here the occupied area exceeds the uh what's allowed on the philadelphia zoning code and
falls in line with what we're requesting
maps of the area again we're not changing the zoning this is zoning map like we're seeking
single family use google map kind of so you know where we are in the brewery town section of
Philadelphia. Photographs of the property. This has been a vacant property for some time that
needs some desperate TLC. This is our proof of posting for today's hearing. New Kirk Street to
the right of the property. As you can see, some of these building structures are well above what
we're asking for. Also, you can kind of sense that they have roof decks. This is New Kirk to
left of the property. This is our site plan showing our roof deck. This is showing our
reuse of the property by adding that third story. Again, simple floor plan, open floor plan in the
front, living room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms, a bath, a linen closet on the second
floor, and a primary suite on the third floor with a roof deck. RCO meeting notice, well-attended
meeting february 20th proof of mailing of that notice is here as well our application for appeal
that we followed on amina's behalf along with the deed to property showing that she owns the property
and then finally our certificate of tax clearance showing that while she owes taxes for 2025 those
or not do yet. I would ask that Amina
virtually raise her hand and be sworn in.
Amina? I'm sorry.
Hi, could you state your names and
spell it for the court stenographer? Amina,
A-M-I-N-A, last name Oliver, O-L-I-V-E-R.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
yes please please proceed counsel uh yes um amina you heard everything i had to state today
about your zoning matter is it true and correct yes and do you adopt as your own testimony
yes thank you thank you questions from the board
questions or comments from our attorney hillary emerson
questions or comments from our attorney hillary emerson
not at this time questions or comments from the virtual audience
i do not see any hands mr chair planning commission
thank you chairman and good evening david fechto with the city planning commission
chairman and board members the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the rsa5 residential
single-family zoning at this location the city rezoned this neighborhood in 2014 and accord
recommendations in the comprehensive plan there is no unique physical condition or circumstance
of this property that would prevent it from being used in strict conformity with the zoning code
the city planning commission recommends the board deny the reposed use and dimensional variances
thank you MI 2024 006 299 1453 North New Kirk Street I vote yes
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes.
Tana DeGraham, my vote is yes.
Hi, Owen, my vote is yes.
Mr. Nockamson, MI 2024-006-883-219-25, Cecil B. Moore Avenue.
State your name for the record.
Alan Nockamson.
There's a letter of unanimous support from South Kensington.
Also, the applicant provided a letter of support from the next-door neighbor
and a letter of opposition from Frida Anderson.
You waive the reading of the refusal
and you agree with its accuracy.
Yes, but we do have a revised plan
and a proviso form filled out, but yes.
And could you identify your client,
the relationship to this property?
Yes, my client is Millennium Philadelphia Development LLC.
and to the left of me is Umar Sethi, one of his representatives.
Why don't you start your presentation?
All right.
All right, so here we have 219-25 Cecil B. Moore Avenue.
I think it's more appropriate to recognize this as a North American street address
because of where it is.
it's the corner of Cecil B. Moore and North American. It's probably the largest growing
part of Philadelphia from a residential apartment building perspective. To the left of us is the
locks, which this board granted by way of variance, which created 179 units with a height of the
building of 77 feet high. So, you know, what we're trying to do is mimic like what you would see on
North American street and NOM architecture who's handling this matter as the architecture firm
did a great job of trying to mimic that use on North American street. Also, the zoning is
partly the industrial in use. So their use of materials was very interesting and in conformance
to what you would expect on North American
Street now. We have the notice of
refusal, the proviso form and revised
plans. This is in the affordable
housing overlay where
when you have more than 10 residential
units, 20% of those units
have to be at 40% AMI.
part of our proviso plan,
we indicate
changes in the height of the building, but also
the amount of units that we're
reducing to. And then we
would also need a proviso separate from the revised plans about the planning commission
commission acknowledging a new form for the overlay because we have to resubmit a form
and we've done that before our office has done that before but the zoning board needs
to have that proviso in there directing the planning commission to do that. Correspondents
from South Kensington Community Partners. Again, overwhelming support here, letter of support from
the nearby neighbor. Don't have the other letter that the chairman indicated, so I don't have the
benefit of looking at that letter. Posting photos, presentation package that we got from Nome,
or RCO meeting notice. So South Kensington Community Partners, they have a pre-community
meeting, and when the project is big enough, they have two community meetings, not one, but two.
And again, just, you know, they, they're a board of architects and other real estate professionals. So they really hold their developer developers accountable. And we made some major changes in terms of the height and the unit count that fell better in line with what you would see on North American street.
telling the letter of uh opposition has to do with removal of trees okay um i guess we're
removing some trees is that okay um all right our application for appeal or deed to the property
Is that okay? All right. Our application for appeal or deed to the property and our certificate
of tax clearance. Again, all I can say about removal of trees is it's a prominent corner.
You know, we'll work with the Fairmont, you know, park to like put like trees around that as well.
So I don't think that's an enforceable proviso, but you know, I would definitely recommend that
to my client. Notice the refusal. It looks worse than it is because we have mixed zoning. We have
ICMX and RSA 5 zoning. Interesting. So multifamily use is not, so we're looking to do now 15 units
with a commercial space. And we updated the refusal to make it so that the commercial space
could be used for CMX 2.5 zoning. What they envision to have is really either some type of
restaurant establishment or maybe coffee shop there, which will be allowed as a right for CMX
two and a half zoning. But anyway, that's what we're seeking. So multifamily is not allowed in
RSA 5. Multifamily is not allowed in ICMX. The building height of their 85 and a half feet is
not allowed. We took a floor off. Now we're reducing the 73 feet, which is four feet less
than the Lux, or maybe even six feet less than the Lux, which is next door to us. Building height
for ICMX is not allowed based on that. But again, we're mimicking what's still left of us.
Um, you know, we have no side yard, um, which we do because if you read orient the property,
instead of thinking of it as a Cecil B. Moore address, you think of it as a North American
street address.
We have a 10 foot side yard to the left of us where people have access to where the garbage
is actually stored in the back too.
We have no parking, you know, as part of our project, there's no way we'd be able to fit
parking.
It doesn't make sense.
Plus it's a corner property as well.
And so those are two of our other refusals. Again, we, you know, worked with the community, have, you know, our revised plans here where we reduced the building height to 74 feet, 74 and a half feet. We reduced the amount of stories from seven to six.
We reduced the unit count from 18 to 15, which, again, we'll have to do a revised acknowledgement form with the Planning Commission as it pertains to the affordable housing overlay.
And we slightly reduced the affordable unit count from four to three based on the 20% requirement.
So it always rounds up.
So we're down to three affordable units as well.
These are the revised plans.
Again, this is the side yard.
with the entrance as well and then this deals with the heights the reduced height
and then again we met with community unanimous support they appreciated we make the we made
those changes letter of support from someone on cecil b more who would be directly impacted
i would also say the person to the right of us on cecil b more there's also a garage there so
they're not there's no living there so we're not affecting their livability of their space with
our building uh posting photos presentation packet kind of goes with what we have but you know zoning
map regular map and then an aerial view of of where we are in the neighborhood
you can see there's some massive structures nearby here and what we're trying to do is
mimic it because we believe we're more so a north american street property
and you can see that here as well and then this is what we're to the right of us is cecil b more
and this is the only thing left on cecil b more on our block there's vacant lot here
there's a two-story structure as well as a garage and then you can see this is the lock 1705 north
american street the americana which is 1740 north american street and so on and so on are some
significant building structures. And then again, no living in the basement. And we have like a gym
for the building. We have a bike room, the commercial storage, some utility bolts.
We have the commercial on the ground floor, which is facing North American Street. We have the
lobby, multiple forms of egress, but we have a lobby here with elevator service. It's trash
So trash is going to be stored inside.
Again, everyone has access over here.
There's also commercial dumpsters in the rear as well.
And then, you know, every floor is the same.
Every floor has a one bedroom.
Every floor has a two bedroom and every floor has a studio.
This is the same thing over and over again.
Here's the studio.
Here's the one bedroom and here's the two bedroom.
And so that goes along five floors.
and then there's our roof deck which is a communal roof deck so everyone has access to it
roof deck so everyone has access to it. And then again, this is our rendering of what we
and then again this is you know
envision the property is going to look like. Everyone has a little outdoor space with these
balconies. And then again, metal cladding, brick in some spots, more with the black,
it makes it look more industrial. But this is an ICMX property. North American Street used to be
very industrial in nature. So it has a cool hip look. But the color palette is to mimic also
So the traditional red brick that you would see in buildings here and just generally in Philadelphia, but having the metal for the industrial look.
A lot of like light too for the commercial, prominent commercial space that we hope to go there.
Either a restaurant establishment of some sort or maybe a coffee shop for the residents and the neighbors as well.
RCO meeting notice.
This was the last notice.
Again, we had two community meetings and one pre-community meeting, proof of mailing of that notice, our application for appeal that we filed on behalf of Millennium Philadelphia Development LLC, our deed to the property showing that they own the property, and our certificate of tax clearance, where we're actually in the positive for this property.
With that being said, I would ask that Umer be sworn in.
sir could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer yes my name is
amarseti a-m-a-r last name s-e-t-h-i do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth
nothing but the truth yes please proceed counsel uh uh yes um you heard everything i had to state
today correct and it's true correct yes if you adopt it as your testimony yes thank you i have
one more thing that actually during it for the commercial element just to put it out there it's
actually my own personal restaurant that'll be taking place over there that was a um topic that
came up with the rco they were worried that would be a blank empty commercial space that's not going
to be the case my own personal restaurant will actually be there as well questions from the board
i guess i'm trying to figure out okay so um this is split zone so which one is
i'm not sure that the refusal was written correctly i think they're supposed to pick
one and evaluate it based on one or whichever is stricter and so the examiner went with both
in this case so i did not think that was correct i don't think there are as many refusals on there
as they're they're truly are well i think that this so for instance the height refusal either
way i mean i think you would go basically rsa 5 for 38 feet right rather than 60 feet either way
we're being refused right um okay you know so they they they didn't do it like it doesn't look
like they selected one district that they they use it or just they're supposed to select one
district or select like the the most restrictive one provisions yeah or the most restrictive
provisions of the zoning districts something like something like that but well even the use
of multi-family use either zoning district is not allowed right yeah but it makes it confusing when
it comes to the height and it makes it i don't see yeah the parking yeah it makes it a little
hard because if it was evaluated under rc5 there would be no parking requirement right right yes
yeah so it makes it so it's a little hard to say what you need the variances for because of the
way that this was i mean i can i can ask ellen i to correct it or provide further explanation if
that would be helpful i mean i need to because we got the revised plans today i need a little
bit more time to to just look at them and figure out how many pages to stamp if the board approves
it so um i mean if we just wait a week i could get clarification on that fine i thought we are
office submitted with the original materials i thought we just got them today maybe i'm
but so what we'll do is we're going to hold this
okay all right thank you yeah and i'll check are we asking questions are we
holding it okay all right so i'm just holding just
holding the vote i'll get clarification just one more go ahead okay so what about
the commercial use i don't see where
it's on the it's on the you know what mate did i
let me let me see this hold on a second
there's right let me take a no you know it's it says it's yes but but there is a i think the
updated refusal says that it's for two cmx updated refusal says for cmx yeah this is in cmx 2.5 but
cmx yeah this is in cmx 2.5 but yeah those are yeah okay i did actually have a question about
yeah those are yeah okay