that it was not posted it was not posted properly that was my understanding because that actually
has come up in in reviewing notes for this we weren't clear when it was it was contested that
the property was posted just that it wasn't posted properly but what that meant we weren't clear okay
all right let's move on okay thank you um jordan you s you were here for the last hearing
yes okay and all you saw on the screen you saw uh my client christine christine correct
And you saw on the screen, you saw my client, Christine Christou, correct?
Last hearing.
And you've seen on the screen Richard Kramer.
Well, she's on the screen now again.
And you see Richard Kramer.
You saw him testify today, correct?
Correct.
Have you ever met either of those two people or seen, well, have you ever seen them prior to today?
To my knowledge, no.
Or prior to the last hearing.
Outside of the Zoom hearings, I don't believe I have.
And you've never had direct communication with them, correct?
I don't believe so. Do you know if anybody any anybody affiliated with you or the project has had any communication with them? I can't speak to anyone else. Okay. All right. I have no further questions. Okay. Um, Leonard, do you have anything?
Uh, I have no questions. Well, do you have anything you want to offer?
Uh, so he has no witnesses, but I assume we're going to do closing.
um could we do brief closings sure yeah all well you you you why don't you go first sure all right
um and i'm talking five minutes i won't even need that okay so she's catching me on a good day today
yeah yeah so so so essentially so what you have here is you you have um somebody who
pulled a zoning permit didn't post it as they were required to post it which is what you're
supposed to do to provide proper notice which puts us in this gray area of constructive notice
there was activity at the site after the zoning permit was actually pulled but my there was
activity before that and years of activity before that my clients did not see or notice necessarily
anything different about the activity before the permit was pulled versus the activity of the
after the permit was pulled that would give them any indication that anything different was happening
that a zoning permit had actually been pulled.
My clients made it clear that,
and they testified under oath,
that neither one of them knew about,
they knew about a proposal that something was happening,
there was gonna be additional units there,
but they did not know a zoning permit
had been issued until 1215.
When they learned that the permit had been issued in 1215,
as you heard Richard State, they did research,
they tried to figure out what had happened,
and as soon as they figured out what had happened
and confirmed it and figured out what they needed to do, they filed an appeal within 30 days of that.
My clients have acted diligently and properly throughout this process, leading up to the filing of the appeal.
And since then, on the other hand, you have the developer who has not posted and still has not posted the property.
And nobody can stay for certain that my clients knew that zoning permit had been issued before 1215.
And we don't believe that anybody has established that they should have known that they should have known before 1215. That it would be reasonable for them to have known that a zoning permit was issued for the increased use and or the addition at the property.
First of all, thank you for your time, members of the Board.
I would say that the relevant provisions that the Board must consider is Section 14-30315A.3,
which talks about the appeal period that an appellant of this sort must file within.
And it's, you know, when it's not a proper posting, they have 30 days of constructive notice of the L&I decision. I would also point the board's direction to Strubel v. Phila, Sony Board of Adjustment, which is, where's the citation, 2014 Phila CT Common, Please Lexus 179, where the board considered a similar type of situation.
AND THEY DEFINED CONSTRUCTIVE NOTICE, SUCH AS IN THE FOOTNOTE 4, EXAMPLES OF WHAT MIGHT
PROVIDE ACTUAL NOTICE OF A PERMIT ISSUANCE INCLUDES WHEN A LAND OWNER ENGAGES IN CONSTRUCTION
ACTIVITIES WHICH ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THE PREVIOUSLY PERMITTED USE OF THE PROPERTY
AND ARE VISIBLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
That footnote cites in ray mount development 17 a 3d at 442. In addition to the construction
activities which we outlined in the testimony of Mr. Abrams which took place between October 22nd
and October 31st of 2025 which included a port-a-potty outside being installed 15 workers
at the site, multiple construction vehicles at the site, complaints by nearby neighbors, which
ultimately led to a violation notice, even though there was a permit of public record
in October. We also showed instances in September, October, and November where they should have been
on record everyone else knew and in september and i'm going to outline it in september on
And I'm going to outline it. When we obtained our zoning permit on September 15th, 10 days later, Councilmember Bass introduced legislation on September 25th, changing the zoning or her attempt to change the zoning back to RTA 1.
when we re obtained our zoning
obviously as the board knows the the zoning applies to when the zoning permit application
was submitted we obtained a zoning permit application so no matter what council member
best has tried to do to change the zoning today this is an rm1 property for purposes of the zoning
application my client had multiple conversations with the council member about a zoning permit
that testimony was stated today by jordan abrams which was not refuted my client testified today
talking to the next door neighbor about a zoning permit in october and i believe september and
october of 2025 my client testified that he talked to the the ward leader for this area of philadelphia
about a zoning permit.
The testimony also showed that the appellant relied primarily
and almost exclusively on her husband, who was a former practicing attorney
and who also is in the business of construction and development.
The testimony also showed by them is that he has an Eclipse account.
He's well-versed in this area of development.
that they, you know, in addition to the projects that he's done since, I apologize, I said 2021,
2018 in the city of Philadelphia, they did their own house in 2021 where they had to get a zoning
permit, presumably had to post the property with a zoning permit before anything, and then had to
post all other permits. So knows that as a professional. That was testimony that was
introduced by them what was also introduced by them is that they knew as as early as november
9th because they both testified to that fact that they they both saw a petition and uh the
appellant signed a petition so the the idea that they didn't have constructive notice where everyone
else had actual notice of what was going on i mr orphanetes please don't interrupt me i'm giving
closing argument I'm not I'm not introducing any facts that work that this board hasn't heard you
are you saying everybody please let him finish yeah it's not accurate so the fact that so many
individuals knew of this that was a public record with LNI on Atlas in Legistar where you know there
was legislation passed not once but twice regarding this project September 25th it was passed to try
to change the zoning which doesn't matter for the purposes of here and then on November 20th the
council member tried to give herself standing to appeal the same decision that this appellant
appealed over five weeks later so i do think that there are grounds here that the that the
appellant did not file her appeal on a timely basis and you know if this board decides to hear
the merits of the case, they'll find that that is as meritalist as the actual non-proton petition
that this board has heard. Thank you. Leonard? Hi. Thanks, Leonard Greuter, for the City of
Philadelphia. Again, just to follow up on a couple points that have been made. First of all, again,
just to reiterate, the City has no knowledge or belief respecting whether the appellant or Mr.
creamer uh had any actual notice uh of the posting of the permit um what we're the city's main
interest here is in uh the board not reaching a decision that would leave uh the time for taking
an appeal open-ended uh for just anybody you know being able to uh file an appeal because they
themselves weren't aware of a particular zoning permit the code says pretty clearly and again i
I think we've got an admission or stipulation now that the permit was not properly posted,
which I assume is because it was not, they have admitted that it was not posted on the Sedgwick Street side.
Sedgwick or Sedgwick?
Sedgwick.
The Sedgwick Street side.
And again, as Mr. Nockamson's pointed out, the code says, I mean, the mere failure to post properly does not itself leave the time for taking an appeal open-ended.
what the code says in 14303 sub 15 sub a sub point three any appeal of an lni decision must
be filed with the zoning board within 30 days of the date of lni's decision which in this case would
be the issuance of the permit where the applicant that's this guy fails to post the permit in
fails to post the permit in compliance with 14303-6-F, posting of permits, that's the part where you're supposed to post it in the street side,
compliance with 14303 sub 6 sub f
any person other than the applicant must file an appeal within 30 days of constructive notice of the L&I decision.
So, I would disagree with Mr. Orphanides. Constructive notice isn't a gray area.
It's a pretty well-established legal principle of constructive notice is when you knew or should have known.
So, what we've heard is that there was texts that were sent or a petition, still not clear in my mind which came first, but I think somebody was circulating a petition.
There was text sent about the petition back November 9th, and then there was notice that there was going to be a meeting of the RCO at some point.
After that, I think that wound up taking place in December.
Anyway, the point being is that what we haven't heard from anybody is I went up to the property and looked at the property and did not see any permits.
What we have not heard is anybody from the RCO testifying, yes, the L&I failed to provide the required notice to the RCO because under 14303 sub 6 sub F sub 0.3, all by right permits, L&I is required to notify RCOs of all by right permits.
in fact fun fact you can go online and you can see all by right permits online not you don't have
to go to eclipse you can see those on atlas but or through the city's website i'm not actually
sure it's with atlas so again nobody has testified from the rco saying yeah we didn't know anything
about this permit ellen i never gave us any notice we haven't heard anybody say that um
Um, what we haven't heard is, is again, like you had a, you had a petition that was being circulated. You have text messages, then you have an RCO meeting. You have apparently conversations at some point, uh, with the, the council member.
nobody looked online to see if a permit had been issued. I mean, they're talking about
like having some kind of action, some kind of response to this project, which understandably
they would be very, very concerned about. They're talking with RCOs and nobody said,
oh, let's look and see what the application says. I mean, how did they even know there was a project
uh that would that prompted the uh the petition that was being circulated like did they get like
a secret message was it a crystal ball reading no they somebody saw an application for a zoning
permit or by that point had seen the actual permit being issued so again we will leave it to
the discretion of the board but it seems kind of incredulous that you know all of these meetings
took place all of this discussion was taking place about a project that had a significant
an impact on these people, and nobody checked to see what the permits were that were issued.
They were just saying, well, they're clipping the weeds, they're doing these other things
that's been going on for years. It doesn't really make a lot of sense in the city's opinion.
One other thing I wanted to address, because it's come up, is discussion about the zoning
had been a mistake. I'm not sure where that comes from. The ordinance that changed the
zoning of these properties from RSA 3 to RM1 was only passed in April of 2024. We have had issues
where there have been a zoning change and the mapping change, and there was a mistake in the
actual final map, where literally, no, this was mistakenly zoned from one thing to another. The
map is in error. The ordinance is fine. The map was in error. That's not what happened here. There's
no just no dispute here that the entire this block of ardley street from sedgwick to vernon
was changed to rm1 deliberately there was no mistake it was that was the intention of the
ordinance that was literally one of the three things that that ordinance did that was passed
in april of 2024 now people can change their mind the council member decided to change her mind she's
now passed an ordinance now this is all rta one uh twins basically which is what they are for the
most part so i just want to be clarified that if we were talking about a mapping error that would
be a completely different type of discussion this is not a mapping error just that it may have been
a mistake as in it was a bad idea to redo this the map the the map but there was no mistake so
i just want to be clear about that but with respect to the outcome of the case the city will defer to
Okay. All right. I want to thank all three of you. We're going to schedule a hearing on 1826 at 930 AM. We will address the merits of the original appeal.
address the merits of the original appeal right so just to clarify mr chair the board
is finding that the appeal in this matter was timely filed yes all right thank you
no it's not a final decision of the board there's no there's no vote on the timeliness
It would only be a vote if we were dismissing for timeliness.
So that would be a final decision.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
have a good day
Thank you.