levels
josh do you want to take this one um yeah sure so the um uh the plan for the the restaurants on the
ground floor are more daytime operations so the the restaurant the restaurant on the rooftop would
be more of an evening time uh into nighttime operation um we are not planning to have it
open more than, say, 11 o'clock at night at this point, but the actual final determination
will be worked out with the operator when they're brought on board.
Sorry, it's a lot of stuff. So, no, I don't. That's the wrong. Do you have it on your screen,
Mark? I do. I can pull it out. I would appreciate that. Thanks.
i guess while you guys are pulling that up for mr rosenblum uh what was sort of the
what drove your decision to decide to put a restaurant here um
well a couple things the main the main thing is that we think that the area itself is um a good
candidate it's a good neighborhood for uh for nightlife and hospitality and uh we think that
it's an interesting building that would be a good draw for something like that and we think that
there are not enough rooftop experiences in Philadelphia generally, perhaps in part because
of the requirements of the code. And so we think that having a good opportunity to do something
here where you have an interesting building in a great location that has minimal housing
residential uses in the immediate neighborhood, it seemed like a really good place to try to do
something interesting and creative that would help continue to spur the development of the area.
Okay. Does everyone see my screen? We should. Okay. So these are the initial renderings of
the space. The interior is a little bit vanilla on purpose because, again, we're trying to attract
a tenant that would have their own aesthetic. Moving into the floor plan, we do have a series
of um interior and exterior seating um of course when inclement weather and throughout the winter
either won't the deck really won't be in use it will just be the internal um space um and our
total count 48 54 and 14 are the amount of seats i had that somewhere i apologize for not having
that plus 14 we're currently showing 116 seats um where's the location of the commercial kitchen
there is no kitchen okay it will it will just be drink service and light fare
got it and so there's no prep stations no refrigeration well there will be refrigeration
We have under-counter refrigerators for drink storage, and there will be the proper health department sink mix for essentially cutting citrus fruit to put in drinks.
Can you point out where that is anticipated to be?
Can you point out where that is anticipated to be?
So we have the bar along the eastern side.
All of that work will take place either under the bar or on the back portion of the bar.
We have a series of commercial refrigeration, dishwashers, all under counter equipment.
And triple sinks, vegetable sinks, hand sinks, all of them are in here.
okay and then they would go into this i guess this hallway and take this the singular elevator
down to the lobby that's like that would essentially be the only way to access
correct this is there's one there are two elevators in the building one only one stops at the elevator
or i'm sorry stops at the sixth floor um they the the other one stops at the fifth floor um the main
entrance would be here we would have a hostess they would come through i'm sorry you guys do
see my crosshair yes okay um so uh there is um there'll be a hostess to greet them and sit them
and um the the goal is to have a um uh a higher level drink experience rather than a local corner
barb okay questions for our attorney hillary emerson not at this time what's your comments
for the virtual audience i see no hands chair commission good afternoon chair members of the
board liz fuselay liz last name fuselay capital f-u-s-e-l-i-e-r on behalf of the philadelphia
city planning commission do you swear or affirm that tell the truth the whole truth and nothing
but the truth i do please proceed the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the cmx5
commercial mixed-use zoning at this location the property in question if completely redeveloped
would allow a much taller building than the proposed six sixth story edition this building
previously received approval from this board to add a sixth floor with commercial use in 2015.
given its context the proposal for a roof deck for non-residential use is unlikely to cause
detriments to the local community beyond what might otherwise be expected and is compatible
with existing uses nearby therefore the planning commission recommends the board grant the proposed
special exception for a non-residential roof deck mi 2025 001 890 15 to 21 south 11th street i vote
yes michael johns my vote is yes cheryl gaston my vote is yes tanetta graham my vote is yes
Ryan McAdams, my vote is yes.
I win.
My vote is yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Rachel, we'll have another case here for you.
Thank you, everyone.
All right.
Thank you, everyone.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Rosenblum.
MI 2025-001893, 3408-50B Street.
Rachel Pritzker is the attorney.
We have a letter of unanimous opposition from ASEE, and we also have a letter of support from the 7th Ward RCO.
Rachel, just for the record, could you state your name?
Yes, Rachel Pritzker.
Could you identify your client, the relationship to the property?
Yes, my client is Judah Angster on behalf of 3408 B Street, LLC, which is the owner of the property.
And our board member, Tenetta Graham, has a few questions.
Good afternoon again, Rachel. Have you submitted your documents five days in advance of this hearing?
And do you waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Thank you. You may share your screen and proceed with your case.
Great. Thank you.
So this is a refusal for 3408 B Street.
some of the board members may remember this project from like two years back
as this property back in 2023 was granted a variance for the erection of an addition
above an existing two-story structure for use as 50 multi-family dwelling units
with 16 class a bike spaces parking eight parking spaces for off-street accessory parking
to include one van accessible space which was approved back in 2023 and issued in 2024.
Since that time we've tried to get work with the project to get it financed and also
we're trying to resolve concerns around having 50 units and only eight parking spaces.
The developer spent a lot of time with the architect and construction team to figure out
how do you include additional parking spaces which we'll discuss which requires an additional
structure to lift the building up to provide parking can't do underground parking as this is
an adaptive reuse of a long-standing blighted structure that hasn't had anything
an adaptive reuse of a long-standing blighted structure that hasn't had anything going on with
it since at least 2017. And so although we went through and were successful at that process,
we decided to bring it back to make the project a little bit better, address some of the parking
concerns, and provide, again, a raised parking because you can't go under the building
for 38 spaces as opposed to the 30 and an additional 25 units to help support all the
additional structural needs of the building in addition with improving the landscaping
security facade and other requirements for this project the site is zoned i2
so it's an existing industrial warehouse again this is a an adaptive reuse and the refusals
that we have are again for the multi-family even though it already was approved for multi-family
for the building height 60 feet which is permitted in i2 versus 72 feet that we're proposing and then
for off-street loading spaces which is mostly triggered by the i2 zoning classification for this
site just some of the information for the appeal again it's zoned i2 it's almost 20 000 square foot
intermediate lot featuring an existing structure that's been vacant and was prior to the current
owner was used for unpermitted warehousing since at least 2017 it has sat vacant and blighted ever
since there were holes in the roof there were a significant amount of violations on the property
including an imminently dangerous violation which my client resolved and did all the repairs
in order to bring this property back into a safe condition there's was probably i don't know five
or six different um violations that were resolved uh by the now current owner and again um when the
client purchased the property we went back through it went through the process to get 50 units and
eight spaces put her back here again which we think makes it a better project um most of the
conditions are related to the doing an adaptive reuse in an i2 zoning district and again trying
accommodate 30 additional parking spaces and the structural steel and things that are needed to do
that while also making a building that is financially feasible given the amount of work
that goes into this adaptive reuse the areas surrounding it which you'll see at the zoning
maps is a lot of rm1 which is why i think the board granted the variance originally because it's
mostly around multifamily development. And it's on B Street in the city. So it's not really a
commercial corridor, a strong industrial corridor anymore. And so kind of the multifamily use is in
line with both the residential multifamily directly adjacent to the property and also
the residential single family. Again, given this is a 20,000 square foot lot with an existing
structure proposal for single family is not appropriate here for this the loading zones
i think our architect probably explained better than i do but i think the requirements based on
my understanding the code were based on needing four loading zones which relates to the i2 zoning
i don't know that a building for 75 units would need four loading zones typically is for industrial
uses with frequent deliveries which is not applicable for this project in particular
and so we kind of align this project more with the rm1 use considerations and we will have loading
and things of that nature i will be working with ppa for that but we're not able to provide four
loading spaces for this building we went through civic design review and now in front of the zoning
board of adjustment and um for whatever reason i think due to some court or rco coordination
and council office coordination we were assigned two different rcos for different parts of this
project which is probably why you which is why you see the two different letters the uh assay is uh
their boundaries sort of abut this um and have a little bit of overlap but the seventh ward rco
RCO has residents that are directly in this neighborhood and the ward leader who runs
the RCO lives across the street from this property.
So that's why you see their letter of support.
And again, I'll go into the community a little bit just so the zoning ward can see the makeup
Just so the zoning board can see the makeup of the zoning near the property, as I mentioned, you have sort of this I2, which is our structure, a little bit of an island over here where a lot of the other I2 is concentrated more on the right side of the screen.
of the zoning.
And then you have mostly residential and multifamily, a little bit of CMX2 a few blocks away.
but this certainly isn't a strong industrial site and obviously it's been vacant for quite some time
so just shows the lack of of investment and um viability of this site in particular for for
industrial again surrounded almost entirely by rm1 and again across b street rsa5
this is an aerial shot just the board can kind of see the size and scale of this building
building. So it is really quite a large site. And even just from the aerial view, you can
see kind of the nature of the building. This does a better job kind of showing the current
site conditions. Again, the current owner has cleaned up this space a lot. It's got
no violations on it. And, you know, given the need for approvals, it hasn't been able
to be fully developed into an adaptive reuse multifamily property
which is also showing showing the zoning posters the lot spans both 3408 through 50 b street so
if you can get a sense of the size of this this photo does a bit of a better job just showing
sort of the the linear nature of how long this and big this industrial structure is
Again, another photo.
It's just the zoning archives to show the prior approval as I mentioned for the 50 units
and eight parking spaces.
This is where in the code that you can't have multi-family in I-2, same with the other
their height considerations, and the loading zones.
As mentioned, we went through Civic Design Review, which was approved after just one
hearing by the Civic Design Review, which I included information about that in this
presentation.
We went to both a meeting, we did a combined meeting with both RCOs.
We thought that that would be a little less challenging and confusing for the community
groups and also for the neighbors when we noticed them to invite them to one meeting where we
discuss both civic design review and zoning at the same meeting given we didn't want to notice
two different rounds of people for two different things and that meeting was back in i believe may
May 1st.
It was via Zoom.
Here are the notices that we sent out, 255 notices for this meeting.
This is the letter of support from the 7th Ward RCO, again, that is directly adjacent
to the property.
The ward leader lives across the street and most of the residents affiliated with this
RCO do live in directly adjacent and in that directly adjacent community.
They provided full support for this, and a lot of it was because this was kind of the only property that had been kind of an eyesore still, as they had seen a lot of other redevelopment with the other industrial structures nearby.
Bye. I'm going to go through the plans. I think maybe last, well, I guess maybe we'll have our architect. Can we bring on Raymond Rolla to just go through the architectural plans?
And then I can go through the civic design review comments and go from there.
Why don't you go over to civic design while he's coming on?
Sure. So as mentioned, we did civic design review for this project because even though we'd gotten 50 units approved and this is an existing structure, the additional 25 units required civic design review.
As you can see from this rendering, you can kind of see the other buildings along B Street and kind of close to the property that have this kind of large scale industrial structures.
it's not like some of the other projects i've seen where you have just like one big industrial
building and kind of everything else is leveled as a single family you know 38 feet or 28 feet
so it kind of isn't matching with the adjacent structures around it and again because the the
nature of what's needed on this building in addition to to parking have to provide a number
of units that can function in this building we have an elevator we're going to have landscaping
lighting, security, steel structures, rooftop as an amenity as well.
um as well so just given the nature and the quality that that the developer is looking to
So just given the nature and the quality that the developers.
provide in this neighborhood um we needed the additional units in addition to wanting to
include the parking this just shows the site context which i think we've gone through and
this just gives you kind of an idea of what this project looked like before this developer
took it over this has literally been sitting for almost 20 years with nothing going on to it no
investment no interest and um we are proposing a significant reinvestment in this site um to be
able to kind of eliminate that blight from this community all right the architect please
hello hi sir could you please state your name as bell for the stenographer my name is ray rolla r-o-l-a
Walnut Street, Suite 1300
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?