square feet of disturbance so there will be there's no required stormwater per pwd um so this is pwd's
approval of this project thank you is the you actually just answered my next question but just
to make sure is the project subject to any required or typical stormwater management requirement
not per pwd and why is that again because we're less than 15 000 square feet of disturbance
so to comply with the requirements of the zoning code as it pertains to steep slope disturbance
and as well to address community concerns, did Collier's prepare a stormwater management plan
seeking to address some of those concerns? Yes, we did. And is that plan and finding summarized
and shown here on the screen at Exhibit 20? Correct, yes. And just if you can summarize some
of the highlights for the board. Sure, so this plan shows the roof area being captured by roof
drains running into yard drains that will have filters to collect sedimentation and then
ultimately that will discharge to a rain garden and you can see the rain garden is that green
area on the plan in the green space that we have on the project this rain garden will manage the
two through the hundred year increase in volume due to the additional impervious area and then
increase in volume due to the additional impervious area. And then also the rain garden
also the rain garden will have
will have an outlet control structure which will manage the rates coming off the site from the
post-development conditions to the pre-development conditions. And pre-development conditions versus
post-development conditions, will this development based on this design increase stormwater runoff
to this site from the site? Without the rain garden there would be an increase in runoff.
with the rain garden there will be no increase in runoff based on your professional opinion will
the project cause any shifting of earth to adjacent buildings either up or down slope
no and a developer will need to obtain their building permit site work permits there'll be
on-site supervision and special inspections that have to occur and based on your professional
opinion uh in the scope of what you would have reviewed do you believe that this development
will cause an increase in the likelihood of loss of any adjoining properties no same thing building
permanent site work inspection special inspection slate work permits will be obtained during
construction thank you gabby so just to summarize board we believe that the testimony that our
architect presented as well as our professional consultants and engineers today and during the
first hearing have conclusively and as a matter of law established that this lot suffers from a unique and unnecessary hardship that would foreclose the development of any construction on this lot whatsoever in the absence of variance relief.
we believe that that evidence and the witnesses have established that the variance is the least
minimum and is intended to disturb as little of the site as is possible this is not the case where
an alternative development might generate a different but less extreme variances
in this particular case these are the absolute least minimum variances that are required in
order to support any viable development of the site furthermore in a review of available case
law on the subject and as referenced in the memo of law at exhibit 21 courts have generally only
upheld denials of steep slope variances where there was some evidence of another viable option
here we would submit that the evidence has shown that there is simply no other viable option
uh i did like i said i included the memo of lawd exhibit 21 and i'm also happy to submit
my notes of testimony after the hearing for your file as well and for your additional review
now while my client fully respects the community's position and concerns the fact remains that this
particular developer met with the community three times over the course of nearly a year
including continuing the hearing originally scheduled way back in the winter in february
to make further changes that were shown to the board during the last hearing
now as the community did acknowledge changes were made uh even though a vast majority of those
changes had no bearing whatsoever on the steep slope variances but were done in an attempt to
try and find some level of common ground uh just for purposes of the record we would respectfully
ask this board to strike from the record a letter that was submitted yesterday on behalf of rco
solo germantown civic that does not have geographic boundaries including this property
in fact its boundaries don't start for over a half a mile away after west chelton avenue
The letter was not submitted on an individual's behalf. It was actually submitted by an RCO purporting to take a position on the project for which it has no technical jurisdiction under planning's RCO rules.
That note aside, we do submit that the evidence presented during the first hearing and today is unambiguous and clearly establishes this applicant's entitlement to relief, and we would respectfully ask for the board's approval.
I would like to bring on my client to adopt my testimony, and I just have two questions for him.
Nadal Hassan.
Nadal has been promoted.
Good morning, sir.
Could you please state and spell your name for the stenographer?
Hello?
Could you please state and spell your name for the stenographer?
Yeah, Nadal Hassan, first name Nadal, N-I-D-A-L, last name Hassan, H-A-S-S-E-N.
Could you please turn on your video too, please?
do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
i do counsel thank you uh nadal have you heard all of the testimony and ever
evidence that was offered uh first in the hearing in may and then as well today in front of the board
yes do you agree that that testimony was true and accurate and would you adopt it
as if you had provided it to the board yourself i do uh nadal just very briefly can you please
explain how you intend to manage this particular property um i have a management company that i use
to for rentals for tcs management and then um if we have the we already have a stormwater agreement
with uh colliers we've already signed the contract so they would manage that as well for maintenance
overseeing that so just just to uh emphasize what you just said so uh colliers would be
managing the stormwater management system on this property correct and do you have experience in
construction in philadelphia yes for like eight years now and would you be intending to construct
this building in accordance with all necessary and required engineering and building code standards
yes thank you questions from the board can you can you explain uh just uh briefly uh the storm
water management system uh just one more time and how that um system um will not um
increase any runoff uh from the existing site if if the site is not developed
Sure, I'm sorry, I'm going to have Gabby answer that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to hear from this. So a rain garden is essentially just a whole that the storm water from the roof would be the roof discharge with discharge to the rain garden, which is essentially just a big hole.
and then um that holds back some of the water and there's an outlet control structure that has
various orifices and weirs that hold back water and will only release it at a rate that is
consistent with the pre-developed conditions um and the water that's sitting in the rain garden
you know there's evapotranspiration and things like that that occur and and gabby a rain garden
this is a system that uh colliers has designed and implemented for other projects before correct
correct it's a typical BMP used in Philadelphia and is there a green roof on the building at all
or no there is not okay so the rain garden and the stormwater management on site will
effectively address all issues related to stormwater management uh and runoff correct okay
other questions yes and this system has been reviewed with the water department it's not
required to be reviewed with the water department because we have less than 15 000 square feet of
disturbance pwd doesn't require stormwater so then this is done through what how how is this guaranteed
well um the we can prepare an o and m agreement which is an operations and maintenance agreement
that we will provide to the developer that he can record with the city to maintain it.
All right. And then I guess, all right. So this rain garden, how many gallons does it hold?
Gallons? Let me give you some numbers here.
So the existing runoff volume is 15,000 cubic feet approximately.
and then the proposed runoff is 2990 cubic feet so there's a 1500 roughly cubic foot difference
in the amount of runoff that's going to be generated from the proposed building essentially
because that's the impervious addition um so that rain garden is approximately 1500 um hold about
a 1500 cubic feet of rainwater okay and then you say it drains how it'll yeah it'll connect to an
existing pwd um sewer in walnut avenue okay all right and then it it drains is there some sort
of system in terms of how that drainage uh is controlled correct so that yeah yeah so that
you're not like if there's a big storm it's not like it's going to overwhelm the system that's
in place correct that's the exact point of the rain garden so it it'll maintain what's currently
Correct. That's the exact point of the rain garden. So it it'll maintain what's currently happening at the site.
happening at the
Okay. All right. Thank you all the questions. Yeah. So just a quick summary. I know the building height has been reduced, correct?
that's that's correct so uh let me just show you the summary form so the roof height was reduced
uh from 39 feet 8 inches to 37 feet 4 inches main roof parapet was reduced from 44 feet 2 inches to
41 feet 10 inches and is this still a roof deck proposed or that's gone too um the there is a
roof deck um the locations and and dimensions of the pilot house were revised let me bring that up
and and where is that and oh yeah sorry uh so you can see it's it's a fairly small roof deck it does
not cover nearly the entire building it's just a small roof deck uh basically right up at the front
along walnut and uh with second avenue and you can see it does meet all of the setbacks including an
additional setback on the side uh next to the neighboring property so there's about a 10 foot
uh distance from the roof deck to the neighboring property along with the hicken avenue okay and and
and i think is the cut then the commercial on the first one has been removed as well correct
that's going to be a unit now that that is correct the the commercial was removed really
in response to discussions with the community that didn't feel that commercial was appropriate here
Got you. Thank you. Any other questions? Questions or comments from our attorney?
Not at this time, Mr. Chairman. Questions or comments from the virtual audience? Well, we're going to start right here.
Sir, could you please state and spell your name? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Sidney Ozer, S-I-D-N-E-Y.
Right. Last name Ozer. O-Z like zebra, E-R like Robert. Right.
And I'm a member of the board of the whole Civic Association.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir.
And you have sent us correspondence, am I correct?
Yes, we have.
Okay, so you could summarize the correspondence, but you have two minutes because we have other people who want to testify.
I appreciate it.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman and board.
Working with Meredith and Nidal, we did come to agreement on many issues.
However, we did not come to agreement on a very, very important issue, that being the building height. We mentioned that. Also, we have questions about the responsibility of the builder that we'll address, and the developer submitted ground floor plus four stories without notifying the community, which is different than what we had thought we had negotiated.
So, and it seems that the midpoint that they're using for the height may have been changed as well. So let me just summarize here that our community supports responsible, environmentally sustainable development, but we have questions about the height. It's not in scale with the neighborhood.
We have questions about the hardship. The developer and affiliate have eight years of working in Philadelphia. Right now, they have seven other development sites in Northwest and North Philadelphia that they're working with. So they should have been familiar with the area.
The developer and the affiliates have many L&I violations in the city, including utilizing a contractor for demolition excavation whose license was revoked.
Regarding the man-made nature of the hill, for lack of a better word, neighbors have lived here for generations,
and some of our senior neighbors do not recall any removal in their lifetimes or in their family's
lifetimes. The developer did not remove weeds at the site for months until we called CLIP.
The developer promised to prepare a dangerous sidewalk of the property and has never done that.
And this indicates the responsibility or lack thereof of the developer.
An adjacent nonprofit child care center requested discussions with the developer.
Obviously, their children and their staff would be at risk if there was a problem with the excavation.
The developer never contacted that child care center organization.
The partner, RCO 21st Ward Democrats, requested discussions with the developer about the safety of the removal, and they were never reached out to by the developer as well.
And the following organizations also do not support the development as proposed and have submitted letters, in addition to near neighbors in the Blue Valley community.
Uh, uh, letters, uh, in addition to near neighbors in the Bluebell community, that would be historic written house town, Delaware river keepers, 21st Ward Dems, state representative Rob and council member Jones.
So, therefore, Bluebell Hill civic, uh, kindly request that you not support the development as proposed.
All right. You have any questions?
just just one um mr ozer you you made uh allegations about the developer having received
many violations on other development sites do you have any proof that it's this developer
do you have any any documentation to provide thank you council these are affiliated companies
with the same address in astoria queens uh that this developer used and the ndh the same initials
is one of the developer's LLCs. Also, can I point out, counsel, if you'll excuse me, the PWD.
Wait a minute. Let her answer first. My question was, do you have any documentation?
We have the L&I names of the developer and the address being the same address
in Astoria, Queens or Milford, Pennsylvania. So I have one question. You did start off by saying
And you came to agreement with many things about them, and then you went on, right?
So you came to agreement on many things, except the height, but the height, let's me, but the height's not an issue here, right?
It is not, Mr. Chairman.
That's right.
But the rainwater care of the rainwater retention basin is a very important thing, and we're very worried about the responsibility of this contractor, particularly in view of their history.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir.
Why don't we do this?
Let's see how many other people want to testify, then we come to questions.
How many people want to testify?
Why don't we start over here?
Good morning.
Could you please state and spell your name?
My name is Laura Morris, L-A-U-R-A, last name Morris, M-O-R-R-I-S.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Are you a neighbor?
I'm a near neighbor.
Please proceed.
i reside at 609 west naomi street my property is one parcel over from the construction i submitted
testimony for you all as well as a video but i'm not sure if the video was able to be uploaded
because i don't know how that works and i tried my best if you look at 609 west naomi street in
the council you'll see that um and if you pull up the water if you still have the water drains
you'll see that i have drains in my backyard i took a video of the property which i've dated
in my testimony to you all which shows that there is significant earth that will be moved
during construction and i'm very concerned about my yard okay and i think that's really it in
summary well you can read my testimony i thank you so much for your consideration thank you very much
for being so precise and quick next person good morning could you please state and spell your name
for the stenographer my name is mary louis friedberger m-a-r-y-l-o-u-y-s one word friedberger
f-r-i-e-g-b-e-r-g-e-r do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the
truth i do please proceed and your neighbor i am a neighbor i have lived in 617 naomi street which is
yep i know where it is right for greater than 50 years the only building that was built
on wissahickon avenue is the building that is now the school all the other buildings
have entrances on Wissahickon Avenue Walnut Lane has no building entrance on
that side okay because of the slope the slope as is not a man-made slope it is a
slope my from my from Walnut Lane where I enter the back of my house I have to
go up at least ten steps all the other houses are the same that are three
houses from
that have entrances from
Walnut Lane into their
front entrance, which is on
Naomi. Okay.