as a industrial area as seen in the recent approval of the 1 million square foot UPS
warehouse to be located at one line road within less than a quarter mile of the site.
The Planning Commission recommends that the Board deny the requested variants for use as a daycare center.
MI 2024-001-872-260 Geiger Road. I vote yes with proviso. Use limited to space B. Hours of operation 2.30 to 6 p.m.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes with proviso.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes with proviso.
Senator Graham, my vote is yes with Proviso.
Iowyn, my vote is yes with Proviso.
Tishmel Shaheed, my vote is yes with Proviso.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you, members of the board.
Number seven, MI 2024-003-727-535-Ruin Street.
535 Rowan Street, David Orphanides is the attorney.
David Orfanides is the attorney.
There's a letter of support from Fox Chase Civic Association and a letter of support from Council Member O'Neill.
David Orphanides will be rejoining us as a panelist.
Hello.
Good afternoon, Council.
Good afternoon.
Would you please state your name and spell for the court's sonographer?
Certainly. My name is David Orphanides. The last name is spelled O-R-P-H-A-N-I-D-E-S.
We're affirmed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do, sir.
Could you identify your client in a relationship to this property?
Certainly. My client is St. Celia Catholic Church, and the property is 535 Bronze Street,
which is the church and a number of other buildings that include a school and the gymnasium and things related.
Our vice chair has a few questions, sir.
Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to wait to read another refusal or stipulate to its accuracy?
The refusals are correct. The description of the project is not correct.
As a result, I've been trying to work with the zoning plan examiner for a number of months now
to try to resolve the issue to determine whether or not the refusal could be just corrected by him
or done with handled with the revised proviso plan form in front of the board or required an amended
application. I haven't been able to do that, make that determination with him yet. So I would ask
that this matter be heard, but that the vote be held until maybe Hillary can assist. But right now
there are some things in the notice of refusal, mainly regarding the description. I think the
refusals are all correct but the um the way that they're worded but the description isn't quite
complete of the application understood have you emailed in all the required documents and
exhibits as needed and required to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing
we emailed everything uh we were having problems with the tax clearance um obviously with it being
the church um there was an issue um i mean it's non-profit and it doesn't uh it doesn't get taxed
but often we can still get a clearance
and we weren't able to get that.
So I wasn't able to provide that five days in advance.
And then apparently the photos did not go through
and I'll forward those.
I have those to present today of the property
and of the posting and I'll forward those,
upload those to the system after the hearing today.
Understood.
All right, please proceed and share your screen.
And if we just, are we gonna continue chair with this
and just hold the vote?
Hillary wanna hold the vote on this, am I right?
Yeah, we'll we'll have Mr.
If you need to explain the project, as he said, the refusals are should be correct.
It's just that the description is incorrect and may need to be adjusted so we can address that afterwards.
And just to be clear, the plans, the revised plans are the plans that were presented to Fox Chase and that they based their support upon.
So just wanted to clarify that.
OK, thank you.
Can you all see my screen?
We can. Great. So let me just minimize this up here. Okay. So again, my name is David Orfanides with the law firm of Orfanides & Toner. The property in question is 535 Rohn Street. 535 Rohn Street runs through to the rear of it. It's on effectively the north side of Rohn Street.
And you can see that here with our aerial photos, you can see right here, here's the property.
So you have Rohn Street, you have the church, and as I mentioned, there's public library, which is not part of the property, here at Jeans and Rohn.
The property goes through to Stanwood and then goes through to Jeans.
At the present time, there is a freestanding, you'll see in a minute with the photographs, there is a single-sided freestanding sign by the church.
And then there is an existing wall sign over here on the side of the building that's located along Jean Street.
The zoning archives don't include any reference to this particular sign, the wall sign, which I'll show you photographs of.
So this application should be clear, and that wasn't clear in the way that the notice of refusal was worded as far as what the application was for, should have stated that it was to document this existing sign just, you know, while we're here dealing with everything else to make everything else legitimate and legal.
but in the end there's there's right now there's two these two existing signs freestanding and a
wall sign and then what you'll see as we go through is the idea the proposal is to take
And then what you'll see as we go through is the idea, the proposal is to take this freestanding sign and mount it to the same wall that the existing wall sign is along Jean Street.
this freestanding sign
One of the issues there, again, was that the notice of refusal did not indicate that that sign and, you know, is it necessary?
You know, I like to, as you know, I like to be very specific and to be clear so everybody knows what's going on, particularly when it comes to illumination and how neighbors feel about that.
So the existing freestanding sign is internal as internal static elimination.
And that will remain when it's if this is approved and it's moved to the wall of the building over here on jeans.
And then what you'll see as we go along in the local general location where the existing sign is here by the church on Ron Street.
The proposal is a double sided freestanding sign, a portion of which is a digital sign.
It's a 16 square foot on each side, two feet by eight feet, which, again, the way it's worded, it makes it sound as if the description and the refusal, as you'll see, makes it sound as if the whole double-sided freestanding sign is, well, they called it a message board, which isn't even a type of sign in the zoning code.
So that was something that I was trying to address.
But only a portion of the sign is digital, and we'll go through that in a minute.
So just a couple more aerials here showing kind of the three locations for the three signs that are going to be included with the application when all is said and done.
You go around.
You have the Fox Chase train station over at this location.
You'll see later on, there's an existing freestanding sign that's already been permitted right around in this location by the train station, right by Councilman O'Neill's office there for American Heritage.
It's fairly similar to what we're talking about here.
There's a freestanding sign a little further down the road for recurrence meets.
That is also in close proximity, but we'll go through that in a couple of minutes and I'll show you.
Some photographs. Here is the existing sign that I mentioned, single-sided, internally illuminated sign. Identifies the church, times of service, things of that nature.
um brawn street um it's largely residential in this area you can see to either side you have
across the street caddy corner you have the fox chase elementary school
then other than that it's residential until you get down to the shopping center
where the train station is and as i indicated as you saw in the aerial there's a number of
Buildings, it's a fairly large property, spread out throughout the property.
I'm just going to quickly scroll to Gene.
So on the Gene side, this is the building where you see the existing sign.
It's a non-illuminated wall sign.
That's the sign that I mentioned is to be documented because there's no record of that.
It's interesting.
It didn't mention it in the description in the Notice of Refusal.
but it included it in the calculation for square footage for that street frontage.
And again, when we're done with this process,
I want to make sure that the church has three legal signs
and there's no question as to that when they're finished.
This, as you'll see from the drawings,
is the location of where that existing free standing sign
that I initially showed you is to be relocated.
And again, here's the original drawings that were submitted to L&I.
And it shows, again, A, which is the new double-sided freestanding sign that includes the digital sign.
By definition, in the zoning code, it's a digital sign.
The thing is, is that they included, well, initially, the square footage is 59.8 square feet, but did not include the base.
um there's a question as to where whether or not by definition the base should be by definition
the zoning code the base should be included but i wasn't able to confirm with and it was clearly
shown that the base was not included in the calculations but the examiner asked to try to
get in touch with the examiner to confirm whether or not that's correct or whether we should properly
show the square footage that includes the base we showed both plans both the existing plans and the
plans that i'll show you in a minute the revised plans that include the square footage with the
base um that's the only real kind of question regarding um that sign is and the thing that i
want to either have addressed with a corrected refusal revised plan stamped by the board or
an amended notice of refusal um sign b which is
an amended notice of refusal um as sign b which is i mentioned um is the relocated sign from the
front that's 32 square feet and then sign c and again um sign c is that existing sign so you can
see if i take it take you to the revised zoning drawings that they're they're exactly the same
the only thing is is that we you know included the base in the calculations the overall size
of the sign did not change so again it's a double-sided sign has some width to it and then
there this is the digital portion right here this is the two feet by eight feet 24 inch by 96 inch
digital on both sides as opposed to being a message board it's seven feet 10.61 inches tall
freestanding signs are only permitted to be seven feet tall digital signs as noted in notice of
refusal are not permitted in the zoning district. And we can go through that in the middle.
Here's some, these are exactly what was submitted, you know, as far as graphically,
the pictures, the original drawing, and then again, in the revised drawing.
And here you can see on this drawing, we provide a little more detail on the revised drawings,
but nothing effectively changed the original zoning drawings again showed the relocated sign
that freestanding sign internally illuminated statically illuminated being located to the wall
for existing signs c is located and you can see here it's exactly the same we just added some
dimensions just for the community group meaning to be to be clear c is not illuminated and there's
no intention to illuminate them. You can see here, again, they only reference two signs in
the application, but they include three signs in the calculations of square footage, as I mentioned
on genes. They call the message board, as you can see in the relevant sections of the zoning code
that I've included with the exhibit book. You have an electronic message sign, you have a digital sign,
and then you have an accessibility digital news ticker and because they reference it a notice of
refusal uh animated illumination and so going back here there's only three types of signs
that fall under that category and the one that fits most clearly is the digital sign
and so it's those things that we wanted to try to get clear with uh with the examiner so that
the permit is accurate. And again, so there's no issues with the church when we go forward.
I mentioned that there are some properties nearby that have digital signs. So right down at Jeans
and Ron, there's the Bethany Baptist Church, which has a freestanding digital sign. I could not find,
I include zoning archives with my exhibits. I could not find any, interesting, I couldn't find
any zoning archives for the church, which is shocking to me. You have the older church building
and newer buildings. It might have been under a different address. We checked every possible
address it could be and couldn't find anything. There aren't any zoning archives for Bethany
Baptist at 460 Ron, but there is a freestanding digital sign there. A little further down the
street, I mentioned at American Heritage, right by the train station. You can see here
and probably greater square footage with their digital with their digital sign double-sided
and i mentioned that's right in front of councilman o'neill's office it's just at the
back his office at the back of the parking lot a little further down the street you got reekers
meets that also has a digital sign you can see here double-sided a couple streets down there's
a daycare also internal static illumination with a part of it similarly being digital sign
and then i mean it's a little further away but i know this is driving over um on harvison and
bruce that very similar to what something not similar but something similar to what we're
proposing here where it's a static it's a fixed sign that has a digital portion um i couldn't
find a zoning permit for that sign, but it is there. We included Exhibit 7, all the old deeds
showing our clients own the property. I mentioned we don't owe any taxes on the property. My client
doesn't own any taxes, but we did have issues trying to pull tax clearance. If we need to do
something else, we can provide that after the fact. A copy of the hearing notice. It did copy
what was in the notice of refusal, so the description of what the project was for is
the same, a little slightly limited, but again, what we presented to the community group and
But again, what we presented to the community group and explained to them in great detail, a member of the sign company, a representative from the sign company who's on the call today, was there.
explained to them in great detail.
We went through the types of illumination, the amount and extent of the illumination, the duration of the illumination, things of that nature with the community group.
Our posting photographs, we posted on each of the frontages at Ron, at Stanwood.
And then I didn't also add and then also add at Jean.
And then 14303 notices we originally.
Well, here's the email from the planning commission identifying Fox Chase Civic Association as the coordinating RCO for the project.
The list of addresses to which we sent the notices.
We sent out two notices. We were originally going to have a meeting in June on June 12th.
We didn't have the meeting then.
And then instead, I'm sorry, not on June 12th, on July 1st, I beg your pardon, on July 1st, or July 10th.
And then we didn't go forward with that, but then we did meet on September 11th.
And so with that, I would have my client and a member of the sign company, Casey Signs, adopt my statements.
and then we would open that up to any questions
that the board of members of the audience might have.
Bring your client on first.
Father Chris, are you on?
Father Chris, if you are in the virtual audience,
please raise your hand.
Father Chris has been allowed to speak.
Could you please state your name
and spell for the court stenographer?
My name is Christopher Walsh,
C-H-R-I-S
T-O-P-H-E-R
Last name.
Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, sir. Yes, sir.
Father Chris,