basement there is and there's an ability for each of the units also to store trash inside
and we would also agree to a proviso for commercial pickup as well.
Our meeting notice we met with the community on February 24th 2022 at 5 30 p.m. We notified
114 addresses of this community meeting. These are the addresses and proof of mailing.
Our application appealed to the ZBA.
ALONG WITH OUR PROJECT INFORMATION FORM AND NOTICE OF REFUSAL AND OUR DEED TO THE PROPERTY
SHOWING THAT THEY ACTUALLY INDIVIDUALLY OWN THIS PROPERTY, MR. KANE AND MS.
COCH. So with that being said, and we have our also our tax clearance certificates showing
that we owe no funds. With that being said, I would ask that either Adam or Kelly virtually
raise their hand to adopt my testimony, and then we would be more than happy to answer
any questions from the board. Mr. King, you may unmute yourself.
Could you state your name and spell for the court reporter, please?
Hello, all. This is Adam Cain. Last name is spelled C-A-I-N.
Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do. Proceed.
Proceed.
Yes, Mr. Cain, you heard everything I stated.
Yes, Mr. Cain, you heard everything I stated today.
That's correct, I did.
And is it true and correct?
Correct, it is.
And do you adopt it as your own testimony?
All right, thank you.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Cain.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
I see no hands, Chair.
Thank you, Chair.
Planning Commission.
Good afternoon, Chair.
Peter Bernard for the Planning Commission.
The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential single family zoning at
this location.
However, the applicant has demonstrated a hardship via longstanding use at this location.
The Planning Commission recommends the Board grant the use variance.
Thank you.
um sharon do we want to add those provisos
they're not requested a roof so the councilman president wanted a
no roof and also commercial trash you can add both of those share
there we go all right mi 2022 00051 1940 north 22nd street i vote yes proviso
So, no roof deck and commercial trash pickup.
Harold Teneri, my vote is yes with proviso.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes with proviso.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes with proviso.
Thank you, Mr. McAllison.
Thank you. Have a great day, and good luck, Sharon.
Thank you, Alan.
MI 2021-005-421-1905, Catherine Street.
RCO, South of South Neighbors, Letter of Support with Proviso.
That one is still on.
Thank you.
I was muted.
Sorry.
David Orphanides.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board.
Could you state your name and spell for the court reporter, please?
Certainly.
David Orphanides, O-R-P-H-A-N-I-D-E-S is the spelling of my last name.
And I'm with Fortune.
You swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Could you identify your client and the relationship to the property?
My clients, and I don't know if I gave my address, but it's 1500 John F. Kennedy Boulevard, Suite 800, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19102.
And our clients are Rosemary and Ryan McCarthy, who are the owners of the property, 1905.
And they should be noted as such, Rosemary slash Ryan McCarthy, I believe.
Thank you.
You wanted to promote them.
And then the architect is Tim Kerner.
Right.
And our vice chair has a few questions for you.
Mr. Orphanidis, do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
I waive the reading.
I don't stipulate to its accuracy, but we can address that as we go through.
They missed some refusals, but everything was presented appropriately to SOSNA, and they're all reflected in the revised zoning drawings.
Okay, and I assume you submitted all the required documents timely?
I did.
the only the only things that weren't submitted and timely was the um the the letter of support
from sasna so do you have that now yes and i i supplemented my materials to include that
um and then the drawings that were based upon uh the proviso requirements of that letter
okay thank you you may proceed and begin to share your screen certainly one minute show my screen
um and obviously uh i also joined real quickly um everybody else in um thanking sharon for
everything she's done um actually i have to i have to say thank you otherwise because i get
choked up here thank you david and just let me say now that i did we received the revised plans
it's one page and um i reviewed them they're fine thank you actually it's two pages there's a site
plan and elevate in a section so ah it's hard to tell from the okay two pages thank you thanks and
thanks for focusing back on a matter of hand because i might have lost it otherwise but thank
you for everything sharing um again my name is david orphanetes um with orphanetes and toner i'm
here on behalf of ryan and rosemary mccarthy um they are the owners of the subject property which
which is this building located in the center between two existing structures with the garage
in the center between two existing structures with the garage door. You have 1903 Catherine
You have 19.
to the right or to the east. Our property is located on the north side of the 1900 block
of Catherine Street and 1907 Catherine Street to the west of us. You can see at the present time
there's a above the third floor there's an existing roof deck that has a railing around
the front of it. There's a fourth floor that's set back with the roof deck on top of that.
You can see that the front facade of 1907, Catherine, is higher than the main portion of our front facade.
The 1903 has a lower facade at the front building line, but then extends higher short distance back.
To the right, you can see part of what we're looking to do here.
Essentially, you have a rooftop deck on top of the fourth floor, a roof deck at the front of the fourth floor,
which I've indicated with the railing around it, and then a deck at the back of the second floor.
And for each of those, we're proposing an integrated planter bench structure
to go either at the front or the rear of the structure.
In addition, you'll see that the ground floor does not extend.
It's set back from the rear of the property and the alley that runs across the rear of the property.
There's a deck on top of that one-story rear portion that extends past that, and we're looking to fill in the area underneath that, take it from just unusable dark space, outdoor space, that butts up to a fence and a deck of the property right behind us with an address of 759 Martin Street and enclose that and make that functional interior space.
But this is the change that the world is going to see from the street.
And again, what will happen is the back of the bench or the front of the bench and planter is going to be made to look,
it's been designed by the architect to resemble a mansard type style.
It'll be standing seam metal, and it'll bring up the front in line with 1907.
So there'll be a consistent cornice line that runs across from 1907 across the front of our planter structure.
We do have a letter of support from SASNA. As indicated, there was a proviso. We did have a
fully advertised community group meeting after meeting with their architectural review committee.
That was a Zoom meeting. There was a proviso that came out of that meeting,
which we were notified of the end of last week, that the deck at the front of the fourth floor,
which is this deck, you know, the one that you can see from the street, be set back a little further
than what we had originally shown on the drawings that were submitted to LNI, which generated one of
our refusals that they noted. And it still is not completely compliant with how LNI defines the five
foot front setback, but it's much more closer to being so. And you'll see that in the revised
drawings but as you can see we had a vote uh that was in support without having that proviso
expressly included at the time that was a vote from the meeting and then they took the position
to support our application and our appeal with that proviso um tab two we do have some letters
of support from the immediate budding neighbor behind us at 759 martin street you can see they've
seen the refusal saw our original plans which i'll go through in a minute and then also at 1907
Catherine Street which is the abutting property to the west of us our notice of refusal had two
refusals one involved that front uh deck at the top of the above the third story at the front of
the fourth floor um you'll see in the plans they took the position that that deck was not set back
five feet with that structure planter bench structure we were adding I disagree with that
also they had the rear yard depth with the addition under the second floor rear deck
at three feet as I indicated I couldn't stipulate to the accuracy because it's actually zero
there's a three-foot alley that runs across the rear of our property that counts as you know as
open area but any rear yard depth gets measured to the rear to the edge of that alley so while
there's technically three feet beyond our addition that's our property that does not count as rear
yard depth so that's where I couldn't stipulate to the accuracy but we did represent at the
SOSNA meeting. There was an extended discussion regarding existing conditions and dimensional
requirements and variances and whatnot of the zoning code. And we clearly indicated to them,
and our revised drawings clearly confirm that, of those conditions. And again, that was presented
to SOSNA. We do have the letter of support with the proviso, and we are presenting that today
to the zoning board, both with our statements, testimony, adopted statements, and with our
revised drawings so our revised drawings um you know again uh
So our revised drawings, you know, again, basically show in this area this further setback of the bench.
And essentially what SOSNA, like I said, wanted to see was this bench and planter set back a little further than it originally was.
It was about the edge of the planter was much closer to the front of the building,
and we've pushed that back in conformance with the requirements of or the request of SOSNA.
As you can see, here is what we're talking about. Originally, this was all much closer. This is now the front edge of the planter that is on the back of the bench is now three feet. The back edge of the planter is four foot six.
It was always our position that if anything, the deck actually began at the back of the
planter or at the front of the bench, and if the requirement's five feet, we're at four
foot six now.
So to the extent that there was a refusal, because here you can see in our original drawings,
you know, we were only at 310 there, all the way back to the bench.
Now we're at four six.
They said that somehow we were at zero, and we were never at zero, because this bottom
edge is one foot three inches away.
But again, the refusal wasn't correct in a number of ways, and we've worked our way through the process.
Here's the addition underneath.
Right now, this deck is partially on top of the one-story portion and then extends to the rear alley.
Right now, there's walls on either side and an opening in the rear.
I'll show you the photographs, and we're just looking to enclose this area.
It's not going to impact any air and light to a neighboring property because there's already a wall to either side.
And then to the back of us, you'll see there's a stockade fence bordering the alley or the driveway of the properties behind us at 759 Martin Street.
We've also documented some other existing conditions at the property, the skylights, some walls along the sides of the existing deck.
We're adding some screening above them and screening and a pergola up on the rooftop deck.
real quickly um here's our property 1905 1907 1903 to either side of us here's a close-up
as i mentioned here the martin street properties behind us their decks back right up to the alley
um just like our deck does right here and again we're just looking as far as the addition filling
in underneath the deck and nobody's going to be impacted by that the benches we're talking about
are right here uh right here right here and this one here at the front of the fourth floor is the
one that generated the the refusal for that we are located in rsa zoning district we intend it's
currently used as our single family and we my clients intend to continue to use the property
as single family and i could run through some existing photos most importantly i'm going to
quickly show you the back of the the backyard of the property and here you can see this is the
conditions how my clients bought the property so this is the underneath the deck this is what is
at the rear alley and this wall is what's to either side there's a wall to either side so
they're basically looking to enclose this opening um and use this turn this into a habitable space
here's the ground floor interior right now and here's that area underneath the deck and here's
wall on the west side the stockade fence that's our lattice fence that's on the martin street
property side of the alley but you can see it's a narrow alley behind us filling this in is not
going to have any impact an air light of any neighboring properties um and here are the
martin street properties right behind us and you can see their their buildings are set back and
it's just their driveway uh and their parking areas that's on the other side of the alley from us
And here's the area of the deck that's above it.
Prior zoning archives for both our property, 1903 and 1907, as well as Martin Street.
Again, here's the rendering at the front of what we're proposing.
Front elevation showing the consistent cornice line or front line here between 1907 and ours in our property.
1903 is clearly very different than all of ours.
and here's a partial floor plan showing the existing room with the rear patio and then the
enclosure of that area and turning it into like a media room original zoning drawings you have in
your file we've outlined the differences with clouding of the revised zoning drawings that are
provided with the revised proviso plan form our application project information form the deed
showing my clients Ryan and Roseberry McCarthy own the property, our tax clearance, the hearing
notice for today's hearing that was posted at the property in compliance with the zoning code
requirements, our 14303 notice. Well, first the email designating Sassen as the coordinating
Our 14.303 notice, well, first the email designating SOSNA as a coordinating RCO.
As indicated, we met both with our architectural review committee, then had a full remote or virtual community group meeting.
The list of addresses to which we mailed the notice, and I think we mailed to 207.
There were 207 mailings with our certificate of first-class mailing you can see right there.