less trash than theirs, mostly just paper trash, but we will have a dedicated trash storage
in the rear. He sells newer used cars.
in the rear um he sells newer used cars i would say he specifies that they they're still under
warranty so they're they're relatively newer um and uh and you can see it's the right of the
property on frankfort obviously this is a very busy commercial corridor what we're asking to do
here not only is it not out of character because of the other car sales but generally it's it's a
busy commercial corridor i think this is an appropriate use here
the interior you can see is is gutted right now you'll see on the plans it's pretty open concept
so this is the proposed layout a few offices uh you know the with doors a few sort of open
offices, a janitor closet, some bathrooms. Um, the, this sort of space at the top of your screen
right here, which is windows, um, from the Wawa is going to be converted to more of like an
accordion style door, which will allow the cars that you see on the diagram to get inside of the
building. Um, we're not sort of cutting any of the structural walls down on the sides. Um,
Um, and, uh, I mean, that's, it's sort of your classic, um, car sales business.
Here's an aerial of, uh, what the, the space looks like.
There's 30 parking spaces.
Um, many of them will be used to stage cars, but also a large portion of them will be sort
of left open for customer parking.
Um, and he has customer parking at his other locations as well.
The RCO meeting notice.
We met with the RCO on June 1st.
mailed notice here's the application for the variance
feed to the property which he has owned since uh for about a year since june of 2025
and then the proof of tax clearance with that i'd like to call my client to adopt my testimony
sir could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer michael m-i-s-c-h-a-l-e-l
last name m-i-l-i-s right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the
truth counsel michael did you hear my testimony today yes was it true and correct yes and do you
adopt it as your own yes thank you questions from the board is there no uh there's an old pylon sign
are you planning to do signage to replace so great question he's going to put his signage
on the structure that was left behind by the Wawa.
He's not proposing to build anything new there.
I don't think that it is going to be require variants.
Obviously, if it does require some sort of variants,
we'll be back in front of the board.
Just looking at the images,
like there was an old, I guess, pylon sign on the corner.
Yeah, exactly.
Pylon's still there.
We're going to reutilize that.
So you are going to put a new sign up?
I think you said on the building.
The pylon wasn't on the sign structure that's existing, the pylon.
So that's a separate application?
Correct.
What about fencing?
I noticed in the other locations there's fencing around the property.
Are you going to do fencing here also?
We don't have fencing on other properties.
I thought on the images I saw fencing.
The only fencer is in the back.
we put up that fencing right after we bought the property for the neighbors just to be more
and we also there's nothing there's no updated pictures we put like trees in the back just to
make it look better okay other questions yeah would you keep that same border in the front
like i know um in the front on um i guess that's frankfort avenue while i had the shrubs
will you no no no we put stones and we just made it clear needing clear we just cleared it up so
you know like people walk by and throw stuff in there so we just keep it clean okay and my last
question is um how many um exits do you have i know there's a there's two curb cuts so which one
are you going to close or use both of them or close one off no we'll use both of them okay
both of them so cars will be coming either way yes okay thank you and then in their requirement
for a landscape buffer we're not modifying the parking lot so i i don't think there is there's
reference on a refusal that the existing existing accessory parking spots will remain so my
assumption is that because we're not modifying it and this is just a use application we're okay i
would defer to l and i's interpretation if the bushes were removed just a point there it's fair
I didn't hear what you would just what you say.
I said it was modified if the bushes were removed.
oh right right right right um my question well one i will say like i do think that the
All right, right, right, right.
the landscaping that wawa had was nice looking at the frank frankfort avenue and knowing that
like specifically car oriented uses break up streets and make it really not great urban
environment so i would have supported and strongly encouraged constantly the vegetated buffer um but
this is just car sales right we're not doing any repairs it's car sales
all the questions questions from our attorney
no my one question was going to be about signage but that's been addressed thank you
questions or comments from the virtual audience i see no hands at this time chair learning
commission you know solomonic with the planning commission the comprehensive plan recommends no
change to the existing cmx 2.5 commercial mixed use zoning the appellant has not shown that the
property cannot possibly be used in strict conformity with the zoning code and that a
variance is therefore necessary planning commission recommends the board deny the requested use
variance for the personal vehicle sales and rentals mi20260012826506 frankfort avenue i
vote yes michael johns my vote is yes tenetta graham my vote is yes i am mcadams my vote is yes
tywin my vote is yes thank you thank you council thank you thank you number 12.
MI 2026-001-569-2229, Philmar Street, Alan Nockamson is the attorney.
Alice, are you involved in this too?
That's it.
Please start. All right. I just said, state your name. Cause you've been sworn a few times in here and could you identify your client, the relationship to the property? Yeah. Tell left of me. Oh, my name is Alan. Right. And tell left of me is Nelson, who's the owner of the property. Okay. Our voice chair has a few questions.
Good afternoon. Have you submitted your documents with this case? 5 days in advance of this hearing?
yes we have okay and you have a host of refusals so do you wait to read another refusals as typically
to their accuracy yes i do i just want to make sure that the board got the most recent refusal
that was issued i think it was a couple days ago just want to make sure it was i mean they uh yes
july 28th we received it yes all right great yeah thank you you can share your screen and proceed
with your case and the point we do have several uh letters of opposition right we just have my
understanding is the only letter of opposition from the oh i see greater bustleton right that's
the only one i have right and a letter of opposition from the council member o'neill
we never received that but i can you know respond obviously to well his his person's here okay great
so um i will say this that the this is seems worse than it is from a variant standpoint and i would
say that most of the refusals that came in from the landscaping came in with this secondary
amended refusal. So while this project or the property is noted as 2229 Fulmer Street, it's
really a Roosevelt Boulevard address. Like that street that's facing us is Roosevelt Boulevard. So
we're at the beginning of a residential neighborhood, but for all intents and purposes,
we're right on Roosevelt Boulevard. And you'll see from the aerial view that we're right next
to a commercial building, a Verizon building. So what we're proposing is more in line and
character with the surrounding neighborhood that were on Roosevelt Boulevard. But we'll have 11
exhibits to look at. I also have the architect's representative, David McArthur, on the line. And
I have Nelson Telleleptomy, who actually lives in the property. So he's owned this property
for almost the past four years. So he can speak volumes about how well it's to live in a property
that's essentially on Roosevelt Boulevard. He has a single-family house there, which is rather loud,
and it's out of character to have a single family house right there and then so we will go over the
refusal so let's go through the first one the first one is about the height we got rid of that
height refusal where we're supposed to do 35 feet where you know we're originally proposing 37 feet
and 518 inch inches we reduced it by way of revised plans uh the second refusal has to deal
with one more than one principal uh building we're trying to put two two two two two two
duplexes there we're doing four units here two units in each building we're looking to condo this
this is for sale opportunity um but what we wanted to do was two separate residences
residences or building structures there to have as many windows as possible for the units to make
or building structures there to have as many windows as possible.
it more livable. So that's the reason why we're doing that. Tell us what's there now. It's a
single family residence right there. It's a rather knock that down. We are going to knock that down.
It's a rather large lot, which is the lot area is 9,111 square feet. So it's a rather large RSD
D3 lot. The next refusal has to deal with the surface parking. Again, not out of character. You'll see surface parking right next door to us. The next refusal has to do with screening with regards to the parking lot, which I wouldn't really call a parking lot. It's more like, again, a residential driveway. But we did add a lot of screening to the left of us.
So the person who is to the left of us supports this project.
And by the way, when you say that the coordinating RCO is in opposition, while there was a lot of opposition within that room,
you'll see there were no nearby neighbors who voted on this project at all.
And that we did a separate petition of nearby neighbors because, you know, Nelson lives there and they're all in support of this.
They rather have like something more like more in line like this, provide a diversity of housing,
opportunities for other people to move in the neighborhood where single-family is just not
appropriate right there on Roosevelt Boulevard. How long has it been there? The property? I don't
know. I mean, it's a single-family home, but it's been there a while. Nelson bought it, and like I
said, in terms of the noise and the traffic, it's, you know, it's for the board to decide. I think
this is a good, yeah, it's a good use of the property. It is for sales opportunity, and again,
it gives opportunities for people to buy differently and there these are three bedrooms
two baths were around 1800 square foot uh units uh and again all these other refusals have to do
more so with the shrubbery and things like that um again he added a lot of shrubbery to the person
to the left of him that's more appropriate he did not add any shrubbery in the in the parking lot
because he wanted to provide one parking spot for each unit uh this next refusal has to deal with
the four dwelling units where rsd rsd3 but again we're a substantial lot we're almost 10 10 000
square foot lot uh side yard it's it's interesting here so l and i had it both ways they said okay
we're when we when we analyze the side yard and we'll go through the site plan when you analyze
a side yard we're going to call fulmer street the front street which you know it should i guess right
because it's named fulmer and so it's a irregular shaped lot where we're seven our side yard is seven
feet wide for a portion of it and then how it tapers off we're slightly less than seven feet
but then on the front yard they decided that roosevelt boulevard should be the street that
they analyze it based on and we're we run afoul of the rsd3 residential zoning district where 25
foot front yard should be allowed or is required where 15 feet 11 inches and change is proposed
but if you took the front yard as fulmer street then we would actually fall in line with it so
they said for one part of the analysis for the side yard we're going to count fulmer street as
as the main street but for this but for the front yard we're going to count uh roosevelt
boulevard as uh as the as the primary street so we did meet with the bustleton group again
what i would highlight is this there are no nearby neighbors at all so i mean yes this is a very
active group you know and and they're very vocal and which is great right everyone should have a
vote in in their neighborhoods to vote it was 11 in support and 31 against but again we don't know
who they are where they are they're not within the affected area the people that were who are
the affected area be most impacted by this are in support of it the person again to the left of him
who would be most supported by this increased density is in support of this project um and
again he personally walked the block because that's his block he knows those people so i we don't even
have a vote with the with the board i don't know if they don't vote the board but again no nearby
neighbors and again so uh and again there were 62 people in attendance we only have 42 votes i don't
know what happened to the other 20 votes that should have been there uh these you know we try
to like minimize some of our refusals although then after you know the last two days we were told
we have all these other refusals but you know we reduced the building height to put in more in
character to the rsd3 zoning classification and we added the landscape buffer because that was what
was asked of us in the nearby neighbor right we're not changing the setback in any way but he just
wanted to left of us wanted more and better like buffer you know from a sound perspective
you know from a sound perspective uh and then if you can just see here just want to go over just
and then if you can just see here
those two refusals right so from fulmer street we talk about the side yard right of seven feet
seven feet in the front and it's six feet four and eleven sixteenths in the back but it's tapered
off that's a regular shape that's a hardship in terms of the frontage right you see we're set
back 25 feet, which again, would fall in line with this zoning classification, but instead
of counting Fulmer as the frontage, they counted Roosevelt Boulevard as the frontage where
it's 15 feet and 11 and 11 sixteenth inches. So again, kind of acknowledging that this
really should be frontage, should be Roosevelt Boulevard. And when you say Roosevelt Boulevard,
you're not thinking single family household living. You're seeking, you're seeking, seeing
as a commercial, mixed-use, multifamily type of living,
which, again, kind of matches what we're proposing here.
Just one question, and I'm not disagreeing with you.
But the whole issue of living on up there because of the noise and things like that,
isn't that going to be the same thing of people living in a fourplex?
That's true, and that's right.
But I think people are more willing to deal with that.
Like when people are living—
Willing to deal with it, you think?
Yeah, multifamily, yes.
And by the way, he lives in an older home, too, which probably doesn't have the sound insulation that you would expect of a newer construction.
So when he builds it, he's obviously going to take that into account.
Right. So you'll see from the single family, it's an older single family.
I would probably looks like 40, 50 years old.
I can't I don't know the exact age, but obviously they didn't take that into account.
And just to step back, how we're set back further in, we were mindful of that.
But you can see here that we have multiple people on Fulmer Street, which is including the person next door to us, who are in support of this project.
And then maps of the area.
So, again, we have a CMX1 property.
We have a couple of CMX1 properties, which are probably mislabeled, too.
Because, again, this is the Verizon building, which we'll show you.
But a couple of CMX1 properties.
And then, you know, obviously, I think that's probably like a CA1 or something like that across the street.