I do. Please proceed, Council.
Yeah, Ray, I just wanted you to go through the plans. I don't
know that we need to go through all the
details on Civic Design Review, but
do you want me to go to the zoning plans?
Yeah, go to the site plan that shows
the parking. I guess we can start at the lower level.
There we go. Scroll down a little bit.
Okay, so this is the, I'll actually go up because this doesn't show the parking on the exterior. I guess we want to see the, yeah, this will show it. Okay. So at the bottom of the screen, you can see the ground level plan. You can see there's open space to the south, which is on the left side and open space to the right.
there's sort of existing parking in those two areas. So we've taken the ground floor of the
building and turned it into parking as well as utilities and two elevators and two fire exit
stairs. The way that the parking works is you enter from the south side through a gate, a
security gate, and you turn right. It's all one-way parking. So you come in, you make a right
into the building and there's diagonal parking for approximately the first half of the building
and then there's parallel parking just past the lobby area. So there's the total of 38 parking
spaces and landscaping as required by the city planning and the zoning code. And we also have
a trash pickup area across from the lobby entrance where trash will be held and trash
pickup will occur through the north parking area. Dumpsters will be rolled out through the door
and into commercial trash trucks. Okay, next level up a little bit. Okay, so this is a typical
floor plan where we have, I just want to check my notes here, 61 bedroom units, 15 two-bedroom
units, total of 75 units. The light color is the one-bedroom units. The dark color is the two-bedroom
units. The one bedrooms are around 600 square feet, and the two bedrooms are around 700 square
feet. And they're very comfortable units. All rooms, the living spaces have windows with Juliet
balconies. There's a laundry in each unit. There's also provisions for a very energy efficient HVAC
system that provides fresh air directly through the exterior of the building, the BPAC units.
And each floor also has a very generous lobby space off of the elevator, which is kind of like
lobby spaces in the sky. And so each floor basically is that floor plant. And then there's
the roof deck. You can also see part of the reason that the building had to
exceed the height limit of 60 feet was because the first two levels, because we
wanted to reuse the exterior wall of the existing structure, those windows are
very high, provide for very high ceilings and also the high space for the parking
area, so we couldn't really squeeze all of those floors into the
required the height of the building. And so the exterior of the building is
designed as the masonry is going to be restored on the first level. The parking
area openings are going to be done in decorative glazed brick so that we
provide more visual interest at the at the street level. Done in glazed brick
this used to be a fabric mill they made wool worsted wool so we kind of played off of that
and created a pattern of glazed brick for the openings that are required for natural ventilation
for the parking area and above the brick would be above the masonry would be metal panels and
You can see the Juliet balconies and also the exterior VTEC units.
and also the exterior VTEC units.
Here you can see the upper level will be two-tone of metal, kind of breaking up the facade.
You can clearly see the Juliet balconies and the V-PAC units providing energy efficiency and fresh air at all times to the units.
This would be the entrance.
We were hoping to do some kind of an artistic mural.
on the front around the entrance, and also there'd be sidewalk lighting attached to the building,
so the sidewalk would be bright. We've included a lot of street trees and bicycle racks, and so we
feel that the streetscape will be a very lively space. These were some solar studies that we did
in order to determine what the shadows were like now in the existing building, as well as what they
would be if you did a 60-foot high building, which is by right, and what the difference would be
between a 60- and 70-foot building. One of the interesting things is that the shadows, because
the building is oriented north-south, you really don't get a lot of shadows for a long period of
time in any one place. A lot of times during the day, the shadows are heading north, and there's
an industrial site to the north. So I think the Civic Design Review was very appreciative of these
studies for for not blocking the sun for any extended period of time to for the neighbors
this is just a shot looking at night again there will be sidewalk lighting another rendering of
the building and a view from the roof deck very uh dramatic view from there into center city
These are the lobbies on the upper floors that I mentioned, kind of a place where people on the floors can kind of sit down for a minute and get to know their neighbors and provide a more sociable environment.
This is the parking area at the lobby where we've made a space for smaller trucks for a short-term loading that they could unload.
If somebody's moving in or out, the truck could park there for a short period of time, not block any other cars, and furniture could be loaded or unloaded there.
It's another shot showing some of the higher buildings in the area.
just the uh cer packet and application um
this was the um letter from civic design review as i mentioned they concluded civic design review
after one meeting and stated that seventh ward rco was in support of the project they had also
acknowledged that they had not sent the correct email to the other RCO as far as the timing of
the meeting or the date of the meeting, but they had reached out right before. And again, that was
an advisor, as we know, an advisory meeting. And they had sort of, Planning Commission kind of
had apologized for that, but we did have some RCO representation at that meeting and stated that
it's been an eye store for 20 years and they um also had wanted us to look at there was some
surrounding lots in the back of the uh property that might be uh available to be improved as well
sort of the last kind of pieces here mostly their comments were about sustainable metrics and color
of the great panels um and can do items like that include a dog run and uh other residential space
They again confirmed that this was completed for this meeting.
It's also worth noting that at the community meeting we had with both ASE and the 7th Ward RCO,
one of the ASE had brought up was a kind of speculative concern around like would 30
additional parking spaces cause more traffic. We had shared that we believe that no additional 30
spaces, as opposed to the eight, was going to actually alleviate parking. But we went ahead
and got a traffic engineer to write a report and study it a bit just to make sure that we provided
them something from an expert. And ultimately, what this report states is that this actually
would alleviate traffic, not cause more traffic, because you'd be bringing 30 additional spots
onto the property as opposed to off the street.
And that given the two driveways on B Street,
this would help alleviate a lot of that, any congestion.
Obviously it doesn't eliminate all the congestion
in that neighborhood or in the city,
but that adding an additional 30 units
uh that adding an additional 30 units was actually going to be uh beneficial um to kind of and and
was actually going to be beneficial.
would cause insignificant differences as far as adding congestion uh specifically the proposed
75 unit building will not result in significantly higher volume of traffic than what was generated
under the prior proposal um and that would not have any adverse impacts the current proposal
with 38 spaces would generate less traffic than the previous proposal to provide eight spaces.
The only other thing kind of worth mentioning is that we went back and forth after the community
meeting that we had with both. We got a letter of support, as you have, from the seventh ward RCO,
and then we were pretty surprised to get a letter of opposition from seven members of ASE.
We went back and forth with them over their concerns.
We, in order to address the parking, we got a traffic study.
Then the concern was affordability and density, so we said to them that we would, and senior living, so we agreed to do 10% of the units dedicated for seniors.
It's also an elevator building, so it will be accessible to seniors.
I think also some of that lobby space that was mentioned on the upper floors allows for some congregation.
more akin to seniors, and also that we would also have a senior discount for the entire building.
So try to address those concerns. We had looked at removing units from the building,
but we had explained that given the need for parking and the structures that that wasn't going
to work. And we went back and forth for months up until like a week ago, trying to satisfy their
requests, and it just wasn't feasible to add more than we were doing. In addition to,
we offered up the roof deck as a community space as well so that anybody from their organization
or others that needed a place to meet could utilize the roof deck as a meeting space for
community-related activities or meetings. Ultimately, again, the directly adjacent RCO
RCO was in support of this. So that's why you have those two letters. And we do believe that,
you know, given all that we've presented today and all the sort of fair dealing we've tried to do
through months of this, that we'd ask that the board consider the seventh ward RCO letter and
those additional, you know, concessions that we made and were willing to make. We have really
wanted to work with everybody, but one project can't satisfy every single requirement. And
we weren't able to ultimately satisfy their last request, which was for, I think, between 30 and
50% of AMI for a 50-year deed restriction. This is not a subsidized project. This is not getting
any state money, federal money, city taxpayer money. It's not part of a program. It's not
included with PHA. And so we're not able to do a 50-year deed restriction for a project like this
um for that level of ami and so what we'd offered we had thought was um sufficient or at least what
we could commit to so um that's where this stands and uh if we could bring on judah angster to
just adopt my testimony and then we're happy to take any questions that the board may have
no we were joining
can you hear us judah yes no i do great date your name and spell for the stenographer
my name is judah angster j-u-d-a-h last name angster a-n-g-s-t-e-r you swear a firm to tell
the truth told you is nothing but the truth i do please proceed counsel judah have you heard my
testimony today do you believe it to be true and accurate and do you adopt it as your own
yes i do thank you questions for the board yes could you restate for me again the justification
for going up an additional 25 units so sorry go ahead so um part of the reason we decided to pause
even though we were approved for 50 and we were ready to pull permits for 50 apartments,
is that the local neighborhood had mentioned parking as being an utmost concern for them.
And I had promised some of the folks in the meeting that I would see what I could do with
our architects to try to accommodate more parking. So we went back to the drawing board with Ray
Rollin. We tried to explore ways that we could increase the parking. The only way
was to go basically with a ground floor parking, creating a steel structure,
because you need to have a special fire rating between the residential and the steel structure
and that fire rating is really thick really intense and has to last for several hours in case
And that fire rating is really thick, really intense and has to last for several hours in case, God forbid, there's a fire in the parking garage.
And by doing so, the cost to build that structure is so much that without the additional apartments, you can't afford to build it.
You need to have additional revenue to balance out the cost of that structure.
The other issue we ran into is as you're creating this higher ceiling to accommodate the parking garage, you end up going higher in elevation by a few feet above what was typically permitted.
So that created the second refusal that we have to go for.
And finally, one of the concerns was they didn't want to have cars parking loading and offloading into the building.
So what Ray designed was actually a loft, a loading dock within the parking area.
So that way, when people are moving in or moving out, they wouldn't have to disturb any of the folks in the neighborhood driving around.
Those reasons combined is why we ended up with a building that's a little higher than what's permitted and with more units than what we originally were approved for.
Our initial design with the parking, which we tried to attempt to accomplish, was the 38 parking spaces with just 50 apartments.
but it wasn't financially feasible. No lender would give us the money to build it because it
didn't make any sense. So we had to just add a few more units, which is just one floor. That's
all we asked for was one more floor above what we were already approved for in order to accommodate
that extra cost. And frankly, during the meetings, we were incredibly open with them.
We said, we want to address all your concerns. We're approved for 50 units today. I can pull
permits for 50 apartments with eight parking spaces and tell the neighborhood, I don't care
about your parking problem. But we really wanted to work with the neighbor. We are a neighborhood
conscious developer. We're not the type of group that goes into an area to build without the
support of our neighbors. And so we really are trying to accommodate them. But during the
meetings, we said, listen, we can't give you certain restrictions, but we'll do whatever we
can. They said, well, we have a lot of seniors in our community. I said, great. We'll give a
senior citizen discount and we'll designate 10% of the apartments for seniors, period. And they
said, well, our seniors need a place that they can relax. I said, okay, every floor, instead of
taking space for an apartment, we're going to give more space into a lobby on each floor because some
people aren't so mobile that they have a place to relax. Well, there'll be a couch, there'll be a
little table, there'll be a place where they can relax outside of their apartment. And then they
mentioned, what about the rooftop deck? I said, well, we're happy to share that with the community
once a month, any community group that wants to throw a function and needs a location can utilize
free of charge our, you know, they can't throw a party, but they can throw any type of meeting or
group meeting or function once a month on the rooftop deck. We're happy to work with the
community. And they sounded really positive. And during the meeting, all we heard was positive
notions and positive accolades. And then there were some emails where they asked for a little
bit more and we accommodated. Then they kept going and seeing how far they could go. And the last
email was literally, I would say today we're on Wednesday, but the last email was on Thursday or
Friday last week where they gave us a list that was impossible to comply with and said, if you
don't do this, Asia is not going to support you. And we were reviewing it with our architects and
reviewing it with our financial folks. And they all said it's impossible. And at that point in
time, we said, hey, we're here to work with the community. We want to add parking. We want to try
to do what's right we have all trash services contained within the building that means that
the exterior side of the building will not have any trash pickup it trash room is in the building
um trash collection is happening from within the parking garage i mean we're doing everything we
can to be a good neighbor here question for you um the your original project what was the the
total square footage and cost per square foot versus the new
plan square footage and the cost per square foot.
So that needs to be the rub, right?
Yeah, that would be the big differential.
Give them one second.
We actually have this on.
Google Drive.
Dan, your B Street numbers are on the Google Drive.
so it sounds like you really did try to accommodate a lot of uh the requests so
yeah and with that like nine plus months right with what that means in terms of making those
changes and what you had to do to kind of get get to to kind of where you are from a buy right you
had the you had the 50 unit eight eight parking spaces kind of you could build right then
to not only was it wasn't by right uh well not by right but I'm saying you were you were ready
to go was approved correct ready to move and having this sort of wanting to do this accommodation
having this sort of wanting to do this accommodation and add that you needed to add
and add that you needed to add
this. I just want to understand what that meant. I'm pulling it up right now.
Okay. Our 50 units without the parking came out to a, and this is a per unit price because the
square footage varies a little bit between the residential and the non-residential came out to
per unit cost of about $145,000 without the parking structure per apartment. That came out
to a total of hard, soft labor and subcontracting, $11.78 million to do the project without the