I love Ron, but that's not really accurate.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
MI 2023-006-921-2431 North 26th Street.
I vote yes.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you.
Have a good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
So number six, MI 2023-007-017, 5700 Germantown Avenue.
There's a letter of non-opposition from Faith CDC.
Darwin Beauvais is the attorney.
Darwin will be joining us as a panelist.
I counsel, could you please state your name and spell it for the court stenographer?
Gladly. Darwin Beauvais, B-E-A-U-V, as in victory, A-I-S, as in Sam. I represent the
applicant, 5700 Germantown, LLC. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Our vice chair has just a few questions.
good afternoon counselor do you agree to read another refusal or stipulate to its accuracy
yes i do have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that is needed to
proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing yes i have thank you please proceed
Can we see my screen?
We can.
All right.
Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I have a not-so-controversial application this time or not.
So, before you is an application in a SAMX 2.5 commercial district.
It is for a telecommunications store in the Germantown section of the city.
Specifically, it's part of a mixed-use project that will feature the renovation of a historic building where the upper floors were vacant for over 70 years and the downstairs floors, the retail, ground floor retail, was unfortunately vacant during the Black Lives Matter riots.
We are looking to put, well, no, I strike that.
We are approved to put 16 affordable housing units that will range between 50 and 60% AMI, and we will be marketing to seniors, but we won't be limited to that just in case we can't fill the units.
I would like for the board to identify my client, John Serpernicus.
Sir Pernicus, he is in the audience, and he will be available to answer any questions.
He is in the audience and he will be available to you.
So I have my exhibits from 1 through 14, which includes the refusal, the tax clearance certificate, our deed, our ZBA application, photos, existing photos, our floor plan, existing approval, the zoning map, zoning code section, aerial views, our memorandum of law, emails of support from both the councilwoman's office and the RCOs.
and our letter and certificate of mailings and additional photos.
Now, with respects to the application, let me just start with Exhibit 7.
That is page 124.
and this is our approval giving us the ability to have retail sales of food beverages groceries
from the basement through the first floor with multi-family household living 16 dwelling units
above. Now, and let me just show you the building itself.
Can everyone see this? So, this is the building. We see it better now. Yeah. Yeah, this is the
building. So, the retail stores have been empty. Now, what the board is viewing is a corner
It's a corner property that has two separate retail frontages, and then you have several units of stairs.
These units have been vacant.
This is a historic building, and as I mentioned before in my opening, the upper floors have been vacant for over 70 years.
Just by way of trivia and to show how much of a commercial corridor, the variety that Germantown had, this used to be a banquet hall at some point in time, 70 years ago.
Now we are excited to convert this to affordable units, 16 in total, with the two retail frontages.
So, let's get back to our refusal here.
Our refusal, we have one use refusal.
And it centers around the fact that it is part of an overlay district and telecommunications stores are prohibited in this overlay.
Now, what I do feel that I'm one of the few lucky ones that having shared a similar experience with the board council, Hillary, that I used to be a staffer for city council.
What I would like to take the board's attention is to the ordinance that actually created this overlay.
It was introduced in 2005 when I was still a staffer, and it was introduced by not the current councilwoman, but the prior councilwoman.
And I am certain from my own personal recollection that she put this in place because she was trying to prevent the proliferation of mom-and-pop stores that will sell pagers.
If you recall, back in 2005, 2007, pagers were the choice of a lot of drug activities, and there was a lot of, and the overlay was put in place to try to introduce and curtail certain types of retail uses.
Mr. Chairman, members of the board, we present that we are looking to attract a national tenant.
We are looking to have either a Verizon, an AT&T, T-Mobile, or the like.
We are not, the applicant is a Class A developer and has not engaged in that type of activity that will warrant B or C or subclass tenants.
Again, this is where we are.
and if I could just show you the floor plan.
So here is the entrance
for what we hope will be Verizon.
what we hope will be verizon they haven't signed a lease yet so we do not want anything in our in
They haven't signed a lease yet, so we do.
our um uh notice of decision that limits us to verizon but we are seeking a national tenant
so i would like to rest assured this this here is the entrance to the new residential units
But that, as I mentioned before, has already been approved, and this blue area is what's before the board.
If I could show the board additional photos.
Here's a photo on Germantown Avenue.
Avenue. Here's photos of the interior of the retail space. Here's photos of our postings.
Photos of our postings. A view of Germantown Avenue.
the property is on the right of the screen as you can tell it used to be sneaker villa
another area and that concludes our photo so if we mentioned before that we did meet with the
community. This is our letter of opposition from the faith CDC. Non-opposition. Non-opposition,
yes. And here's our notice for the community hearing. We had not one, but two community
hearings were scheduled. After the first one, we actually fly the area and here's our certificates
of mailing. With that said, I would like to bring John on,
if he can raise his hand and identify himself in the virtual audience.
John has been allowed to speak. John, could you please state your name and spell for the sonographer?
john what's john's last name scopernicus john has been unmuted i believe they may have the
may be experiencing technical difficulties at this moment right um counsel you're an officer
of the court um your testimony is fine questions from the and just for a point of information this
is only about the retail sales of telecommunications that's correct everything else is approved
Okay, thank you. Questions from the board? No, Mr. Chairman.
Questions or comments from our attorney, Hillary Emerson?
Not at this time, Mr. Chair.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
Yes, Chair. We have Charles Richardson with their hand raised. They have been allowed to speak.
Mr. Richardson, just state your name, please, and spell for the stenographer.
Good morning. Good afternoon, rather, Mr. Chair. Charles Richardson, R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S-O-N.
Office of Councilwoman Cindy Bass from 508 City Hall.
Do you swear or affirm the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Certainly do.
Please proceed, sir.
The Councilwoman has no opposition to granting the variance for this telecommunications storm.
Thank you for calling us.
We appreciate it.
Is there anyone else in the virtual audience?
There are no other hands.
High Planning Commission.
Ron Benmar City Planning. Comprehensive plan recommends a change in zoning at this location from commercial mixed use 2.5 to commercial mixed use 3. Proposed telecommunications store is what would reasonably be expected to find in a major commercial corridor. The City Planning Commission recommends that the board grant the requested use variance.
Thank you. MI 2023-007-017, 5700 Germantown Avenue, I vote yes.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you.
Number seven, MI 2023-007-031, 4714 Griscombe Street.
Jermaine Harris is the attorney.
No RCO letter, but there was a meeting held 5-9-24 by Frankford NAC.
Jermaine will be joining us as a panelist.
Thank you.
mr harris could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
sure jermaine harris uh counsel for the applicant just concierge reality good afternoon
counsel could you just spell your name for the record please for the stenographer
Oh, I'm sorry.
Jermaine, that's J-E-R-M-A-I-N-E, Harris, H-A-R-R-I-S.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
One more time, could you state your client and the relationship to this property?
Client is concierge, a realty LLC, and they are the owner of the property.
okay our vice chair has a few questions for you sir sure good afternoon good afternoon counsel
do you agree to waive the reason of the refusal or stipulate to its accuracy i do have you emailed
in all the required documents and exhibits that is needed to proceed with this case five days in
advance of this hearing i have except for the uh rco position uh which we don't have as of yet
unfortunately. Understood. Please proceed and share your screen.
This is concerning
property at 47
4714 Grissom Avenue. And I'm just going to walk over, walk with you my exhibit,
walk over, go over my exhibit packet. This is a posting notice of posting of today's hearing.
this is the subject property here and what we're seeking to do what the applicant
concierge realty is seeking to do is they are seeking to make this into a five unit building
so there are three levels to this building and this is a side view this is more so at a lower
level, the first level, and the upper level. Now, this property does have a history.
This property has a history of having, back in 1993, this was approved as a two-dentist office
on the second floor on the first floor an optometrist office and in the basement level
the lower level was a three family dwelling
and before that back in 1965 this same building was approved as a dental on the first floor
dental and medical office a dental on the second floor a dental and an apartment on the second
floor and in the basement it was used or at a lower level it was an optometrist uh it was used
for an optometrist office so this building has a a a significant history of multi-use
for this of five different five different uh five different tenants so to speak this is a pretty
large building it's about 20 over 2600 square feet with a lot size of 20 about 2300 square feet
let's get to the uh drawings
So what is proposed here as far as the actual layout is in the basement or lower level,
it would be two bedrooms with the kitchen and the mechanic on laundry roll in the front.
With the first floor, it would be...
With the first floor, it would be two units, so it would be two bedrooms in the back unit, and it would be two bedrooms in the front unit of the first floor.
and it would be pretty much the same layout for the second level or the third floor it would be
two bedrooms and for the rear unit for the third floor it would be the kitchen it would be two
bedrooms in that area. Now, let's go back. So there is, on the lower level, there is a method
of egress, which is where there would be the one unit, which would be, which runs the length of
the building with the two bedrooms there would be the method of egress as to that also
uh the drawings also reflect a egress well for the for the two bedrooms that would be on this level
as well and again it would be it has its own separate entrance for that so apart from
the egress wells for the actual windows there would be a separate level
there would be a separate door for escape right here and as well as in the front as well
these are uh this is just framing out of the first and second floor
there's nothing and this is the current condition that it's in once they discovered that there were
issues with the zoning they just stopped doing what they're doing uh pending the
pending the resolution of their variance application.
Also, I would like to add that this particular block has several multifamily units.
so we have an active uh three unit and that would be for 4728 Griscom which is right down the street
we have a 17 unit uh on the same side of the block which is uh again 4732 Griscom
street my client uh purchased this property in may of 2022 and uh as the owner
and then we have the refusal the notice of refusal which was issued and it's an rsa 5
zoning uh district so multi-families are not permitted by right so that's the reason why
the proposed use of the multifamily was uh refused and this application was necessary
so again we are we are waiting on the result of the RCO and what they what this their meeting
summary is but this is our presentation as to what it is and we would ask that
once you receive the summary meeting summary of the community meeting from the frankfurt cdc
that you grant this uh that this request be granted it does have a long history a lengthy
history of five different tenants since 1965 of this and i would open it up for any questions
Mr. Harris, why don't you bring a representative of your client on to adopt your testimony?
Mr. Senegal, he should be on the call.
Mr. Segal, you have to raise your hand.
Mr. Segal has been allowed to speak.
Sir, could you please state your name and spell for the court stenographer?
Sir, could you please state your name?
It's spelled for the court stenographer.
Yeah, hi, good afternoon.
Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Zev Segal, Z-E-E-V, last name Segal, S-E-G-A-L.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Pre-proceed, counsel.
Okay. So, Mr. Segal, did you hear all of the testimony that I just gave to the board?
I did, yes.
and do you adopt meaning do you agree with the testimony that i just gave to the board as if
you were to testify i do yes uh and you don't necessarily have to say so but if there's anything
is there anything that you want to add to the testimony that i just gave um no i believe you
summarized everything i don't have anything else to end okay questions from the board
no mr chairman no chair no chair questions or comments from our attorney hillary emberson
not at this time mr chair questions or comments from the virtual audience
i see no hands planning commission uh ron i'm going to hold the vote on this till we hear from