Thank you so much for coming on.
You're welcome. Anyone else out in the virtual
audience?
No other hands, Mr. Chair.
Planning Commission.
Amy Boyd with the Planning Commission.
Sorry, one moment.
The comprehensive plan recommends no change in zoning at this location from the existing single-family RSI-5 and commercial mixed-use CMX-2.
The appellant has not demonstrated that there are unique physical circumstances or conditions of the property that would prevent it from being used in conformance with the zoning code.
The planning commission recommends that the board deny the requested variance for household living unit count and max-occupied area.
Thank you.
So, Mr. Crick, we're going to actually close the case outside of waiting for the amended corrected refusal, and we'll vote that within 30 days from the day we receive it.
If I may, well, if the record is still open, I believe that if there is a consolidation that we would assume that this property receives just the CMX designation, because that's the majority of the square footage of the land once consolidation is complete.
But I recognize Ms. Emerson's assessment of the standard of review at this time.
Yes, and once there's a third of the property, we have to still go with that.
Understood.
it. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, too. Bye-bye.
Number 18, MI-2024-006176, 2144 South 57th Street, Attorney Steve Masters.
Mr. Masters is here.
Please state your name and spell it for the court reporter, Mr. Masters.
Hit the button.
Sorry about that.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the board.
Steve Masters, S-T-E-V-E, M-A-S-T-E-R-S, with the law firm of JustLaws.
can you please uh do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
i do um our board member mrs graham has a few questions for you good afternoon have you emailed
all the required documents and exhibits needed to proceed with this case five days prior to this
hearing um yes we have and then we've um updated our exhibit binder this morning with the rco notice
of the RCO letter of support.
Okay, and do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal
and stipulate to its accuracy?
Thank you.
So, Mr. Masters, as we were pulling up your presentation,
for use of a two-family household living within an existing structure,
the refusal was for two-family household living
is prohibited in an RSA 5 zone and district.
Do we have a letter of support from the Southwest Philadelphia
the consortium of RCOs, and we can move forward.
Did you say I may proceed?
Oh, thank you.
Hello, members of the board.
We are here.
My client is Michael Monegatwali.
He operates an LLC called Ocean Blue Holdings.
He is the owner of 2144 South 57th Street.
I think I'll just start by saying that Mr. Michael obtained a building permit to have an addition and to put a roof deck on the structure as a single family.
That was back in 2021.
It's permit RP 2021-015542.
So as we go through the photos, you'll see that there is some new construction there.
The application is to provide for duplex.
The application is to provide for duplex as opposed to a single family.
And the basic story that we shared with the community, this property is one of the only properties on the block that was renovated.
It's a block of primarily older construction, quite a bit older.
And a lot of the other houses on the block are in various states of disrepair.
Our client has created, well, he hasn't finished the construction.
It's all basically down to the studs, as we'll see.
But he has been putting in a lot of tender, loving care to this structure.
um the cost though of of of renting it if it was to be a single family with with um the three
stories and everything would be would be beyond what the normal market rate is for this neighborhood
so he is proposing two units which would allow it to be more naturally occurring affordable housing
And that was very popular. I'm going to go to the petitions. So he was able to circulate petitions. He had actually an injury recently, but he nonetheless was able to go out door to door and get these signatures.
We have 25 petitions of support of all neighbors within the 250 feet.
And then we have here the RCO notice of support in which the RCO reported that of the RCO members,
There were two in support of the participants at the RCO meeting.
All five of the neighbors were in support.
They have four suggested provisos that we are in agreement with, but we believe that
your board of counsel may not consider them to be appropriate provisos for the permit.
A certificate of occupancy is, of course, required to operate a duplex.
We are fine with putting signage on the building so the neighbors know who the responsible party is, exterior lighting to illuminate the right-of-way, and to enrolling in the safe cam program with the police department.
All of those are what we were happy to agree to at the RCO meeting.
Let's look at some of the photos.
Oh, actually, first, these are the plans.
And so this is our site plan.
Let's go up here.
This is our side elevation, and you'll see the pilot house.
This is the front elevation.
The rear elevation is down here, and the other side elevation.
In terms of floor plans, there's no dwelling use at all in the basement.
For the first floor, we have the living and dining room area, a bathroom, then a bedroom of 150 square feet.
that is one of two bedrooms for the for the first floor apartment with these with a dark black
border everything on one side of the border is one unit so this going up the stairs to the second
floor there's a rear bedroom that is connected to the dwelling unit on the first floor and then on
the second floor in order to arrive to the second floor for that apartment you go up the stairs
from the from the front door the porch and you get into the kitchen dining area on the second
floor and then you'll find the two bedrooms one's 150 square feet the other is 130 square feet
those are on the third floor and then there is a roof deck with a pilot house that is
already been approved and constructed so let's look at the photos now as I said
everything is down to the studs this is the second floor can you zoom out so
that we can see the whole photo at once sure thank you
Thank you.
Is that good?
All right.
Second floor.
We have the third floor.
This is the second floor, and there's the partition between the rear bedroom that belongs to the first floor and the other space.
Here's the third floor steps that lead up to the pilot house.
the third floor, the first floor.
Here's a view of the front of the building.
Our building is here
with the newly constructed third floor up there.
This is a view from the side.
This is an alleyway and you can see the pilot house
just peeking up from on top of the third story and here we have the rear view this is the backyard
and you can see the the new construction that brought out both it extended the second floor
and crater to the third floor we posted the zoning notices for the hearing let's make it bigger as
you can see for today's date this is our notices on the door of the house
and we also have a no trespassing notice there was concerns raised by the community that because
this has been a vacant um you know use for for a number of years there are transients who
who basically apparently use the the porch area to hang out and and do their thing and so
that will obviously stop when someone is living there but that's why they want lights and other
things that are going to deter those folks from being able to do that. And we have a tax
tax revenue clearance that is good for this period of time. We have the
the deed showing ocean blue holdings is the owner of the property we also have
our application for appeal and our project information form
and then the rco notice letter that was sent by the mail to all of these addresses supplied by
the planning commission and our proof of mailing went to 137 locations and at this point I will
call my client Michael it's challenging last name but Moon Yantawali please raise your hand and be
sworn in.
Mr. Manchawali?
We also have Stanley Mina, I believe, who was standing by also, although it's been quite a bit of time since the 930 list was called. He's the, he wrote the plans for the, for the project.
They're coming back in now as a panelist, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Hand.
Can you please state your name and spell it for the court report, please?
Michael, it looks like you are still muted.
yes can you hear me now yes yes spell it for the court reporter
um my communion twally m-i-c-h-a-e-l last name is m-u-n-y-a-n-t-w-l-i
you swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
Yes, I do.
Please proceed, counsel.
Michael, were you present and heard my testimony today?
Yes, I did.
Do you believe that it was true and accurate, and do you accept it as your own?
Yes, it was.
Wonderful.
Is there anything else that you wanted to add to the presentation to tell the board about this project?
Yeah, I basically wanted to state that I received actually quite a good response from the neighbors when I walked around.
Unfortunately, I sprained my ankle and I actually have a doctor's appointment in a few minutes, but I've been walking with Christ.
I actually have a doctor's appointment in a few minutes, but I've been working with crutches, you know, for the last two weeks.
But all the neighbors, I think I received almost 99% of the support of the neighbors when I told them that I was planning on doing affordable housing and converting it instead of a five bedroom, making it a duplex.
So they were very supportive of the plans.
Thank you.
um any it's up to you mr chair for questions any questions from the board yes i have a few one can
you go back to the floor plans sure and what's the plan for the basement as it relates to that first
unit uh the basement is only going to be just for uh uh for the heater and uh and you just it's just
just to be a utility room it's not going to be used by any of the occupants and then is it going
to only be accessible to the unit on the first floor or are you as the owner going to retain
some access to the basement for property maintenance yes i'm going to retain access
to the basement so as you can see in the plans i believe my architect has uh there's going to be
steps from the on the front going into the basement and only me the landlord will have
access to it. Okay, got it. And then my second question is, I see that you pulled a building
permit from LNI in January of 2022, something that has now since expired. And so one, I'm
wondering, have you talked to your LNI inspector to be able to complete the work? And what's
your timeline right now to finish work at the site for what you were previously approved yeah so
basically i spoke to the inspector and i explained to him i was trying to uh get change the zoning
and get him turn it into his duplex and he basically came and looked and saw the framing
and says let me know uh what the zoning committee decides and then we can move ahead and uh you know
can continue if they're if they they give me the zoning to do the duplex or if not then we'll just
retain we'll we'll keep it as it as is and then when you purchased the property what was the
interior condition oh it was it was actually terrible i wish i had had pictures before
because i gathered it all out it was literally in a dilapidated state the entire neighborhood
was so excited that i had bought the place and uh i was going to develop it because it was in a
very very very bad state all the joists were literally demolished so i literally had to
it was just the walls that were fine so i literally took my time and did new joists
throughout the entire house so it's all new interior framing so the only thing that's
existing is the exterior walls i would say a good portion of the second and third floor the first
floor was fine the joists were fine but then on the on the second and third floor i had to literally
doing it's all new joists and you said because that was under the previous alteration permit
that was inspected by correct correct um and then what is your plan currently with the new
layout that you're seeking to approve for the hvac well the hvac i usually like putting hvac and
electrical yeah i usually of course they're going to be uh it will be a 400 amp service and maybe
100 amp for each apartment but I usually do uh I'll either do a split system or I'll do
the DAC system and each unit will have its own unit so I would probably put the condenser on the
on the pilot house and the condenser for the first floor will be in the rear yard because there's
there's quite a big there's I think over over 12 feet in the back so I'll put the condenser there
and then the heater will go in the basement but you have no plans so there's no actual
shop drawings or plans uh we i think we do the what my attorney has submitted are those are the
plans yeah but they don't you don't have anything to address the hvc or the electric no we haven't
we haven't done the mep this just those are just the building plans for now
building plans are not a full set you don't have a full set yeah exactly i mean it's for zoning
it's yeah no i understand that but here's already construction happening my concern is that this was
already started to be changed into a two-bedroom unit i mean it's already been framed as a
multi-family and it hasn't been improved as a multi-family and the zoning permit and the
building permit say it was for a single family but some of the work for what we are reviewing
But some of the work for what we are reviewing right now has already been completed.
right now has already been completed so i'm just
So I'm just trying to get all the facts of where it is and what's going on.
Yeah, we had initially just done the building plans.
Then we're going to do the MEP plans.
Then I realized it was going to be, you know, it was going to be too prohibitive or, you
know, it wasn't affordable for the amount of square footage.
It was going to be a bit too big for a five bedroom house in the neighborhood.
so I when I sat down and looked at the numbers I thought it would be a financial hardship
and I that's when I approached my zoning lawyer and said maybe I can try and convert it into a
two-bedroom a multi-family. Understood. Any other questions from the board? Yes. Can you tell me
about this addition? When was it approved and when did you construct this addition on this property?