All right, thank you.
That's your case, Mr. Knackamson?
That is correct, Mr. Knackamson.
Okay. Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chair.
No, Mr. Chair.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
Chair, we have Dylan Mahoney.
Mr. Mahoney, can you unmute yourself or wait for the chair, please?
Good afternoon.
Hi, good afternoon, Mr. Mahoney.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, sir.
Dylan Mahoney, D-I-L-L-O-N-M-A-H-O-N-E-Y.
Do you swear or for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir.
Proceed.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Again, Dylan Mahoney from the Office of Councilwoman Sherelle Parker.
Our office received the letter of non-opposition from LCA, and our office would join in the
requests for the various provisos, in particular those related to hours of operation.
It's also our office's typical policy to request a temporary permission with respect
to event spaces to allow um community members uh future input um and with that we are not
opposed to the project thank you uh any anyone else in the virtual audience
i see no hands at this time chair yeah mr chair can i just make one clarification because i know
the hours of operation were discussed in the letter um we would ask again from 10 a.m to midnight
night we've indicated during our presentation to the community that we would be open to um the
events at 11 but we need to actually you know clean up as well so that's why we're saying
to midnight yep i understand um anyone else in the planning commission i'm sorry
planning commission
good afternoon chair peter bernard for the planning commission
the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the existing cmx1 commercial mixed use at this
location we feel the applicant has failed to demonstrate a sufficient hardship accordingly
the planning commission recommends the board deny the variance um hillary um should we set a timeline
on this if we if when we approve it um we can mr chair that that is fine to do okay um how about
three years just so three years three is fine mr knockamson do you have any um comments related to
a proviso for a temporary variant we have no objection mr chair i would ask for five this
We have no objection, Mr. Chair. I would ask for five. This is a very long process, especially nowadays. And, you know, it's not a cheap endeavor either. So if the board feels inclined, I would ask for five.
This is a very long process.
Okay. So MI 2022-003-125-6410, Rising Sun Avenue. I vote yes with proviso. Hours of operation, 10-8 at midnight. Trash stored in the rear. And a timeline would be October 1st, 2027.
um that's five years right yes that's correct right yep
that would be five years mr chair yes that's fine carol tennari my vote is yes with proviso
thomas halliman my vote is yes with proviso james snell yes with proviso
yes with proviso
thank you mr knockerson thank you have a great day
MI 2022-002-920-4717 Stenton Avenue.
Recommendation of support from coordinating RCO, 12th Democratic Board, no explanation.
Letter of non-opposition from RCO, Solo Germantown.
Chair Brandon Saverin is coming back in as a panelist now.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
Hi, could you state the court report, Brandon, please?
Yes. Brandon Saverin, B-R-A-N-D-O-N. S as in Sam, A, V as in Victor, R-A-N.
Right. Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Could you identify your client and relationship to the property?
Yes. So my clients are 4717 Stenton Holdings, LLC. That's the title owner. They are under contract to sell to 4717 Stenton, LLC. Same name without the word holdings in it. They are the buyer under contract. They are also represented by us in this process and will be here to adopt my testimony today.
Our vice chair has a few questions.
Hi, Brandon. Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Yes, I do, Madam Vice Chair.
Have you emailed the exhibit packet with proof of ownership, tax compliance, refusal referral, photos and or plans of the property five days in advance of this hearing?
And have you met with the RCO and do you have a letter?
Yes, to all of your questions.
Okay, great. You may proceed by sharing your screen.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay, so what should be on your screen, members of the board, is the zoning refusal for this matter.
This property, 4717 Stanton Avenue, is a 47,000 square foot parcel in what is zoned ICMX, Industrial Commercial Mixed Use, on its side of the block, but is on somewhat of a mixed use block, as I'll show you in a moment.
So just to real quickly show you the subject property, it is this multi-story former manufacturing building with a sort of lower level portion in the back there.
And what we are proposing to do is convert this into residential use.
As the refusal says, we're not proposing any additions.
So there's no proposed increase in height or occupied area, as it says in the scope statement there.
What we are proposing to do is take the surrounding parking areas, repave them, restripe them, and add landscaping.
That's also provided for you here on the refusal.
And then we originally proposed to convert the interior of that building to 80 dwelling units.
We've reduced that a bit in our revised zoning plan, which is one page.
And I'll show you our proviso change form in a moment.
We will also have 40 off-street accessory parking spaces rather than the 47 stated here.
What remains accurate is all of the sort of special types of spaces.
We'll have two van-accessible parking spaces, three electric car charging parking spaces, and 27 indoor bicycle parking spaces.
The only refusal generated by this proposal is a use refusal because residential use is prohibited in a blanket manner, regardless of how many dwelling units there are in the ICMX district.
in the icmx district there's no dimensional refusals pertaining to the parking lot we're
There's no dimensional refusals pertaining to.
proposing the existing building etc so here's our proviso change form real quickly as i mentioned
we're we're down to 78 units on our revised plan we're down to 40 parking spaces but still have 27
than bike parking spaces indoors.
The reason we went down to 78 units
is actually because the coordinating RCO
wanted to see a trash storage facility
inside the building, not outside,
as was originally proposed.
So we made space for that.
And there's some other small changes that were made.
The location of the bike parking was moved
and there was the enlargement
of what I think will be some very nice common spaces.
And I'll show you that in a moment.
So here's the subject property.
We're in what I'll call Lower Germantown here.
Where my cursor is, is the Wayne Junction bus and rail depot.
There's a large sort of purple mass here of industrially zoned properties,
most of which are not served by city streets and are accessible from driveways off of Windrum Avenue down here.
But we are part of a strip of smaller properties.
keep in mind still a 47,000 square foot property so not that small but a strip of smaller properties
on Stanton Avenue that are directly accessed from Stanton Avenue and as you'll see on the zoning map
and on screen in a moment there are some residential uses nearby as well
so this is the letter of support from the coordinating RCO the 12th Ward Democratic
Committee. There is no rationale provided in this letter, but they do have a vote count,
which shows that it was an even vote with near neighbors, as they describe sort of forming the
supportive party, which I think was a part of their decision. They also coordinated with us
on those revisions I mentioned. There is also a letter of non-opposition from an RCO that actually
has its limit across the street. So this RCO governs the other side of Stanton Avenue. It's
called Solo Germantown. There is a rationale provided here. I'm not going to run through it
in full, but it talks about how the developer has developed other properties in its jurisdiction and
has taken care of them appropriately. That sort of forms the basis of their non-opposition,
and they have their own vote count which is very similar. I think they total seven people instead
of six but pretty much the same thing. So I'm going to just give you a brief tour of the building
and the area using Google. I like this because it's three-dimensional but there are extensive
photos of the building and the street in our exhibit packet. So just to say that you can find
these images in the exhibits as well. As I mentioned, here's the building, and there's sort of
two bases of hardship here for using it for industrial or commercial purposes. One is that
the back portion, which is quite lengthy, actually larger than this front portion of the building,
formerly, we believe, had windows, and they were filled in with stucco. You can see that more
closely as it also happened on the first floor of the taller portion of the building. This is
really quite unfortunate and needs to be remedied. I'm going to show you the final sort of third side
here because what it does to the lower floor of almost the entire building going way back there
is it makes it sort of like a cave. There's very poor lighting. There's almost no natural light
And as a result, even for the commercial non-industrial uses that the code does allow in this district, it's just not a pleasant space to occupy.
And it's going to take extensive funding to restore windows to this space.
Again, I'm going to take you back to this is the best view I think I have of it.
You can see sort of the tremendous length of building here that is just served by no natural light.
So we're going to remedy that. It's all going to have windows, big windows. But to sort of secure the investment to do that, the sort of most surefire way we can guarantee that folks will move into this building is to renovate it for residential use.
So that's one of our hardships. The other is that if you look on the zoning plan here, this is not a building that has one large parking lot. Instead, it has two small, narrow parking lots on both sides.
Instead, it has two small, narrow parking lots on both sides of the building, one up here and one here.
Now, this still provides adequate space, if you will, for regular passenger cars to pull in and out.
That's how we were able to fit 40 parking spaces.
But it's not the kind of space that is good for truck parking or truck turnaround.
And in fact, up here, some of this area we use through an easement agreement with our neighbor, and I don't believe the easement agreement allows truck parking necessarily.
So it just doesn't have the vehicular facilities that you would expect out of a modern industrial space.
Let's see. So I'll just real quickly show you the remainder of the block.
There's other buildings across from ours. Excuse me. This is our building on the left again.
there's other buildings of a similar sort of quality across the street in various states of
repair this one looks somewhat occupied this one has more boarded up windows here and then there's
some residential as well this is a residential building to give you a sense of the environment
so this is the one page official zoning plan but we have um a more extensive document that has
tentative floor plans and renderings. And I'll real quickly go through that. This is a color
coded version of that ground floor plan just to show you sort of how the parking works.
And this would be a landscaped area that we added here. There's actually an interesting
sort of power structure. It's like an on-site power plant that we're going to use for the
bicycle storage here and this is this elevation shows sort of what i would call the splendor of
how the stenton avenue front of the building is going to look once we restore all those windows
there are 78 proposed dwelling units 34 of them are two bedrooms that average about a thousand
square foot each these are really nicely sized units there will be 44 one-bedroom units that
average about 550 to 600 square feet. The blue units, this is the first floor plan, are the two
bedrooms. The pink are the one bedrooms. I'm not going to go drill down on a unit per unit basis
and show you layouts yet, but I can at your request. I'm absolutely happy to do so.
And what you sort of see here is this portion on the left is the tall three-story portion.
And the lower, longer portion of the building is all of this.
And that's sort of why it's so devastating to its current use that there are no windows
because almost the entire building has no windows.
This would be what we're calling the basement, but it's partially above ground.
And we'll have windows.
All of these windows.
These are upper floors here.
This is a bedroom table.
And then there are, we offered the RCO a security plan.
So this shows lighting posts to be installed, shown here, and security cameras that are going to light up the site.
And between that and the addition of windows on the ground floor, make this a safer block.
And then we have extensive renderings that total like a dozen pages.
Pretty cool stuff.
I'll sort of, I'll just show you one, for example.
This is, pardon me, one type of unit that would be in that lower portion of the building.
It's sort of a two-bedroom loft.
So I have the architect here to answer any further questions you might have about the project.
As I mentioned, we have some really extensive renderings available.
But for now, I'll leave it at that.
I'm happy to take any questions.
Why don't you have your client adopt your testimony?
Okay, thank you.
His name is Judah Angster, and he represents the buyer under contract.
Mr. Angster, can you please unmute yourself and wait for the chair?
What you doing?
I am now unmuted.
Hi, could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
My name is Judah Angster, J-U-D-A-H, last name Angster, A-N-G-S-T-E-R.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Proceed, counsel.
Judah, were you able to hear the full extent of my testimony today in this case?
Yes, I was.
Okay. Was it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge?
Yes, it is.
Would you therefore adopt it as your own testimony?
Yes, I do.
do you are you an authorized representative of the buyer under contract and equitable owner of
the property yes i am and last question for you can you specifically affirm that if your firm was to
And last question for you. Can you specifically affirm that if your firm was to purchase this building, that it would restore windows to those stuccoed areas that I showed such that all of the dwelling units would have windows?
Absolutely.
Okay. Thank you. Just stay on in case the board has any questions for you.
Is that your case, Brandon?