But you have, you said that the building as it is with the 20 units is fully occupied.
Correct.
And that the square footage that we're talking about is.
We have, we have 3,000 square feet that's vacant where the veterinary practice.
Yes, but the occupied part of it is how much?
You're asking the square footage of the 20 units?
Matthew, you have that figure.
again i think it's approximately 14 000 square feet okay so you're saying that
you can't you can't afford the debt service because of the not being able to use the 3 000
square feet when you have 14 000 square feet for which you are getting whatever um rent so whatever
you are getting for the other yeah but but what we have you know we obviously have the same level
of operational expense on the building we just we just have 75 000 of income that you know we've
lost which we've not been able to backfill and to be able to supplement correct and frankly even in
the residential use that we're proposing here we actually believe we'll come in in an income level
that will be below what we were earning from the from the retail but it's the best of the
worst options that we have in front of us given the fact that we've not been able to lease the space
over the last two and a half years
okay thank you questions or comments from our attorney
um i we this is a case where we may um want to get a corrected refusal i'm just a little concerned
that the way it's written it sounds like it's 24 new units but it's actually four units added
to the existing units for 24 total and it references lot one and lot two without the
addresses and that there are cross access and easements there so i'm just a little concerned
that the refusal is um i don't know what you know what the board's ultimate decision on this case is
but um i think the refusal is is not well written and could cause confusion in terms of what's
actually um being proposed so i think that's something that um we can we can consider depending
on where this how this moves forward we're hillary we're happy to ask the plans examiner to write it
in a more clear way that's if if the board would like that's fine with us okay thanks all right
if the board would like that's fine with us okay thanks all right questions or comments in the
question
virtual audience yes chair I have one hand and that hand is John Hunter okay
good evening mr hunter good afternoon or good evening uh yes um yes this is john hunter j-o-h-n-h-u-n-t-e-r
right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
i do um you know mr hunter our new policy is you if you can try to get your comments in the two
minutes i do think we have letters right am i right hillary we have a letter from a couple
different organizations of relative to this but we want you to have your chance to say what you
think of this project if i might say before that i think the idea that um a coordinating rco can
give its full testimony in two minutes is ridiculous but i'll address that separately
And so I will do it as quickly as I can.
Well, thank you.
Well, you know, Mr. Hunter, just so you know, we didn't do this.
We had put this policy out for a while.
So it may be ridiculous to you, but I do think we have a pretty long letter from you, too.
Am I correct?
It's a one-page statement, yes.
Right. Thank you. Go ahead. Proceed.
Okay. Thank you.
But I also want to, not only from the letter, but to respond for the actual testimony presented today,
which is slightly different from what was presented at the RCO meeting.
And that specifically is the testimony of Matthew Kursk because it's a little confusing
because at the beginning of his testimony, he did mention 44 feet plus as the proposed level of the floor.
But at the same time, he also said that we will have to provide a floor level of the BFE plus 18 inches,
which is almost two feet higher than that which we point out in our letter and that wasn't made
clear at the public meeting but and also i don't think it's clear because if you look at the floor
plans and uh bear with me rachel if i could ask you to uh share your screen and show the floor plan
sure uh which the floor plans that scott did from design yeah give me one again sure um
So there are two issues. One is flooding, and one is the design and disposition of the four units.
On the flooding issue, Rachel cleverly sort of skirted around it, but we have evidence of what happened during Hurricane Ida in 2021.
At one of our meetings, the owners did mention that there was limited ingress into this floor level from Ida,
which indicates that the BFE is, if anything, a little lower than is probably reasonable.
Because although it's misnamed as a 100-year flood, to give the people the impression,
and it only happens in one year, we know that floods will increasingly occur
and will increasingly occur severely and a lot more frequently than once in 100 years.
So we're concerned about flooding, and we're concerned not only about flooding within the units,
which would be disastrous but as you can see the two egress stairs from this building when it was
designed back in 2012 by the previous owners not these owners we understand that that the two egress
stairs for the whole building discharge at the rear of the building which is almost down at the
canal level so and it's below the bfe once you get to the bottom of the ramp that you could see on
the photographs that rachel showed so that is something that we find quite concerning for just
the whole building but if if you look at the arrangement then of the four units
you will see that the two units at the top have windows along that north
elevation at the top of the screen beyond those windows literally is the
canal the canal laps against the side of the building and those windows are quite
large windows and those two units I would describe as as reasonable they're
attractive, they would be attractive units, forgetting the issue of the floor plan, of the
flooding, sorry. But if you look at the other two units on the bottom left-hand corner of the
plans, you'll see the one along the left-hand side, which is Leverington Avenue. And Leverington
Avenue is substantially higher than the rear of the property because the road is rising up to go
over the canal so the unit on the very left with those three windows those
With those three windows, those windows are high level windows at the sidewalk level, which you can see from the photograph that Rachel showed and described as very fixed proportion windows.
windows are high-level windows at the sidewalk
So that unit, which you can also see, has a very narrow living space that is probably not dimension, but seven, maybe eight feet wide with these very high windows.
And then it has an internal bedroom.
similarly the building the flat the apartment next to it on the bottom of the plan has two
windows that have been will have to be punched into the side wall of this 150 year old building
and it will look out onto a tunnel which allows cars to exit from the parking lot behind the
building so we would consider that those two units knowing the board's concern
about semi basements and basement units for living spaces are not acceptable as
units and those that was the core of our concern that some of the units are not
acceptable and some of the other units would still be susceptible for flooding
in a flood event not so much if they do have to raise the floor levels but for the egress out of
the building and I would just point out about something about these plans that just confirms
what we said about the presentation is you can see that Scott had drawn in after our first meeting
ramps in the sort of the blue hatch corridor areas on the right hand side there's a ramp there but
that ramp isn't long enough.
It would have to be 24 feet long to meet ADA requirements.
And then the other area,
where there are just at the bottom of the corridor
in the blue, there are just two steps,
which will not be adequate to make the over two feet
transition that would be necessary.
So that is why we had to listen to this testimony
and respond accordingly because it's different
from what was said at the public meeting.
Thank you very much.
Rachel, do you have any questions to John?
No, I just, I just, yeah, I guess I would just ask, John, are you a civil engineer?
Are you an expert?
I'm an architect with, registered architect with 40 years experience.
But are you a civil engineer?
I don't need to be a civil engineer.
I'm just, John, it's a yes or no.
It's just a yes or no.
I'm asking if you're a civil engineer.
No, I'm not a civil engineer.
Thank you.
just if i could just respond with one comment in regards to wait wait wait here's why i want you
to wait let's see if there's other people and then you can respond to all together okay do
we have anyone else with their hand up no there are no more hands hello no more hands no more
hands here okay thank you rachel you gotta have to respond to something else uh yeah i just want
be able to have our team respond to to john's comments the whole team rachel one at a time
uh just matt and scott okay just our experts let's go go ahead matt so just in regards to my
testimony i believe my testimony stated that the existing elevation is that 44.22 and we do plan
to raise it to be to meet the requirements of the city ordinance with the floodplain
And then in regards to the flood data, again, we're using the FEMA data that gives us the floodplain elevation, and that's the data we have. It's used industry standard on what we designed to.
Thank you. Scott?
yeah i mean i would just uh echo that a little bit in regards to some of the designs uh or the
ability to raise the floor additionally pass where where we need to we have abilities to
add additional ramps and stairs within the corridors um and at that phase we can tweak
a little bit of the corridors if we need to but we do have ways to do that um that'll be handled
with the building permit level and obviously as matt stated we'll be going through floodplain
management review with the cities to make sure that we do comply with all of those building codes
thank you planning commission
good evening nina solomonic with the planning commission could you spell your name for the
stenographer yes s-o-l-o-m-o-n-i-c do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing
but the truth yes go ahead the comprehensive plan recommends a change in zoning at this location
from i2 medium industrial to rm1 residential multi-family this property was granted a
variance in 2012 for an animal hospital on the ground floor and 20 total units
total units the property is located in the special flood hazard area section 14704
the property is located in the special flood hazard area section
for the proposal to convert the commercial space on the ground floor into four dwelling units
would endanger public health safety and general welfare and increase flood danger and the
likeliness of loss of property this property has a history of flooding and the proposal relies on
the existing egress route that is entirely below the base flood elevation the zoning code requires
residential development in the floodplain to be elevated to the design flood elevation which is
18 inches above the base flood elevation the first floor elevation is 44.5 feet and the base flood
elevation is 45 feet unlike the prior commercial use residential development is expressive expressively
prohibited from relying on dry flood proofing and must instead meet elevation requirements designed
to protect life safety therefore the planning commission recommends that the board deny the
requested variance for four dwelling units and just respond chairman sure so she just mentioned
that the property should be remapped or rezoned rm1 which is residential multi-family one which
is in keeping with exactly what we have and the lot is over 12 000 square feet so a little confused
about this would be exactly in line what she's suggesting it or the planning commission is
suggesting it be remapped at in addition i don't know why it's getting lost but the 18 inches we
are suggesting we're going to be doing that at the but that's a building code requirement so
we also have to meet all the building program brands which would include that additional 18
inches from the bfe which was what matt has now said a few times so we will be meeting all of
those requirements and we wouldn't be able,
we can't move forward to doing any of that
without the prerequisite zoning approval.
Additionally, as mentioned,
if there's no viable use of this space at all,
it's considered a taking.
So if we have shown that two and a half years
of trying to get commercial here
and we're willing to comply with the building code
for any flood mitigation,
and then we're denied any viable use of this property,
that 3000 square feet becomes unusable
and becomes a taking so what we're trying to do with just this application again is and again
there is already two units on the ground floor is just have a viable use and we'll go through
every mitigation effort that we need to with approval through the city department of licenses
inspections and any other agencies that require to to meet those those requirements thank you so
um you know there's been a lot of uh issues raised here and um what i want to do is take this back
to an executive session that the board can really we could talk to each other about where we stand
with this we're going to do that on the 14th and we will vote at 2 p.m on the 14th next week
thank you all thank you chairman members thank you right
number 13 mi 2025-005-733-6709 nessington avenue and dennis george is the attorney
mr george
and the storage is promoted thank you
Mr. George yes I'm with you all right thank you Mr. George could you
please state your name and spell for the stenographer dennis george d-e-n-n-i-s g-e-o-r-g-e
all right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
i do counsel could you identify your client in a relationship to this property
yes uh the cl the owner of the property is six jr realty inc and its affiliated entity pacifico
Hyundai. And I would say that the Southwest Philadelphia Consortium of RCOs issued a prior
letter of support, and our Vice Chair has a few questions for you. Yes, sir. Good evening. Have
you submitted your documents five days in advance of this hearing? Yes. And do you waive the written
of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy? Yes. Okay, thank you. You can share your screen
and proceed with your case. Thank you. This is an application to, for a sign to replace an existing
If we could promote Nicholas George, he can submit the signed photograph.
Mr. Chairman and board members, we've appeared before the board in September of 2024 and presented the application at that time.
Mr. Chairman and board members.
Unfortunately, what occurred was in the oral application and testimony, it was for replacement size sign of approximately 30 feet.
However, the documentation showed a lesser sign and when the permit was issued, it came back as a lesser sign.
And now what we had to do was resubmit an entire application for the replacement sign.
Nick, could you show the sign itself which we're asking for?
This is the sign that exists on the left, which is the Pacifico Auto Group.
And the manufacturer of Hyundai has insisted that all Hyundai dealers now change their sign to reflect the sign that you see on the right.