organization proffered full support? Yes, I was. Thank you very much. I have nothing else, Mr.
chairman other than to move that testimony into the record and open for questions thank you
questions from the board no mr chairman no mr chairman questions or comments from the virtual
audience i see no hands at this time chair planning commission
I see no hands at this time chair. Planning Commission. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good
afternoon. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, David Fecto, City Planning Commission. The
comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential single-family zoning at this location.
The majority of homes on this block are duplexes or triplexes. The proposal for a triplex matches
the character of the block and considering that this is a pre-existing use, the City Planning
commission recommends that the board grant the use variance thank you mi 2021-005248-5003 pine
street i vote yes carol tenere my vote is yes thomas holloman my vote is yes james snell my vote
is yes ishmael shaheed my vote is yes thank you thank you all have a good evening thank you
Court reporter, we're going to hear one more and then take a quick break, okay?
Thank you very much.
Are we still on the record?
Yes, we are. I think we lost the chair. Can we pause off for a minute?
Number seven, MI 2021-005238-7111 Germantown Avenue.
state representative chris rab sent a letter of support councilwoman vast letter of support
and refers to rco support in the letter mr masters here mr masters is coming back in as a
panelist now thank you good afternoon mr masters could you state your name and spell for the court
reporter? Steve Masters, S-T-E-V-E, M-A-S-T-E-R-S. Right. Do you swear for him to tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do. Could you identify your client and the
relationship to the property in question? I have two clients here, members of the board. I
represent the owner, Philly Office Retail, and I represent the tenant, Lantern Theater Company.
Thank you. Our Vice Chair has a few questions.
Mr. Masters, do you agree to wave the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
I do, and it is a referral, not a refusal.
Okay. It appears that you've submitted all of the required documents five days in advance
of this hearing. Is that correct? That is correct.
Okay. You may proceed and share your screen.
Thank you. Please. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the board again, Steve Masters representing
Lantern Theatre Company.
I'm going to walk us through these exhibits, and then we're going to hear briefly from
Stacey Dutton, the executive director of Lantern Theatre Company. We'll have our architect,
Dick Winston, go through the drawings and the photos very briefly. And then we're going to
have our traffic engineer present the traffic plan. And this is all because at the community
meetings, there was some amount of controversy around the parking, the impact of a parking of
of this project so i do want to fill the record with with the necessary information in in the
event that there are um objectors who are going to be coming to testify so um exhibit one is the
refusal i'm sorry the referral for just um it the we really are applying for a a performing arts
theater and we and as you'll see we have a proviso that we've agreed to with the with the community
group east minority neighbors to limit this special exception to a performing arts theater
but at the moment lni has given us the category of assembling entertainment
exhibit two are petitions in support from near neighbors we have we have 12 of those
And then in Exhibit 3, we have the RCO letter of support from East Mentoring Neighbors.
They list a number of different suggestive provisos,
and I believe that at least one of their witnesses will be testifying to that later.
at least one of their witnesses will be testifying to that later.
For the meeting summary, we had 33 attendees voting in support and nine
opposed, and it was an overwhelming, it was 50 attendees total, it was an overwhelming level
of support from the community. Exhibit four, we have a letter of support from Councilwoman
Cindy Bass, from Congressman Dwight Evans, from State Senator Art Haywood, and from State
Representative Chris Rabb. The provisos that we're going to be talking about today are two. One is
to the change of use limited to performing arts theater only, and the second is that theater
patron parking to be managed in accordance with the attached action plan for travel and parking
for patrons of the Lantern Theater in Mount Airy, which was something that we worked closely with
the community on. So with exhibit six, we're going to get to the architects'
role and exhibit seven is the parking study. We'll just skip through those for the moment.
uh it's kind of a long parking study
and we'll go to the last few exhibits the zoning posters um that were posted on on both um
both street facing sides um
we have uh presentations to the rco that we will be going through and
And the tax clearance certificate, the deed and the lease, our application for a special
exception, our project information form, and the RCO notice letter, and we had a second meeting
with a flyer, and we have proof of mailing. So just to give you a brief introduction,
the Lantern Theater Company is a professional not-for-profit theater company that was established
in 1994 and has been producing a full main stage subscription series of plays in Center City at
St. Stephen's Theatre since 1996. The Lantern will continue to produce plays at St. Stephen's Theatre
and is excited to move its educational program and new artistic programming to the Mount Airy
Theatre. The Lantern secured a long-term lease to develop this performance venue in the former
Mount Airy Presbyterian Church located in the business district of Mount Airy on Germantown
Avenue and Mount Pleasant. The theater will become the home of the Lantern's educational programs,
including the student matinee performances and their theater school. They also plan to operate
a theater camp in the summers and to deepen relationships with partner schools in the
Philadelphia School District. The theater will have a capacity of 170 to 180 patrons
in a flexible black box style performance space.
And at this point, I'm going to call on Stacey Dutton
to raise her hand and come in
and just affirm that information up till now.
Could you state your name, please,
and spell for the court reporter?
oh i'm sorry you you were not able to hear that were you all right could you state your name and
spell for the court reporter stacy dutton s-t-a-c-y d as in david u-t-t-o-n right do you
swear firm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do proceed um good
Good afternoon, Stacy. So you have heard my testimony. Do you accept it as true and correct
and adopt it as your own? I do. Great. I would like you to walk us through the action plan for
parking. And I will share that on the screen. I keep getting muted.
So we're having technical problems with Zoom. And as we can assist, we will,
And as we can assist, we will, but it's some crazy stuff going on with Zoom, okay?
but it's some crazy stuff going on with Zoom. Okay.
Thank you.
Understood.
Steve, I'll just wait for you to...
Okay, yeah, I'm locating this.
Let's see.
It's going to be...
Number nine.
there we go yeah um so at the conclusion of our first meeting with east mountain area neighbors
we were asked uh to um create an action plan to explain to our patrons how we would um both
guide them to how to travel and park near the theater in such a way as to not inconvenience
neighbors and to direct them away from the residential streets, specifically like Durham
and Mount Pleasant and Chew, and towards the commercial corridor of Germantown Avenue,
including some of the public and private parking lots that are available to them.
So what you see here on the screen right now is our executive summary. We emphasize that we have
many multiple and frequent points of contact where we can share this information with our
patrons, printed materials, email correspondence, as well as phone calls to our box office and
always available on our website. And we committed to use, we commit to use all of these opportunities
to communicate to our ticket buyers about the best way for them to come to our theater in Mount
area and where to park, again, so as to help us be good neighbors and for them to be good
neighbors with us. Specifically, you know, in conjunction with the parking study that we
commissioned, we really wanted to direct them to parking on the commercial corridor to Germantown
Avenue, where there is ample street parking, particularly south of Mount Pleasant and down
towards Gorgas Lane and Carpenter. And we also reached out to the senior vice president of
market operations for Philadelphia of Acme Markets, who was quite welcoming. The Acme is
one block from the proposed theater at 711 Germantown Avenue. And Mr. Crosby,
it is a private lot it's a grocery store it's quite a large lot and he couldn't have been more
welcoming and said that you know our patrons are his customers whether they live in Mount Airy or
at another Acme in their hometown and that that that he would be happy to work with us to
allow parking there in particular because there is a large stretch of parking in that lot that
is very close to Germantown Avenue and quite far away from the grocery store entrance with a small
staircase from the parking lot to Germantown Avenue. It's why the logistics of this particular
lot make it so appealing for, frankly, for our purposes. Just scrolling on a little bit
about how we can communicate this to our patrons printed materials such as subscription packages
which we mail annually all patrons receive ticket confirmations by email and we include
information about travel and parking to our theaters in this conference in this ticket
confirmation a few days before their scheduled performance we send them another pre-show
reminder by email and their tickets which they now usually do print out at home fewer and fewer
people actually use the old-fashioned printed tickets that are sent we also have an opportunity
which we already do to include travel and parking information there our patrons often call into the
box office to seek information about where where to dine near the theaters where to park how to
travel whether public transportation or in their own cars and so we would commit to train our box
officers as we already do with our center city location to how to best direct them at mountain
area as well and then of course we will always have information about travel and parking available
on our website we included in this action plan for the community some samples of what these
communications with our patrons look like, including just if you scroll through, this
um including just if you scroll through this would be information that would be on our website
would be information that would be.
um and and we want to specifically uh say that that you know this this is of mutual interest we
want to be uh a good neighbor um and and participant in this well-established community
um several members of the lantern staff including myself and the artistic director live in mount
Mary, so it's a community we know well and we certainly wish to maintain good relations in.
So what you're seeing now is actually a web page that we created and made available for community members and near neighbors to view
with all the travel and parking information,
including, for example, the residential streets that we would recommend that they avoid
and not spend time on and not inconvenience folks or include themselves. And then where,
for example, there's a Philadelphia Parking Authority lot, where the ACME lot is, etc.
And then just scrolling to the final pieces that we included in the action plan are samples of our tickets to print at home, which would, in this case, it's another different venue, but it includes lots of information to help patrons prepare, including directions to the theaters and live web links to get more information.
Similarly, this is a printed home ticket, and this box has information about parking and where we direct patrons.
And this information is, you know, specific to the venue where we are producing the give and play.
And this is just a little bit of marketing collateral for our subscription and our education program.
In particular, this, just scroll up just a tiny bit, Steve.
On the right is a photograph from our annual production of Romeo and Juliet for Philadelphia's middle and high school students.
So that, I think that that hopefully explains, you know, how we responded to our first RCO meeting with East Mountaineers and we had a really productive second meeting with E-Man.
and which had the successful outcome that Steve described.
All right. Thank you, Stacey.
So we are going to jump to our parking engineer
to briefly share some slides on the parking study
because you've seen now how we're going to tell people
who are patrons of the Lantern where to park,
but now we're going to demonstrate to you
that there will be parking spaces for them to use
so that they won't be parking in front of people's homes
in the residential areas near the business corridor.
So Lori Ware, can you raise your hand at this point?
Ms. Ware, you can unmute yourself
and wait for the chair, please.
Could you state your name and spell for the court reporter?
Absolutely.
My name is Lori Ware, L-O-R-I, Ware, W-A-R-E.
Right.
Do you swear for them to tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I have found.
Mr. Masters, in this presentation,
will you make sure that we don't go back
and cover what's already been covered?
Because I think you did a fabulous job.
She did a fabulous job of talking about
where not to park and where to park.
Yes, our engineer, Lori Ware,
is going to describe to us the studies
that were done to demonstrate
that there is availability of parking
in those areas.
But first, I would like, Mr. Chair,
if she could be declared to be an expert
Um, and, and if you, uh, we have her, her resume here, um, but, um, it's where, can you just
briefly describe your expertise and your role at, at your, um, engineering company?
Um, I am the, um, manager of traffic services for Dawood Engineering.
Uh, our company is headquarters are based out of Harrisburg.
Um, I have been with Dawood Engineering for, um, almost 12 years now.
My years of experience actually are at 16 with a prior firm as well. I've done multiple traffic studies and parking studies, both in Philadelphia region and actually in New Jersey as well.
I have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in transportation engineering, and I hold a professional engineering license and a professional traffic operations engineer license as well.
i asked if she could be recognized as a as a traffic and parking expert absolutely she is
okay thank you um all right um it's where this is a graphic
All right. This is where this is a graphic. I'm going to make it a little smaller so we can all see it completely. This is a graphic prepared by an active leader of East Manoray Nativeverse. And can you tell us what we are looking at here?
Yes. So the areas in green in particular are the areas in which we have performed a traffic study, a parking study.
And what that means is we went out during the proposed times of the listed plays and performances and actually did an active count.