In terms of the physicality of the existing structure, there's an existing center staircase
here, which basically separates the first and second floor in a way that prevents the first
and second floor from being confined in the way that the third floor has been.
So we're left with these two units on each of the first and second floor, and then that
third floor, we met the neighborhoods concerned and added a two-bedroom unit.
Um, I understand sometimes the board says, okay, you can move the center staircase, but this kind
of goes into our economic concern. The total acquisition and renovation cost for this property
because of the condition it is in, um, and we're not talking any profit, just costs is going to be
over $350,000 to get this property habitable again. Uh, the rental prices in the Tioga neighborhood,
especially with the type of renovation my client does
and how they target their tenants,
there's just not enough rental value
to cover the cost if we do fewer units.
The owner's plan here is to renovate these units
into modern apartments,
hold them and rent them at accessible prices
for the existing community.
I know the board doesn't like us
to necessarily go into hard numbers, but what I can say is that it's a price point that working
adults in the community can afford. As I mentioned, if this renovation isn't done, like if we were to
say let's hold on to it to see if sort of real estate conditions improve, maybe rental markets
go up, we would be facing, I don't know how, you know, I don't know when that would happen and I
don't know what would happen to the structure in the meantime. I don't like to make, this is not
an idle threat, this is not like approve something or or else. I just wanted to show this aerial view
of the surrounding blocks and you can see especially on the 2000 block.
of the surrounding blocks. And you can see, especially on the 2,000 block of West Tioga,
just how many properties have been demolished. And you can see some also on the 2,200 block
of West Tioga that have been demolished. And these were properties that when you look at their
records, had had that same sort of long-term neglect and abandonment. And these properties
were largely had to be demolished by the city and many of them are still owned by the redevelopment
authority with no plans of redevelopment. I'm just going to go to the list of nearby uses because you
can really see, this is color-coded, all of the green properties are properties that have been
demolished and are now vacant land. So I'll stay on this tab here.
This use as a multifamily, while it's zoned for single-family use, is in no way out of character
with the existing community. From the 2000 to the 2200 block, which is the block our property is on
and one block to the west and one block to the east, all of which are zoned for single-family
use, either RSA 3 or RSA 5. There are 65 total occupied dwellings. 54 of the 65 are not being
used as single-family residences. In fact, only 11 of the total 85 parcels are current single-family
homes. On our block alone, there are 24 parcels. 22 are occupied. You can see this here on my
chart. 22 are occupied. Two are vacant, including our own property at 2116. 14 are non-single family
dwelling uses and only eight are. Of the ones that are not single family dwellings, we have
some multifamily. We have a large 40-unit apartment building on the corner, but there's also
a bunch of rooming houses and personal care homes. And this is including our two adjacent
properties. If you can see, this blue property is our property here at 2116. 2118 is being used as a
multifamily property with apartments. And then 2114, the last permitted use was as a seven-unit
rooming house with a total of 16 units. Of the two neighbors that were in attendance,
one of them was the owner of 2114, who indicated that instead of being used as a rooming house,
it's actually being used as a personal care home, but they don't have a use permit for that.
But in any case, there are seven rental units. There are seven rental permits for that property
and a total of 16 residences, which is a higher intensity use than what we are asking for,
especially with the five uh the five units we expect less people to be living in the building
than in our jennifer excuse the interruption how many units are in 2118 i'm not sure i'm going to
be honest with you i'm not sure there was no permit um is that the adjoining property the
adjoining the adjoining twin is 2118 the neighbors told us it's being used as a multifamily
um all right so like i said so i'm just going to show you this um spreadsheet yellow are non-single
family white are single family blue is vacant structures and green are existing um or or vacant
land uh houses that have been demolished so you can just see that the prevalent use here
in this area is non-single-family homes. And when you expand beyond Tioga and you go a block up on
both 21st and 22nd, you hit large apartment buildings. So a block north on 22nd Street
is a 109-unit apartment building. And when you go up a block north on 21st, you hit a 53-unit
apartment building. So I'm just going to show you again on this map here.
You can kind of see some of those larger buildings up here, these apartment buildings.
All right, so I just want to briefly mention, as you can see in the aerial view,
almost none of these multi-family rooming houses, boarding houses, personal care home
provide off-street parking. This is because these are existing structures.
And while we do have a large lot that goes street to street, we did explore
And while we do have a large lot that goes street to street, we did explore parking in the rear
yard. First of all, that would require a separate variance. That part is zoned RSA 5. And second
of all, the width, there's a length, but there's a width issue. So really, we couldn't accommodate
more than perhaps one car for off-street parking. Maybe two based on the dimensions, but it wouldn't
it wouldn't be a full six based on the dimensional uh variances and it would require a curb cut
addition and additional variances for off-street parking in the rear because it's rsa5 um
let's see so i said we had a meeting with uh tayoga united on december
second. I'm just going to bring up their letter. There were a total of 11 people present,
but only two of them were near neighbors. I did send out 117 notification letters with proof of
mailing. So these were all the addresses I mailed them out to, and there's the proof of mailing,
but only two neighbors attended. One of them was a single-family home owner and the other was the
owner of a seven-unit rooming house. In the letter to the RCO, or the RCO letter, excuse me, from
Tioga United, you can see that there was not really an opposition necessarily to this property being
used as a multifamily building. However, the immediate neighbors were asking for no more than
four units. We did go back and take a hard look, and that's why, as I explained before, we really
came up with that the best we could do was to create five units and have that third unit be
the two-bedroom. There was just no way to incorporate more two-bedrooms or reduce the
the unit count any further and still have this be a viable project that would preserve this building.
The neighbors also asked for trash, like a shed to store trash in. We were happy to provide that.
Fencing around the yard, again, happy with that. And additional lighting, that's great for everyone,
no problem. I would like to call Trina Clark, who is the property manager,
who will be the property manager for this property and is also a real estate agent
because I just wanted to talk a little bit about single-family home conditions
in this neighborhood and then also adopt my testimony.
Trina, can you raise your hand so you can be unmuted?
Yes, can you hear me?
So Trina, can you put your name and address onto the record, please?
Yes, my name is Trina, T-R-E-N-A. Last name is Clark, C-L-A-R-K-E. The address is 107 South
2nd Street, Suite 300, Philadelphia, PA, 19106.
And Mr. DeChico, do you want to swear in?
frank can you hear that is the witness on do you swear or affirm to tell the whole truth
and nothing but the truth is that what you asked jennifer yes i think frank may
not be on again you may have lost frank yeah
oh frank because his audio was off so he'll be sorry i had to i had to get
leave the meeting again my audio keeps going out for some reason frank i just swore the person in
and that's all i did you're okay with uh telling the truth there yes okay um so i'm just going to
ask you a couple of questions um as both a pro experienced property manager and as a real estate
agent you you are both of those correct yes okay and you have worked you're working closely with
this ownership and development team for this property so you're aware of uh the condition
of the property and and special concerns with it correct yes all right and um i'm just i'm just
going to have you confirm a couple of uh things from for the record uh this purpose this property
was purchased last year for approximately $75,000, correct? Yes. And the estimated cost
to make sure this property is structurally sound, renovated, and make it habitable again
is about $280,000, correct? Yes. So that's a total of $355,000. You don't need to confirm
my math. I'm pretty sure on that one. So as part of your job as a property manager and also as a
real estate agent, have you evaluated the recent property sales?
um have you evaluated the recent property sales um in this area i'm gonna also put up a couple
right now yeah okay let me get to the page so these are these are current property sales i'm
just scrolling to meet one thing hold on um i'm sorry in any case i'll keep asking you questions
So are there any single family homes in this area, like in the Tioga neighborhood, that
are selling in the $300,000 to $400,000 price range or even above?
Are there any that are selling above $200,000?
And so based on the comparable sales that you've seen, do you think it would be possible
to do the renovation work on this property, even at like a very basic trim level?
finish level to get all of the work done to make it habitable again and sell it at a price that
would make sense to do that work? No. Okay. And how about if you did those renovations but tried
to rent it as a single family home? Would that be an economically viable plan? No. Okay. Thank you
for that information. I would just say, then I would also say, have you heard my testimony here
today? Yes. Do you believe it to be truthful and accurate? Yes. And would you adopt it as your own?
Yes. Thank you. At this time I would take questions from the board. Thank you. Any questions from the
board? No. No. Would anyone else like to testify in this case? If so, please raise your hand.
Chair, we have Sloan Foulkes. You've been unmuted. You're free to speak.
good morning mr folks please identify yourself with the record you're still on the road from
earlier today you mean charles richardson well charles richardson all right
charles richardson from the office of councilwoman cindy bass room 312 city hall
and do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
i do please proceed uh question uh jennifer
has the rco seen the new plan um i didn't i did not show it to them yet but they we did have a
full discussion about whether or not they would be okay with a smaller number of units
um and as indicated in their letter they were okay with up to four okay uh they have not seen
to meet with them they offered you a meeting last somebody making noise mr richardson something i
think you're moving something around we're getting static so can you hear me now now yes okay all
right uh as i was saying they offered you the opportunity to meet with them uh with any changes
that you had last night which would have produced a letter today and you know a letter to us and
we would have been able to approve. But at this point, you have made changes, but you have not
gone back to the community to talk about the changes, correct? I would like to address that
issue. I have been reaching out to the community association since February. I'm just going to do
a brief, let's just say that I have been reaching out since February. I received no communication
until September. I then had to continue one hearing, again with no communication. I didn't
receive any communication scheduling a hearing from February 22nd through November 19th. We
finally had a meeting. The proposal was discussed in full. The neighbors made it very clear that
they wouldn't support anything over four units. I said I would go back, and I just did not feel
that any further delay was warranted based on the conversation we had already had with
the community. I'm sorry, Chair, if I could interject, just for the record, the attorney
did contact me on multiple occasions stating she was unable to connect with the RCO. Thank
you. Thank you, Tanya. Again, I will go back to the fact that the RCO has not seen any
changes and the community hasn't approved any changes as yet. We're going to reserve
our uh opinion on this and let the board make the decision uh since this that the community is not
being engaged fully on this uh no matter how many times you actually went to that you just had the
meeting on december the second and they offered you something within another couple of weeks but
you declined and which would have you know which was the day before but uh you know we're going
to reserve our opinion on this uh mr chair thank you thank you very much anyone else who would like
to testify in this case? If so, please raise your hand.
There, Trina Clark has her hand up again. Did you want to hear from her again?
I believe this is, we didn't hear from her yet on this case.
I believe this is, we didn't hear from her yet on this case.
This is, no, that was my property manager.
She just testified.
Oh, okay.
I'm sorry.
I don't think Trina needs to be heard again.
Anyone else, would anyone else like to testify?
I have North Central CDC that I'm on mute now.
Hi, this is Tina Marie Russell again.
Good morning.
Just identify yourself.
You're still on the roof.
Thank you.
This is Tina Marie Russell, representing Tina Marie Russell.
I happen to live down the street from this property, and as a community member, I'm not really, first of all, I hadn't been notified of a meeting, but more importantly, we are oversaturated.
When I say oversaturated, we're oversaturated.
You just gave statistics on how oversaturated we are.
I'm in agreement with the RCO and the city council representative, Charles Richardson, that if we need to have another meeting, then I would suggest, and I would appreciate if you would let the community have another meeting so that everyone could be apprised of this situation.
I appreciate that, but according to the attorney who's representing the applicant, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think she stated a few times, the community said that they would not support anything over four units.
so the applicant is basically saying we're reducing it from six to five four is not going
is feasible based on the way the property is laid out so we're all at the five number five unit
number i don't see if i i i can't imagine having another meeting where it's going to be resolved
and that was my my my feeling as well you know i am usually a fairly cooperative person
I just didn't see the reason to further delay this hearing based on the fact that we had over an hour conversation about the use of this property and what the two near neighbors that were in attendance would support.
And I just didn't see how going back would have any would lead to any more productive conversation.
And it would just create another delay, another continuance, further further deteriorate.
Anyone else would like to testify, please raise your hand.
Something new and different.
Chair, we have Charles Richardson who wishes to speak again.
Sure, Mr. Richardson.
but again i i reiterate that uh they did offer you a meeting last night you know for that be
scheduled for last night and you would have been able to present the plan the revised plan at that
point in time and could have gained their their their uh their uh support but uh you know you
declined that and uh and and and in such that just presents another situation where you're
trying to kind of disenfranchise