do you agree with my testimony and adopt it as your own?
are you available to answer any questions
that the board may have for us.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
Questions or comments from our attorney,
Hillary Emerson?
Not at this time, Mr. Chair.
And Mr. Mifuchi, thank you for sending over
all those deeds separately.
I appreciate it.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
I see no hands at this time, Chair.
Planning Commission.
Thank you, Chair Bergman and board members. David Vecto with the City Planning Commission.
The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential multifamily zoning at this location.
The appellant seeks to replace the current low-rise public housing units with new low-rise units.
The City Planning Commission approved the introduction of a new street into what is currently a superblock to facilitate this project.
The proposed floor-to-area ratio variance and substitution of Class 2 bicycle parking spaces for Class 1 bicycle parking spaces are both consistent with the Commission's previous actions at this site.
The City Planning Commission recommends the Board grant both variances.
MI 2023-003-644-2411-43 North 11th Street, I wrote yes.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Counselor, you have your votes. Thank you.
Thank you, Karen. Thank you.
Thank you.
Number eight, MI 2023, 003-716-240 Hermitage Street.
Brandon Saverin is the attorney.
Letter of support from Ridge Park Civic Association.
Letter of support from Councilman Jones. An applicant provided 23 form letters of support from neighbors.
Mr. Saverin is coming back in as a panelist now, Chair.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, Mr. Saverin. For the record, could you state your name and spell for the court stenographer?
Yes, my name is Brandon Saverin. 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.
You swear or affirm, tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Could you identify your client and the relationship to the property?
So I have two clients in this matter. One is the title owner of the property. That's the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Catholic Archdiocese.
Catholic Archdiocese. The second applicant is under contract to purchase a portion of the
this. The second applicant
property and that is Studio Hill 1 LLC and I represent them both today. Mr. Holloman has just
a few questions for you sir. Good afternoon counsel do you agree to waive the reading of
refusal and stipulate to his accuracy? Good afternoon, Mr. Holliman. Yes, I do.
Did you email all of the exhibits and documents as required five days in advance to this hearing?
Yes. Thank you. Please proceed and share your screen. Thank you.
okay good afternoon members of the board um as mentioned i am here to speak about 240 hermitage
street um what's on your screen right now um is exhibit eight among the exhibits that i submitted
to the board and asked be moved into the record uh this is a zoning map from atlas that in this
blue rectangle highlights the property um the property is the uh holy family roman catholic
church and contains a building that formerly was the holy family catholic grade school
and just to orient you a little bit zoom out a tad um this is the ridge park section of
rocksboro so where my cursor is right now is the green lane bridge where a lot of folks cross the
Schuylkill River and to Lower Marion to get on the Schuylkill Expressway. If you were to proceed
northwest along Maine and Umbria streets and then make a right and go up the hill just a little bit,
the property is on Hermitage Street. It's a very large property. It's over 87,000 square feet. So
particularly in the context of Roxborough, we're talking about an enormous site.
uh this has been um you know in the hands of the archdiocese of philadelphia for a very very long
time um the vesting deed that i submitted among my exhibits was written in hand by hand in cursive
which i haven't seen in a long time um so just to go through a couple other exhibits um this is
exhibit nine um also from the atlas website an aerial view of the property i'll go through that
more more carefully in a moment um just to point out though uh in a rough overview the front of
the property along hermitage street basically serves as a front yard um there's also a rear
yard in the back of the buildings and then even further back there's a parking lot and even
further back there's a strip of uh woodland uh which is zoned differently than the rest of the
property. It's zoned SPOA. So important to note right off the bat, we're not proposing any
construction of new structures and hardly any new construction at all. We are certainly not
touching the protected woodlands. Very important. And then Exhibit 10 is a few slides that we showed
at the two RCO meetings we attended. So this is privately obtained photography that shows
the school building, which is vacant and has had a rough go of it of late. I believe within the
past year, a portion of the roof collapsed and had to be repaired. So the archdiocese is looking to
sell this portion of the property, but retain the rest. And my clients actually put together,
sorry, this is a side view of that same school building. My clients put together this image,
which I think is helpful before I show you the official zoning plan. So here's what this is all
about. The dashed red line indicates the extent of the portion of the property that Studio Hill
1 LLC is set to purchase from the Archdiocese. And what it contains is a small portion of the
parking lot, some additional blacktop area, some of which we're proposing to landscape,
and the school building, and a historic fire tower behind the school building that is going
to be used for storage purposes. The rest of the property, which consists of the Holy Family Church,
the rectory and the former convent which is now used as an assembly hall are all going to remain
you know in their their current state of use and remain owned by the archdiocese
as you'll see there's this sort of leg here by which the the property flows out to Fowler Street
by which the the property flows out to Fowler Street this i'm outlining with my cursor is
actually a separate property owned by the archdiocese and they have offered my client
an easement through it so that it can access so that so the future residents of the school
which we're converting to an apartment building can access their parking more on that in one moment
So here is the notice of refusal and referral.
And this is Exhibit 2F.
So the capitalized text at the top tells you in a little more detail about what's being proposed.
First paragraph says that we're proposing to subdivide the property and create some easements, as I just summarized for you.
The second paragraph talks about what Studio Hill 1 wants to do with the school building after it purchases it, which is to convert it to 16 dwelling units of mostly two-bedroom apartments.
I have interior floor plans to show you about that in a second.
It also talks about using the fire tower for storage, and it talks about the purchase of 13 parking spaces from the archdiocese, which will include the requisite van accessible ADA space, as well as covered bike parking.
Finally, the text mentions that the rest of the property, which is not being sold, is going to remain in use as religious assembly, accessory storage and kitchen.
And what it says is six single room residences. That's the rectory.
In addition to 41, which we've reduced to 40, I'll show you in a second, but we'll say 40 parking spaces that will be for the exclusive use of the church and the related uses.
So 40 spaces for the archdiocese activities, 13 spaces for my client, and my client is actually also leasing some off-site spaces from the archdiocese, which I believe will give them a total of 20 spaces, but that lease is not a subject of this application.
So 13 on-site spaces for the 16 apartments.
I know that was a little confusing.
I can go back and talk about parking count if you have any questions.
And just to show you the referral and the refusals.
So the referral is right here.
The Archdiocese requires a special exception to continue to operate the rectory as a rectory.
It has six bedrooms for clergy.
That's a pre-existing use. There's also some refusals for which we need variances. So at the bottom, this actually pertains to the archdiocese portion of the site.
There are currently only two ADA spaces. It's not clear that they were the requisite with. So as I'll show you in a moment on our plan, we basically are not officially eliminating these refusals, but we're dealing with them by providing on our revised plans the ADA spaces that they require.
So that's how we satisfied that. The rear yard death issue, I'll show you on the plan in a moment. That's a dimensional refusal. And then finally, sort of the central issue is that we need a refusal to use the school building as multifamily residential living.
keep going here I'll show you our zoning plan so this is exhibit 2j this is our proviso plan
that we're asking you to approve it's two pages long it's very similar to the zoning plan that
we originally submitted to L&I basically the only differences are that we've added some landscaping
which I'll talk about in a moment and then here are those new and improved ADA spaces serving the
church, which aims to satisfy the criticism of that last refusal. So that's, that's shown here.
We're just going to re-stripe this parking aisle to install these code compliant ADA spaces.
But let me zoom out a little bit. You know, the shaded portion of the plan is what Studio Hill
One is purchasing from the Archdiocese. And you can see how this is sort of a, what's called a
third more or less of the site and it shows how the parking spaces are going to be attached to
and part of what's being sold. The landscaping is going into some sloped blacktop. This was at the
request of the two RCOs that participated in this process. It's really a beautification effort
and because as the board knows there's a lot of rules now about landscaping in the code that are
relatively new. We had the planning commission preemptively review the location.
we have the planning commission preemptively review um the location the size the species of
the new landscaping that we're proposing and you can see right here that the planning commission
stamped the plan with approval so our our new landscaping would not generate any new refusals
and we have sort of official uh you know go ahead on that um we also show the easement that is
mentioned the refusal. So as you saw in the aerial image, the way that the parking lot is accessed
from the street is not changing. One iota, no physical change with regard to the driveway.
All we're doing is basically signing a piece of paper, a legal easement that officially
guarantees the apartment residents the right to drive onto the property. It's to ensure
that the archdiocese, not that it would ever do this, but it's to ensure that the archdiocese
can't change its mind later and say, hey, we changed our mind. You can't park there anymore.
So the fact that the easement is located in the rear of the property triggered a refusal,
but it's a little bit, I would say, of like a de minimis, like purely legal refusal in the sense
that we are not like paving additional areas to get this done that's already paved really just
giving rights to the apartment residents to drive on it but that triggered a refusal because of its
location um and again the woodlands in the rear not being touched that i showed you earlier
i also will show you i promise i'm nearing nearing the end a couple more minutes the streets
department did review the plan showing that driveway easement and gave zoning stage approval.
This is Exhibit 2E. It's the approval letter from the Department of Streets.
Exhibit 5 are the floor plans that are proposed for the interior of the school.
I'm going to go through this as quick as humanly possible. Three stories,
no additions to the building, no roof deck, nobody living in a basement. Basically,
most of these units are two bedrooms, just to pick on a few at random. You know, here is an
example of a two bedroom unit. Here's another, right? Let's say, on average, 1000 square feet,
something like that. Now, here's a one bedroom unit. It says 789 square feet. Why is this
bedroom only? Why is this unit only one bedroom? That's because of the fact that it is adjacent to
one of the emergency egress stairs. So we couldn't establish a second bedroom here given the way
there's no windows next to those stairs without really limiting the light going into the living
room. So just to say most of these units are two bedrooms. There's a handful that are one bedroom,
but this is definitely not an attempt to like shoehorn a bunch of studios into the building.
I'm going to go into sort of the RCO and the neighbors.
This is exhibit 13.
As the chairman mentioned, we obtained, I believe, about 20 letters, form letters of
support that were signed by residents of the Roxborough and Nandiamh communities.
This is a letter of support that was provided to us by the coordinating RCO, Ridge Park
Civic.
We attended two Zoom meetings. It says that there were 27 votes in favor and only two opposed
to the entire project. This is a letter of support from the project from Councilman Curtis Jones.
I also have, just to go back to this, I have a short email from the Maniunk Neighborhood
Council, an affected RCO that simply says that they share in Ridge Park Civics support of the
project. Exhibit 3 is a memo of law that speaks in full to why we meet the requirements of the
code for all of the variances and the special exception that we're requesting. I will not
read through this. I'll simply note that with regard to the use of the school as an apartment
building there is a case which looked at a similar conversion also of a catholic school
called marshall verse city of philadelphia um that found that um a a uh vacant school building
um it is a valid hardship to be able to say that it cannot be converted uh to uh any by right uses
to any by right uses, and that multifamily residential use can be held to be the minimum
and that
necessary relief to enable reuse of the building. And then finally, last exhibit,
this is a letter from the Monsignor of the parish, Holy Family Parish, that granted me
power of attorney to testify on behalf of the archdiocese's behalf. And that's because the
archdiocese did not send a representative today. I do have a representative from Studio Hill One
to adopt my testimony. And that's it. Let me have your testimony adopted.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. His name is Andrew Janos.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Hey, Andrew. Firstly, do you have authorization to testify today on behalf of Studio Hill One LLC?
And your organization is under contract to purchase what's shown as proposed parcel A on the subdivision survey?
That is correct.
So with regard to parcel A, did you hear my testimony in your zoning case this afternoon?
I did.
And was it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief?
Yes, it was.
And would you therefore adopt it as if it had been your own testimony?
Yes, I would.
Okay, thank you.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Chair.
Questions or comments from our attorney, Hillary Emerson?
Not at this time, Mr. Chair.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
I see no hands, Chair.
planning commission thank you chair bergman and board members david vecto with the city planning
commission the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential single-family zoning at
this location the proposed use of variants for multi-family units and rear rear yard depth
variants advance the comprehensive plan's goals to reuse vacant land and structures in innovative