Where in front of you to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Please proceed.
Did you have an opportunity to hear my presentation?
Yes, I did.
And do you adopt my description as true, correct, in your own testimony?
Thank you very much.
Mr. Chair, I'll turn it back over to the board for any questions.
Thank you.
Any questions from the board?
Anyone else wish to testify in this case, please raise your hand.
chair we have sloan folks from the council person's office as long as you can meet yourself
morning chairman de chico zba board my name is fire officer director mr folks yes sir my name
I'm Sloan Fuchs, S-L-O-A-N-E Fuchs, F-S-A-F-I-R-O-L-K-S, Office of Councilwoman Maria Quinonez-Sanchez, Room 508 City Hall.
We're confirmed to tell the truth, all truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do, sir.
Please proceed.
The applicants having met with the coordinating RCO and receiving a letter of non-opposition,
the Councilwoman would also like to put on record that she has non-opposition for this variance request.
Thank you.
thank you planning commission
good morning david effecto city planning commission mr chairman and members of the board
this property is indicated for commercial and residential mixed use in the city's comprehensive
plan this is a mixed use affordable housing development that will add density to the north
5th street commercial corridor accordingly we are not opposed to granting this variance
Thank you. MI-2020-001227, 2739 North 5th Street. My vote is yes.
fifth street my vote is yes my vote is yes my vote is yes thank you very much good luck thank you
My vote is yes.
My vote is yes.
okay medium item mi 2020-001-219-2811 south hutchinson street
attorney steve
Good morning, members of the board.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
And do you agree to waive the reading of his refusal and stipulate to attack her scene?
Also, have you emailed an exhibit packet with the required documents, proof of ownership, proof of tax compliance, copy of the refusal or referral, photos and plans five days in advance of this hearing?
Yes, to all of them.
Okay. Also, have you met with the RCO and have a letter?
Thank you. Can you please identify yourself for the record?
Steve Bertil, B-E-R-T-I-L, of Claire Harrison Harvey, Brandsburg, 1835 Market Street, 14th floor, Philadelphia PA 19103.
I'm going to share my screen here.
Okay, great. Good morning again, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. As I said, my name
is Steve Bertil. With me, I have Mr. Plato Marwanekos, our architect, and Mr. Michael
Petrogyanis of the ownership group. We're here today to present our application for 2811
South Hutchinson Street. We're requesting a variance on this property for requesting relief
to allow for the relocation of lot lines to create eight new lots from one existing lot
and the subsequent erection of eight attached buildings for use as single-family household
living. With each single-family household structure, we're proposing a roof deck above
the third story with a roof deck access structure and accessory interior private parking garage
for once car access from both Hutchinson Street and 9th Street. So just to give you a sense
of what we're talking about, here's my submitted exhibit package that includes all the prerequisites.
I'm going to jump ahead to just photographs or actually to the zoning area of the property.
the property is zoned as rsa 5 um it's this entire section here it's it's the main front
of zone property is on south hutchinson street although the entire parcel stretches from
hutchinson to south ninth street um it sits on between johnson to the north and bigler street
to the south mr bertill was this a former catering facility yes it was i was going to
It was a catering facility slash banquet hall, sort of all-encompassing for that sort of business.
The property itself has since been demolished under a previous zoning and building demolition permit.
This is the current status. It's currently used as a vacant lot.
As the chairman stated, it was previously utilized as a catering slash banquet hall until demolition last year.
I believe the permit is for December of last year.
So as I said, the property is currently vacant, and its lot size is currently about 8,568 square feet.
And as I said before, it stretches from Hutchinson, which is the front we're looking at now.
And the frontage on the other side of the lot is South 9th Street.
Now, so this is a photo of 9th Street here.
This is when the hall was existing.
This is just to give you a sense of what 9th Street looks like.
In terms of the proposed development,
Let me zoom out a little bit so you can see that.
As I stated, we're proposing a subdivision of the parcels into eight new lots ranging
ranging in size from about 1,075 square feet to about 12, a little over 1,200 square feet,
including rear yards and an ingress-egress alley for emergency egress purposes.
As you can see, we are proposing four of the single-family homes fronting on Hutchinson
Street and then the remainder of for fronting on South 9th Street we get a
sense of the floor plan we're talking about or actually let me go here first
in a sense of the rendering we're talking about a three-story buildings
with a roof deck and a pilot access here as I stated prior these all of these
of single-family homes will be three bedrooms two and a half baths here's a sense of the floor plan
as you can see two bedrooms on the third floor a bedroom on the first floor
a accessory garage here for one single car parking as you can see in the rendering we're proposing
a front-facing garage for the accessory parking, and we'll get into why we believe that is
necessary when we discuss the refusals that was provided by the examiner.
We did have a RCO meeting that took place on September 23rd.
In that meeting, we received, so in that meeting, we received no opposition to the project.
We met the notification requirements, I believe we sent notices to over 180 homes in the area.
In addition to that meeting with the RCO, for the official meeting, we've had a subsequent meeting with the near adjacent neighbors to ensure that there was clear lines of communication during the construction phase.
If the project is approved at this level, when we move forward with the building permit, we want to make sure that we're good neighbors.
So, as such, we received no opposition from the RCO, and here's their letter of support.
Or non-opposition, I should say.
Oh, I'm sorry, support, letter of support.
Now, in regards to the refusal, we received two main refusals.
um the first was for the minimum lot area required under a rsa 5 zoning district minimum lot area
under the code is 1440 square feet are the proposed ranges of the lots that we would create on this
um on this big large parcel range from 1075 square feet to a little over 1200 square feet
I believe it's 12099. The plan, as I showed before, includes a ingress-egress alley on a rear of the
lots. There isn't, you know, that alley itself takes away from the square footage. But more
importantly, with the exception of about two to four homes in the area, every residential home
this block and on the surrounding areas, surrounding blocks, and the cluster of
homes are all under a thousand square feet. As you can see from the zoning
area here, neighborhood contents of the residential single-family homes are all
fairly small. So having lots much larger than what we're proposing here is really
out of character for this neighborhood. As I said, most of the lots, with a few
exception, are under a thousand square feet. They range from 920 to about 999.
There's a few that's a little over until 1,005 square feet. So we do believe that
the proposed square footage of our lots fits within the character of the
of the neighborhood and it also is needed for what we're about to discuss in terms of the next
neighborhood and it also is needed for
refusal so in addition to the lot area the next refusal that we received was for the accessory
parking under the RSA 5 zoning designation accessory parking is prohibited unless it can
be accessed from a rear shared driveway or alley or some sort of rear access.
As I showed you earlier, there's no space really in this proposed project for a
drivable rear alley and would substantially reduce the lot sizes as
such as currently a walk accessible alley here that's not accessible via
vehicle and it's the same situation on the other side of the parcel as such
there's no way to ingress and egress via vehicle on this lot so even if we
were able to put an alley that's drivable between the homes, there would
be no way to access them through the street. More importantly though is the
context of both Hutchinson Street and Knife Street. Firstly, there's already a
large curb cut due to the prior use of a banquet hall that had sort of a
driveway a driveway access in addition to that as you can see from these
photographs there's currently the property sits across the street from
commercial garages where there's so there's curb cuts running all the way
down through down Hutchinson and therefore there's no parking here anyway
and therefore it doesn't having those additional curb cuts to have front
facing garages does not change or substantially alter the context and
character of the street this is Hutchison here if you look on 9th Street
that's one-sided parking which is here which means there is no parking on the
side of the street where the parcel is placed and therefore we would not be
removing or cutting into any existing parking on that side of the street
additionally in terms of the context when it comes to front-facing garages
this board has already deemed front-facing garages as appropriate on
the street in the past as you can see here there's front-facing garages
immediately adjacent to the parcel question on the on our side of the street
for for newly built residential homes and that is also the same case on 9th
Street this is on 9th Street or the two more recently built residential homes
immediately adjacent to our lot this is right here was the banquet hall when it
was before it was demolished in addition to this which is as important
if not more important this is what the neighbors have expressed to us that they
want and support. Neighbors have let us know that it's already extreme pressure
when parking in that area as it is, and therefore RCO leadership and the near
neighbors have told us that because parking is essentially a nightmare in
that area, that they're supporting this project in part because of the
inclusion of the front-facing garages. As such, because of the context of the
Street because of the existing curb cuts on Hutchinson and because there's
already front-facing garages in existence on both 9th and Hutchinson
Street we believe that this is a one of those rare occasions where it's
actually appropriate to have front-loading garages as part of the
single-family residential use as opposed to what's typically required in terms of
rare access. So because of those reasons, we believe that the request of variances
are de minimis in nature, not only appropriate to the neighborhood, but would
would actually enhance the current use as it's currently a vacant lot,
eyesore, as most vacant lots usually are. We don't believe it will create any
additional congestion of public streets due to our inclusion of the off-street
parking and we do not anticipate any uh any negative impact on the supply of lighter air
negative impact on the supply of lighter air on neighboring properties or the welfare of the neighborhood as a whole. And so for all these reasons, we're requesting variance approval when we believe it's appropriate.
on neighboring properties or the welfare of the neighborhood as
I have with me, as I said earlier, Mr. Michael Petrogiannis. Michael, if you could raise your hand so Ms. Sunkit could recognize you.
and who are you looking for mr bertell uh mr michael petrogiannis and if you can't find him
um he may be under the architect's login which is mr plato uh yes plato is um available to unmute
okay mr plato please identify yourself for the record spell your full name
i'm sorry i was trying to unmute i apologize i played a maranakis jr 107 south 2nd street
philadelphia pa 19106 your last name please m-a-r-i-n-a-k-o-s we're in a firm to tell
the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes thank you uh mr chairman uh plato have
you heard and have you heard my testimony this morning as in as in regards to the design of this
proposed application and project yes i have uh do you confirm the truth from my testimony and
adopted as your own? Yes, I do. And is Michael Oren logged in with you? He's not presently
physically with me, but I can't tell if he's logged in or not, so I don't know. I think we
can forego that, Mr. Bertil. Okay, thank you very much. And Plato, is there anything outside of my
testimony that you feel that needs to be added? The only thing I saw was on the site plan that
The alley, we might have to add another three-foot alley along 9th Street because there's – I don't know if you go back to the – I know you guys are busy.
I didn't want to take too much time, but –
I'm scrolling back now.
You see, there's an existing alley that's to the south of the properties that the existing houses have access to.
and according to rogerio and plant um i don't know if we have access to that alley that's along the
south end of the property there's an alley that goes to hutchinson and there's an alley that goes
to ninth street and then there's an alley that heads south because of fire egress and public
safety we have to have an egress through all these properties so so the only change might be
that we might have to add another alley that's going towards that's three feet in addition to
the three feet alley that exists making it six feet again i think that's the only thing that
i wanted to add but again it doesn't really change the the eight houses and the front loaded garages
or anything else but it's just for a public safety um just so that we are that cannot be changed
today if um if that change is going to be made maybe by administrative review are you submitting
revised plans today requesting that change uh no sorry no we're not submitting revised plans today
if we if we would make that change it would be in the administrative review okay thank you
thanks sure any questions from the board no no no anyone else wish to testify in
this matter no hands at this time thank you planning commission good morning
David Fecto City Planning Commission mr. chairman and members of the board this
property is indicated for residential single-family use and the city's
comprehensive plan. This property is on a block of mostly one-story and two-story single-family
homes. Accordingly, we have no objection to granting these variances. Thank you. MI-2020-001219
2811 South Hutchison Street. My vote is yes. My vote is yes. My vote is yes. My vote is yes.
Meeting item MI 2020-001-234. Address 4401 Magari Street, Apartment 1.
Meet an item MI-2020-00123.
Our attorney is Jared Klein.