Darnell Kossam.
First name is D-A-R-N-E-L-L.
Last name Kossam.
C is in Charlie.
O is in Oscar.
S is in Sierra.
O is in Oscar.
M is in Mike.
You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Please proceed, counsel.
Thank you.
Mr. Kosom, have you heard my presentation here today with regard to your project at 2546 Page
Street? Yes. And do you agree with and adopt the testimony that I've given here today with your
with brought to your project at 2546 Page Street? Yes. I have one more question. Here I'm showing
a petition of support. Did you obtain these signatures from neighbors in the area who
Yes, I did. Yes, and they expressed their support of your project? Yes. As it's shown here? Yes.
Now, can you just briefly describe to the members of the board why it is that you
want to convert this into a duplex? So, my plan to convert it into a duplex is,
one, so I can have more affordable housing in that area. I'm from Strawberry Mansion,
and I've been trying to just clean up the neighborhood,
I think that I can do a pretty good job
of making the block look better.
And with me being there and having tenants in the house
because most of the block is abandoned,
it may motivate people to want to come to the neighborhood
and start to live there again, or the block.
Thank you.
I have no further questions of Mr. Kosom.
Are there any questions from the members of the board?
uh yes i have one question before i ask the board uh now i didn't see the uh tax clearance
oh yes i apologize uh mr chair it is right here the tax clearance is here i did send it to hillary
we just got it earlier today hillary did you get it i emailed it
miss nichols i don't believe i received it for some reason so if you could resend it that would
be greatly appreciated all right when we um do you want me to send it again now i thought when
you're done when you're done it's fine okay all right i'll resend it um and i also sent you the
petition of support did you receive that i have not seen any emails from you today okay no if you
sent that today i did not receive that i sent that yesterday but i'll rescind it again okay
Thank you. Thank you. I'll make sure to double check my junk folder. It didn't go in there.
Okay. Thank you. Questions from the board?
Yes, Mr. Chairman. Counselor, how many two family units, buildings, is on a block?
To my knowledge, hello, was that a question to me or to Mr. Cosim?
To my knowledge, Mr. Holloman, we aren't aware of any two-family units at this time,
but Mr. Cosim, as he stated, he's concerned as someone who's lived in this area that the
development isn't attracting individuals to want to live in a single-family property.
He's got another property not too far from here where he's going to develop it as a two-family
dwelling thank you are all the council are all the properties on that block in the average around
uh 11 to 1200 square feet um i don't want to answer that because i'm not familiar i believe
as far as i can see visually they look the same size but i don't i haven't done any research into
actually looking at the actual square footage no problem jim do you have any questions
no mr chairman all right questions from the virtual audience
i see no hands chair planning commission this is ron bednar city planning the property is
indicated for residential use on the city plan are adopted district plan recommends no change
the existing single family residential zoning at this location the applicant's hardship is not
supported with evidence of unique physical circumstances or condition of the property
that would prevent it from being used in conformity with the code. Therefore, we recommend
You went out, Ron. We didn't get your recommendation.
All right. Our recommendation is not to be granted.
May I respond to that briefly?
Sure, counsel.
Thank you. As I stated, Mr. Cosim is
Thank you. As I stated, Mr. Kosom is from this area and his awareness is that the properties in this area, most of them are not occupied.
And he knows that young people want to move into the area.
And for him, his hardship is that he knows that he wouldn't be able to rent this property to a single family.
He would only be able to develop it with people who can afford to live here as a duplex.
Thank you.
Do we have any opposition from the council's office?
Hillary?
Mr. Chair, I think we should hold this one maybe for two weeks since the RCO meeting was just this week.
um and it was it was not communicated to to council or the applicant what the the position
was um so i think we should we should wait for a couple of weeks to get the the position letter
from the rco um and i i don't know if there will be one from the council office as well but we have
not received one to this point the one thing i'm sorry the one thing is robinson was asking us
about was trash she didn't seem concerned about the duplex as opposed to trash so that's the one
thing i can give you a comment about okay all right so we'll do is we'll hold this uh case and
we'll vote on it in two weeks um on the three o'clock on the 3 30 hearing we'll vote on the
the 2 p.m. 2 p.m. last. Yes. Okay. On the 22nd. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council.
All right. Number five, MI-2022-005422, 2315 Parrish Street. Jennifer Blazetto.
Hello, Bizzitlo.
Bizzitlo.
Apologize.
No problem.
Please state your name
and spell it for the record.
Sure. My name is Jennifer Bizzitlo.
B-A-Z-Y
D as in dog,
L as in Larry, O as in Oscar.
You swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Please
give us the connection to your client sure i am representing um zubin hensler through his llc
home cone audio who is the proposed tenant of the ground floor unit at 2315 parish
okay our board member thomas holliman has a few questions good afternoon council do you agree to
the reading of the refusal and stipulate to his accuracy i do i do all documents as required
five days in advance to this hearing did you meet with the rco and do you have a letter from the rco
yes thank you and share your screen
Okay, so, as I said, my name is Jennifer Bezidlo, I'm here representing the proposed tenant of the ground floor unit at 2315 Parrish Street.
I've submitted a packet of information that I'm just going to scroll through here for a second.
The first is our refusal.
This is an RSA five zoned property
that's historically been commercial.
I'm going to get into that later,
but that's basically the cause of our refusal.
Our lease here, which is a three-year lease
that will be ending approximately the end of May in 2026.
We are agreeing to a three-year temporary.
We'll talk more about that later too.
Lots of leases, here is the proof
that the taxes are current on the property.
This is just what's due for 2023.
This is the letter from Fairmount Civic.
And as you can see, they were in support.
It was 28 to two to two people that took no position.
We'll get more into that later as well.
And we do also have letter,
this was all the addresses that were notified.
We have a letter of support from the only attached neighbor, which is 2313 Parish.
They were unable to attend the meeting because they have a newborn, but we did do outreach and they supported it.
We also have a letter of support from the local Democratic committee person who is an affected neighbor as well.
This is the prior approval in 2019, which was for the legalization of the two units above and a fitness studio at the time on the first floor.
This is the prior approval in 2019.
Separately, I submitted the complete zoning archive. I'll come back to that, but I didn't want to have to scroll through 50 pages as we were talking.
um that was the notice of decision this is the zoning map um and then this is the aerial view
i'm going to come back to all this just want to show you that we have it photographs of the
posting of the property um we also have this is the front of the property side and rear
this is the interior the current interior of the first floor this is the stairway main stairway
we'll get back to that and this is the plans of the first floor which basically just showed this
is the commercial entrance it's a couple of rooms a bathroom in the back and exit to the yard in the
back so um i want to go back to the photo okay so um 2315 um parish uh it's located in the corner
of Parrish and Judson Street in Fairmount. The building currently consists of two two-bedroom
apartments, one on the second floor, which is actually where my client lives, and one on the
third floor as well. This building was, and there's a vacant commercial space is what we're talking
about on the first floor. As you can see, there's a commercial entrance and a residential entrance.
This, as far as I can tell, this building was constructed in the early 1900s as a mixed-use
commercial property. And the zoning archive shows that since back to 1959, there has been a commercial
use on this first floor. Before this was the approved fitness studio. Before that, it was a
dry cleaners. So despite its RSA 5 zoning, this is not a single family home. It is a mixed use
commercial which I want to go back to the zoning map if you can see on the zoning map
a lot of these corners on this block in this area are zoned commercial mixed use.
This one just happens to have been categorized as RSA 5 despite its long-standing history of
commercial use. So therefore any business that would go in here would generate a refusal.
Our proposal is to use this space for process.
It's going to be just for Zubin.
It's actually quite a small business to process and edit audio for podcasts and a couple of other audio projects.
So we're not talking about a traditional commercial recording studio where you might have bands coming in or renting out the space, anything too loud.
This is really just mostly computer work. And I'm going to have him explain it better after I go through some more like the legal stuff here, because I'm not an audio expert and he is.
um but um i just wanted to point out a couple of key factors again uh we are just asking for a
three-year temporary um to run coincide with the lease uh understanding that other uses in this
use category might affect the neighbors um more um so this was we started off with that and we
fully, we fully agree to that. The other is that I pointed out that Zubin has been living
in the second floor since about June. And hold on one second. I just wanted to go back to
something else about the lease on page 10 here. Hold on. So the lease itself is for a small
personal use audio studio, primarily for podcast work. So that's the scope of what's allowed by
his lease, and that's the scope we are applying for here. So like I said, it would be three-year
temporary coincide with this lease. Zubin has been living above the second floor since about
June of last year, and he's been doing a lot of this work in a home office with the neighbors,
no complaints from the neighbors, no noise complaints. In fact, the neighbors above that
just live there are making more noise than he is doing his business, as a lot of this work is
rather quiet and on the computer. And I wanted to get back to this photo of the stairs and why this
is important. So what originally attracted Zubin to this space, and he can explain the acoustics
of this better, is that there is only one attached dwelling unit other than his apartment, which is
which is the 2313 next door and then we have this area of buffer with no other
attached buildings in the back and how the layout works is that the wall that is
And how the layout works is that the wall that is that the commercial space and the attached building have this void of air, which you can explain the acoustics of this better.
But this is one of the best ways to insulate sound is to actually have this staircase with this air gap that prevents noise transfer that might happen to adjacent properties.
um so as you can see again on the plans you have this stairwell that's buffering
the connection between the two properties in addition to just the wall in addition to any
other sound reducing techniques that might be implemented um so we believe that this use is
in harmony with uh the surrounding neighborhood as you know we have a lot of these properties in
the area that are corner commercial. This building has had a commercial use on the first floor. It's
not going to cause any additional congestion as it's going to be primarily used by Zubin who
already lives in the building. So he's already a resident. It's mostly needing more space to do
what he might have otherwise just be doing in his apartment or if he had a larger apartment.
And, you know, again, this is, we're asking for a limited time, a limited scope, which will further reduce any possible impact to the community.
I'm going to go back to the letter of support.
We did meet with Fairmount, in addition to doing outreach to direct neighbors as well, which I can have Zubin explain that to.
He did extensive outreach.
He's been a very good advocate for himself.
um voluntarily but we did meet with them um and we did have a good amount of support
uh again 28 uh attendees in support only six opposed um and for near neighbors there was two
opposed um and two in support um so um like I said and then I had additional two letters
of people that did not attend the meeting who were near neighbors who were also in support
um i'm just trying to think uh with that um i oh all that they asked was they did want a three-year
temporary which we talked about and for the if possible you know to have the description that's
in the lease be what's approved uh so excluding radio and television broadcasting um we're okay
with that. So if I can ask Zubin Hensler to raise his hand so he can be sworn in and adopt my
testimony and talk a little bit more about his business, that would be great.
Zubin, please state your name and spell it for the court reporter.
Yeah, it's Zubin, Z-U-B-I-N, Hensler, H-E-N-S-L-E-R.
You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Yes, I do. All right, Zubin, let's just first have you adopt my testimony.
Did you hear my testimony here today? And do you believe it to be truthful and accurate?
Yes. And would you adopt it as your own? Yes. All right. So can you just tell us a little bit
about more about you, your business, the scope of work that you plan to do here,
and any outreach you've done to the neighbors? And yeah, just tell us a little bit more about
what you've done and what you propose to do. Yes. So I'm an audio engineer. I mostly edit
and mix and compose for podcasts, museum installations, and albums and other types