005-323-
4317-19
Conley Street, I vote yes.
My vote is yes.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes.
Tanetta Graham, my vote is yes.
Haya Nguyen, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you.
You have your vote.
Thank you.
Happy Chinese New Year.
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Oh, thank you. That's so happy.
Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Number four, MI 2024, 006-330-560107, Ray Street.
Ronald Patterson is the attorney. There's a letter of support from HMC Squared RCO.
Mr. Patterson, you've already been sworn.
Could you just state your name and spell for the stenographer?
They're coming back in as a panel, sir.
Good afternoon, Ronald Patterson, P-A-T-T-E-R-S-O-N.
Right.
Our vice chair has a few questions for you.
Good afternoon, counsel.
Do you agree to weigh the reading of the refusal or stipulate to its accuracy?
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that's needed to proceed with this case?
We can't hear him.
Yes, I have.
I can't hear you closer.
Yes, I have.
Thank you.
Please proceed and you can share your screen.
So good afternoon.
So this case regards 5601 Ray Street.
it's a property located at the corner of Ray Street and 56th Street it's a vacant high ceiling brick
building purposely built in 1935 before uses a pico substation has been long vacant for many
years we presume at least over 40 years here's an aerial view here and some other photos
So the property is located in an RSA 5 zoning district, which, as we know, permits generally only single-family dwelling units, but naturally and obviously single-family dwelling would not work in this building, and therein lies the hardship.
It's no longer useful for what it was specifically built for and used for for a long period of time.
So this application proposes a rehabilitative and adaptive reuse of this unique building.
And how we propose to add...
I propose to add a handsome second floor addition, step back from the street, and redo the facade, and part of it will hear the architectural reasons for this.
The upper addition is different from the brick addition, so it appears to blend into the background and not be affected by the height.
What we're proposing to do is then convert the building into 20 single-family dwelling units, utilizing the step-back, and within that step-back, utilize the area that's created for small outdoor roof decks.
In response to our zoning permit application, I issued a refusal letter for having more than one single-family dwelling unit and for the roof deck not being set back five feet from the building line, for example, with guardrails.
and we'll address that, and proposing a height of 43 feet, where the maximum in the district
is 38 feet.
We did meet with the HMC Square RCO on December 5th, and they supported our application with
some proviso requests that we can go through.
So with that said, I'd like to call Tim Kerner, our architect.
Mr. Kerner, could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer?
Yeah. Good afternoon. My name is Timothy Kerner, T-I-M-O-T-H-Y-K-E-R-N-E-R.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Please proceed, counsel.
Thank you. Tim, what's your occupation?
I'm an architect.
And are you familiar with these plans?
Yes, I am.
Okay, you drew them? You designed them?
I designed them.
Okay, great.
Had some help drawing them.
You've heard about my presentation and testimony. Would you agree it's true and accurate?
Yes, I would.
Would you adopt it as if it were your own?
Okay, thanks. So as I explained, this building, can you briefly describe it again, the Pico substation building?
Yeah, it's a large masonry building, which used to have a lot of machinery that brought down the voltage from, I guess it arrived at about 4,000 volts and dropped it down so it could be distributed to the houses around it.
It's no longer functional, the machinery is gone, the building is basically a large empty space inside, has 17 foot tall ceilings on the first floor.
It has a lower level concrete structure, very solid, needs needs a lot of attention and love to bring it up to what you're looking at right now in the picture.
And that's the intention. And in your opinion, could it be reused as a single family dwelling?
Yes, it could. One single family dwelling unit? Oh, I'm sorry.
Sorry, I didn't follow your question. It could be could be used as a residential building.
One single family dwelling unit. It would not really be appropriate as a single family dwelling.
Okay, good. And so in trying to make an adaptive reuse, what were the design considerations you took into account in terms of the second floor and its height, its massing, and a step back, if you want to elaborate?
Well, it's an interesting building. It has classical details built in brick, and so we want to be respectful of that.
We also thought that to build out to the full extent of the exterior walls would make it a more massive addition.
So we stepped it back in the four corners, which brings down the upper mass.
But we did that in a way that reflects the architectural character of the original detailing, which breaks the building facade up into three parts.
And we talked about a proposed for 20 units, correct?
Correct.
And how would they be arranged within the building?
So because of the high ceilings on the first floor, we have mezzanine apartments.
So we were able to use a second level.
We subdivided, actually, if you could flip forward a couple, there, that page.
There's one.
No, we're down one.
You could kind of see the idea of the basic unit that we have the kitchen, the bathrooms
towards the corridor in that axonometric view.
We have a large ceiling in the living room area with the windows, and then we have a
bedroom up above.
We have a mix of one bedroom and two bedroom apartments, but most are one bedroom apartments.
And the two bedrooms, was that a suggestion by the local community group?
They did raise that as an issue, that they wanted some of the apartments to be two bedrooms.
And also another question or comment was, would it be ADA accessible?
That was raised by the community.
And so the idea of making it accessible is to add a wheelchair lift on the outside.
is to add a wheelchair lift on the outside. We don't want to put that in the front and
We don't want to put that in the front.
the sidewalk, but you could see where we would do that if you flip forward to the
first floor plan, which I guess keep going.
Yeah, that one if you zoom into that, that lower one below that, yes. So the existing floor level,
which is a concrete floor, is four feet up from the sidewalk, and you can see those existing
stairs are concrete stairs, which kind of are down into the apartment below. So it makes it difficult
to put a wheelchair lift in the front. What we would do is that if you look in the left-hand
top corner, there's a stair, and we're going to reorient that towards the sidewalk to make that
basically a secondary front entrance. We'll put a wheelchair lift adjacent to that entrance so
that the first floor level would be accessible and and let's finally talk about uh the second
floor setback and the use of that open space for a roof deck uh we received a refusal for not
providing uh the five foot setback from the building line um could you um elaborate on on
this yeah so this is the area where i mentioned that we tried to break down the the mass of the
building and so we reset the the four corners of the building and then that seems like a nice
opportunity to provide the amenity of some outdoor spaces for those four units um so that is where we
we have we're using the building parapet as the parapet of those decks and let me clarify so the
parapet is is a wall that's not to exceed 42 inches correct that's correct and so if you were
to have raised that wall say four or five or six feet would we have received that refusal
Well, if we had raised that wall, then the zoning interpretation is that it's no longer – it's a building wall, and so that would be a building element, would not be a deck.
That would have obscured a view to the street and light and air, correct?
Correct.
So this is a better design?
We feel the 42-inch height would be appropriate for that.
Okay. And lastly, do you feel that the variances that we're seeking, that if granted, the relief would cause any detrimental impacts to the public health, safety, welfare, or traffic in the area?
No, I believe this project would be beneficial to the surroundings.
Okay, thank you. I have no further questions.
Are there apartments in the basement?
There are apartments in the basement.
Would you show that?
And you could see in this view that the windows do rise up above the sidewalk, so there would be actual light coming within.
But you could see in the section, in the next one, one down, that one.
Yeah, so if you zoom into there on the right-hand side.
This one?
Yeah, so you could see how we have the egress windows at 44 above the floor.
And we have a window well in the front and the sidewalk on the left hand side. That's that's the sidewalk on the right hand side. It's the rear yard. We can take advantage of that by making that window well deeper, more like a five foot from the window to the to the edge of the well rather than three feet.
All right. Questions from the board.
For the units that are shown, are there any that don't have a mezzanine bedroom?
The ground floor units do not have a mezzanine bedroom
because we don't have the ceiling height to do that.
None of the ground floor units have.
That's correct.
What's on the mezzanine in the section for the things on the ground floor?
Can you repeat that?
What's in the mezzanine?
The ground floor units are showing a mezzanine in the section,
so what's on that mezzanine?
That's the bedroom.
so there's a one mezzanine bedroom and then there's one ground floor bedroom
no the no the in the ground floor units are separate from i'm sorry the
in this you're asking about the you which ones are you the two bedroom units consider the first
floor how many of the units don't have the bedrooms and the mezzanine okay i think ron if
you go to that plan and you go to the yeah go to the right lower right corner just trying to figure
out if we have an ada ramp where where are they staying if all of the units have a stairwell if
you look it's a good question but if you look at that uh two-bedroom unit which is that one there
that has the bedroom on the on that floor so that that is the one unit on the ground floor that has
a bedroom on level with
the rest of the apartment.
Okay. That one, that single
two-bedroom unit. That's right.
And then how many two-bedroom units are there in total
across the entire
project? I think we have three.
Okay. And
the question for me is, so I guess
the bedrooms are on the mezzanine because you're
sitting dead on top
sitting dead on top of a ceiling slab?
of a cement slab.
Am I correct?
Am I correct?
The first floor, we have a slab.
The first floor is elevated from...
Elevated, four-foot slab, right?
Right.
And what's...
How many units are...
There's a box.
You're screwing up a little bit.
Yeah, to the left is...
But there's a key.
Thank you.
There we go.
I want to know how many units are on each floor.
And there are handicap accessible units or no?
Well, it depends. Are you asking if it's a fully accessible unit with the bathroom and the
kitchen's done in such a way? That has not been detailed yet. In terms of accessibility of
getting to the units uh the if you were to count if you were to say the bedroom has to be on the
first floor then we have one accessible unit that includes a bedroom on the first floor
uh what about trash pickup trash pickup would be we have a trash storage area which is in the i
guess if you look yeah i think go go down right into the site plan on z1 zoom yeah yeah you were
almost right there one more no sorry next one there yeah yeah yeah the site plan there if you
zoom into there um sorry that one doesn't show the doesn't show the trash but we have a trash
area which is which is off of the sidewalk uh which is in that area behind the gate from the
race street sidewalk so that's correct here sir where where is it
i guess it's in a different drawing uh go up ryan sorry
you have to go up here it's yeah it's it is located there but it