Henry Clinton is the attorney
I'll be back in as a panelist
good afternoon mr chairman mr clinton mr clinton could you state your name please and spell for
the court stenographer sure my name is henry clinton h-e-n-r-y clinton c-l-i-n-t-o-n right
do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do
can you do both your cases together 8 and 13 at the same time i think i can mr berg when i
I have a system where I can do the first one and just do topics for the second.
So let me read in to number two.
So MI 2024-000276-1020-30 West Sedgley.
There is a letter of support from the 12th and Cambria advisory groups.
And Mr. Clinton, could you identify your client and the relationship to this property?
Sure, Mr. Chairman. So the first property is 10,000 to 1018 West Sedgley Avenue, LLC.
And the principal of that LLC is to my right, Mr. Joe Wilson, Williams, W-I-L-I-M-S.
And then the second property is 1020 to 1030 West Sedgley Avenue, LLC.
And Mr. Williams is also the sole member of that LLC.
Okay. Just a few questions from our vice chair.
Good afternoon, County. Do you agree to weigh the reading of the refusal or stipulate to its accuracy?
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that is needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
Except this morning, we got a letter of support from 12th and Cambria on both projects,
and we also have a letter of support from another RCO that just came in within the hour,
and I have included that in my presentation.
You'll make sure that you send a copy to us, Henry.
Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
Please proceed.
Excuse me, Mr. Chair.
We were still waiting for proof of tax compliance.
I just would like to confirm when that was provided to the board.
And that's in my package, too.
We have a clear real estate taxes that were paid March 22nd, and I have proof.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And you'll send this to us, too?
Yes, I'll send that separately by also having it in my package.
Okay, good.
Thank you.
Can I share my screen?
Please.
Mr. Chairman, is that visible?
It is.
All right. So with me is my client, Joe Williams. He's having some technical difficulty. So he came to my office and just thought it'd be easier to do it this way. So, Mr. Chairman, there's two properties, as you mentioned, that they outset before the board today.
They're side-by-side properties, two separate addresses,
but I'm going to present them, as you suggest,
at almost at the same time,
I'll run through 10-100 to 10-18 West Sedgley first,
and then the second project will be abbreviated
because I'm just going to incorporate a lot
from 10-100 to 10-18 West Sedgley in the second property.
The second property is 10-20 to 10-30 West Sedgley.
So this is the table of contents
for property number 1, 100 to 1018 West Sedgley,
including my table of contents,
refusal A1 through A10.
This is the refusal.
And basically what we're asking the board for
is multifamily use and commercial space
and commercial space on the first floor with 100 units above the first floor on a lot that is about 30,000 square feet
on the first floor with 100 units above the first floor.
and historically has been used as a oil storage facility for Atlantic Richfield, otherwise known as ARCO.
We're also asking for 42 parking spaces, which includes two accessible and two auto share vehicles,
as well as four electric vehicles, and then 40 Class A bicycle spaces.
This is the RCO letter of support.
There are some requests that were made.
One is that we have an environmental report done.
My client purchased this property in 2008,
along with the adjacent property at 1020 West Sedley Street.
At that time, it had numerous above and below ground storage tanks,
All of those storage tanks were removed.
We have a phase one and a phase two, and we've also had monitoring of the dirt and the soil
there for the first couple of years.
Mind you, Mr. Chairman, it's about 15 years forward, and the ground has been used simply
for storage of trucks or automobile and truck repairs.
You'll see from the billing that we present, we do not intend to have a basement, so it's
going to be slab on grade.
So there's not going to really be any significant disturbance of the soil.
The community group also asked us, my client, to set aside 20 bedrooms at $200 below the market rate for use of people in the community.
He's standing right next to me or sitting next to me, and Mr. Williams agrees to that.
And I guess, again, they came, the community was concerned about any toxicity on the ground.
And we basically cleared that up.
And certainly when we go to build any toxic materials that have to be hauled away will be hauled away.
So I want to spend a little bit of time on the photos just to give the board an orientation of what's going on here, because it applies to both properties.
So 100 West Sedgley is where the red mark is.
1020 West Sedgley is where my cursor is.
They're literally side by side.
In 2008, Mr. Williams purchased the property where my cursor is now, and he developed that into a charter school, which is still in play and still a well-recognized charter school in the neighborhood with several hundred students attending.
These two parcels, 100 and 1020, were used, as I said, by ARCO, and they were environmentally distressed.
They've since been cleaned up, and Mr. Williams, who worked for 10 years as an attending physician at Temple Hospital just a few blocks away, has retired, and he thinks this is the time for him to develop this parcel.
He sees positive changes going on in the city.
The charter school is thriving.
And this ground is really not usable for industrial or commercial.
It's in a very odd location.
My cursor is on the train tracks.
This is the West Trenton line that runs from 30th Street Station all the way to Trenton.
But it also is the line that carries most of the Amtrak travel back and forth in and out of the city.
So it's a heavily traveled route. And as you can see on both sides of the trains, you really have industrial uses.
Down to the right is a Pico substation. On the other side of the tracks, you can see there's just storage, trucking companies and large buildings.
Across this street from our project, there is a laundromat and there's a commercial building that houses decor.
There's only 12, and I don't mean to diminish it,
there's only 12 residential structures within earshot of the property.
And if you go to left, you can see this is Allegheny Avenue.
Allegheny Avenue comes down, and because the train tracks are here,
Sedgley Street is really just a means to go down the block,
hang a right, and then pick up where Allegheny is.
So if I ran my cursor straight through the train tracks,
you would pick up Allegheny Avenue.
So Sedgley just kind of hugs the train tracks here.
Three blocks to the west is Broad and Allegheny.
We're only a seven-minute walk to the Allegheny stop on the subway.
We're about a 10-minute walk to the north foot off your station where you can take the R6, the R7.
And then if you walked up Germantown Avenue, we're only about 12 minutes from another subway stop on the Broad Street line.
And again, this layout of the geography and as well as the transit routes would apply also to 1020 West Sedgley Street since they're adjoining properties.
Just a closer view to give you an idea of the width of Sedgley Street here.
And this is a photograph that was taken this weekend looking.
And this is a photograph that was taken this weekend looking eastbound on Sedgley.
The two properties, 10-100 and 10-20, are to the right.
You can see this is a wide boulevard here.
There's a bike lane on the right side, and there's also vehicular parking on the right-hand side.
A barrier has to curve around Sedgley Street.
And then you have another parking lane on the left-hand side with a bike path and with parking.
So there's parking on both sides of the street.
Since there's only a few residences, there's maybe four or five cars typically parked on the opposite side of Sedgley.
And then the laundromat here has about 40 or 50 parking spots.
We actually have approached them to see if we can rent some of their spaces.
That has not happened yet, but that's certainly in the works.
Another photograph on Sedgley, and again, these photographs apply to 1020 Sedgley Street.
This is the charter school on the left-hand side.
That's not going to be disturbed or bothered.
And again, the two parcels are where my cursor is to the left.
You can see the homes that I spoke about across the street.
There's about five or six here, and there's four or five as you make the turn.
But there's ample wideness on the block, traveling in either direction with parking in front of the structure.
And that's why I'm pointing this out and kind of belaboring this point, because on 1020 Sedgley Street, when I get to the refusal for that particular property, you can see we have a refusal for parking.
But some of that parking is going to be alleviated by on-street parking.
So I want to go back to the refusal.
So we only have one refusal, Mr. Chairman and members of the board.
This is in an I-2 industrial zone, I-2 medium industrial, and the only refusal we have is that a residential multifamily use is not permitted in this zoning district.
We don't have any issues with parking, height, open space, rear yard.
It's simply one of use.
These are our zoning notices that we've posted throughout both properties.
Again, these postings apply to both properties.
And this is the plan, and we're calling it Phase 1 and Phase 2.
The lighter color building is the subject of property that I'm presenting now,
which is 1,100 to 1,018 West Sedgley.
To the right, the darker building is the Phase 2.
Again, they're two separate properties.
That's why I have to do two separate presentations.
But on the right is 1,020 to 1,030 Sedgley Avenue.
know. What's unique about this facade is we have a drive aisle in between the building. So we don't
have any parking in front of the building. As you drive out Sedgley, you're going to see this,
you know, beautiful structure where it once was an eyesore, and you're not going to see any
parking. It's all going to be in the rear. This is our zoning chart. Again, I just, I'll go over
this briefly. We are conforming in every aspect, lot width, lot area, occupied area, front yard
setback, side yard setback, rear yard setback, building height. And the only thing that we're
non-conforming with is in the second project with the parking. On the first project, we're
conforming with parking and bike storage at the same time. And you can see the whole area is zoned
I-2, medium industrial. This is a site plan to give you a better idea and better feel for the
project. Again, there's one curb cut on Sedgley, so you can see that there's numerous areas in
front of the building for additional parking if it's needed. I'll ask the architect at the end
what he's calculated in terms of the number of parking spaces that are available on Sedgley
Street. The idea is that you would come through the drive aisle, under the building, under phase
one, which is 1,100 West Sedgley, and come in the back and park. So where this dividing line is,
to the right-hand side, there's 42 parking spaces that will be used for 1,100 to 1,1018 West Sedgley.
And on the left side, 1,20, there are 16 parking spaces. They're not all demarcated. I'll show you
these in subsequent photographs. Here's a better layout that's more detailed. That was kind of a
general site plan. So here you can see we have four spaces for electric vehicles, two accessible
spaces for regular vehicles, and also one for a van. And then we have additional parking spaces
to total the 42. Here's the drive aisle between the building. You would enter the building through
the front into the lobby. We have a mail room, trash room, two elevators, and bike storage.
And then we have this wide open commercial space on the first floor. Mr. Williams doesn't
And then we have this wide open commercial space on the first floor. Mr. Williams doesn't know what type of tenants from a commercial vantage point he'd be able to get for these spaces. We've reached out to the community, let them know the availability. We mentioned it during the community meeting. If they have anybody in mind, we certainly are going to be open arms for anybody who would want to come in and rent the space.
The other thing is part of this commercial space on the right-hand side, it's about 7,500 square feet of commercial space at 1,100 West Sedgley and a little bit less on 1,020 West Sedgley.
But the idea is part of the commercial space, it's going to be flex space.
So we're going to have an officer, a manager's office in the commercial space along with the superintendent.
And also we've offered to the community for their community meetings.
They could also hold their meetings in one of our commercial spaces.
Since I had this planned up, Mr. Chairman, I'll also talk about 1020 West Sedgley, which is project number two.
Again, there'd be an entrance into the lobby area.
We have a mail room, a bike room, two elevators.
And there are also two fire stair towers on 1020 and also two in in 100 in the event the elevators aren't operating.
The other thing is we do have streets approval for the curb cut, for the drive aisle, and streets insisted on having a loading bay for both projects so that commercial trash can be taken away, people who want to move in and move out, and also for deliveries of larger bags or boxes that won't fit into the mailroom.
So we have loading bays in the rear. We also have a privacy fence around the rear of the property, including landscaping, adequately landscaping to give some buffer between the rear of the building and the train tracks, railroad tracks, which are behind the building.
Mr. Clinton, just a quick question. Is there much industrial activity around there?
Not really, Mr. Chairman.
If I go back to the aerial photograph, this is the charter school here, a laundromat across the street.
This is a big storage facility for some type of a home decor company.
There's a Pico substation here, and there's like an early learning center here.
So there's really no industrial, unless you want to call on the other side of the train tracks.
You know, there's some trailer parking, but there's really no industrial that I was able to see in the area.
Thank you.
So this is the typical floor plan for 1,100 to 1,018.
It's a combination of studios, one bedrooms, and two bedrooms.
And this floor plan repeats itself on floors two through six.
It's a six-story building with a large commercial space on the first floor.
So it's a good mixture that we can really appeal to various types of people.
But again, the bulk of the bedroom, excuse me, the bulk of the apartments are one bedroom.
So I don't know if it's necessary, if the chair wants me to go through the floor plans, but, you know, pretty straightforward.
In one bedroom, you're going to have a bathroom, one bedroom and living area.
How about the second property, same?
Same thing. So this is your typical floor plan for the second property at 1020 to 1030, essentially.