ZBA Hearing - August 5, 2026

So the lower level basement level of those commercial spaces will have storage and

mechanicals and things like that specifically related to those businesses.

The rest of the building in the front on Frankfurt is slated to be used for

utilities, meters, things like that.

And then in the back of the building on Survivor Street, we have storage and mechanical space.

So this is our ground floor level plan.

On the left of the page is Frankfurt Avenue.

You can see street trees, bike racks there, just for reference.

Again, the orange hatch indicates the commercial spaces.

In the back on the right-hand side is the residential units.

So there's one residential unit per building on facing step 5th Street, and we'll see that in the elevations and renderings a little bit later.

But this kind of gives you an overview of how that first floor is set up with our circulation, commercial space, and residential space.

I think also worth noting on this plan before we jump ahead is the bike storage room and also the trash storage room.

One of the concerns that was voiced at the community meeting was trash being removed on Step 5th Street, and so one of the compromises that was agreed to was that we would keep the trash rooms where they are, but the commercial spaces, the commercial tenants would have separate trash pickup from Frankfurt Avenue, and the rear would just be used for the residential units.

This is our second floor plan. The yellow indicates, the yellow and blue indicate different residential units. So there's actually a couple of shades there. I'll start on the left just for clarity.

So these are larger two bedroom units. I do have a table on the lower right hand side of each of these pages.

If anyone has questions about the square footage, I'm not going to go through each unit, but there is a there is a range.

We've got one bedrooms and two bedrooms. So these two units on Frankfurt Avenue are two bedroom units.

The blue units on the Sub-5th Street side are also two bedroom units.

And then the darker yellow on Sub-Viva Street are one-bedroom units.

So essentially, this is two buildings, and there are three units per floor on each of these levels.

So moving up to the third floor, this is essentially a very similar floor plan.

Where we start to differ here from the second floor is on Sub-Viva Street.

Again, we have that 10-foot setback that we have on Sep Viva Street so that our roofline and our cornice on Sep Viva Street more or less essentially match with the two-story buildings there.

So we were able to do that by creating that 10-foot setback on the third floor level.

The overall scope of that floor level doesn't change.

it's still the two-bedroom units on Frankfort Avenue, the two two-bedroom units on SubViva,

and the two one-bedroom units on SubViva as well. They're all just reduced a little bit in size

on the SubViva Street side. And then this is our fourth floor. This is where the most significant

revision took place. So what we initially had here was a floor plan similar to the third floor

in our January design, this more recent design, which was reached as sort of a compromise,

we introduced a 30-foot setback along Sep Viva Street.

So that added a lot of relief in terms of massing on the fourth floor level.

Again, you'll see when we get to the renderings and elevations that that helped create a lot

of relief at the upper level, but it did cut into the floor plan space quite a bit.

so we've now reduced the unit count. You can see on this level there are only four units instead

of six. So from January up until May when we made those revisions, the overall project unit count

went from 20 total units to 18 total units, and that split up between the two buildings,

going from 10 units to nine per building. This is just a roof level plan. The darker

hatched in wall indicates where the pilot house access would be and then the other two staircases

which are unhatched are sort of inset into the fourth floor level so we think that that's worth

mentioning because instead of having you know six pilot houses at this roof level we only have two

and we think that's a positive just in terms of reducing the overall mass and height of the

project and those two two proposed pilot houses are set back uh very far away from the street so

they'll be almost invisible from from the sidewalk level you would really only see those from from

very far away or from above so we think that's a nice detail to to keep the overall height and

massing down. This is our building section cut through from front to back. So on the left-hand

side is that Frankfurt Avenue facade that we mentioned, and on the right-hand side is the

Survivor Street facade, and the bubbled area indicates where our revisions were made. So again,

at the second floor level you can see we are now just proposing a two-story

massing at Subvivus Street and then on the third floor we're going up to a

three-story massing all the way back to 30 feet so there's essentially a 10-foot

setback at the third floor level and a 30-foot setback at the fourth floor

level that was again reached as sort of a compromise between you know based on

feedback we received from the community about the height being unwelcome or unattractive for the

for the scale of Sep Viva Street. So we feel that we responded well to that and were able to reach

a nice compromise. And then we can go through these briefly. This shows the Frankfurt Avenue

side, primary facade at the top. And then on the bottom, this shows

uh primary facade at the top and then on the bottom this shows the uh survivor street facade

and i think excuse me i think worth noting here um the intention was uh to take these

essentially two buildings and through the use of you know how we laid out the windows and the doors

and that sort of pattern we used, we've, in a sense, tried to recreate a series of two-story

townhouses here, even though it is a multifamily building that we're proposing. We wanted this to

at least aesthetically sort of emulate what little two-story townhouses would look like. So you can

see our four units or segments there. And then to the right, there's the existing two-story building.

And then further to the right is a three-story new construction building, very similar project, which Rachel mentioned earlier on, which was just approved within the last six or seven years.

Similar size, scope, and scale to our project.

This is our view from Frankfurt Avenue.

And I think worth mentioning here.

So on the right, there's that there's that single pilot house that we that I had mentioned a little bit earlier.

That would be the only thing visible there in terms of obstructions above the roof.

We're proposing a single material, solid white brick for the facade.

We think we've come up with a nice, attractive design that fits in on Frankfurt Avenue.

There's a nice, you know, an eclectic mix of different buildings, a lot of new construction in the last 10 years or so along Frankfurt Avenue.

and we think this will be a nice addition. There are some recessed balconies here. If you go to

the next slide, you can see how we plan to illuminate those at night and illuminate the

face of the building. So we think this will be an attractive addition to Frankfurt Avenue.

And then, so this is our view again from Seviva Street, as we discussed. It's two buildings,

but we've we've taken this window and door pattern and tried to emulate what uh what you know two

story buildings two-story row homes would essentially would look like there and we think

we think that blends in fairly well with with that sort of varied uh scale of survivor street

a little bit smaller and narrower than than uh frankfurt avenue and and with lower building

heights there. And I think our last slide here, I can, if you go down one more, if you would,

please. So this is just to give you the quick overview of what we changed in summary,

just to wrap everything up here. So again, from our previous design, we had a total unit count

of 20 and our current design that we're proposing is 18 probably the most significant change

aside from the unit count is the off-street parking so we were originally proposing curb

cuts and these sort of carport garage parking parking areas in our original design and we

received a lot of feedback that was unwelcome on on that block despite the difficulties with

finding parking in this neighborhood. It just what we were hearing was that the curb cuts are

unattractive. And, you know, losing on street parking doesn't really help anybody, even if we

are adding, you know, even if we would be potentially adding parking spaces under that

carport, it would result in a loss of parking to the to the local neighbors who live on set five

street um and so we eliminated all the proposed off street parking for the project and obviously

the view on the right is now the the proposed view there's no no garage doors no openings there

um it's just that that solid uh red brick facade that you see we also changed the color of the brick

uh to sort of blend in a little bit nicer with uh with some of the red brick houses that already

exist because we're really going over on time here so how much longer do you this is the last slide

i i'm just about finished said that before but go ahead okay um and then again just to mention the

uh fourth floor setback uh at our january design was only 10 feet and now on our current design

we're at 30 feet and hopefully you can see in these two images the way that sort of provides

a little bit of relief at the upper levels there the exterior exterior materials were revised and

the windows and doors were revised as i just described and that's that's all i have on that

last slide thank you um hillary wheeler across mr chairman

Mr. Chairman, thank you. Mr. O'Neill, let's talk about Parcel I for a second. Do you agree

with Council's representation that it consists of approximately 2,070 square feet that is

zoned CMX2 and 2,010 feet that is zoned RSA5?

I believe so I'd like to to see that if we could pull up that site plan again just so

I before I agree with what you're saying I would just like to reference the site plan if that's okay

the only thing I would object to is he's not the civil engineer so he didn't

provide the survey just the architect so okay that's the site plan

well if he can't do it he can't do it i mean it's as simple as that

he didn't yeah he didn't come up with those numbers that's from the survey

yeah could you could you just repeat the question maybe short-circuit it do you agree with me that

parcel i the more restrictive zoning designation applies and that would be rsa5

yes okay so is there some physical condition uh affecting parcel i that makes it that prevents

developing that lot as a single family home chairman i'm going to object this is not an

appropriate line of questioning for the architect this is why we're in front of the zoning board

adjustment and hardship is determined by the zoning board of adjustment which is why we're here

the architect created the plans the architect knows what is and is not viable on this site

but you're asking him about the zoning and restrictiveness which is determined by

lni and then the hardship is determined by the zoning board of adjustment

i agree with that part of it so why don't we just move on and if you object you object i'm asking

the architect whether factually there's something about this lot that made it not possible for him

to develop plans for a single-family home. Rachel? No, I hear you, and that's a question

for the zoning board of adjustment. We're here seeking variances, so we have to provide what

the hardship is to the zoning board of adjustment. You can ask the architect why he designed what he

designed, which is probably at the direction of the owner, but the whole case we're putting on

it relates to hardship try to move on mr o'neill why did you design a multi-family

structure on parcel i instead of a single family structure

well for several reasons that's what i was instructed to do by our client but i think

one of the primary reasons that that was considered is there would be significantly

less disruption to Surviva Street if we limited the number of total buildings that were built.

If this were six or seven different houses and apartment buildings, that would potentially be

a much longer construction project, more utility trenches, more sidewalks closed. I think the owner

as a resident of the neighborhood thought that this could be a faster, more streamlined, safer

project why didn't you design single family homes for 2018 sub viva and 2020 sub viva

when object this is asked and answered he just explained why he designed what he designed

mr chairman i'm just asking for the opportunity to establish a record of the factual circumstances

surrounding this plan i he did i believe he answered that one i really did when he answered

list, but I think it covers that. I really do. Was there anything that prevented you

from developing plans for a single family home on parcel I?

Well, I'm not developing them. I mean, I'm designing the buildings based on what our client

hired us to design. Also just going to object because the question is quite broad, Jordan,

and also it's why we're here in front of the zoning part of adjustment. We don't have to show

that the project would be obsolete or that there's no viable project at all. We have to show

hardship and we discussed the CMX2 zoning, the mix of RSA5, which is an existing condition,

and also the fact that the character of the neighborhood has provided multiple

buildings of this sort on this block which is part of my testimony which will get adopted by the

client mr o'neill can you identify any hardship that prevented you from developing

mr o'neill can you identify any hardship that prevented you from developing plans for a single

family home on parcel i again i'm going to object to this the architect is not responsible for

determining hardship that's why we're here in front of the zoning board of adjustment who gets

to make that decision i agree i have no further questions for you thank you um where do you want

to go next, Rachel? Yeah, I just would like to bring on my client. Right. And also just mention

that maybe this provides some insight that the redevelopment on a deep through lot like this one

with masonry buildings on both sides carries real construction challenges. So you have to consider

underpinning coordination, step foundation, modern structural floor assemblies, and stormwater

management infrastructure which is all necessary to build safely in a series of issues specifically

in the fishtown neighborhood related to multiple construction sites with next to single-family

homes or adjacent structures and so part of the design was to take that into consideration instead

of building seven individual properties that would be out of character two of which would be

four-story single-family homes potentially and the rest would be commercial mixed-use buildings

which would not be in character with the neighborhood also mentioned that we had

multiple conversations around construction and have and still express a desire and a

willingness to work with miss dorothy and her team through construction to eliminate

any concerns that she might have okay you're bringing on your yeah is there a yuri tomilchuk

Mr. Tom Yuschak has been allowed to speak.

Hi, everyone.

Good afternoon, sir.

Could you please state your name as Bell for the stenographer?

Yuri Tomalyschak, Y-U-R-I-Y, last name T-O-M-A-L-I-S-H-C-H-A-K.

Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, hold you with nothing but the truth?

Yes.

All right.

Rachel?

Yuri, have you heard my testimony today?

do you believe it to be true and accurate and do you adopt it as your own yes thank you um yeah

let me let me ask you this question how long do you think you need five minutes okay go ahead

mr tomolchek do you contend that denial of a variance will cause unnecessary hardship in this

case again i'm going to object the developer is not is not responsible for determining hardship

That's the responsibility of the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

It's also a broad question, as under the statute, hardship can take place in many different

things, both the existing character block, the peculiar nature of the property, the topography,

and financial considerations.

And we don't have to show that the project would be obsolete without the request and

that we're asking for the minimum variance required to seek relief in this case, which

we've demonstrated as part of this record.

You can't establish a hardship without the underlying facts. That's what I'm asking about,

and I can make it more specific. But you're asking the developer and applicant,

and the Zoning Board of Adjustment is the adjudicating board responsible for determining

hardship. We just present that to them. Which it will do based on the facts elicited

in testimony, which is what I'm trying to do. But I can ask a more specific question.

Mr. Tomilchek, is there a physical condition of this property that prevents developing

parcel i as a single family structure i'm gonna object again to the same question to this developer

we've presented testimony on this i think ms pritzker just argued that you can establish a

hardship in several three different ways really the physical condition of property financial

implications if i'm not permitted to ask anyone about the physical condition of the property or

the financial implications a i don't see how the facts necessary to establish a hardship

could be developed and b i have no opportunity to cross-examine anyone in any meaningful way