maintenance of the streets.
Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, instead of
going over all this, do you want to
hold the vote until they straighten out what the
provisos are? That is fine, Mr. Chair.
Yes, we can do that.
All right. Let's go to
is there anyone else in the virtual audience?
Yes, Chair. I have a caller with the last four numbers, 3552.
Right. Could you bring the person on?
Hi. Could you state your name and spell for the court reporter, please?
Yes, this is Adrienne Fernandez. My last name is spelled F-E-R-N-A-N-E-C-H.
Hi, Adrienne. Yep.
Do you swear to her firm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
proceed okay um testifying for 12 to rco we are one of the affected rcos um thank you hillary for
reading the enforceable provisos that i listed i did have one question about the two that um
you're saying are not enforceable which is no more subdivisions on the two addresses and also
So no cell phone, large antenna, the way I listed it, no new variances for those type of data.
So, Adrian, what we're going to do is we're not going to vote on this today.
We're going to hold this for two weeks.
And in that time frame, we'll get straight where our provisos are, okay?
Okay, my list won't change.
It'll be the same list.
Okay, thank you.
Anyone else in the virtual audience?
Yes, I have a Zanetta Ford with a hand up.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, good morning.
My name is Zanetta, Z as in zebra, A-N-E-R.
Right.
We lost you.
Ms. Zanetta?
Can you hear me now?
Yes, go ahead.
Do I need to spell my name again?
Yeah, please.
Okay, Zanetta, Z as in zebra, A-N-E-T-T-A, last name Ford, F-O-R-D.
Right.
Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Are you a neighbor?
I am the attorney for Mount Sinai Holy Church of America.
We are directly across.
Okay, sure.
Thank you.
So I just wanted to echo what Mr. Clinton had said, that Mount Sinai is planning on building a church, one to consolidate a lot, and having the parking towards the 16th Street side, and that we're not opposed to the plans that are being put forth today.
Thank you so much for calling in. We appreciate it. Is there anyone else in the audience?
Planning Commission.
I'll say no more.
Planning Commission.
Thank you, Chair Bergman.
Ian Hegarty for the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.
Board members, the comprehensive plan recommends a change in zoning for this property from RSA 3 to RSA 5 single family.
The intent of the recommended zoning district is to encourage single family infill housing at row house density.
As a point of reference for the board, under the recommended RSA 5 zoning, 11 row homes would be allowed by right on this size of lot.
With regard to the use variance, we believe the appellant has not supported their hardship claim with evidence of unique physical circumstances or conditions of the property.
The prior use of the property is no longer a physical hardship since the property has been cleared of all structures.
The adjacent multifamily development on Allegheny Avenue is in a different zoning district and so is not comparable as a benchmark for appropriate development on the subject lot.
for appropriate development on the subject lot. Furthermore, we do not believe the anticipated
Furthermore, we do not believe the anticipated
development on lots across the street are germane to the hardship claim. Since the multifamily use
and density of the proposed building do not conform to the recommended RSA 5 zoning district,
we also believe that this proposal conflicts with the adopted comprehensive plan. With regard to the
dimensional variances, the appellant has failed to show that the dimensions are economically necessary
and consistent with the surrounding neighborhood both of these conditions are required in order
for the board to grant the variances while we appreciate the appellant's interactions with the
affected rcos we find this proposal has several fundamental failings when evaluated against the
criteria for zoning variance approval and we recommend that the board deny the variances
thank you this case will be continued for two weeks not not next wednesday but the wednesday
after where um we want to see what um what all the uh provisos are and what's enforceable what's
not before we make any decision on this other than that it's closed right hillary that is correct
mr chair the record is closed except for clarification of the proviso thank you mr
Clinton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Have a great day. Okay. Number 11, MI 2022-002-678-1330
East Burke Street. David Orfanides is the attorney. Letter of opposition from Fishtown Neighbors
Association. RCO was sent, revised plans, but position has not changed.
Mr. Orphanides is being promoted to panelists.
Thank you.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, counsel.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Certainly.
David Orphanides, last name is spelled O-R-P-H-A-N-I-D-E-S.
Right.
Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do, sir.
Would you identify your client in relationship to the property?
Certainly.
My client is 1330 E. Berks, B-E-R-K-S, LLC, and they are under agreement of sale to purchase the subject premises from the current owner.
In my understanding from our council, the case is going to be held for receipt of an amended refusal from the applicant that reflects revised plans presented today.
Upon receipt, the case will then be voted on.
The record is otherwise closed.
Yeah, that's correct, Mr. Chairman. And those plans, revised plans, were presented to the community group. They were revised to address comments we received at the first meeting. So, and it's our position that, and you'll see, we basically just shifted the project that no new refusals will be created and no cited refusals will be increased with the changes.
All right. And our board secretary has a few questions. Ishmael?
Mr. Chair, I just wanted to interject that the additional documents that I had requested from Mr. Orphanides have been received.
Good morning, counsel.
Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to his accuracy?
I do, sir.
did you email all the exhibits and documents as required such as proof of ownership tax
clearance copy of refusal or referral pictures or drawings of property five days in advance
of this hearing and did you meet with the rco and do you have a letter met with the rco as i
indicated twice we have a letter from them i did send all the materials last week he accidentally
re-sent the posting photos from the first hearing and those were provided along with an addendum to
the agreement of sale that shows we're still under agreement through 12-22 which is what
hillary was referencing earlier in her comments to the chairman yes please proceed and share your
screen. Thank you. Can everybody see that screen? We can, sir. Okay, thank you. All right, again,
my name is David Orphanides. I'm with the law firm of Orphanides and Toner, LLP, here in
Philadelphia. And again, I'm representing 1330 E. Burke, LLC, the entity that is under agreement
a sale to purchase the subject premises 1326 R, 1328, and 1330 East Burke Street. I have with me
today representatives from 1330 East Burke Street, 1330 E, Burke's LLC, excuse me, from NoMark
from no market architecture, the architects for the project. And then also an appraiser,
Architecture, the architects for the project, and then also
Caitlin Droznak, they prepared a report where we addressed the financial hardship between their
report and my clients' pro forma and their calculations to establish the criteria,
the financial hardship that warrants the granting of the variance in this case.
uh real quickly uh the the three properties um you can see here in an aerial i've clouded them
they are they're contiguous and abut each other you have a 1326 r that you can see here that is
to the rear to the i guess to approximately to the west of the um property known as 1326
1626 East Burke Street. And then next to that, you have 1328 and 1330. So here's 1326R where you
see the cars in the pad here, 1328 and 1330. You take a look at the lot consolidation plan that
was submitted to L&I with our application. You can see here 1330, which is in an 18-foot wide
lot that stretches from Burke Street to what's called Wilts Street. It has a street sign,
but is not on the city plan. It's not open. It's 15 feet wide. It's an alley that's referenced in
Adede City butting properties, including ours. And that's utilized predominantly as a driveway
to access off-street parking for other properties, again, that abut East Wilts Street.
um you'll hear testimony from my clients that one of the reasons uh we designed the project the way
we did with which was with a singular curb cut from burke street and you'll see that there is
an existing curb cut on burke street presently for a garage of the existing single family home
that's there was because uh we had heard and it was confirmed during our community group meetings
that some of the owners of the properties that abut will street uh concerned about any additional
traffic utilizing it. You can see here 1328 is the same size as 1330, 18 feet wide, stretching
from Berks to the East Wilk Street Alley. And then you see here the very oddly shaped 1326R.
You can see that there's a very narrow strip that extends to Berks Street. It's only a couple
of feet wide. Oops, apologize for that. Zoom in here a little bit. You can see it's two feet five
inches wide, technically creating a very narrow frontage. It is a flag lot, but unlike most flag
lots where you can actually drive down the pole or even really walk down the pole, you can't do
that here. It's only two feet, five inches wide. And then it opens up to an 18 foot wide by 55
feet, seven inch deep area to the rear. It has no frontage on a legally open street. That's on
the city plan. Again, it does front on Welch Street. One of the things you're going to hear
from both the architects and the clients is that utilities run in Burke Street. There are no
utilities in Welch Street. It makes the 1326R lot not only very oddly shaped, but virtually
impossible to develop. And the problem is that they're all under common ownership. There's no
way that 1326, you're going to hear there's no way that 1326 is ever going to be sold off by itself
because the cost to bring utilities down East Wilts Street, approximately 260 feet from Belgrade,
well, more than that, actually 296 feet from Belgrade, almost 300 feet is cost prohibitive.
You're going to hear it's probably, I believe, in the range of about $500,000, a half a million dollars
to bring utilities all the way down there.
And the problem you're going to see is as consolidated, it creates an oddly shaped lot because of 1326, but also impacts the financial viability of the ability to develop the properties as they are currently configured or otherwise other than as what we've proposed.
So back to the aerial you can see right here is our property.
You have Thompson Street to the one end of the block and again, Belgrade.
Here you can see Wilt Street.
The alley that comes off of Belgrade and then dead ends just to the south of us.
There is a project here that's accessed off of East Montgomery that was recently approved by the Zoning Board for identical variances, RSA parcel with a structure that touches the East Wilts Street property line, which is the rear property line, doesn't provide the nine foot required rear yard depth.
It doesn't provide the nine foot required rear yard depth. And obviously, with more than one single family dwelling on it, it developed a created a use variance. And here you can see our refusal, which is, as I've stated, the two variances we're going to be talking about and addressing here.
and obviously with more than
But again, these properties do access East Wilt Street, the alley for their parking, as do some other properties. You'll see the zoning archives that I've provided. There was also another RSA 5 property here that was developed for multiple structures that had similar refusals or should have had similar refusals with parking that's accessed off of East Burke.
There's some parking access off the East Wilt, but you had multiple structures and more than single-family use on this large lot.
So you'll see in the zoning archives, and there are other examples in the nearby vicinity where variances have been granted by the zoning board for similar conditions and similar properties that are located literally within a stone's throw, less than that of the subject premises.
Again, you have a variance that I'll show you that was granted here, same variances, and then granted here.
Sorry.
Here's an aerial.
You're going to hear during our, you know, here's our property again, view from the north.
During our meeting with the community group, there's an abutting property owner to the north of us that owns both of these parcels.
The parcel that's a Buttsus 1332, they have a swimming pool lawn and then they live in the property, the building of 1334.
You'll see that our original design, sorry, had our structures set up along our northern property line and that the revisions that we made to address this was to shift the whole property, the whole project to the southern property line to change the location of our drive aisle from the middle of the consolidated lot.
to the northern side but unfortunately you'll see in their letter they still found reasons that that
was unacceptable and those are reasons that were actually worse with the original design and
actually worse with the buy right project again if it were even financially viable which it's not
the original zoning drawings that were submitted show this development five single families even
though the refusal calls it a multifamily. It is not. These are going to be a planned unit
development, five single families. Originally, each one was to have two-car parking. You'll
see in the revised design, the one structure in the rear back here has been changed to provide
access off of Wilt and only has one car parking. That will all be accessed off of a single curb
cut. I'll show you in a second in the photographs. There's an existing garage with an existing curb
cut on 1330 East Berks. But each of these are going to be a single-family dwelling,
both as originally proposed and as we've revised the design. Each one will have a separate building
permit. They'll be separately deeded and separately owned structures, which then creates
a shared drive condition, which addresses and eliminates the possibility of a parking
refusal for the parking off of Eastbrook Street. The proposed height is a permitted height other
than the rear yard depth. And again, you can see the structures as originally proposed come right
along to the rear property line, which is not a front because Wilk Street is not a city street.
And again, as like the other projects that abut East Wilk Street, had a refusal for not having
the rear yard depth. And then again, having more than if you want, if it wasn't for having five
units it would have been for having more than a single principal structure so either way and
you'll see sometimes l and i will write their refusals that they used to write the refusal
as having multiple principal structures but either way having more than one single family dwelling
generates a refusal but i'll have my my client speak but we went to a meeting
advertised meeting with uh we're soon to 14 303 with the fishtown neighbors association and the
main voice there was that property to the north of us. Again, the owner of this property speaking
about the impact it would have on her roses, the impact it would have on her privacy, on her air
and light. As a result of that meeting, we shifted the whole project. And you'll see here before
the projects along the north property line along 1330 and the property line with 1330 and 1332
and then wrapped around the back east will street and coming back up behind 1326.
the back east will street and coming back up behind 1326 and then the revised design