But the lot is 3,526 square feet, as you can see right here.
It's about at least twice the size of the other properties that you see mid-block, including the property located next to it.
It's about 1,800 square feet, and the other property is extending down the block.
So this is a very large block, a very large lot.
The structure only occupies, I think it's about 25% of the lot you can see here in the zoning table.
Obviously, RSA 5 corner lots, it's allowed to occupy 80%.
So it's not densely developed in terms of the structure.
Each floor is about 890, 194 square feet.
Each floor is about 890, 194 square feet.
The total interior square footage is pretty, as it presently exists, again, not utilizing anywhere near how much of the ground that could be utilized there.
The interior square footage is 2,659 square feet between the three floors.
So it's a very large house.
as mentioned and I'm going to just show you here in terms of some of the other lots and I'll show
you in a minute the zoning archive so this property that's located across the driveway from us
which is 236 Feirston already has a zoning permit for five it's been that way five units been that
way for a long time this property which is across the street on the corner has a zoning permit for
four I mean all these properties at the ends of the blocks a couple of them are still twos but
But again, most of them, because the houses are two to three times larger than the other houses, sometimes four times larger, have been approved and permitted for more units.
My client wants to develop this and turn the lowest level into another unit to provide housing for a family member.
You can see our refusal is simply a use for refusal.
As I mentioned, the property is owned by RSA 5.
But again, this development was done as a mix of two families and five families.
And this property was always, this house was always a two-family dwelling since it was developed in 1955.
I'm going to pull up, and here you can see an aerial image of the development, similar to what you saw with the zoning map.
Here's a little closer image.
And you can see how much larger this lot is than the house is as well.
And then here's 236 Farriston, and you can see the same type of situation existing there.
Continuing on with the exterior photos.
Again, drive the alley leading up the back.
You can see here people parking behind.
Some of them already closed out.
this is 236 fairston the five-family dwelling that's located across the driveway you can see
the meters on that house the front of that house and then this is just the other views
that are properties across the street which are again utilized and zoned for
two three sometimes four family dwellings this is just leading out of the development
You can see here.
This is the property.
This is the one right here on the end that's presently zoned.
This is a four-family dwelling.
As mentioned, we met with the community group a week ago Monday.
It was very well attended.
It was a long meeting, not for our presentation, but council member Phillips was there in attendance as well.
as members of the staff and you could see from the letter that we received um just the other day
from the upper uh unccc um that it was a near unanimous uh support by members of the community
there were a number of people from the block like i mentioned including the abutting property owner
who may or may not be on the call today um and so that spoke out in support of this proposal
the need for this type of housing up in this neighborhood, and that the impact upon the
abutting properties and nearby adjacent properties and nearby properties would not be something of
concern to any of the neighbors. And again, I think the one person that had opposition or had
concern, didn't vote in support, was a little confused by the materials that were mailed out,
somehow had a copy of the notice of refusal, which we handed out at the meeting,
And that seemed to confuse the person.
But other than that, again, it was nearly unanimous.
I mentioned the zoning archives for some of the other properties.
This is the 236 Fairston, which is located right across the alley.
And again, you can see a five-family dwelling was granted by variance in 78.
You know, 260 East Walnut Park Drive.
I don't know if I actually hit that tab.
I just said 151.
and you can see historically it was a doctor's office and a four-family as well.
We do have, as you can see on the floor plans, I know there's been some talk in the prior,
some of the projects that were presented earlier about how much of is below grade, how much
is above grade. Again, as you can see from the photos, this is the back. There's the existing
door. There are the existing windows fully above grade. There is this window that's right here in
There is this window that's right here in the bedroom where we may be expanding that.
the bedroom.
And then here's a common laundry area for the whole building.
It does have two windows.
And then you have two windows over here also at the kitchen.
And those are higher.
We may be expanding those as well.
But each of the units are a good size.
As mentioned, 894, 891 square feet.
As a two-family dwelling, as you may be aware, you can have up to three unrelated people living together.
So as in its current arrangement, it could have six bedrooms with six unrelated people, three per unit.
Presently, there's only two bedrooms, and then we're only adding one more.
We're not trying to jam a second one into the lower level to have six.
So we have fewer bedrooms and would otherwise be permitted as a matter of right.
We did try to explore the possibility of just, and we spoke to the architect about this at length, of possibly just, you know, as an alternative, expand, although this unit is intended for family members, a separate unit, of converting this vestibule area where you come in, which presently goes down to the cellar and goes up through the door or comes into the unit, through the door to go up to the upper units.
the existing two units are into a door, uh, into the ground, or I'm sorry, into the unit above.
This is the, uh, the second level, the existing unit to second level. And, um, it would be
extremely difficult and extremely expensive because of the, um, the configuration, uh,
in order to kind of seal off this area, um, this area to get from the ground floor to the lower
level, you'd have to relocate the front door. There's a lot of stonework there. And we're not
sure that we would even have the required landing areas or landing spaces with door swings and
whatever else in order to do that. So we explored that as an option of increasing the size of the
ground floor unit, expanding it into the lower level. But again, it would appear to be either
structurally or cost prohibitive and wouldn't serve the purpose that we were looking for, which
is to add a separate unit down below um for the family could you explain how um the other two
units on the first and second floor get it how do they get into the sure so so the laundry area
yeah sure so right now you come in so this is the door that is right here yeah on the side okay
So you come in, and then there's a stair that goes down,
and that goes right now goes down to the basement area,
which everybody can access.
You can come in off the vestibule here, and you make a left, turn left,
and there's a door that goes into the level, I call it level two,
the second story, the lower level is the first story.
This is the second story.
and then there's a door at the bottom of the stairs that then takes you up to the third story
at the top level and they have they haven't there's a door both at the bottom and there's
a door at the top as well does that answer does that answer your question yeah we're okay yeah
and again so the upper floors you know large large living room dining room kitchen kind of
all-open floor plan, as you saw in the photographs, and then two bedrooms with closets, a good
amount of windows facing, you know, towards the street, and then on the side, you get
windows that face towards Ferriston.
I did reach out.
We got, like I mentioned, we got the letter a little late.
I'm not blaming the community UNCCC about that.
The meeting was just last Monday, and I did forward the letter to Council Member Phillips
office but uh had not heard back from them as to what their position is and again they were in
attendance during the meeting i think they could have seen for themselves um that there was almost
again near the unanimous support from a well-attended uh meeting with that so just for a
point 55 years this was used as duplex and now the owner the owner is saying well i want to move a
family member into the third into the basement is that what you're saying yeah and to the lower
level, the lower story, correct?
Bring your client on.
We'd put it at about 65 years, yes.
Amir, can you raise your hand, please?
Obviously, while he's getting promoted to panelists, we do have an architect involved,
as you can see here, and this would be, obviously, we would go through the process of securing
building permits and getting a certificate of occupancy, securing, making sure all life
safety codes are complied with.
We have had discussions about the need to actually, one of the benefits of this project
One of the benefits of this project is that right now it's not presently sprinklered.
is that right now it's not presently sprinklered.
And in order to add the lower unit, we'll need to sprinkle the whole building.
So this will be converted from a non-sprinkled building with two units to a fully sprinklered building with three.
It's also nice that with the access off the back, this could be modified at the ground floor level for ADA access if we were able to make that work in terms of bathroom sizes and turnarounds, which is something we have also discussed.
because you can't now presently get into even the unit that's at the ground grade level
off of East Walnut Park Lane because of steps.
Who's the client on?
El-Tab El-Hasan.
I'll allow them to speak briefly.
Thank you very much.
Good morning.
amir could you please yeah i can could you could you turn on your video first
uh let me promote him to our panelists and then he'll be able to do some please hold sir
there's becoming a back end sure
hi everyone my name is amir al-tayyib al-hassan of lm real estate
could you please spell your name for the stenographer yes uh a m e e r and then al-tayyib
E-L-T-A-Y-E-B
last name Al-Hassan
E-L-H-A-S-S-A-N
do you swear or firm
to tell the truth
the whole truth
nothing but the truth
can you turn your video on please
oh it's not currently on
thank you there we go please proceed counsel
oh yes yes amir did you um did you hear the statements that i made to the board this morning
yes i have and are they true and correct to the best of your knowledge yes and you you were at
the meeting with me on last Monday evening, correct? I was. And it was a very well attended
meeting, correct? Yeah, I would say at least 50 people and more people than were at the first
community meeting that we actually did in winter 2024. So very, very well attended and it was nice
to see there was actually attendees who had never joined a meeting before in the past and this was
their first time and they had been living in the community for 20 years. So definitely got to hear
a lot of voices that needed to be heard and address any concerns that people had and alleviate
them thank you i have no further questions right um questions from the board i have no questions
i have one quick question so when you go into down the basement to that common area you're not able
the the basement apartment is not um has access to that common area through that door but that's
not their main entry correct no no their their main entry is that like it's the existing door
that's right at grade off the back i can show you another picture of it if you would like okay no i
i thought that was it thank you yeah okay and my only question is what is the plan for trash
so we did talk about that and i'll show you on the safe on the plan so right now the plan is to put
to not store it outside and we have it shown here um at there's going to be an area that's
either kind of off in this area right here i mean obviously not right at the bottom of the stairs
um but there's going to be an area in the cellar where we're going to have trash storage for the
units but there's no doorway public doorway from the cellar to the exterior of the home correct
so yeah no there is it's this common hallway here so you would come up and you would come out
the front door right so there's they'd have to carry the trash up the stairs but yeah that's
fine i just wanted to make sure yeah i mean they would store it in their unit but if they didn't
if they had too much for their unit there was there'd be an area to store it inside
which is which is not what's most a lot of most of the people in the neighborhood just put it out
back in their driveway so we were trying to provide as much area as we can inside to keep
trash out of the uh the open the open space all right other questions yes um question um can you
make the uh uh common area the not the common area the lower level a little bigger sure how's that
all right well this is where the new unit is being proposed correct
so am i reading this correctly is there there's a the proposed living room and then next to that is
So am I reading this correctly?
Is there, there's a proposed living room?
the bedroom so it's going to be a one bedroom unit correct correct yes and then am i seeing that the
sorry go ahead go ahead that the bathroom is over here on the other side where the
kitchen is is that yes it is off the kitchen yeah with the stand-up shower that's the that's
the config keys sorry keep sliding it open that's a configuration right now we we have discussed that
and seeing if there's a way not to have the shower right off of the kitchen
um and that would involve you know possibly relocating some of the you know moving some
things around in this area um but it was the way to get the biggest bedroom and the biggest living
right now well i i guess my concern is you know again i and maybe this is a pet peeve of mine
but um you know when you get up at two o'clock in the morning you have to wander all through here
to get to the bathroom go through the kitchen to get to the bathroom i find that to be um
not the best configuration if you will for a living space yeah i mean we have played around
with the idea of putting it in over here right off of the living and the bedroom but then obviously
we end up with a pretty large kitchen you know they can eat in area and then not having um you
know as big of a bedroom um or living room so that that is an option though because we have