community group meeting with the owners of the gym at 9251 and to testify i will say their concerns
were largely were the residential use which i advised them we were eliminating and then they
were concerned that when we built 9249R, if we were to build it, that we would not utilize
the wall that they, the cinder block wall that they built when they rebuilt their, they
erected, when they rebuilt their property.
And I advise them we wouldn't be.
It'll be a free, two free sanding structures that'll be erected and it'll be sealed where
um that'll be erected and it'll be sealed where they where they come together but we won't be
they, where they come together.
pocketing in or hanging off of the side of their building and they seem to be satisfied they did
not show up at the second community group meeting that we had at the beginning of uh January again
here's the the 14303 for the meeting we had back in October and then the 14303 notice we had um
back in um uh back in the oops right there uh back in january there you go on january 14.
so uh we have one refusal we left which is the parking refusal uh it's essentially impossible
to comply with that um given the sizes of the properties given how the properties are situated
with what's located around them and we believe that um and and we and the surrounding properties
don't have any off-street parking for any of their uses either as far as i know we're the only use
and the only properties that have arrangements um with any of the surrounding properties for
off-site parking and i'm just showing you some other pictures of the strip here's the the library
Here's the mosque that's at the end. There have been reported issues with the mosque on Friday afternoons. People parking there were not related to them, and I believe they're working on an arrangement there. And this is the back of the Northeast Shopping Center that I think some people are parking when they come. And here are the other businesses. That's the car wash. And here's the other businesses on the rest of the Strip.
and there's the gym that's located in excess this property is also presently vacant i believe that
was destroyed in the fire as well and that has not been rebuilt and redeveloped since then
so for those reasons we believe we comply with the criteria for the granting of the variance here
long-standing vacant blighted lots i think would satisfy the herzburg um standards uh for the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and we've made arrangements for the one variance that we have
that I think exceed the arrangements that the other, and I'm not faulting them, and I'm not
critiquing them, but in terms of coming in with a new application for this development, we've done
what we can to address that violation, and it just can't be provided on site regardless. And again,
regardless of the use, it's a net leasable area. So if I put a one-story building here, because
these lots are 1600 square feet deep i'm going to be required to and build the full depth just like
all the other buildings i'm going to be required to have eight or my client not me my client's
going to be required to have eight off-street parking spaces because once you get to 1600
you then are now required it goes up into the second 2000 once you get over 1500 so to rebuild
a building anything here that occupies 100 a lot like the other buildings is going to require the
same number of parking spaces as we have with the three-story building that we're proposing
um i would have my client uh promoted to panelists bring your client on yep okay amira hassan
amir el hassan will be promoted to penalize
hello hi everyone hi sir could you please state your name is spelled for the stenographer
yes amir el hassan that's a-m-e-e-r last name e-l-h-a-s-s-a-n do you swear or affirm to tell
the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do counsel hi amir um i'm sorry i've been
mispronouncing your last name all this time and you've been so polite and not corrected me
um did you hear the statements that i made to the board today i have and are they true and
correct to the best of your knowledge absolutely would you adopt them as your own yes i would
and real quickly what's your uh what's your involvement with lm real estate llc
owner okay thank you and um in terms of just real quickly the conversations you've had with
the property owner behind you regarding a second arrangement for nearby off-site parking for the
required parking spaces can you just um very quickly tell the board a little bit about that
where you stand with that?
Yeah, absolutely. So the owner of that property, the Welsh Road School is also the owner of about 10 or 15, something like that building similar to it. And he has a building manager who represents all of those buildings, including the property in question.
Yeah, absolutely.
So the owner of that property, the Welsh Road School,
We have spoken firsthand with that building manager, like I said, represents the owner, and they agreed verbally to allow us to park there. They know to kind of get the memo signed and sent over. It just didn't happen in time.
um but we do have a verbal agreement with them as well yeah and then and that and I will add um
Mr Chairman members of the board that that uh this property that's located behind us um is approved
already approved for non-accessory parking including the spaces that are located behind
our building uh from the zoning archives okay um and then um I have I think Russ and Oler's on
if you know from harman deutsche and older they did the drawings if you'd like them to adopt my
statements regarding i i think i think we're okay with that i mean i think if anybody has a question
about it we'll bring him on then okay sounds great all right questions from the board yeah i have a
just very simple question sure what is driving the decision to add residential to this trip okay so
So originally, Amir can talk about that, but originally it was the idea that to help generate
revenue, because commercial is very difficult right now, as you know, brick and mortar commercial.
And it was the idea that they would rent more likely for residential to fund actually being
able to build something there. But we heard from the community they didn't want it. I mean, listen,
when they first came to me, I thought the same thing. I thought, well, that's a little odd, but
you know you're in the middle of a shopping center you want to put residential but when you
think about it it could be an opportunity for people that work in the shopping center to live
there so that they can walk to work where they if they can't commute otherwise commute or make
it an easier commute for them um i thought it was a little odd but then we talked about it it did
make some sense and then it made a lot of financial sense for the owners of the property um in order
to get financing because it's very difficult to get financing just for commercial um the uh but
But ultimately, the community and the neighboring property, I think the gym, because weights
clanging and whatnot, were worried they were going to get complaints about their use.
So we eliminated and we're going to try to make it work as all commercial, all non-residential.
So that has been removed and it's no longer on the plans, the revised plans.
I'll reference that it's vacant, that there is not a residential use, and that a use registration
permit is required prior to occupancy.
We'd be fine with the proviso from the board that there not be any residential dwelling units.
So there's so it's three. So it's three stories. And so it's just the upper floor is still it's still going to be three stories.
It's still going to have the elevation that you showed. And there weren't any real sort of contextual images to see kind of what's happening on that strip.
are they all single stories so the building next the building next to us to the left of us is two
um the other ones are all one story and so this is proposed to be all commercial now right is
that what you're saying yes so the upper floors are they sort of look residential they'll be
commercial yeah they'll be yeah they could be offices they can be doctor's offices they can
be an attorney's office they can be an architect's offices um you know they can be anything that's
obviously permitted in ca2 and the idea is corn shell what's that is the idea to have these is
just right now they're just big open spaces yeah they'll be vanilla boxes and then they'd be and
then as tenants come along they'd be fit out like you can see here on the floor plans
we've shown a bathroom on each one but other than that that's designed for them to fit out the space
other questions so the so the so the so the rest of the block are they are they just the ones that
are the one next to you that's two stories are they are there three stories like you don't have
any images that really show us with the rest of the how it fits in the context we just got
these three-story buildings and and there's nothing you're not showing anything else right
and quite frankly i can't even find it on on on uh on the google map i'm trying to find you know
you know why it's it's very difficult because when you it doesn't come up on google maps when
you put in 9247 r you know you got to know what you go got to go down the welsh road find the
northeast shopping center and do it that way you kind of kind of have to zoom out and zoom in but
you can see down here at the end it's a two-story two-story yeah and it's all and it's all one
stories but again the the height here is permitted as a matter of right right right i'm just trying
right i'm just trying to i'm just trying to understand the context right yeah yeah so i mean
to i'm just trying to understand the context like yeah yeah so i mean i mean
everybody's got to the right of you everybody's got these sort of awnings but you don't so right
so how does it fit just in context well not and i don't know is there an image of the left
yeah i'm going to show you now they don't have what's the yeah what's the pat patty wax does
because they just that's how they design theirs but so some of them do here and let me let me go
this way there some of them have different types of awnings
and then the gym has does have an awning there as well i mean and then and then our and then your
site is to the right and our site is to the right of the gym to the right of this gym that's between
paddy wax and between the gym okay i mean if it turns out that it was somebody said i mean we
have an awning it's a more modern awning than these older style awnings um over the the front
of the building um to protect people so this is a different this is a different than what you just
oh i'm sorry i'm sorry that's the original i'm sorry here you go so we don't have so we don't
have sorry sorry we don't have the audience we'd be happy to put the awnings back on i'm sorry it
didn't make it back onto this one no no i'm just i'm not i'm not telling you to do anything i'm
just trying to understand how this fits in the sort of the rest of the streetscape yeah and if
you're sort of if at some point maybe residential will be introduced then this becomes sort of a
you know a main street sort of feel right then what does that look like contextually that's my
so that's i'm just trying to understand your what you're trying to do here yeah i mean listen i mean
i think there's no reason it's clear from the prior zoning permit for a one story that a one
story you know they couldn't make it work and i my clients can't make a one story work either
they're they're they're pressed to try to make a three-story commercial and to try to get once
they're building once they have the foundation it makes sense for them to go to the full height
they didn't squeeze in four stories so they have good floor to ceiling heights it's three stories
within the 38 feet that's permitted they did lower the parapet originally it was the 36 inches that's
permitted um a three feet six inches to 42 inches that's permitted and they dropped it down to one
foot six um to bring it a little bit closer but it just doesn't make sense to build financially
or otherwise to build to everybody's lower height um maybe this is what it should be to make it to
continue to continue to make this a viable property and the other properties around it
and maybe like you said this becomes with this building i think it's very tasteful the way it's
done with the brick facade um it becomes a standard and the rest of the the buildings
maybe in turn eventually get developed including the one that's two up from us that's presently
developed i mean undeveloped vacant i'm sorry i have a question around financial hardship i feel
like you know we've sort of predicated this plan around finances but you're proposing six now empty
stores or empty commercial spaces and i'm just curious as you've done your market research and
you've talked to potential financiers what are the sort of uses that you think you're going to
get in this building I feel like you've mentioned a lot of things that also are not typical on this
strip I'm looking down the strip and it's you know it's a lot of disparate uses that don't
really lend itself towards office I don't know if I had an office that I'd want to be in between a
bar and a gym and there's not much in the design of this building that looks like it's insulating
whatever's going to be in there from sort of the, there's like, there's Mack trucks, you know,
pulling out back and forth behind it. This is going to be a really busy, both from a traffic
standpoint, also very loud area and a very congested area, not great for pedestrians.
So to have this concentration of commercial, I'm just curious how you all think it's going to work.
I'll have my client come on in a second and speak to a little bit about his research. But
But again, I mean, I'll say this.
First of all, I've been out to the property a number of times.
There's not a lot of traffic there.
There's just, there's not, you know, for better or for worse, you're not getting foot traffic because the only sidewalk is along this trip.
So you have to kind of come there, park there intentionally and want to go to one of these businesses.
The tractor trailers are to the rear and there's space, a significant amount of space, including the property.
we're looking to have our accessory parking located between us and the tractor trailers.
So there is a separation, and that's the rear of the property.
It's not the front of the property.
In terms of the gym and in terms of the bar, I think it's fair to say that most of the businesses,
whether it's a doctor's office, an insurance office, attorney's office, an architect's office,
the business professional office um that those their hours of operation are going to be during
the day most of jim's hours are they're more they're busier in the evening when people aren't
When people aren't working, not during the day and the same thing, you know, David, because architects work all night.
working not during the day and the same thing for the bar you know david
But no, listen, listen. And I understand that. But I'm just saying the likelihood is I mean, you have to have something there.
And whether it's three stories or whether it's one story, they would have they had the possibility there could be an architect's office on the ground floor if it was a one story building.
So, I mean, we understand there's a gym to the one side and there'd be soundproofing that would be done on the interior of it.
We understand that there's a bar on the other side.
So more than likely, there's going to be soundproofing on our side of the property that's going to be done to make the properties marketable and not have an issue with the uses to either side of us.
But, and again, I'll have my client come on and talk about the financial side and how there was a reason why it started with the residential.
And also between my client and Russ Noller from HDO, hey, can speak about the cost that, like, once you get out of the ground, the cost is, and I think Mr. Johns knows this as well, you know, adding those upper floors.
David, are you going to bring Nimble into the test right now?
Yeah, I'll bring him on right now.
so amir can you quickly talk about the financial side um and and how you went from you know why
you originally started with residential and why you need a three-story building
which which again is not a refusal again the net leasable area that wasn't actually my question yeah
yeah i'm just saying just for clarity that was not my question my question was what's the plan
for the six commercial spaces in the building i mean they could it could end up being one
commercial space too just so you know not easy it could it could but not easily so that's why i'm
yeah amir yeah hi so i think first to give a little bit of context on who we are because it's
the main uh reason why we had the idea for the residential unit so lm real estate we are a family
office. We manage our own properties, build our own properties and have residential and
commercial units across the city. And we also pay for these projects out of pocket and what's
going to be happening in the property in question. We initially thought the idea to build the
residential on top to make it make sense to generate enough income on the property to make
the construction cost make sense. Because right now we've spoken to a few commercial brokers and
to only have one unit, your maximum is going to get maybe $2,000 or $2,500 a month, which would
never ever cover the cost of construction, not even in a decade or in 15 years. So that's why
we thought to initially do the residential above the first floor commercial unit. Now,
we are oblivious to the fact that at face value, it might not make that much sense. But because we
have a portfolio of properties with a long wait list of tenants who want to work exclusively with
us they want to live in our properties exist in what we what we kind of build we have a number of
people who would have been willing to kind of live in this building and who work in the area we've
also spoken to a number of the community centers in the neighborhood um including a church and
including a mosque of people who want to be walking distance uh to those establishments but once once
once we realized that the community just simply wasn't in favor they didn't see this logic they
didn't see that their property value would be raised as well because you have the option to
put residential there to have and also the carbon market that you saw in the photos is another
commercial unit it's a supermarket they had workers who would have been happy to live up
there as well but it's a non-issue now as we have removed it from the case because um because the
lack of community support now in terms of the question from the the board just asked of how we
intend to fill up the existing building we intend to put kind of an academy or a daycare of sorts
but it's not finalized that would for sure use the first floor and most likely use the second floor
as well and then we've spoken to the bar and the bar is in hopes to maybe rent out one of them as
a kind of a storage facility facility for his unit as well so kind of a lot of put a daycare in