So we figured it made more sense to do a smaller, you know, building on that side.
you know, building on that side. You know, that way, both of these had some shared green space,
You know, that way, both of these had some shared green.
they had some shared parking spaces, and it gave an opportunity to put all of the
trash and sort of building utilities and things like that sort of out of sight, out of public
view, kind of tucked in that little finger-shaped corner between the two buildings.
But that created a refusal, correct? Correct. So because it's in the RSA-5, we did get
uh the refusal for parking because in this case we're accessing it off of amber street which is
considered a side street uh versus a you know rear street or private drive which would you know allow
us to do the parking as of right there so that's why we have the refusal for the parking um if you
want to go back to the renderings we can get to um you know sort of the building design and
and the refusal for the height um again briefly um so you know here uh we have the five-story
building um you know what we did when we designed this was you know we wanted to take into account
you know what makes a successful multifamily building so here you know a lot of buildings
don't have parking we felt parking was important to integrate um as well as some support space for
the multifamily units so your ground floor instead of having you know residential units it's a
combination of parking plus you know your building your mail spaces amenity spaces active uses that
you know belong on a street front which as opposed to residential units that you know a lot of times
would have their blinds drawn um you know not really a whole lot of eyes and ears on the street
so you know because we have sort of our common um amenity spaces as well as the parking on the
ground floor you know and we're not using the basement for any sort of residential the basement
is just for uh storage utilities the pico vault things like that would need to support the
multifamily building. You know, we felt that justified the additional height since we're
not using that ground floor and basement like you typically would. And we're surrounded by
industrial that allows at least 60 feet height, correct? Correct. So it's not uncommon compared
to some of the other buildings that are around the area in those industrial and mixed industrial
districts. You know, so you can see here, we have a building that sort of pays homage to that
industrial style in terms of the masonry in terms of the stone the black iron work you know what i
would note here just briefly is each of these units is designed to have their own uh private
outdoor space uh in addition to um a roof deck that's shared by everybody uh fully handicapped
accessible of course the elevator in the building and we do have a partial green roof on the building
as well um excuse me excuse me sir yep my understanding is that the site is on rsa5
correct correct so you're limited to the height of 38 feet correct correct so what's the hardship
of this site that you can't maintain to 38 feet well so the the reason that the reason that we
felt that we necessitated the hardship was because we wanted to do the additional parking
and amenity spaces that you typically wouldn't have in a multifamily build.
So we felt that...
But excuse me, but the cesspool parking is not required.
Correct.
And again, you know, a lot of times when we go to the RCO groups, we hear, you know,
that there's a need for parking almost any project.
So we figured because we had that curb cut and had the ability to provide it, you know,
we felt that that made sense to integrate as part of the project rather than just leave it out you
know but but also it's not required for this project absolutely it's not um you know but but
we also have the environmental issues as well to speak about can you talk about that because
um i mean that was a primary issue if you whack this up and did single family and had backyards
versus um you know paved it for parking right and and and again you know you can look at it you know
several different ways. And there's, there's numerous ways to address environmental issues,
but generally speaking, what we, you know, wanted to achieve here was rather than do single families
that would have, you know, living space in the basement that would have, you know, yards that,
that presumably, you know, people might have kids in and things like that. You know, we,
we felt that it was a better usage to have the building that had all of sort of the mechanicals,
all of the non-occupied spaces down in the basement, then further on that ground floor,
You know, almost capping most of the site with that accessory parking in addition to these, you know, sort of support spaces over top of that basement.
You know, that's sort of a couple of the things that kind of came together and, you know, added that additional story to, you know, the building.
Excuse me.
Listen, architecturally, you could not accomplish all of this within a 38-feet limit?
um no we would basically make the the ground
um no we would basically make the the ground floor would have turned into full residential
then at that point without you know the parking spaces yeah and we're talking about the environmental
um i haven't we haven't gotten to that but at exhibit nine we have our environmental report
talking about it being characterized a brownfield the underground storage tanks um which you know
we think it's ultimately going to be a significant redevelopment obstacle which we're going to need
to figure out how do you how do you justify you know the cost and that's why in this as
Logan explained in this direction we thought this made the most sense for the for the neighborhood
and for the project itself. So my understanding would be that because of the environmental
of course you increase the number of units to pay for it is that is that a question well i'm asking
you is that a possibility is that what you're trying to do well well there's a couple different
yes i mean so what we did was and and we designed this as if it was rm1 um and we took advantage of
the uh assuming if it was rm1 we would have qualified for the mixed income bonus um as
you'll hear. We actually do provide a number of units that we've said that we would provide
at an affordable rate, which would satisfy the mixed income bonus.
Excuse me. You're going to provide the forms?
We don't qualify it because it's RSA 5. But what we said was we have 13% of our units
to require 10% that we would do at that affordable rate.
And we've explained that to the council person,
we've explained that to the community.
And then the green roof bonus that Logan was explaining
would provide the additional units
to get us to the 30 units that are here total.
So again, what we've tried to do here
is look at what makes sense,
try to respond to the environmental,
the fact that we're a corner,
the fact that this has always been industrial,
it was never a single family.
and use this as a, you know, we looked at the 2035 plan that says, what do you do typically
when there's, you know, a former environmental site, multifamily is a preferred approach.
And that's what we've looked to do here.
And to sort of summarize, you know, Brett, like what you were saying and like Mr. Holloman
pointed out, you know, the issue really became, you know, doing single-family homes here, A,
kind of didn't get us to where we needed to be to address the environmental issues.
Secondly, it didn't give the community who has an extreme, you know, need for affordable housing,
you know, doing six single-family houses here kind of puts that out of a price point of somebody
immediately in the area. And then, you know, lastly, you know, we felt that this was a good
opportunity to kind of serve as a buffer between, you know, single family, which is certainly up
more north, and kind of have this, you know, multifamily serve as a buffer between then
a lot of those heavier industrial uses that you have sort of to the east and the south.
So, you know, those three sort of things kind of steered us in the direction of why
multifamily, why, you know, a higher multifamily than you typically see, you know, in the sense
of addressing the environmental, creating that buffer, and, you know, integrating some things
like parking and amenity spaces that, you know, a lot of multifamily buildings don't have these
days. So that's at least sort of where we, you know, took our cue from, and that really sort of
informed the overall site planning and, you know, requested refusals that, you know,
we ended up getting as a result. Before I go to the next witness, is there anything further for
our architect, Logan?
No, thank you.
All right, who's the next witness?
Great. Our next witness would be
Nancy Templeton, who is
our expert land planner.
If I may, I can call Ms. Templeton.
Ms. Templeton,
please unmute yourself and wait for the
chair.
Hi, could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, it's Nancy Templeton, N-A-N-C-Y-T-E-M-P-L-E-T-O-N.
Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
And, Brett, we want testimony that's different than what we just heard.
Yeah, absolutely.
Ms. Templeton, I'll first ask you this.
Ms. Templeton, I'll first ask you this. You have testified in front of this board, I think you explained to me 20 times, at least 20 times over the past 10 or so years?
You have tested
Approximately, yes.
Okay. And you've been in the exhibit package at Exhibit Tab 8. Mr. Chairman, Ms. Templeton's resume CV is in there. I would ask, like she's been in the past, be accepted as an expert in land planning in Philadelphia.
That's fine.
Okay, great. So let me just go to your report. Ms. Templeton, can you just, you know, I know we've gotten a lot of testimony already about the challenges of this site, but please, if you could just explain what work you did to come to your hardship and your land planning conclusions regarding this site, and then I'll ask you some questions about those specific conclusions.
Sure. Well, I visited the site. I reviewed all the plans and renderings, the correspondence from the RCO, looked at projects and multifamily projects in the pipeline and the history of the site, and finally, the phase one environmental report.
Okay. And I know we've talked a lot about the different considerations at the property in terms of environmental, in terms of the regular shape, the corner property, the history, affordability.
Did you look at those considerations vis-a-vis the Philadelphia zoning code as far as what is required to establish hardship and a variance in Philadelphia?
Yes, I did.
Okay. And can you explain what those conclusions are?
Well, first and foremost, I believe there's a hardship because of the environmental. And I
know we've discussed it before, but it is really remediating a site is expensive.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, Ms. Templeton. Here is your conclusions on the environmental,
correct? I don't have the environmental engineer here today.
Oh, that's okay. So in the phase one environmental, they did find the presence of
leaked underground storage tank. And it was identified as a local brownfield site, both of
which can be concluded as being heavy, heavily contaminated site. Yeah. And what is what is a
common um you know residential way to treat those type of properties uh is multi-family such a right
right we you asked that question to the last person too so i i think you've already established
that okay okay um as far as as far as traffic in the area on this templeton um we are close to
multiple SEPTA routes, correct? Correct. Okay. And you also looked at the city plan, correct? As far
as how to address these types of situations with industrial, correct? Correct. And what is the
primary way to do that? The plan does talk a lot about converting industrial uses that really are
not viable for industrial, uh, practices anymore into, um, mixed use commercial and residential
higher density residential. Like, like, like we're doing in this case, correct? Correct. Yes. And I,
I know, uh, the chair wants us to move on. Can you provide your opinions as to, um, uh,
satisfaction of the use and dimensional requirements, uh, under the zoning code?
uh yes i think uh again the the proposed dimensional the height and the um use
and the density are appropriate in this area specifically because of the transit the
environmental conditions and that um it fits in with this area better uh we talked a little
bit about transitional and buffer uses between the industrial and the single family and the
pico substation. And there's also a number of newer multifamily being constructed. A lot of
these are on corner properties. Corner properties are more appropriate for why you see a lot of
corner commercial stores and multifamily on corners because there's heavier traffic on the
corners. And again, those provide sort of a buffer between that higher traffic potential for traffic
accidents and single family residential. So there's nothing that is inconsistent with
So there's nothing that is inconsistent with this project within that neighborhood,
this project within that neighborhood, that block?
that block or specifically that area, correct?
Correct.
I have a question.
With all of the environmental problems with this site,
why is it zone RSA 5, single family?
You know, Member Holloman, it's a great question.
my understanding is that this was part of a larger community-wide, it wasn't just this property,
it was a whole range of other properties in this whole neighborhood that were rezoned
back in, I think it was 2017 or 2018. And this was one property that was rezoned to RSA 5.
um hey it's it's you know it's it's it's it's it's a good it's a default to go to rsa5 um
it's i think it's i think it's on this case it was kind of off the rack and and that's why we're
here because uh when you do block after block after block which i think this is what this was
um you can't account for every situation every area um there's blocks around there that this
makes sense. On the other block, on Rush Street, on Somerset, it makes sense. But here, we have a
very different history. We have an environmental legacy. We have environmental Pico substation
below us. Across the street, we've got an active industrial use. But yeah, it was, you know,
that's why we're here. Because in this particular case, we don't think that makes sense. And it
just isn't, we don't think it's good planning, as Ms. Templeton stated.
but the community and the planning commission consider it rsa5 as good planning
it is it is it is the district i it is the district i don't i don't i don't know why
um as i said at the beginning we we actually went to the community and the vote of the immediate
neighbors uh was strongly in support of this um so you know i take it for what it's worth but uh
But, you know, we've got an applicant here who is looking to this has been empty for a number of years, is looking to redevelop the property, do the work to return this to the tax rolls and provide the density that will help support the corner stores in this area.
So, you know, we think when all things take into consideration, there is hardship here.
It makes sense. And this would be really ultimately a great addition to this neighborhood.
and it also helps support the other block with you know that there's a vacant lot there
to fill in that block and the number of units makes sense it's it's it's got a rhyme or reason
it's you know based on rm1 it's based on um uh you know that's exactly the type of density that
you would allow if rm1 um so as far as any least minimum variance we believe that is the case the
number of units uh we didn't we didn't try to over over pack this we tried to come up with a
a rational um number of units so as you know the vote the community vote was eight to ten
in opposition yeah i think it was i think it was it was nine to ten um the vote of the immediate
neighbors and i don't want to get you know i think if you look at the councilman's letter
he said hey it was super close uh you know typically we all know the council person goes
with you know what the vote is this was a case where there was 60 people there they counted 19
um it was basically a wash and the council person said hey um you know in this case uh you know i'm
going to leave it up to the board uh to make its its decision based on the facts and circumstances
of this matter so thank you yeah so okay where do you want to go now bright um that's that's that's
it that's it for right now um have your testimony adopted yeah i'm gonna i'd like to ask um andrew