ZBA Hearing - January 13, 2026

the location so that is essentially what we're asking the board to do is to grant what is

essentially an extension to what was previously approved use so that the business can continue

to operate i do want to point out that the business is currently closed and we cannot

reopen until there's a decision on the zoning in this case my client is here i believe he would be

happy to verify my testimony and just so i was the attorney on the original matter

uh and that this was granted back in 2020 uh for a three-year temporary at the time

okay why don't you bring your client on sure uh jimmy can you uh raise your hand virtually

to be identified

jimmy can you yeah

um do you see him then um I do not I let me see if I can look at the participant list here

I don't know it's been promoted to panelists chair okay all right thank you

uh jimmy are you there

jimmy declined to be promoted to panelists chair we can allow them to speak

okay now could you please state your name sir and spell for the stenographer

so you have to unmute yourself

and chair he's not unmuting okay um i guess uh zen will have to take your testimony because he's

you're saying he's not unmuted yeah i mean i see him but he's still muted

jimmy can you unmute on your side and uh acknowledge the zoning board

i'm sorry um okay i don't know maybe maybe you could just touch on a couple other things there

was issues relative with lni etc about the shower could you talk about that yeah so the shower room

with part of a bathroom that was actually put in by the original operator at the time we did

the first case, it's always been in part of the design. Because they do body massage,

sometimes people don't want to leave with oil covering their backs. And so there was a shower

available for them to clean themselves if needed. It's not used by every customer, but once in a

while it is used. And I guess the other thing was raised about people spending the night there. Is

and i guess the other thing was raised about people spending the night there is that

at anything.

anything i think it's because um the the operators have a small kitchen in there

so l and i took the position this looks almost like a residential setup if you have a kitchen

and a bathroom with a shower um it is a business it does close at night there's no one uh living

at the space so i i don't know i mean that was raised as a question but it's not

This space has never been used in a residential form.

All right, questions from the board.

Okay.

Well, can you put the plan up again?

Sure.

About the place.

And you have pictures too that show this.

So one of the massage rooms has like two beds in it.

Yes, the front room, the large room, yes.

I mean, that's a little, I mean, I, you know, that looks a little odd.

I believe that room is used when they're not doing like full body massage.

It's more facial or something that doesn't have a lot of privacy concerns where customers are willing to use that room when there's.

But generally, if there's not a lot of customers that or people that specifically need to use that room in conjunction, they would still keep it as one customer per room.

Okay. All right. And so what are the operating hours of this?

So they've been operating at approximately from 10 o'clock to 12 p.m. is what my understanding is.

11 p.m., I'm sorry, 11 p.m. So 10 o'clock to 11 p.m. is what they've been opening their hours.

Wow. And that's how many days a week?

Six days a week.

Okay. So Monday through Saturday?

Okay. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Other questions? Can we look at the, is this the basement

flood plan? There is no, no, I think that's just a, I'm sorry, I'll re-share that. Okay. This is

just a ground floor plan. This is also ground floor plan from a different angle. It's the same

plan. It's the same plan, just a different angle. Yeah, there's no basement to this space. Okay.

and then how many um therapists do they have on site at any given time so at the time we

made the application uh they had usually three to four on site three to okay so i think my one

comment is that this is there's a lot of service rooms um in the facility for there to be

only four people on site. I think my larger question would be like, for example, with

massage room nine at the back, it does feel like at some point they were squeezing in rooms

that aren't necessarily going to be in use. This is like a large massage facility for like, you

know, big national companies don't usually have this many service rooms in one facility. And so

So I'm wondering what's the thought plan around expansion or growth, and if the plan was just

because it had already been an existing facility to keep the rooms divided as they already

were.

So again, the current operator did acquire this about two years ago, and it's already

set up in this form.

That's why they didn't change it.

It would require knocking down walls, and it wasn't something they wanted to do.

As I indicated earlier, they are using some of the back rooms right now for storage.

There are no beds in them.

They're basically set up as storage rooms at the moment.

The talk with the community, the community actually asked if we would be willing to add

some kind of acupuncture service to the business, which my client is entertaining because, of

course, it needs, again, additional licensed individual that would be a medical license

for acupuncture in order to add that.

But that is something they're looking into.

So the space, because it's long and narrow, I think the original operator laid it out

with more rooms in the event that they are busy enough, they have the available rooms

if needed.

Okay.

And then just a question about, I think, trash and like biomedical materials.

Sure.

So what's behind this space is actually a large parking lot.

I don't know if we have a photo here.

i believe there might be a photo that shows it but the certainly the map here can show so this

this entire space back here is a large parking lot they have a rear yard space that's fenced

in as well there's actually a dumpster or trash cans available right in the back the

right in the back. Obviously, any biomedical stuff would be stored in the back area and then picked

obviously the any biomedical stuff

up by specialized companies. Although they don't have a lot of biomedical type trash, majority is

just wipes and those kinds of things that would be part of the trash. And there is parking also

in the back. So there's actually a lot of parking available for this property.

any other questions questions from our attorney Hillary Emerson not at this time Mr. chair

comments from the audience here the virtual audience

um I see no handshare planning commission thank you chairman and good morning David

Fecto with the city planning commission chairman and board members the comprehensive plan recommends

a change in zoning at this location from rsa 5 residential single family to cmx 2.5 commercial

mixed use the city rezoned this neighborhood in 1973 and a council supported map change this

property received multiple violations one as recently as september 2025 and was ordered to

cease operations since this is a commercial property which could not be easily converted

to residential use the city planning commission recommends the board grant the proposed use

variants for personal services but with a temporary variance. Zen, thank you for your presentation.

We're going to hold this and have a discussion among the board. We will vote next Wednesday at

9 30 a.m. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Okay, good. Number five, MI 2025 004019 323 Westerod Avenue.

david orphanetes is the attorney this is a resumptive hearing

and he's coming back in as a panelist chair

morning mr chairman council could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer

certainly my name is david orphanetes the last name is spelled o-r-p-h-a-n-i-d-e-s

do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth

i do um as you know this is a resumptive hearing um what we would like to have is a discussion

from you of the amended refusal sure and questions from the board and council

public testimony limited to what you say today and then planning commission if they want to take

a position okay certainly um all right so let me share screen hopefully you can see that

just so everybody knows just a very very quick refresher this is the subject property two

vacant lots located 323 and 325 West Gerard Avenue they've been blighted for an extended

period of time at least 20 years I have photographs going back to the early 2000s

showing two buildings that were vacant and bad state of repair or in state of disrepair

that I presented previously, I believe.

And then throughout the years, one building,

the one located at the corner, 323 West Girard, was demolished,

and then ultimately 325 was demolished.

It's, again, located at the northwest corner of West Girard

and North Oriana Street.

There's a property located to the north of us

that has a 14-foot wide alley that leads to the back of the property

located to the west, 1205 to 1207 North 5th.

North 4th. That alley we also have a right to, and I'm saying this because it's important regarding the amended refusal to use, and it prevents the building that's located to the north of us at 1206-08 North Oriana Street from utilizing that space to the south of them between our property and on the southern side of their property between the building that they've built there.

And that alley was reflected on the plans for the newer building that was constructed on that budding property to the north.

It's shown in our deed, and it's also shown in the deed for the property to the west on 4th Street.

At one time, the property to the west on 4th Street was stables.

And you can see in the language in the deeds, if I were to show it to you, which included with my updated exhibit book,

this alley was utilized to get in and out of the stable from Oriana Street, from the back of the stables from Oriana Street.

But our properties, both of our properties and our deeds reference the use thereof.

So the reason that's important is because we went to the community group.

We had four meetings with the community group, two with their zoning committee and two full community meetings.

And when zoning committee, community, zoning committee, community, usually they'll have one of each.

South Kensington Community Partners will have it.

But because this was on Girard Avenue, they thought it was a higher impact development project, although originally there were only six units in a commercial space proposed with three accessory off street parking spaces.

But because this was on Girard Avenue, they thought it was a higher impact development project.

But because of its location, they wanted to bring us back and they thought it was important to bring us back for a second round of review throughout that process.

And I can show you real quickly just within a rent and original rendering. Here was our original renderings. We had a commercial space at the front.

We had, oops, and then we had three parking spaces at the rear.

There was a support structure and an architectural element that extended to the rear, to the rear property line.

So our original refusal that I'll show you had, because we had six residential units,

which was more units that were permitted because of the overlay that applies to this property and the size of the lot.

we had a rear yard depth refusal and we had a small height refusal and that

height refusal even though the roof is higher than what's permitted our

parapet is lower so that the parapet height is the same height around the

outside of the building as that would be you would see with the by right

building but when we went to South Kensington they preferred that we do

away with the parking surprisingly you never know what you're gonna get and

instead increase the depth of the commercial space and basically take the

whole building at all four floors to the rear property line, except for a small outdoor space

in the northwest corner that you're going to see. And what they wanted us to do was to expand

the commercial space, make it bigger. And we went from commercial space of 657 square feet to 986

square feet, which you'll see on the floor plans. I think that's an increase about a third, 329

square feet, or half of what was originally proposed. And then in this back area, because

this is not a building the the economics don't warrant or don't support an elevator it's a walk

up we created an ada type b unit in the rear 603 square feet you'll see in the floor plans they

have a small outdoor area in the northwest corner um of their of the property for their unit to have

outdoor space then we pushed like i said the upper floors to the rear you'll see it in a couple

minutes and created outdoor space for the three rear units at the northeast corner of the second

third and fourth floors for units one three and five so here you'll see the original floor plans

with a smaller commercial space with the parking to the rear and then the set back upper floors

and the reason that they felt comfortable pushing the building to the rear and the reason i is the

reason i spoke about it before is because of that 14 foot wide alley that you normally wouldn't have

it creates open air even though it's not on our lot it creates space between our property and

our building and the building to the north. They face largely to the east. It's the front of their

building. And for that reason, the community group felt that it was acceptable to push our building

all the way to the rear property line. Again, we went in respecting other than the superstructure,

respecting rear yard depth, well, other than the superstructure, but accepting rear yard depth for

So the bulk of the building, open area, again, we had the variance for the height and the variance for the-

David, could you show us the new plans?

Sure, certainly.

So here you can see the amended zoning drawings.

We've pushed the building all the way to the rear except for this open area that we've created for some outdoor space for the ADA unit.

They have access out the back to that alley, which the whole building has the right to use.

And you'll see at each of the northeast corners, we've created an outdoor balcony or deck.

expanding the ground floor all the way to the rear.

The result is, again, you have a larger commercial space

in what we originally had.

You'll see a smaller space here.

You have the ADA unit at the rear,

and then the units above have largely gotten larger.

There's a couple that have gotten slightly smaller

with recreating the outdoor space to the rear,

but you can see the outdoor space at the rear

of the second and third floors.

The original refusal as mentioned,

we had the lot size for the number of units.

We had the building height, and we had the rear yard depth.

We had to amend the application because we were going to be increasing the lot size deficiency for the number of units by adding an additional unit.

The height did not change.

The rear depth refusal didn't change, although the amount of the building that went to the rear property line changed.

And then with the amended notice of refusal, oops, oops, there it is.

hmm there it is um we created an open area refusal that wasn't there before and that's

again by taking the whole building to the rear property line except for that a small amount of

open area in the northeast corner of the 48 square feet we generate an additional refusal

again all of these requests came and direction came at the request of the community um again

Again, some of it was a little of a surprise to us, but we were happy to comply and give them what they wanted.