came we were about to cleaning and removing all the debris but we couldn't because he say
we had to close the house within two hours so it was impossible so everything was you know we leave
everything as clean as possible at least from the outside so this is the second floor the third floor
you see it's not even finished and this is one of the room of the of the second floor
this is the the second floor back uh back bedroom you see yeah yeah
yeah that's another picture right there okay this is yeah this is the second floor
with the open kitchen here will be a like a little close a closet
and this is the first floor as soon as you get in that will be the first floor where you go
around there and you found the bathroom over there i cannot so let me ask you a few questions
so the property is vacant right no no no no nobody yeah yeah it's back how long has it been
vacant oh it's been vacant since i bought it like maybe like three years i got the house in
night in 2019 all right so so let me ask this what was it used for before it was used for like
like a single family house like the whole house around there and the reason the main reason why
about the house and me and my family was to make it like a three nice little apartment so we can
live there we are three three different family so we can live together by the same time have our own
space both sides of the house are are triplexes yeah both sides and basically or a almost everything
around the around the corner they all went to the same the remainder of the block is multi-family too
sorry the block the block that this is on are a lot of multi-family yes yes yes it is
questions from the board no mr chairman no mr chairman no mr chairman questions or comments
from the virtual audience i see million share planning commission thank you chair bergman
ean hegarty for the philadelphia city planning commission board members the comprehensive plan
recommends a zoning map change on this block of erie avenue from rsa 5 to rm1 multifamily
this proposed use conforms to the recommended zoning district in the comprehensive plan
We therefore recommend that the Zoning Board grant the zoning variance.
Thank you. MI 2022-001059, 1830 West Erie Avenue. I vote yes, Proviso. Trash will be stored in the rear yard.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes, with Proviso.
James Snell, my vote is yes, with Proviso.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes, with Proviso.
Thank you, sir.
So everything is fine?
Everything's fine.
So that's my own grant.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Have a great day, everyone.
Right, right.
Number 16, MI 2022-001-065-131 West Walnut Lane.
Steve Masters is the attorney.
There's no RCO letter from the West Central Germantown neighbors.
members, we do have a letter of opposition. Mr. Masters.
we do have a letter of opposition. Mr. Masters.
Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the board.
Hi. Could you state your name, please, and spell it for the court reporter?
My name is Steve Masters, S-T-E-V-E-M-A-S-T-E-R-S. I'm with the law firm of JustLaws,
and I represent the applicant. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do.
Quick question.
Are there any other attorneys in the audience who are involved in this case?
Chair, we have Mr. Harry Cook.
And I'm not sure if Mr. Bob Lane.
Mr. Masters, do you know if he is an attorney?
Mr. Lane is part of the RCO.
I just need Mr. Cook.
Mr. Cook is coming back in as a panelist.
Thank you.
Mr. Chairman?
Good morning, Mr. Cook.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Good morning.
I just happened to be on assisting Mr. Anastasia earlier,
And I heard before I get sworn in that, Mr. Chair, you would advise there was a letter of opposition.
I had limited representation for near neighbors on Tipalt Street, and we had submitted a letter brief regarding this property.
I just want to make sure that is part of the record.
I am not here to testify or actively represent in this matter.
Thank you. We do have that. We did receive that. We have it.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Masters, could you identify your client and a relationship to
the property? I represent Luke Smith, who is the property owner. Okay. And Mr. Shahid has a few
questions for you. Good morning, Mr. Masters. Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal
and stipulate to its accuracy? Good morning. Yes, I agree. Have you emailed all the exhibits
and documents that were required to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
Yes, we did.
Thank you. Please proceed. Share screen.
Thank you. Share screen.
Good morning, again, Mr. Chair and members of the board.
We're here on a property located at 131 West Walnut Lane.
It's located in a nationally recognized historic district known as the Topalhawken Station Historic District.
It's a very large and historic property that was constructed in the 1850s.
The lot itself measures close to an acre.
It's one of the largest and oldest in the neighborhood.
and it has a very high cost to live in and maintain as a single-family residence.
We are here talking about a proposal to convert the carriage house into a dwelling unit and an
in-law suite and the cost to renovate and preserve this historic carriage house will run
close to $400,000. The main house is over 6,000 square feet in size, and the carriage house
is roughly 2,000 square feet. The property owner, Mr. Smith, is seeking a variance to allow an
in-law suite, as I said, for his mother to age in place near her children and grandchildren
on the first floor of the carriage house. She's not able to climb stairs, and there is going to
be a small one-story addition on the side where there is an existing large opening in the historic
building envelope. There's not going to be any change to the existing historic building envelope.
And then that will be providing that new addition will provide a bit more space for his mother,
as well as provide stairs to access a second floor rental unit, which will be the accessory
dwelling unit created by this variance. There are no dimensional variances in the application,
so the only variances that we're here for relate to the new accessory dwelling unit.
Why does this zoning project make sense? For a bunch of reasons. It's going to maintain
a very low density in the neighborhood because of the extremely large lot size.
It's going to have a lot of adequate off-street parking.
Between the main house and the carriage house, there will now be a total of two dwelling units spread across 8,000.
there will now be a total of two dwelling units spread across 8,200 square feet.
So it's going to be an average, if we include the in-law suite with the additional dwelling unit at the carriage house,
of about 3,000 square feet per unit, which is a very low density.
There's going to be minimal impact on the neighbors, and we're going to see in a moment
uh the a lot of um plans and and and um and depictions of the property um the carriage
house is located in the very rear of the property and it's not close to any other homes it is close
to several other carriage houses and those carriage houses that it's close to have already
been converted into multifamily uh that's why this project is consistent with the pattern of
development in the surrounding properties. All of these properties, as I said, are part of a
historic district. They're all very old, and many of them have been converted into multifamily
use to preserve the historic structures.
The house of this project is also consistent with the historic use of this particular carriage
house. As we'll see in a moment, photos of the carriage house show evidence of a prior small
room and a stove on the second floor which was used by what were called the grooms and drivers
of the carriages that were stored in the first floor of the carriage house. So this is a very
long time historic use that predates the zoning code and we're asking the board to allow us to
restore this historic use to meet the crisis in rental housing and provide housing for the owner's
mother so she can age in place. Finally, this project aligns with the recently enacted historic
preservation goals of the zoning code, which authorize the creation of accessory dwelling
units in historic carriage houses that are located in historically significant districts,
such as this nationally recognized Topohawken Station Transit District.
There is strong community support for this project. The RCO vote went narrowly
against the application, but this was only because of confusion and technical issues that we'll hear
from some witnesses about. There was a brand new voting system that was put into place,
and four near neighbors who supported the project were not able to cast votes, and we will have
testimony concerning that. Had all of the supporters' votes been properly counted, the result
would show that a narrow majority supported the project. There was one primary opponent of the
project, and that was apparently the former client of Mr. Cook and Mr. Anastasio. That's an adjacent
neighbor who we will see lives, their house is quite a bit far away from this carriage house,
but they are adjacent in terms of their yard. Our client attempted to meet and compromise with
this family many times without success. We will show you 31 letters of support. Many of them are
individually written letters of support. They're not identical at all to the others. There was also
a petition in opposition of 21 signatures living in 14 addresses. Notably, two of those opponents
who signed that original petition against the project have changed their mind and have now
submitted letters of support for the project and we're going to show you a map uh where everybody
is located uh so uh at this point i am going to uh call uh mr luke smith um to to raise his hand
and then we he and i will walk you together through the exhibits mr smith you're free to speak hi mr
mr smith could you state your name and spell please for the court reporter yes it's alfred
luke smith um a-l-f-r-e-d-l-u-k-e-s-m-i-t-h right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth
the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do proceed counsel uh mr smith let's get uh one
thing out of the way first um you've heard uh my testimony so far today do you adopt it do you
agree with it and adopt it as your own i do with one minor correction which is that um you had
stated that all of the nearby carriage houses have all already been converted um and actually
there there's one very close to it that hasn't but there are two others that are um they're the
nearest occupied structures and they have both already been converted but with that correction
And yes, I agree and adopt that.
Okay, thank you. Thank you for the correction. All right, so we are just going to go through the exhibits together. This is the notice of refusal. We have two refusals for more than one principal building and multifamily living.
OK, thank you.
Thank you for the correction.
All right, so we are just going to go through the exhibits
together.
The original proposal was for three total units. We have revised plans today, members of the board, that are only calling for an additional one dwelling unit.
And the building, as we know, the carriage house is pre-existing, a non-conforming structure, so it predates the zoning code and predates much of the history of Philadelphia.
you have. Luke, what are we looking at on this diagram? So this is a map that I highlighted
to indicate the addresses corresponding to the 31 letters of support that are enclosed in the
exhibit package. Those are indicated with green highlighting and those that signed a petition
in opposition um are indicated with the uh orange-ish reddish highlighting and the property
that's in the hash marks hatch marks these are that is your property correct correct that's that's
the subject property and then this red um narrow uh zone here that is the the neighbor that uh was
working with Mr. Anastasio and Mr. Cook in the past, correct? No, that is a neighbor that signed
their petition, the one fronting on Topohockin Street. Yes, right where your cursor is right
now, that it's 158 West Topohockin. That is the primary sort of opponent. Okay.
so we have 31 letters of support is that correct correct and you i believe had wanted to highlight
a few of these letters of support uh we have one from uh mr lane who is uh the the head of the
zoning committee for uh the rco is that correct that's correct um i do want to be clear that
you know, this was submitted in his capacity as a neighbor, not in his capacity as chair of the
zoning committee. And the same goes for Mr. Russell Fulton, who is the chair of the WCGN
History and Heritage Committee. And he also submitted a letter in support with, you know,
based on his values of preserving the historic structures.
But again, that was also, you know, not in any official capacity, but just as in his personal capacity.
Okay, so we'll just go briefly through these.
This first letter at page six of the exhibit is from Roberta Moore.
And is she a near neighbor to you?
um she may be most of these are near neighbors that are on the list from the planning commission
i believe she may be just outside of that um at 51 west walnut lane so she's the the next block up
this letter is from william marsh i believe he also he lives in the same address okay as miss moore
and this is a letter from robert lane that we spoke of and he uh
he's on the uniblock of west topahawken street
this letter is from guthrie ramsey at 100 west topahawken and that's just on the through the
through the um it it basically is quite close to your home is that correct well yeah all the
100 block of um west tolpehawken are those houses that front on tolpehawken it's the next block up
so the carriage house as we saw on the map is at the very rear of my property so it's um you know
a similar distance from the uh a couple hundred feet really from the houses that front on tolpehawken
as well as on walnut lane okay this is a letter from stephanie and kyle moore they're at 105 west
Walnut Lane, which is just a few doors down from you? Correct.
This is a letter from Ryan Kafer at 106 West Topalhawken. Yes, and he is actually one of the
signers of the petition in opposition, but, and he is a near neighbor, and as you can see here,
as you can see here he he um you know has changed his position
he, you know, has changed his position.
after hearing you know the details of the plan and not just someone at his door
this is a letter from kimberly clotman
in this letter she's she's located quite close to you and she
is is one of the um the supporters who had difficulty uh casting a vote in support at the
RCO meeting correct one of the four such people this is a letter from Lewis Klotman
300 feet away from your property he I think he's actually he they their address is within 250
okay so he's on the near neighbor list as well and another one that attended the RCO meeting
and would have voted in support but for, you know, confusion around the voting
or technical issues with the new system.
This is a letter from Dennis Medina at 113 West Walnut Lane.