Yes, I represent the applicant, Frankfurt Square Foot LLC, who's the record owner of the property.
Thank you very much.
Our vice chair, Carol Tenere, has a few questions for you.
Mr. Bolland, you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy.
Have you emailed the exhibit packet with proof of ownership, tax compliance, a copy of the refusal or referral, photos under plans of the property five days in advance of this hearing, and have you met with the RCO, and do you have a letter?
You may proceed and begin by sharing the screen.
certainly so we're here today with the support of the coordinating rco fish town neighbors
Certainly.
So we're here today with the support of the...
association and the other local rco and we're seeking a special exception for a new location
of an existing wine bar and they also do production as well called mural city cellars
and this special exception it was triggered due to an overlay in fish town that requires
all eating and drinking establishments to to obtain a special exception.
And as the board saw, there is a forty two to zero support by the coordinating RCO in support of the project.
And Fishtown Kensington Area Business Improvement District notes in their letter of support that the tenant has a sterling reputation throughout the community
and that they're thrilled that they remain within this district when they move from their existing small location to a larger location.
Just to be clear what we're dealing with here, if the board sees the building we're looking at, we're only seeking a change in use.
It's just a little one-story building here in a CMX2 district, and we're only here for one of the two uses.
We're only here for the restaurant use.
and at this for this project approximately one third of the building will be the back half here
the back third this will be for wine production and two thirds of it will be for a wine bar and
I'll just really briefly briefly show you uh what we're talking about here so it's a corner property
at the corner of Frankfurt Ave and Berks Ave right here at CMX2 here here's another image of it
here it is from above you can see it's a corner property it has a couple of roll-up garages
we're going to have trash on the side here here's another shot of it down burks avenue
um here's just an image of what the facility looks like now in fishtown it's a it's a very
small as you can see there they're crushing the grapes by hand um it's just just a very small
quaint wine bar um also here's just the the board can see that the general layout it's going to be
the the production area is going to be a third and here's going to be the rest um i won't take
the board through the rest of the exhibits that we submitted but this is presently it's presently
a um it was being used as an auto garage um and and the use now the the tenant they um are allowed
under their liquor license to have sales until 11 p.m., but they actually, they're a good neighbor
and they close at 10 o'clock. It's generally a 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. business. And I believe we meet
all of the legal elements necessary to establish a special exception. Again, this is only two-thirds
of the property that's going to be used, and we're talking about a one-story building, not an
expansion. This is a very transit-oriented area. We're very close to the L stop at Berks,
and there isn't going to be any issue with congestion. There isn't going to be an issue
with overcrowding the land, impairment of light. Again, we're not changing the building. It's not
going to be burdening any of the public systems. It's not going to be impairing any of the
neighboring uses, and it's also not going to be a hazard. And I just have two witnesses to swear
and I have the owner and then I have the current tenant if I could uh swear them in just to adopt
my testimony sure if Mr. Winnig and uh Ms. Ducos can um raise your hand please
chair we have Mr. Winnig Mr. Winnig you can unmute yourself and wait for the chair please
hi could you state your name and spell for the court reporter sure it's jason winnig w-i-n-i-g
right do you swear a firm that's all the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
i do proceed jason i just have two questions um what's your relation to the project
i'm the owner of 1831-33 frankfort avenue okay and did you hear the statements i made today
I did. And were they true, correct, and accurate? Yes. And do you adopt them as your own?
Yes, I do. And if the board has any questions for the owner, he's a...
Questions from the board? No.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
Planning Commission.
Good afternoon Chair and members of the Board. The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the existing commercial mixed-use zoning at this location. The proposed special exception for an eating and drinking establishment will not cause detrimental impacts to the neighborhood beyond what normally might be expected for this use. The City Planning Commission recommends that the Zoning Board grant the special exception.
Good afternoon, Chair and members of the Board.
The comprehensive plan recommends no change.
Thank you. MI 2022-001-142, 1831-33, Frankfurt Avenue, I vote yes.
Harold Tenneri, my vote is yes.
Thomas Howell, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
MI 2022-001-067-2100-12 East Rush Street.
Attorney is Brett Feldman.
Letter of Opposition from Somerset Neighbors for Better Living.
Mr. Feldman is coming back in as a panelist now, Chair.
Vote was 8 for support, 10 opposed, 1 non-opposition.
mr feldman yes mr chairman sure could you state your name and spell for the court reporter please
sure sure uh brett feldman 1835 market street philadelphia pennsylvania 19103 i represent the
applicant property owner 2100 to 12 russ street llc do you swear a firm to tell the truth the
whole truth and nothing but the truth i do our vice chair has a few questions for you
Hi, Mr. Feldman.
Do you agree to weigh through the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Have you emailed the exhibit packet with proof of ownership tax compliance, a copy of the refusal or referral, photos and or plans of the property, five days in advance of this hearing, and have you met with the RCO, and do you have a letter?
Yes to all.
Okay, thank you.
You may proceed and begin with sharing your screen.
Great, thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, is my screen up here now?
Starting.
Great, great.
Again, Brett Feldman, 1835 Market Street.
I represent the applicant and property owner.
With me today is Andrew Friedman and Yossi Abraham, who are principals of 2100 to 12 Rush Street.
We also have architect Logan Dry, who has testified on numerous projects before this board, as well as our export land planner, Nancy Templeton.
I passed up exhibits, virtually passed up exhibits.
Excuse me, Brett, the screen's just not up. It's spinning.
Okay, let's try it again.
Okay. Sorry for the interruption.
No, I'm happy you told me.
okay let's try it again here we go okay so i've virtually passed up uh our exhibit package uh
with uh exhibits one through 14 uh i just want to i'm going to go i'm going to go through most
of these exhibits but i did want to bring the board's attention um uh at exhibit tab 13
there is the letter from the RCO. I guess it's characterized as a letter of opposition. It was
our understanding that the group was counting the votes within 250 square feet, which I think under
this letter is considered all meeting attendees. If that's the case, we actually had a strong
letter, a strong vote of support. It looks like what they did was they then, I don't know if it's
overruled or had the board then vote. And those were a vote in opposition. In any event, if you
add the two up, it's like it's 10-9. And I think that's why you see at Exhibit Tab 14, the
Councilman Squilla, who I don't know if the board has this, but we just got this. They noted it was
10-9 if you count both. There were 60 meeting attendees. There were a lot of people whose votes
weren't counted. And they ultimately just said, hey, it's up to the board. So I've been doing this
for a long time i've never i've never been in this situation i don't know how to characterize
this letter uh but i think this is you know what the councilman's office was trying to uh you know
you know here we are so let me just go to the let me go to the uh uh concrete exhibits here um
here is the here is the project um and i'll come back to this but it is i would characterize this
as a uh boutique uh multi-family building it's five stories uh masonry uh with on the first floor
uh off street parking uh and active spaces on the on on the first floor um there is it's a
very irregularly shaped lot i know people say that but it actually is as you'll see
there's a small finger that extends to a third street uh that's currently vacant and we've done
There's a small finger that extends to a third street that's currently vacant.
And what we've done there to try to fit in with the character on that third side is an even smaller six-unit building on that side.
there to
And I'll show it to you in plan.
And then this is the view at the main corner of Rush and Amber Street, wherein I would characterize this as the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.
Here are the photographs.
And I think it's a crucial part of the story.
This is the property in red, as you see here. It is mostly fronts on Rush Street here, Amber Street here, and then Somerset here.
And there's that little finger that we have that second building that's vacant. The property is entirely vacant.
And one of the main refusals we received was multiple structures.
There was really nothing to do here other than create a curb cut in the middle of the block, which we didn't think made sense.
We utilized an existing curb cut and put a small building to kind of fit this gap here.
We are surrounded. The property is zoned RSA 5. It was rezoned at some point in the last, we believe, 10 years.
But we are across the street here. This is a active auto repair sales facility with all the, you know, significant use that that goes on there and traffic.
Below us here is a vacant parking lot. And then this is a large Pico substation. These are those big electric generating facility that you see in Chinatown and all throughout the city. We have one right below us.
And then the other corner here is, I think it's just recently closed, but this is the Outlaws Motorcycle Gang Headquarters, which is our other neighbor here. So let me just go through these aerials. But we think it's important to orient yourself.
Again, here's our property. Here's that finger. Here's Cary Motors. Here's the parking lot below us. And then just going through here, giving you a sense of the area. Cary Motors, the Pico substation below us.
And then here is what it looks like actually on the ground. This is, as you approach our property, you know, barbed wire. You can see what it looks like. This is as you go towards our property. This is right below us. This is that PICO substation with all the power generating facility there and the barbed wire.
This is Cary Motors across the street from us.
And I'll just kind of, this is as you go to our property, Cary Motors again, Cary Motors
across the street.
There's cars, there's a repair facility.
That's our property right there in the fenced area.
That's the former Outlaws Motorcycle Gang.
That's their sign there.
I think it's closed now.
And that's at Amber.
And then this is that little finger here that's vacant.
That's the motorcycle gang right there. Property has always been industrial. We did a lot of research on this. A lot of it was because of the environmental legacy that's there that you'll hear about.
It's a brownfield. There's underground storage tanks, we believe. But this was actually a very famous aluminum factory here, which we, you know, if you look at the Sanborn maps going over the last 120 years, going back to, I think, what, 1900, here's our property.
This was a big foundry here right at the corner. And again, this is the reason why this was important to us is we did a, you know, we've had to deal with the environmental, which is part of the hardship on this property.
That's the foundry in red and just going, these are going, you know, every 10 or 20 years, the foundry, the other surrounding industrial uses here as you go through, going through here, the industrial part of, as we did this research,
We found out that our property was actually this was the aluminum factory back in the 1890s that created the capstone for the Washington Monument, which was apparently we were the only aluminum factory in the country.
And this was a significant project that came out of this this property at this corner.
And if you go through and look at the Frischmuth Aluminum Factory, you'll see article after article talking about how this corner produced the capstone for the Washington Monument.
It's pretty significant. And I'll show you pictures of what it used to look like.
That's what the Aluminum Factory used to look like at the corner.
Again, this being important because of the environmental legacy that continues to remain on that property and our needs to come up with a way to do a project that takes into account the environmental and also makes sense.
We zoning notice, we posted the property, here's all the postings on it.
I'll just go through this very quickly and make sure we get to the actual renderings themselves.
Deeds.
deeds real quick here tax here's our tax tax certificate uh the zoning refusals as i
mentioned uh and we're going to get into this the um one of the first refusals is there's two
there's two buildings um because of the irregular shaped law we have the second small building
again we're rsa5 we thought for a number of reasons i will outline um that multi-family
here made the most sense um we we actually got a refusal for providing parking rsa5 doesn't
require parking but we reutilized that curb cut and that created a refusal um and then we have
a refusal for the height and as we'll explain uh we think the variance for the height uh is
necessary in order to address the environmental as well as to create a project that had the
required parking and active first floor. This is our property over here, zoned RSA 5 across
the street with a motorcycle gang. That's also RSA 5. And then this is the industrial looping
all around us here. There are no residential on our block. As you saw, there's actually nothing
on our block. But that's the rezoning that was there. So with that, I'm going to ask
Logan Dry, our project architect, if he could be, if he could join our call right now, our
hearing. Mr. Dry, can you raise your hand so we can discuss the project?
Mr. Dry, please unmute yourself and wait for the chair, please.
Can you guys hear me? Yes, we can. Could you state your name and spell for the court reporter?
Sure. Logan Dry, L-O-G-A-N-D-R-Y, KCA Design Associates, 6525 Tulip Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19135.
You swear, affirm, to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.
I do. Proceed.
Great. Mr. Dry, I don't know if you want me to start on the renderings or the zoning plan,
But what I'd like you to do is I know you've testified in front of this board on countless projects, many, many single family, some multifamily, actually for this exact client.
I'd like you to give the board a sense of, you know, the considerations that went into into developing this corner property for the multifamily, specifically the irregular shapes, corner property, the industrial history and the surrounding uses, as well as affordability.
So if you could take the board through how you came with the client, determining that really single family did not make sense here because of the hardships that were on this property, if you could take us through that.
Well, sure.
Mr. Feldman, wait one minute.
So then you're also going to bring a land specialist in?
Yeah, yeah.
If the board's so desired.
I mean, if he's going to talk about why he did not single properties, I think that we'll be fine with that, okay?
Okay. Well, yeah, we just wanted to make sure we had done our homework on this.
All right. Thank you.
Yeah. And I'll try to be, you know, as concise as I can be. If you want to start with the site plan, we'll just kind of give a sense.
And then, you know, we can hop right back to the renderings.
I know it's a little bit blurry here, but here's the zoning plan.
Right. That's the little finger here, Amber, Rush, right?
Right. So, you know, as Brett mentioned, you know, one of the big things we had was the, you know, sort of irregularly shaped site, the little finger that extended out on the Somerset Street.
You know, so we looked at this and said, you know, how's the best way to orient the site that, you know, sort of completes, you know, the vacant tooth, so to speak, on Somerset Street, you know, provides some shared amenity spaces for both of these buildings, provides some off-street parking, and also sort of addresses, you know, the existing environmental issues on the site.
So, you know, what we came up with was basically two buildings, you know, on the right side of your screen, you see the larger massing that we put, you know, sort of closer to the industrial context being on the corner.
We do have this separation from the biker building behind us.
And what we figured was because there was that existing curb cut there off of Amber Street, you know, we'd use that as access.
Right here, Logan, correct?
We'd use that as some access for off-street parking for both the buildings.
Because, again, you know, we had that there. We didn't feel it was appropriate to do, you know, curb cut or drive vile through Somerset Street because it's a mainly residential street over there.