for allowing that to happen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pritchett.
MI 2025-002-846-501, Frankfurt Avenue. Augusto O'Neill is the attorney.
Looks like I'm going to keep going with it.
I can't. So, are you, could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer Augusta O'Neill a U. G. U. S. T. A. my last name is spelled.
o-n-e-i-l-l. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
I do. Could you identify your client and the relationship to the property? My client is
5001 Frankfurt LLC, the owner of the property. Okay, and do we have a letter of opposition from
Frankfurt Neighborhood Advisory? I'm not sure if this was before or after some changes were made.
So that was before changes were made. Right. Okay. So our vice chair has a few questions. Good afternoon. Have you submitted your documents and exhibits five days in advance of this hearing? I did. I just want to know for the record, the only thing that wasn't updated was the tax clearance certificate. We've been working on that and I did have a conversation with the board solicitor about the issues with that. Okay, cool. And do you wear the reading of the refusals or stipulate to the accuracy? The refusal is accurate with the exception of one refusal, which has been eliminated, which I'll go through. Okay. Thank you.
You can share your screen and proceed with your case.
Do we have the tax?
She said, talk to Hillary about it.
We have taxes.
We're gonna hold?
Yeah, we'll have to hold for proof of tax compliance.
There's some things getting sorted out.
All right, thank you.
Thank you.
Members of the board, as I indicated earlier, I'm here this afternoon representing the owner of the property at 5001 to 05 Frankfurt Avenue.
This is an application for an adaptive reuse of a previously 2 story, almost 20,000 square foot building that is split zoned.
CMX 2 and RSA 3. We are seeking to create a mixed-use building and erect a second and third
floor addition to the existing building. As you can see on the renderings that are on my screen
right now, this is what the anticipated final product is going to look like, this beautiful
building with aluminum cladding on Frankfurt Avenue. This is a development in the mixed
income neighborhoods overlay originally we had requested 39 multi-family units but after meeting
with the neighborhood civic group the frankfurt cdc and responding to some of the board's concerns
we're here this afternoon presenting a request for relief to provide 29 units
six of which are affordable at 40 percent ami my clients are rehabbing the existing building
that's currently on the property as i stated before previously before my clients at the time
my clients purchased the building this is what it looked like clearly you need some rehabilitation
the building that was on the property always functioned as one building but technically sat
on two lots um as you can see on this page of the page in front of me um this is the portion that's
fronting frankfurt avenue frankfurt avenue is running right along here and then this is the
wakeling street portion of the building this is technically zoned rsa3 or single family house
you can see clearly it's not a single family house it's just part of that that one building
included in my exhibit package were zoning maps my screen
so as you can see that 1613 weakling portion is zoned rsa3 and then the 5001 frankfurt avenue is
split zoned cmx2 and rsa3 because of the split zoning the quote unquote buy right at this at the
time of my client's purchase would have meant that the client the property could only be used
as a doctor's office which is what had been used as before is the eye doctor's facility
or it could be used as a single family home that's because the more restrictive rsa3 provision
would have applied to the entire lot here so again at the time that my clients purchased it
its most recent use had been an eye doctor's facility as you can see in the pictures that
in my exhibit package at page seven this is a picture of the building as it existed
close to the time my clients purchased it they purchased it in june of 2023 this is from september
close to the time my clients purchased it they purchased it in june of 2023 this is from september
2023 you can see there's a large sign up that's advertising the building for rent that's another
view of the property um here's our property on the right hand side on the left is the neighboring
daycare center this property is right under the l which is what you can see on the screen as well
these four rent signs were up even during the time that my client began working on the building
And there were there was no interest in in using the building as a as a doctor's office, and he can testify to that fact later.
A portion of the new rehab to building has already been constructed.
We did relocate the lot lines for the for these properties that my client could get the portion of the building that fronts Frankfurt Avenue under construction while we were seeking variance relief for those additional units.
you can see on the screen in front of me this was a down to the studs kind of a rehab for my client
it was in pretty the building was in pretty poor shape when they began working on it here's some
pictures of the interior again as I indicated before really this was a down to the studs kind
of a rehab because of the condition it was in also included some pictures showing what it looked like
on the inside at the time they purchased it clearly had been used as a doctor's office they
the counter here and the different suites just another picture of the level of construction work
my client had to do in order to rehab this building page 16 of my exit package i included
a picture showing what it looks like today um again this is partially under construction but
you can see he's got that beautiful aluminum cladding on the side of the building this
looks like something you would see in new york city um the reason that we had to relocate those
lot lines and get some of these units under construction is because at the time that my
client purchased the building, obviously there were some economic headwinds, the cost of
construction was rising. So he wanted to get something done while he was waiting for a zoning
board hearing and going through the variance process with the city. To my knowledge, this is
one of the only buildings of the size that's currently being constructed in that min overlay.
So again, as I indicated earlier, there are 20 units that are currently under construction today.
This doesn't mean that a 20 unit project in the men is going to alleviate the hardship that is presented by the split zoning for this for this property.
Instead, the evidence that I'm going to put for put before the board this afternoon is going to show that this project doesn't really work isn't viable for my client at 20 units.
It's not even viable at 25 units, which is what he's a buy rate permit for. We need to get to 29 units in order to make this economically feasible for my client.
In addition to those multifamily units, we're also bringing some retail uses to the area.
At the screen towards the bottom of the building, we're going to be using those suites for a laundromat as well as a corner store, a grocery store.
Those are going to be in the areas where that former eye doctor's office was, and then we're also going to be greening up the space on Wakeling.
we're going to be adding five street trees a copy of my landscape plan was included in my exhibit
package at tab three I provided the board a copy of my proviso zoning plan it shows a building with
with 29 residential units, again reduced from 39 in response to feedback from the RCO, from the board rather, with six affordable units.
We now have a building that is a maximum height of 38 that was reduced down from 50 feet.
We lost a fourth floor in order to bring that building down, so we were able to eliminate that variance from the refusal.
um and just to provide the board with a little bit of context this building i would submit is
really in the perfect location for multi-family use because we are right under the l as i showed
you in that picture previously um here is a map showing where our building is and all the different
transit spots that are close by we're very close to the frankfurt transit center
just to go through the refusal at tab one of my exhibit package
um there are three use refusals that are listed on this on this refusal uh again because this
building is collectively viewed as an rsa3 building our proposed multi-family use is
prohibited as well as the proposed food beverages and groceries in addition to the maintenance and
repair of consumer goods that relates to the laundromat that I was that I referred to earlier.
I do want to note for the board if this entire property were zoned CMX2
if this entire property were zoned cmx2 based on the square footage of the watts
based on the square footage of the lots
we would be entitled to 32 units and a 45 foot building we're proposing again a
35 foot 38 foot building and 29 units sorry i got a little tongue tied up
the other refusal that we received was for the rear yard depth we are proposing a 3.94 foot
The rear yard we're required to have 20 feet in this in this zoning district.
So again, this is an adaptive reuse of this building.
So we aren't changing anything about the yard.
We are working within the confines of the building that's already there.
But if we went up because we're going up higher, technically we've got to comply with the setback and get that 20 feet.
But it's not gonna be feasible because that would cut into the number of units that we'd be able to propose at this building.
and anything less than 29 units is not going to work at this location.
After construction is finished, these two properties are going to operate as one building,
which is how it functioned before my client purchased it.
there won't be separate entrances on uh for the wakeling property units or the frankfort avenue
property units everyone who's got a unit in this building is going to use the same entrance
as i indicated before we are already approved for 25 units on the cmx
uh two portion under a permit that was previously pulled by my office a copy of that permit was
provided to the board at tab 17. we're asking this afternoon for the four additional units
to make this project viable for my client.
As I stated earlier, the 20 units are already under construction
in the Frankfurt Avenue portion of the building,
and the majority of those units are around 500 square feet.
They're mostly one bedrooms.
There are going to be two means of egress for this building.
So there's a means of egress right onto Wakeling.
There's also a back door that deposits out into this alleyway that's off of Wakeling.
there are going to be stairs connecting all the floors rather than an elevator
um there is one handicapped unit that's going to be on the first floor of the building
there is a handicapped ramp which you can see in the rendering um this is a handicapped ramp but
if someone were to be in that handicapped unit they would go in these front doors and there's
to be an interior ramp and it's all accessible to get to that um handicapped unit
the units do not have individual washer and dryers but there is going to be a laundromat
on the first floor which is going to be available for use by the building tenants
um there are two trash chutes in the building i'm just gonna um increase my view so these x's
denote the trash chutes that are in the building there's one right here and then there's another
trash chute right off of wakeling there is a door right here so that when the trash is ready to be
taken out um whoever's taking out would just use that door and put it on on this alleyway or it
would be ready until it's ready for commercial trash pickup my client would have commercial
trash pickup as part of this multi-family building um the trash the quote-unquote trash
The trash drawer is going to look like any other door that's on the building.
At tab nine of my exhibit package, I've provided some slides just showing the what the buy rate quote unquote buy rate expansion would look like if we were to only use the 25 units that we received a permit for, as well as a slide showing what they would look like
with the variance request um so as you can see if we were to do the buy rate expansion
we would be left with this wakeling portion this huge 4 000 square foot unit
um and four smaller units sorry it just keeps i don't know why it's doing that um
the issue with that is that for there are a number of issues with with this layout
So these two units, which are on the third floor, we get little to no sunlight.
We'd also have to construct a separate staircase just for those units.
And the larger issue, in my opinion, is that the units would be limited to about 350 square feet to 400 square feet.
I've been in front of this board long enough to know that the board doesn't really like those really small units.
So, the variance that we're requesting is to allow us to get those units to be larger
to allow us to get those units to be larger
and fill out that weight link.
and fill out that weakling portion
and not have to use it as a RSA3 building
because it was never used that way.
And it obviously functions better
if it's the layout that we proposed today.
So as I indicated before,
most of the units that are on the,
what I'll call the Frankfurt Avenue portion of the building,
those are one bedroom,
Whereas the units that are going to be on the second and third floor with the variants that we're requesting, they would be comprised of two two bedrooms on the first floor, two two bedrooms, and a three bedroom on the second floor, and then three two bedrooms and one three bedroom on the fourth floor.
I'm sorry, on the third floor.
so we did meet with the the rco for this property the frankfurt cdc back in september of 2025
as i said before when we met with them we'd been proposing those 39 units
the board of the rco said that they didn't want this building because they felt it was too dense
So this is the only letter that's currently in front of the board.
I want to note there weren't any members of the community in attendance at that meeting.
you can see on the letter that was provided, no one from the community felt full of votes,
no one from the footless was actually participating, it was, there's no word that they felt, it was two deaths.
One of the things that came up in this letter, oh I'm sorry, one of the issues that came up
that was in the letter was that, I must have knocked it off when I was when I was speaking.
happened there who was that man
um one of the issues that came up that was noted in the letter although there wasn't a lot of
discussion about this at the meeting was the increased amount of parking issues were not
resolved so let me see I went ahead and my client and I discussed this um it was suggested that
maybe we could approach Jefferson because they have a facility across the street there's an
urgent care and a number of doctor's offices across the street owned by Jefferson. And they
also have a parking deck. So in my package, I provide an aerial. This is our building. And
then this is the parking deck. And Jefferson has agreed to let us use 10 parking spots in that
building for our apartment building. Coincidentally, when my client went and spoke with Jefferson,
they told him they were actually very excited about this building because now there's going to
be a use for um for their nurses or employees to have a apartment building new construction
that's going to be available for for their use so this is in addition to the public transit which was
i provided a transit map at tab 20 my exhibit package so in addition to those parking spots
this is also going to be very accessible to the l um in the frankfurt transit center
the I do want to note just for the record though that we're not actually seeking a variance for
parking we are not required to provide the parking in the CMX 2 area but we're just doing it to be
neighborly and to show in good faith that we've taken the concerns of the community into consideration
and we're working to address them um unfortunately the RCO did not agree to meet with us a second
time we did let them know that we have an updated plan we'd love to meet with you I personally sent
about 20 emails between october and this hearing date to try and schedule that second meeting
go through the additional plans um despite my outreach the rco never scheduled a meeting and so
we decided to move forward with this hearing today enclosed at tab 18 of my exhibit package
i provided a pro forma for the board um just to explain the 20 units versus the 25 that we have
the by right permit for or the 29 um my client is here this afternoon just to emphasize the the
financial hardship for why it doesn't work for him to only have a 25 unit building he really
needs the 20 29 units to make this to make this work um but as you can see from the proforma that
was provided. This only quote unquote pencils for him if there's going to be those 29 units
permitted. Just to briefly go over the variance. Oh, and the other thing I want to note about
this pro forma. There is a screenshot that my client provided the his lunch.
There is a screenshot that my client provided the his lender essentially can't service any kind of loan on on something that doesn't provide 29 units because there's just not.
It's not profitable enough at any other unit scheme.