SOS also requires that we post the property with the notice of the community group meeting, which we did at the property.
So going back, we feel that there is a consistent pattern of other three-story or other three- or four-story buildings of a similar height to what we're proposing.
We don't create a height refusal here.
It could be argued that we had not only the rear yard depth refusal, but in our open area refusal.
But underneath the deck, that was not cited as far as rear yard depth in the refusal accurately,
which, again, we've conveyed in terms of open area that was not cited, could have been,
but it's, again, been conveyed both at Sassana and here.
At the ground floor level, we will have open area, which is the rear alley.
You see the surrounding conditions to the rear of us, to both the left and the right of us.
And we feel that the improvements that we're looking to have approved here are consistent with the surrounding properties.
And to the extent that they are not conforming properties themselves, they lose some of the benefit of having the protection against the impact on air and light that these changes might have.
But then again, we don't feel that there will be any.
And so with that, I would ask my clients, I think they've been promoted to panelists, if I could have them just sworn in, and also the architect after that so they can adopt my statements.
I'd appreciate it.
So Ryan.
Could you state your name and spell for the court reporter, please?
Hey, Tim, are you on?
Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me?
Yes, if you can state your name.
Can you state your name and spell it for the court reporter?
Yes, this is Timothy Kerner, T-I-M-O-T-H-Y, Kerner, K-E-R-N-E-R.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Proceed.
Tim, you were the architect for the project?
That is correct.
And you prepared the zoning drawings that were originally filed with L&I,
the revised zoning drawings that had been provided to the zoning board
with the revised proviso plan form as long as as well as the rendering floor plan and the elevations
correct yes we did correct okay and um you heard the statements i made to the board today yes i did
and are they true and correct to the best of your knowledge yes they are would you adopt them as
your own i would thank you and then um to the extent if ryan or rosemary mccarthy are identified
if they could raise their hand my clients i believe ryan is on
hello hi hi could you state your name and spell for the court reporter please
yes sir it's ryan mccarthy r-y-a-n-m-c-c-a-r-t-h-y do you swear or firm to tell the truth
the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do proceed and i also my wife rosemary is also here
to the extent you want to have her sworn as well.
Okay. Could you state your name and spell for the court reporter?
Sure. It's Rosemary McCarthy, R-O-S-E-M-A-R-Y, and then McCarthy is M-C-C-A-R-T-H-Y.
Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Proceed.
And the court reporter can only have one person speaking at the time, so one of you can answer
this question um rosemary and ryan you're the owners of 1905 catherine street correct yes that's
correct okay thank you and did you hear the statements that i made to the board today
yes we did and are they true and correct to the best of your knowledge yes and would you adopt
them as your own yes thank you very much and with that i ask that our exhibits be moved into evidence
and to the record and I rest with the right to for any rebuttal if need questions from the board
no Mr. Chairman no Mr. Chairman questions or comments from the virtual audience
I see no handshare planning commission
good afternoon chair Peter Bernard for the planning commission
The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the existing RSA 5 single-family residential
zoning at this location.
The applicant has failed to demonstrate a hardship that would justify the dimensional variances.
The applicant has failed to demonstrate a hardship that would justify the dimensional
variances.
Properties are not allowed 100% lot coverage in this zoning district,
and meeting the setback on roof decks would not have an impact on its use.
Accordingly, the Planning Commission recommends the Board deny the variances.
Excuse me, Chair, before the Board votes, Mr. Ruffinides,
can you confirm that the revised plans that you've submitted incorporate all the changes requested by the RCO?
they do yes specifically right up here and in the detail they've included with their letter
you can see the three foot set back to the front of the planner four six and again our position is
if five foot is required we're either at four six or very close because the deck wouldn't even begin
to start until decide that it could be habitated but real quickly here's the letter i really just
wanted to confirm that if the board adds revised plans it isn't necessary also to add the specific
proviso language requested by the RCO is that correct that's correct yes we incorporate and
I did forward them a copy of our of our materials for today's and um and then just real quickly in
terms of the other comment by the planning commission we are we don't have a hundred percent
occupied area because the alley does count as open area it doesn't count as rear yard depth
as I indicated so but uh it's similar to the conditions to either side of us
M.I. 2021-005421, 19 and 5, Cat Street. I vote yes with provisos. Revised plans, two pages.
Carol Tenere, my vote is yes with provisos.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes with provisos.
Ishmael Shaheen, my vote is yes with provisos.
Mr. Orfiniti, please stay right there. I have another case with you here.
Oh, okay.
N.I. 2022-000034-2151-61 Albert Street.
And again, I'm...
I have...
Yep, I have...
Let's see here.
Councilman Squilla, letter of non-opposition.
East Kensington Neighbors Association, if yes, proviso, revised plans, three pages.
Correct.
Could you identify who your client is and the relationship they have with the property?
My client is Trenton Albert, LLC.
They're the owners of 2151 to 61 East Albert Street, which is also known as 2148 East Tucker Street, 2148 East Tucker Street, and 2149 East Albert Street, which are the three parcels that we're speaking about.
Our vice chair has a few questions.
Certainly.
Hi. Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Okay. It appears that you've submitted all the required documents timely. Is that correct?
uh yes well the letter from ecna east kensington neighbors association i submitted everything else
except for ecna's letter um because they um they didn't give it they unfortunately we didn't get
the letter until i think yesterday or the day before yesterday but i forwarded that and supplement
our uh our exhibits with a submission i made yesterday excuse me this is sharon we do have
that letter um and they have it's a letter of support with two provisos they're requesting or
actually maybe one proviso no dumpster on street and applicant to provide all street trash storage
thank you and we've revised the floor plans accordingly to show that i do have revised
zoning drawings um it wasn't part of ecna's uh comments but um we wanted to reduce the pilot
houses and elevator pilot house on the rooftop to bring them in conformance with the 125 square
foot requirement of the zoning code that's the only requirement um the only change that we made
to the zoning drawings and we have those with us those are three pages okay you may proceed and you
may begin to share your screen thank you i already am sharing it so there we go um and real quickly
i think uh josh matthew um is here on behalf of uh trenton albert llc and logan dry um is the
architect uh for the project if i can have them promoted at some point so that they can either
chime in or adopt my statements. I would appreciate it. So real quickly, again, David Orphanides,
Orphanides & Toner, LLP, 1500 John F. Kennedy Boulevard, Suite 800, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
19102. You have up in front of you a photograph of the existing improvements at the subject
property. The structure you see right now, 2146 East Tucker and 2149 East Albert or vacant lots.
East Albert are vacant lots. Here you can see over to the left of the photograph where you see a little bit of grass between the warehouse or commercial structure and the residential structure. That's the vacant 2149 East Albert Street.
Here you can see over to the left of the photo.
2149 East Albert and 2146 East Tucker are zoned RSA 5. You'll see that in a couple minutes. And then a larger parcel, which is 2151 to 61 East Albert, where the structure exists, is zoned RM 1.
um it's this property the albert street 2151 to 61 has been used for non-residential commercial
light industrial uses as far back as the zoning archives go on 41 it was a garage it was a
waste paper warehouse in 55 and then since 62 right up to the present day it was used as an
electroplating facility. And it's, you know, you can see it's seen better days.
And that's the existing structure. And you can see over to the right, the vacant lot at 2146
East Tucker. Real quickly, and this is a rendering of what we're proposing to construct there.
As indicated, we have a letter of support from ECNA. There was a proviso regarding interior
trash storage, no trash storage outside. And you'll see in the revised floor plans where we've
accommodated that request. The notice of refusal, and I'm going to go through this in a minute,
because of the split zoning, we're looking to consolidate the three parcels. The larger of
the parcels by far is the 2151 to 61 East Albert, which is zoning RM1. That's almost 7,000 square
feet at 6903.2 square feet 2146 being 504.6 square feet and 2149 east albert being 492.2
square feet but because the east out 2146 east tucker and 2149 east albert uh together when
taken with the rm1 portion are more than i think the threshold of 10 percent the consolidated lot
gets treated as a whole as RSA 5. And here you can see at the top of the refusal plan reviewed
as RSA 5. And RSA 5, as you know, is intended for single family. We're proposing 26 residential
dwelling units along with seven off-street parking spaces, one of which will be an ADA van
accessible space. Because are the side streets, which would likely otherwise qualify as a rear
street under the definition of such on the zoning code even if it's not directly to the rear can be
to the side but because there's parking on our side our property side of albert and tucker and
you'll see we're bringing parking in from one side from tucker and then out the other side on albert
we get a refusal that you'll see there is an existing a large existing curb cut on the east
albert street side so we're actually not taking any parking away on that side but there will be
the curb cut on the Tucker Street side, but we have a refusal for that, and then a minor variance
for occupied area, and then we have a minor variance in terms of height going from 38 to
41.83. Here are the revised zoning drawings again, which I'll go through in a little bit,
which just changed the sizes, reduced the sizes of the two stair pilot houses and the elevator
Pilothouse. Here's our property right here. You have Trenton Avenue, which is a pretty large,
I think 80 feet wide roadway here. You have East Lehigh, Huntington to either side. And this large
complex is the Charles Jackwin Distillery. So it's been there forever. You'll see it's a very
large industrial complex that shadows over the properties on the other side of Trenton.
Down here at the end of Trenton and Huntington, you have a multifamily mixed-use business professional offices and, I think, 36 or 38 residential dwelling units.
You have a safe right across Tucker from us.
You have a shopping center with a large parking lot, a safe a lot.
So it's a real mixed block.
I mean, not often you get a large, huge distillery, distilling complex right across the street.
Again, supermarket.
Then you have residential behind us, directly next to us, more single-family uses, and then
that have been existing further down Albert and East Tucker and on East Harold Street,
and then the multifamily, larger multifamily mixed use down at the end of the block.
Closer up image of our property and surrounding.
And here's the three-dimensional view.
Here's the Save-A-Lot directly across East Tucker.
And here you have Jack Wentz directly across the street.
here's our property right here jack wins again and here you go the whole block takes up the
opposite side and you can see trenton's pretty pretty unusual you have a 90 degree
and you can see Trenton's pretty pretty unusual. You have a 90 degree parking here,
and then 90 degree parking right in front of our property, some curbside parallel parking down the
block. Here's the zoning difference, the larger parcel RM1 and the two smaller RSA5 parcels.
Again, if we were to just develop the RM1 portion between green roof bonuses and other bonuses,
we'd be able to develop in excess of what we're proposing here, which is 26 units,
along with two single families on each of these lots. We wouldn't probably be able to get the
amount of cars. RM1, as you know, does not require accessory off-street parking, but we've been able
with the consolidation and using the two RSA portions of the consolidated lot essentially
as a drive aisle, been able to get, as I said, seven accessory off-street parking spaces there.
um i think the aerials depict the surrounding area we do have additional exterior photos at tab
six interior photos at tab seven you can see it's been used for industrial light commercial use
as you would expect uh what the interior might look like after you know over after 80 years
60 years of that use uh going back to the sanborns um we go back to 1920 uh you can see that there's
always been a structure at 2151 to 61 East Albert since the 20s. 2146 East Tucker went vacant
sometime between 1920 and 1951, and 2149 East Albert went vacant sometime between 1982 and 1985.
We have the zoning archives for the property, which outlined the uses that I
indicated earlier. There's our lot consolidation survey plan, again, showing the three separate
lots consolidated into one and then our i'm going to refer back to the our revised zoning drawings
seeing the only change uh is to the pilot houses and again here's our cars parking underneath the
building the drive that comes in and um utilizes we have an existing curb cut on this side just
real quickly i'm just going to show you i can show you that in photos in a minute and then here's the
elevations of what we're proposing and then the
ground floor parking plan and
plan for the ground floor residential units.
Here's a rendering of what we're looking to propose. This is a view from Trenton
and East Tucker
and here's a view from further down East Tucker
showing the access to the parking underneath
and then the elevations that we've already described floor plans um you have bi-level
units at the ground floor there's five of those uh they range in size from there's only one at
650 the other ones are well over a thousand twelve hundred square feet and then on each of
the floors above it's a similar floor plate with seven units per floor um most of those ranging in
the upper 700s to upper 800 range. Copy of our appeal, the deed for the subject properties that
shows Trenton Albert LLC as the owners. Our tax clearance is included. For some of the properties,
there was an issue syncing up because of the recent transfer of the properties to Trenton
Albert LLC. They hadn't synced up the accounts yet, but there is no tax balance due on the
properties our zoning notice we and we actually did get a clearance for i think 2149 did come
through um but exhibit with our zoning notice the posting of all on all three sides well actually
both the frontage for 2149 the frontage for 2148 and the three sides of 2151 are shown in exhibit