Yes, we do.
did you email all of the exhibits and documents as required five days in advance to this hearing
yes we did thank you please proceed and share your screen thank you
um i'd just like to confirm that uh the the the board is able to see yeah
So this is a picture of the subject property. It's situated along South 23rd Street on the western side of 23rd Street between Waverly, which you can see a little bit here on the right-hand side to the north, and Lombard Street to the south.
to the north and Lombard Street to the south. The application is for the erection of a rear
addition to the first floor and an attendant deck above the new structure that we intend to build
off the back of the first floor. The initial zoning permit was refused for violation of
section 14-701-1 for falling afoul of the maximum lot coverage ratios permitted in the zoning
district. So we are requesting a variance to increase lot coverage by 10%, which will result
after the addition is put onto the first floor. As you can see from the packet that we submitted,
We have all of the requisite documentation, our client's tax clearance certificate, pardon me, proof of mailing to all of the proximate neighbors, including the USPS certificate of mailing.
We have a letter of non-opposition from the Center City Residence Associate, the designated RCO for this particular district.
we also have a letter of non-opposition slash support from one of the near neighbors
immediately adjacent to the subject property and
we have proof of the zoning posters having been posted on the subject property informing the
public of the of the project the board is also has access here to the architectural renderings
of the proposed addition and the deck.
And we also have Ms. Lisa Neely here,
who is the architect of record
in the event that the board has any technical questions
regarding the design plan.
And we also have Ms. Shelby Frazier,
the owner here to verify her testimony as well.
I'm mindful of the board's time
and no doubt the number of cases on the docket today.
I'm happy to go through each and every document in the exhibit list
if the board feels that's necessary.
Why don't you show us photos of the rear of the property
and then maybe the drawings?
Absolutely.
So this is a site plan and elevation.
and you can see here the existing structure, the home, and the shaded area here, the piano key
format, is the proposed bump out, which would expand the footprint of the kitchen on the first
floor and then also provide a deck above that would wrap around. I'll note that the property
immediately to the north at 416 has an identical deck set up as our client's home.
And so this design scheme would not be inconsistent with the existing layout.
I can show you here. We saw the front. Here's the existing the rear.
So the the addition would commence sort of just above the back door.
obviously would take away a little bit of the existing open area garden, but there would still
be sufficient space, open air space there. And then the breezeway here would also have
the deck wrapping around. The clients have lived in this property for a number of decades. They
wish to remain there as city residents um and age in place um this this particular row home is over
100 years old um and you know is not uh set up really for um maximized first floor living there's
no bathroom um and it's tight quarters and in order to accommodate the owners sort of continued
use of the property as they age on, this particular renovation would really improve
their ability to stay in the home for the rest of their years. Just again, to give the board some
um just again to give the board some context for the actual location of the property
uh it's it's just off the corner there 23rd and Waverly um everything that we're discussing is
is purely at the rear um construction would be staged through the home so there would be minimal
interference with if any uh foot traffic um or uh vehicular traffic along 23rd street okay
why don't you bring your client on to adopt your test tonight
thank you mr chairman um shelby could you raise your hand um
the uh the virtual hand raising function there at the bottom
um they've been allowed to speak hello hi this is shelby fraser i could you state your name and
then spell for the court stenographer yes um shelby fraser s-h-e-l-b-y fraser f-r-a-s-e-r
right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
yes i do please proceed counsel thank you mr chairman um miss fraser were you present just
now for the um presentation and testimony that i gave with respect to your property at 414 south
23rd street um and um did you hear and understand um all of my statements yes and do you adopt those
statements as true and accurate as if they were your own testimony yes thank you very much thank
you questions from the board no mr chairman
no chair thank you um questions or comments from our attorney hillary emerson
not at this time mr chair thank you questions or comments from the virtual audience
no further hands mr chair planning commission
thank you chair bergman sarah bomb with the philadelphia city planning commission
the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the existing commercial mixed-use zoning
proposed dimensions are consistent with nearby properties the city planning commission recommends
that the zoning board grant the variance thank you mi2023-003-579-414 south 23rd street i vote yes
Thomas Holliman, my boot is yes.
Jim Snell?
mr snell are you available yeah yes i'm sorry i'm having trouble with my uh
my uh my mouse i'm sorry about that okay i'm getting a good vote vote on that yeah my vote
is yes thank you thank you counsel thank you may we be excused mr certainly can okay have a good
day. Thank you all. You too. Thank you. Number four, MI 2023-003-182, 2832 to 34 East Pacific
Street. Brandon Saverin is the attorney. Letter of support from Port Richmond on patrol and civic.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, counsel. Could you state your name and spell
please for the court stenographer. Yes, my name is Brandon Saverin and that's spelled B-R-A-N-D-O-N
and then S as in Sam, A-V as in Victor, R-A-N as in Nancy. Right, do you swear or affirm to tell
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes, I do. Would you identify your client
and the relationship to this property? My client is Buildings Holdings LLC,
Sorry, Building Holdings, LLC, who is the owner of the property.
Mr. Holloman has just a few questions for you.
Good afternoon, Counsel.
Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to his accuracy?
Yes, I do, Mr. Holloman.
Did you email all of the exhibits and documents as required five days in advance to this hearing?
Thank you.
Please proceed and share your screen.
Okay, thank you.
Members of the board, the property I'm here to present on today is 2832-34 East Pacific
Street. The image on your screen right now is part of Exhibit 9D.
The image on your screen right now is part of Exhibit 9D in the exhibit binder that I submitted to the board last week.
This is a rendering of the front facade of the planned project on Pacific Street.
I would note that not only do we have support from the coordinating RCO by an 11 to 2 vote that was taken at the RCO meeting back in August,
and that letter is on your screen here. We also have a letter of support from the district
councilman, Mike Driscoll, councilman for the sixth district. And as you may know, generally
the council offices tend to take a position of non-opposition on many projects. So I found it
notable that the councilman supports this project explicitly. So what this project is...
Brandon, could you make sure Hillary gets a copy of that?
I sent it today, but it wasn't that long ago.
So the project is the demolition of a warehouse that's currently on the property that I'll show you in a moment.
and the erection of this building, which would feature 25 dwelling units and 10 car parking
spaces on a lot of 5,744 square feet. Before I leave this slide, I'll just note for you that
there's a mix of other warehouses, such as the one to the right in this image.
That's an actual photograph onto which the rendering was superimposed. So this is another
warehouse, whereas on some other sides of the property, there are residences. But you can sort
of see in this image that the residences are at a pretty good distance from this building. I bring
that up because that's one of the refusals that we obtained, as I'll show you in a moment. But
I'm not aware of any point at which one of the homes would be less than about 20 feet from our
structure. And you can sort of see that distance in this image. So the side windows of this
particular home on the corner of Pacific and Allen Street, you know, you can see how we're not
coming anywhere close to sort of encroaching on these windows or blocking their view here.
So I'm going to jump to exhibits five and six in our binder. They are images from atlas.phila.gov.
So the first one I'll show you is the zoning map. And you can see that our property is zoned ICMX. So we need a variance for residential use, regardless of the number of units, which is sort of funny, given that, you know, this is a mixed industrial residential block.
Where we are in the context of the city is near the intersection of Richmond Street and Castor Avenue.
Castor Avenue has some on-ramps here to I-95.
You know, Richmond Street, you may be aware, members of the board, is sort of the closest street that runs parallel to I-95 in this part of the city in Port Richmond.
So there's a series of blocks that are sort of orphaned or like sandwiched between Richmond Street and the retaining walls for I-95.
We are one such block. And I'll keep going here.
I'll show you an aerial image from Atlas.
And what this shows you is that there are across the street from us and to the north of us, other ICMX zoned properties that have very low value industrial uses.
These are not like light manufacturing, they are basically storage or parking. So that is sort of, you know, we heard at the RCO meeting, undesirable, because what you have on the other side of the property between us and 95 are some single family homes on Allen Street, which is a very small street that is literally in 95's shadow, as you can see in this image.
And, you know, because these industrial properties are not really used actively on the rest of the block, you have a situation where there's very little human activity on these blocks between Richmond and 95, particularly at night.
And it's lent to a situation where there's, you know, open air drug use and prostitution and just just a bad situation.
I'll just leave it at that. So we heard from neighbors and the leaders of the RCO that the introduction of more residents to this area is going to be a severely positive impact.
to this area is going to be a severely positive impact on the block.
I also just want to point out before I move on that what we're going to do is demolish the existing warehouse that's on the property.
That warehouse was not built by my client. It was there when my client purchased the property.
There are no building permits that we're aware of or zoning permits on file for this property.
So what we have is a deteriorating warehouse that was potentially built illegally, and we're going to tear it down. We're going to replace it more or less in its current footprint. But you can see in this image, there are pedestrian egress alleys that surround most of the property, and we're going to leave those intact. We're not going to build on those.
um i will show you our uh oh sorry i was going to show you the refusal last thing i'll do before
that is to show you some street level photos from atlas so this is our building on our property as
it currently stands again this would be demolished um it's basically a glorified indoor garage with
some weird windows on a second floor this is across the street from us this is what i mean by
the really sort of dire condition that especially our block of Pacific is in.
This is sort of used as occasionally an open air parking lot, but it looks like it's been
abandoned.
There's no maintenance and there's just all sorts of bad activity that occurs at this
lot frequently, again, directly across the street.
This is looking north away from 95.
You can see some other warehouses, as I showed you in those aerial images, not really like
high quality activity here it's it's basically just storage um and then this is looking south
again you can see sort of the the distance the significant distance between the end of our
property which is at uh this uh i think sort of this fence but we'll get into a site plan in a
moment in the nearest homes and that's 95 that's that raised embankment of 95 at the end of the
street. So now I'll go to the refusal, which is exhibit 2B and the zoning plan, which is exhibit
2A. Here's the zoning plan. I'm actually going to bring on the architect in a minute to walk
through this. So I'm not going to give you a whole lot of details at the inside of the building. But
the one thing I'll say, as you see in our site plan, is that we're proposing parking. So what
we have is 10 parking spaces. They're screened from the front street by our residential lobby.
You sort of come in and the spaces are tucked behind it. We're going to have a six foot high
opaque wooden fence that separates the rest of the parking lot from the surrounding properties.
There's going to be 10 spaces just to give you an image of that fence. Let's see. Here's sort of
what I'm talking about. This is at least for now the kind of fence that we propose separating off
the parking area from neighbors. Whatever we do, it will be code compliant. We're not seeking a
variance for the type of fence. And then the refusals back to exhibit two. I authored a memo
to the board at exhibit one, which lays out my full detailed long argument for why I think we
have qualified for variances with regard to these refusals per the sort of requirements under the
city code. But I'll just give you a summary of that argument here. Working from bottom to top.
So in the ICMX district, the parking ratio is one to two. That's the minimum requirement.
In a lot of other districts that you're probably familiar with, the parking requirement is one to
three. So if we were in a one to three district, we would be satisfying the requirement because
we're providing 10 spaces for 25 units. But because we're in a one to two district, the
requirement is 13 spaces. We've really, really tried to fit in the maximum number of spaces
possible without doing anything really expensive, like going underground or building an elevated
parking deck. We maxed out at 10. So that was the best we could do there. With regard to the
side yard requirement. So as I mentioned, on one side of the property, I think it's the southern
side, we are supposed to offset our building from the property line by eight feet. But to do that
would be to really reduce, if not almost entirely eliminate the opportunity to provide parking.
And we feel that non-compliance with this setback requirement doesn't hurt the public because we do
have the alley that separates most of the property from our neighbors, which we're leaving in place.
And if you saw in that aerial image, most of the homes in the area have pretty deep rear.
And if you saw that aerial image, most of the homes in the area have pretty deep rear yards.
So, again, I'm not aware of any point at which our building is nearer than about 20 feet from the nearest residential property.
As you know, in the ICMX district, any amount of residential use requires a variance.
Again, the current industrial structure is in very poor shape, may have been constructed illegally and it needs to go.
We don't think the market supports the cost of constructing a new industrial or commercial structure. We think residential is the only type of project that can attract arm's length financing here for new construction, and 25 units was the minimum that our development team felt it could do and get away with attracting financing.
It's also not clear, by the way, that in a non-residential district that one has to prove that they're proposing the minimum number of units, but that's a legal argument I've left to my memo.
And then finally, I showed you that fence that separates the parking lot from our neighbors. There are two sections of the code. One is 14705 and one is 14803 that compel us to have an eight foot planted buffer rather than just a fence.
And, you know, the reason we can't comply with that is, again, if we build in these eight foot buffers, we're going to lose a lot of parking on the ground level.
But further, we are providing the fence. And the reason for this requirement, I would say, doesn't really apply to this project, because one code section says that the reason for the eight foot buffer requirement is that we're in an industrial district, but we're not doing an industrial use.
Therefore, I would argue that we're not violating the spirit of the code, which is really concerning itself from separating industrial uses from homes.
I would say the buffer is not necessary because we're not proposing an industrial use.
And then the code also speaks in the 803 section about separating parking from homes.
But it's interesting to note on properties that are under 5000 square feet, and we're at 5744 square feet, so we're not that far over that, you don't have to provide the buffer between residential parking and residential homes, you can just do a fence.
So we would be excused from that section if our property was only, you know, a little bit smaller.
Therefore, I would argue the fence suffices for the purpose of those buffering and screening sections.
I think that that is more than enough for me.
If the board is willing to hear from him, I'd like to call on Chris Klass, our architect, just to walk you through the floor plans very briefly.
Go ahead.
Chris?
He's been about to speak.
All right, sir, could you state your name and spell for the court stenographer?
Christopher Klass, C-L-A-S-S.