ZBA Hearing - June 24, 2025

and my last question is um is there uh i guess for the impact of the surrounding area is there

potential job numbers that are anticipated from this new regrowth um we have i can't give you

specific numbers but um you know part of the goal for everyone on campus is to have access to income

when you know when they're getting ready to exit into permanent housing um as part of that we are

leveraging resources from philadelphia works um and other you know providers of workforce development

to come on site um we are also working with our community advisory council around you know what

local businesses might have hiring needs and then with the different city departments whether that's

through the taking care of business program or um the same day work and pay program to um help folks

you know get into the community um and then the last thing i'll say is you know we are right now

we have an open RFP for food services, where we are intentionally looking to bring in a food

service vendor that not only will provide food, but also job training and connections to employers

in the surrounding community. Thank you. I have a number of questions. This is

almost doubling the number of people you can accommodate on the site. What data did you use

to support this need case?

I'm so glad you asked that

I'm so glad you asked that because I realized I wasn't as explicit as possible in my previous

because I realized I wasn't as explicit as possible.

testimony.

So when I mentioned the continuum of people going into inpatient treatment, what tends

to happen is there's 1,700 beds of inpatient treatment and only up until we opened Riverview,

only 500 beds of recovery house.

So what that means is for anyone who's experiencing homelessness at the point of entry into recovery or doesn't have a safe place to go home to that's conducive to their recovery, like they might be going back to a family that still has use in the household, et cetera, those folks would basically end up back on the street or in a non-safe place, which will lead to recidivism back into substance use disorder.

We have expanded the recovery house capacity by 66% with our existing footprint. That's not nearly enough to meet the needs of the population. We also, you know, are working collaboratively with the Office of Homeless Services and the Department of Behavioral Health to identify the needs for beds, you know, and different types of beds in this space of recovery-based housing to properly meet the demand.

And then what's the average tenure that you're expecting of the patients that would be in

the recovery housing?

Up to a year.

Up to a year.

And again, it's all very case by case.

The providers that we're working with have a lot of experience in this space around gauging

when someone might be ready to exit.

But again, you know, we want people to really take advantage of the time to heal and have

access to all of the resources on site so that, you know, it doesn't lead to any kind of relapse

when they leave. And then I guess, having worked with homeless populations before, oftentimes with

rapid rehousing, a year tends to not be enough time for people to get situated. What's the plan

for individuals that might need more than a year? And how does that affect sort of the

beds on site? Well, the year is a guideline and you're absolutely right. And a lot of rapid

rehousing vouchers don't come with the kinds of services that we're providing, right? So we've got

every social determinant of health covered on campus, but with the lens of it's, you know,

we want to help people, you know, gain the skills that they need and the resources that they need

so they can move on. The new building actually addresses that same question. Like there will be

people who probably will need to stay there longer and having the ability to have that next phase

of more private spaces, even, you know, essentially studio units on the campus will allow for maybe

folks who need a longer stay to be able to still be part of the supported environment that we're

creating. And then I want to shift a little bit to parking. So there's a lot of people that will

be on this site. And I guess currently the land that the new building will be on, what is it

currently being used for it's vacant vacant okay yes and and i will say you know with the population

we have now um the majority of our residents do not have vehicles and are not but it's really

staff and and other folks but other people i was just i mean it seems like for the number of staff

you would need to operate a facility of this size that while you've met parking minimums that the

parking seems small for the size of the site i mean looking at aerials with the prison next door

it seems like there's like way less maybe almost a third is less parking on this site than some of

the surrounding uses um and so just wanting to better understand how are most patients

getting to the site um and visitors and are visitors going to have a separate parking lot

i'll defer on the the parking to the architects and and and to mary but what i will say is that

we through our recovery house providers are providing you know transportation to and from

you know hubs of public transportation and to appointments in the community um

you know we we're meeting the needs of the residents through you know transportation

resources um but you know as far as the the spaces i'll turn that to sure can i steven do you mind

coming back up discuss parking just state your name again please stephen bartlett please proceed

counsel um stephen can you clarify the parking on the site i think this slide probably depicts it

fast yeah we we located two parking lots associated with this site and there and there are other

parking areas on the other portion of portions of the site that will serve those areas as well

and we locate we created two primary parking lot one is one is to the top of this image that is

One is to the top of this image that is towards a service building that the city uses on the backside of the site.

towards a service building that the city

you

That is about 20 spaces that would largely be staff parking.

And then we have on the right hand side, we have two parking areas and also a bus drop off or a van drop off area for residents there.

There's about 30 spaces over in that area.

That would be for staff, but also for visitors, because there will be a new entry directly into the new building.

That's the parking that's been provided.

No, that I just said, I was just more so wondering, do we think that's sufficient to the need?

How many staff on site at one time?

So, Isabel, could you answer that about how many staff members of staff would be on site?

Why don't you come up?

So, keeping in mind that we have multiple uses, I can't really give you an exact number,

especially as we keep adding different uses, but it is a 24-7 campus.

The general ratio between resident to staff member is 1 to 11 at this time, but that does not include the security staff or the facilities maintenance staff and groundskeeping.

um as far as programming during the sort of the the day um we will have additional additional

folks coming on campus um so i can't really give you a perfect number but again um you know with

the resident population um where we're trying to you know provide classroom training and things

like that i would say during the the day hours we might have an influx of you know maybe 20 more

staff for for some of that programming so it sounds like you could have anywhere from 60 to

80 staff people on on site at any given time not including visitors or vendors we could and we're

talking about so when we're talking about the site we're talking about just the riverview wellness

village but actually the address there's a couple of addresses for the site but 7999 covers the

correctional facility as well and when you look at the larger site you can kind of see it faded here

there's there's tons of parking there's like five seat tons yeah about 30 parking spaces which is

why i brought it up so there's parking and and i can i can provide more materials that illustrate

this but there's something like 400 parking spaces between the entire prison site and it's

all connected so you could get the prison site is not separated by fence because it did look like

there is a there is a fence but there's still there's still the ability to to have parking if

if we needed to um and we're also going to be providing uh and i think isabel talked about this

there's that we're providing people with the ability to use uh city transportation and

encouraging that um with stepta as well but i mean we're upstate road we've had the same issue

with multiple housing complexes that were proposed at this in this vicinity and near this prison is

that there's not a lot of septa transportation up there it's created issues in the past in fact

the mayor herself stopped a housing project that was going up there for this like one of these

reasons so I think my question is this is a big campus it's a big site I don't know if I was

coming to visit a family member that was in a recovery center I would want to walk what's

equivalent to probably a quarter of a mile from the prison and park my car at the prison and walk

over um and i think it also seems to kind of go against this idea of wellness because i think

when i think of a prison i think of a recovery center i think of two very different types of

environments and even visually they feel from the plan like two visually different environments so

um i think my my question around parking on the site and near the use that we're talking about

um it would be nice to better understand what the actual need is instead of just

meeting minimums absolutely and i also have pedro pinto here um he's from the department of

he's the project manager from uh capital programs office and he can talk more about the parking

at the site could you state your name please and spell for the start thank you uh pinto p-i-n-t-o

do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do please

proceed counsel. Pedro, can you please articulate for the board the additional parking options that

are available at the site? Sure. So, if you see at the top right of the picture,

if you see at the top right of the picture,

if you see at the top right of the picture, there's about 30 or 40 parking spaces around that.

there's about 30 or 40 parking spaces

around that maintenance building.

There's spaces right in front of the meeting house.

There's about 25 there.

There are spaces between above College B,

which is somewhere around 18, I think.

And then there's spaces to the left of College B,

which is about 30.

And of course, the 50 or 60 that we've testified.

So I think we're about 160 would be my guess,

total parking spaces.

And of course, you know,

Part of the reason we didn't want to just continue to increase parking is because we wanted to take advantage of what this central lawn and this exterior space also provides as part of the healing.

Other questions from the board?

Yes.

Thanks, Pedro.

Okay. I guess I'm getting into the weeds a little bit, but I'm having trouble with the idea of the expansion of non-conforming use.

Okay. First, I'm not sure how the uses that you're talking about, the single room residence, the personal care home and hospital are non-conforming in an area that is zoned industrial in the first place.

so i'm not sure how we got to this being these being non-conforming uses

um but now you're talking about expanding so yeah yeah i'm sorry i'll let you finish i'm sorry

expansion the expansion piece goes into um expansion within the same facility so

as a zoning concept and this is all i'm going into um when you talk about expansion of a

non-conforming use it can't be a new or different use um it can't be an excessive expansion

and it can't be an expansion that's against the public interest right and if you're talking about

the 10 percent the 10 is not about use 10 is about um uh 10 within say the same facility and

here you're talking about an expansion into an entirely different building so i'm i i understand

what you're asking for i'm not sure if that's that that this is something where you can apply

the whole concept of expansion of the non-conforming use,

and it's really something that needs to be approved by variants.

So we are seeking variants today.

Yes, we are seeking a variance today.

So the basis for the variants that we're seeking

is the expansion of the three non-conforming uses

that we spoke about,

and then is the new use, the multifamily use.

So you're right, the underlying zoning is I-3,

but these uses existed prior to us having any zoning code

in the city of Philadelphia.

So that's what we're talking about

when we're talking about personal care home.

We're talking about single use.

Am I answering your question?

It's single room residence.

Single room residence, personal care home, hospital.

and hospital. Yes. So those uses existed since the early 1900s at that site. They were not

continually used that way, correct? It was continually used that way in one iteration

or another, all three of those uses. Yes. Even, you said that, when did this,

when did you start using it this way?

part of this property that you're using now when did you start doing that it started in the 1900s

and we started using the use that you are using now when did that start

the so the riverview wellness village is that your question when did that start

that started in january and prior to that was this property occupied and used in the ways

that we're talking about here.

Yes, it was occupied and it was used.

It was occupied by the Office of Homeless Services.

They were using and operating the property,

and that covers the single-room residence.

It was occupied by...

What time period?

For what time period?

I'm not sure.

That was before the Parker administration.

that was

I mean I'm sure

I'm not sure about that. I don't think that anyone that was running it during that time period still works for the city. So I couldn't tell you specifically how long we were using it for that. But we were also using it as, at one point, it was used as a home for the elderly and infirm, and that's the personal care home piece. And it was also being used, it had hospital uses in addition to that because of the level of care that was required.

I'm not sure about that

I don't think that anyone that was

running it during that time period

So when we submitted our application to L&I and they reviewed the application, that's what they came back with, that we were expanding these uses, and that would require the variance with the new building.

Yes, because you're expanding them into a totally different building.

Well, we're just expanding them beyond the 10%.

Yeah.

that 10% applies within a building.

But you're talking about expanding a nonconforming use

into a totally different building.

Well, zoning doesn't just cover specific buildings.

It covers the parcel itself.

So that's what we're talking about.

We're talking about expanding the uses in the parcel itself.

Yeah.

you put what you're doing you can't you can't do it that way either um but what you're doing is

you are basically doing a new and different use in a different building

we are also doing that yes we are also doing that with the multi-family as well which is why we need

a variance for that the multi-family to need it for these other two because that building okay

is a different building and the use that you can have in that building is has to be approved as

well right so i think we are saying the same thing we are here seeking a variance today i think we