what's the makeup of the block multi-family or single family the majority of the block
uh i can go to that for you i can go to that for you um i have properties and i think
so the the block is obviously a mixture of both of single family and quite a few multi-family
what's the majority i would say it's very close to probably 60 60 40 50 50 residential versus
commercial if you add the units in the in the commercial you have probably six or seven four
to five bedrooms within a block either way and within two blocks you probably have about 15 uh
multi so and and and here are a few of them i got them you can see them it it's a lot of this
prestige the gray buildings you're seeing are you seeing them yes okay these gray buildings here
are all on the block there's one of them has like probably 20 units in it the other one has
uh five or six units the two adjacent buildings if you're facing our building i can show you
the two adjacent buildings if you're facing our building i can show you the two adjacent buildings
um right here are multi-family our lot is right next door to those you can see the utilities on
the brick building right here there's probably five units in there and there's our lot which
is right next door to that so okay the nature the nature is high high highly uh multi-units
okay thank you you're welcome uh and yeah all right um mr dofino do you have your client on as well
i don't think he's here right now if he's not if he's there i'll ask if he
adopts your testimony if not we'll move on i have two two clients actually but my met are you out
there anyone who needs to testify will have to raise their hand yeah i don't think he's out there
okay all right any uh questions from the board no no planning commission
this property is indicated for residential use on the comprehensive plan we feel that this
application represents an overuse in both unit count or in unit count of a single family district
that has been remapped recently accordingly we recommend the requested variance does not be granted
given the fact that there's looks a ton of multi-family on that block
well we did a community remapping and one of the goals was to make this single family so we
try to support the work we do yeah and i get that and i'm not uh you know being disrespectful i just
think it might be a little bit too late for that but okay all right calendar no no revised plans
correct the the plans were reduced the original plans were reduced so they may be
i don't know if we need revisions charles you there uh yeah actually the the floor plans we
were just looking at are the revised plan and if you scroll through a little bit more uh the
revised floor plans the revised elevation to to have brick on the elevation as the rco asked
uh and as well that indicates the reduced height that is currently the revised elevation
uh the rco requested a uh a larger masonry brace and then the upper floor to be
so they permitted some metal paneling and mostly the red brick veneer that you would typically
find in uh philadelphia okay so there's one is it one page no they i don't think that you submitted
did you submit a revised plans proviso form yes i i did with my uh it's in my exhibit
it's right here the proviso plans form was changed at the request of the meeting the
project was changed five units to four the building height was changed to 40 foot plus
to 38 generally don't like to stamp floor plans I'm wondering if we could rather than
stamping the plans just add two provisos one saying maximum four units the other saying
maximum height 38 feet would that change there is a revised zoning sheet in here also that indicates
all of the revised uh updates so if you scroll down a little bit further uh vince yeah it didn't
scroll any further than that that's it that's all i got here okay well it wouldn't matter because if
it wasn't listed as one of the changes in the revised proviso plan it would not be approved in
any case so if there are revisions in addition to those that are listed um i'm afraid you're going to
have to come back and at least present that no that's it i think that's it i think we're good
there okay so then you can do the two provisos and that would cover everything yes it would
okay okay thank you sherry thank you all right calendar number 39127 1426 north 7th street
my vote is yes with the following provisos maximum number of units to be four
maximum height 38 feet yes with provisos yes with provisos
thank you all thank you very much thank you everyone have a great day guys
Thank you.
Girls, everybody.
Calendar number 3988730 Pelham Road.
Steve Masters.
Did I hear you earlier?
did i hear you uh earlier someone maybe it was sharon said that this case is being continued
no no i think friendship street no not this one back on the record
steve unmute yourself ah great okay
do you agree to wave the reading of his refusal and stipulate to its accuracy
um i do
name and i just for the record steve masters law firm of just laws 621 west mount area avenue in
philadelphia here on behalf of the applicant occasion mr masters excuse me you're swearing
to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do and i don't know if you heard me
earlier i asked that you uh your testimony uh do your best to uh put in uh whatever you need on
the record that it's most important. We're trying to keep these hearings to a minimum of one hour.
Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. I'm going to give you a brief
introduction to this project, and then we're going to have a few witnesses who are going to go into
more details for you around the different aspects of it. We hear about the historic Fairlawn Manor
F-A-I-R-E-L-A-W-N. It sits at the corner of Pelham and Cresham Roads in West Mount Airy on a 1.2
acre lot. The property is currently zoned RSD2 single-family residential. It's a historic
mansion that was constructed between 1897 and 1902. Same architects that built that mansion
built the iconic Bellevue Stratford Hotel on Broad Street. It took 60 artisans four years
to complete the construction of the Fairlawn Manor, and today the house has 10 plus bedrooms
and four and a half bathrooms in a massive 10,000 square foot structure. The mansion has been vacant
for over five years, and it has seriously deteriorated to the point where it's now in
jeopardy of demolition. Our client Philly Office Retail purchased this property to preserve and
save the mansion. As you would imagine, that cost is substantial and we'll get into some of the
details with our witness Ken Weinstein. Our design calls for converting the mansion into two very
large condominiums. One will be five bedroom and four and a half bath units and the other will be
four bedrooms and four and a half baths in order to finance the staggering costs for rehabilitating
this extremely large home the plan calls for subdividing the 1.2 acre site into five parcels
four of those parcels will be sold off to Chris Murray and Jonathan Thomas and Jonathan Thomas
will be one of the witnesses testifying today they plan to build four single family homes
in the form of two twins that will be facing pelham road immediately next to a row of existing
five row homes just the same the same character in terms of landscaping there will be some trees
that are going to be removed obviously in construction but we're going to be putting
in a lot more new trees and shrubs and professionally landscaping the whole lot after construction
for traffic and parking we're actually going to result in an increase in parking spaces
we are going to uh have the residents of the four uh new homes use the driveway off of cresham uh
i'm sorry off of um pelham road that would take away three on-street parking spaces but we're
creating uh two parking spaces for each of the homes so we're going to have a net gain of five
excuse me steve were you able to share that we don't have a screen oh sure sure sure and can i
interrupt for one minute um i apologize this there was no decision on this being continued but there
was a continuance request submitted um charles richardson is um charles richardson would like
to speak on that he's from councilman bass's office he's here richardson good morning mr
chair and uh committee uh councilwoman is asking for a continuance on this case uh she believes
there is a higher degree of opposition that's reflected in the results of the RCO meeting.
It was a very lengthy meeting of two-plus hours, and at least 15 people that I saw and approached as they were leaving cited the fact that it was the length of the meeting that caused them to leave.
It was a very lengthy meeting of two plus hours and at least 15 people that I saw.
The RCO committee also allowed the developer himself to vote as a near neighbor on his own project, and the prospective co-developer of the proposed four houses to vote as well.
Neither of them is a near neighbor or lives close by.
She also has a question on the vote total, which we got two different reports that it was 20 to 17 and the margin was in opposition as opposed to being as for being in favor.
So she's requesting a continuance and for them to hold another meeting in order to actually get a full idea of what the people actually wanted to occur at that location.
and can i say that there was some confusion because the original letter from the rco that
you received was one of non-opposition then they discovered that the vote had been flipped that um
and actually the majority were in opposition so we received another letter yesterday
um mr chair and after that there there has been i'm going to agree that there has been some
confusion as to uh the vote but it has been resolved and um not to our who wrote the letter
not to our excellent time please mr masters continue thank you so m so ralph pinkus wrote
the letter um that we have um in front of us now which was um dated july 24th mr pinkus
was not present at the RCO meeting that happened in early March. We have, we would like to present
the testimony right now of Bob Bembry, who is an attorney and who was the chair of that meeting
and who, but he's a member of the zoning committee of Westman Airy Neighbors. Mr. Pincus was assigned
the task of writing the letter but Mr. Bembry was the one who took the tally and took the vote
so i would like to have Mr. Bembry join us and offer testimony at this point
okay but there's a request for continuance so Mr. Richardson
I'm going to suggest that we go forward with the meeting with this hearing the board will hold off
on any decision uh and mr masters maybe you can then uh accommodate the councilwoman's request
uh to have another meeting
uh well that is that is certainly possible mr chair but what we have here is um if the only
issue is what was the correct vote of this meeting we can we can resolve that with you today because
we have the chair of the meeting who is on standby to come and testify as to that the vote was
correct it was 20 in favor and 17 opposed and you'll hear um excuse me excuse me steve uh let
me speak on on that uh with the near neighbors the eight to eight vote if uh the developer was
allowed to vote which normally in most rco meetings they are asked to leave the bill they
leave the room at least during the vote but he was allowed to stay and to vote for his own project
also the code of the prospective co-developer also voted for part of that of that 20 to 17
and you know and again it's that that's an anomaly that's not something that's normally
done and and in fact they're voting for their own interest so we want a continuance we do want a
continuance. Mr. Bembry is currently in the Zoom chat, and I would really like him to just
clarify what really happened, because I feel that the councilwoman's representative, who wasn't
there, he was there at the beginning of the meeting, through the middle, and he left before
the vote was taken, so he has no personal knowledge of the vote. Mr. Bembry has no personal knowledge
of the vote. I do have a, I got a text as I was leaving. And as I had indicated, my wife had just
had gotten out of the hospital from surgery. I had left her at home to come to this, to this
meeting. I stayed until about nine o'clock. And I asked the executive director of Westbound Area
Neighbors, Catherine McKenzie Ziegler, to text me what the results actually were.
so let me interrupt let me interrupt is the is the mr richardson i guess it's more
is the is the mr richardson i guess it's more for you than than mr masters is the issue at hand
for you than than mr masters
the count the vote count not not all of the vote count because again 15 people left that were in
opposition that i spoke to well and then the councilwoman has received several calls over
the last uh couple of days asking for her to oppose and we're not opposing what we're doing
is asking for another meeting here's my point if people left that meeting uh i i don't know why
the applicant should be held um we should be holding it up i'm not suggesting we would vote
today i would give it at least another week i don't know if we need another meeting if the issue
is the count now the issue is someone like we can like i think mr masters said we can have the uh
the zoning chair for West Mount Airy will get that testimony on the record,
but to hold it for another hearing, another meeting rather, just because of the vote count,
I guess. She has received, Mr. Chair, she's received several calls with regard to opposition
to the project, and as I indicated, had it not gone for two plus hours, that we probably would
have had a different type of outcome. But again, I am not really concerned about the outcome,
and neither is the councilwoman. The issue is, was the level of opposition is higher than is
reflected in the RCO meeting. And she's very concerned about the fact that people's voices
were not heard. Mr. Chair, what we're going to have today, and members of the board, we have
five near neighbors who literally border on this giant 1.2 acre property they're all strongly in
support of it um we have uh the westmanry neighbor zoning committee itself voted unanimously
in favor of of this project uh the the community did have some people in support some people in
opposition but the ones in support were more um so that that's the whole picture but um i agree
with you um mr chair that this isn't a reason for a continuance and we can certainly clarify what
the vote was by putting mr vembrey uh for some brief testimony right now and mr chair can i
suggest that there's one possibility would be um scheduling a second brief limited hearing where
any member of the public who believes that they did not have an opportunity to um register their
opposition will be given an opportunity to speak and then the case will be voted i mean those same
people who attended the meeting and maybe left early or left after the two and a half hours
if those are some of the people that are calling your office mr richardson as sharon suggested we
could hear from them if they choose to you know get on get on they a brief hearing well that that
that could could be a possibility but again i do have issues with the fact that uh the developer
himself was allowed to vote as one of the near neighbors and it was tied 8-8 well well he will
not be voting if we if we hear from the those other folks who have been calling your office
that'll give us a better indication of what the count should have been okay or could have been
we can do that all right so why don't we proceed yes and and then we'll hold sure
thank you and there were sorry at sharon's suggestion we can do a brief hearing we'll
figure out the timing on that once you conclude with your testimony okay um and there were many
supporters of the projects who also left early because it was a long meeting and so it was not
just a one-sided thing understood um so maybe what would be i i do want to touch briefly on
the hardship issues and then i'm going to go to my witnesses who will walk through the plans with
you the site plans show you why we don't um well we don't have any more problems with the two
um variances related to the watershed and uh the steep slope uh why the dimensional variances are
are very important and why the use variants for the two um the two condos in the manor are essential
but in terms of unnecessary hardship uh this mansion is functionally obsolete and can no
longer be used in conformance with a single family use so under the holdings of marshall
and logan square neighborhood uh that constitutes unnecessary hardship under the code
the proposed two-family dwelling use is the minimum variance that will provide
relief and for the dimensional variances you'll see why these are just very
slight variances from the setbacks so that we can have
uh variances from the setbacks so that we can have four homes with the proper size to conform
to the characteristics of the adjacent five row homes. I'm gonna call Ken Weinstein as my first
witness. Ken I think you're supposed to raise your hand to get recognized by the board administrator.
i'm sorry steve i didn't catch that last part oh i'm i'd like uh ken weinstein to uh to be my
first witness and i think he has to rip his hand all right mr weinstein i'm here thank you please
identify yourself for the record state your name and address i'm ken weinstein uh president of
philly office retail i live at 502 west allens lane in philadelphia do you swear in a firm to
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you, Mr. Weinstein. Please
proceed. Ken, before we start with your testimony, you have heard my testimony so far today. Do you
adopt it as true and correct and as your own testimony? It is true and correct. Thank you.
all right great so um let's uh what kind of what exhibits would you like me to show while we're
talking about uh the the plans that you have for the mansion and how you developed uh this this
design by either the floor plans or the elevations of the mansion would be great okay so let's do
okay thank you um so not to repeat what steve already presented um i just wanted to say uh