Thank you.
Okay, Chair, we have 17 attendees and we can start as you wish.
Thank you.
Good morning.
My name is Bill Bergman, and I will be chairing this morning's EBA hearings.
With me is our Vice Chair Ismail Shahid.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
Our Board Member, Thomas Holliman.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
And our Board Member, James Snell.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
Also present is Hilary Emerson, our attorney, and our executive director, Tanya Sunkett.
Here's our virtual format. Be advised, these proceedings are being recorded.
The video will be available by contacting tanyasunkett at phila.gov.
For the benefit of our court stenographer, we ask attorneys and witnesses to identify themselves before testifying.
If you're participating by phone and you wish to testify, press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute.
To enter an appearance statement, call 267-270-5548.
Leave your email address and the address of the property in question.
And finally, the question answer box on the screen is not for comments or testimony.
All comments should be directed to our executive director, Tanya Sunkett.
Let's look at the continuities that we have for this afternoon, this morning, I'm sorry.
Number one, MI 2021-004-659-2126 East Lehigh Avenue.
There's a request for continuance.
Is Darwin Bovee present?
mr bovay um i don't see him in the audience here mr bovay if you're in the audience raise your hand
yes he's going to speak okay sorry good morning mr bovay good morning good morning
mr chairman members oh go ahead could you please state your name and spell for the
Yes. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name is Darwin Beauvais. That's B-E-A-U-V-A-I-S. I'm at the law firm of Obermeyer, Redman, Maxwell, and Heppel. And I represent the applicant owner of 2126 East Lehigh Avenue.
Do you swear our firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
i do i do you explain why we need a fourth listing or a fifth listing and and it it wasn't
my understanding that this was the fourth or fifth listing um i just came on to the case
he had prior counsel um i do know that there's a lot of community issues and i just wanted to
take a a reset so i so i can approach it um the the members of the board mr chairman you know i i
I do like to present the most credible arguments, and that's a result of true due diligence on my part, and I wanted to take that same approach with this matter.
If it looks like that the board doesn't want to entertain rescheduling for a third state certain, we're more than willing to be the moving party.
But again, I'm seeking this continuance in order to make sure that I can put the best foot forward for this matter.
So, Mr. Bovee, this case will be continued, but a smart must be tried.
Okay. All right.
Thank you, sir. Thank you for calling in.
Number two, MI 2021-003-189-813 South 17th Street.
There's a request from the RCO for a continuance, but we do not have exhibits for this listing.
Is either the owner or an attorney present for this location?
Excuse me, who's the attorney here?
David Orphanides was at one time an attorney.
Okay, thanks.
If the only attorney of this property is in the audience, please raise your hand.
If the only attorney of this property is in the audience, please raise your hand.
Mr. Orphanetes.
Mr. Sample.
Or Mr. Sample, please raise your hand.
I don't see no hands, Chair.
Thank you.
So MI 2021-003-189-813 South 17th Street.
This is the fourth listing.
We still do not have exhibits.
I vote to dismiss.
Thomas Holloman.
James Snell.
I vote to dismiss.
Ishmael Shahid.
Voters to dismiss.
Thank you.
Number three, MI 2021-002-020, 2601 West Huntington Avenue.
This is a request for continuance.
Verne Anastasio is the attorney. Would he please come forward?
Mr. Anastasio has been promoted.
Good morning, sir. Good morning, Mr. Chair.
Can you please state your name and spell for the court reporter?
Sure. Verne Anastasio, A-N-A-S-T-A-S-I-O.
Right. Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do. Council, this is the fifth listing in this case. Could you explain to us where we stand and where we're going with this?
Yeah, Mr. Chair, I understand it's the fifth listing. I respectfully request one final continuance.
And it, of course, can be marked must be tried.
There are in this particular area, there are several very active RCOs.
So each and every one of them needs to be engaged.
I have gotten a letter of support with provisos from a majority of them.
The one RCO that is asking me to seek a continuance to return just one more time is the coordinating RCO, which is Strawberry Mansion Community Concern.
So for the sake of having universal support, everybody on the same page, I'm asking to give me one more chance to make that happen.
And I'm confident we're going to be able to do that.
As I said, all other RCOs have been, are now on board.
Thank you, sir.
MI 2021-002-020-2601 West Huntington Street.
Cases continue.
Mark must be tried.
Thank you.
Number four, MI 2021-005-130-3424 North 22nd Street.
This case is continued.
Mark must be tried. Number five, MI 2022 003 389 303 Brown Street. This case is continued. Mark must
be tried. Mr. Chair, this is Hillary. And with that one, I just want to note that that is number
b because there are two 303 brown streets okay thank you number six mi 2022 003 279 2810
north 22nd street this case is continued mark must be heard
number seven mi 2022 003 288 303 brown street number c this is the first listing
Cases continued. Number eight, MI 2021-001-959-2349 North 20th Street.
Donald Benedetto is the attorney. This is a request for a continuance. This is the fifth listing.
Mr. Benedetto.
out. Mr. Benedetto, if you're in the audience, can you please? Benedetto. Benedetto? Yes. Can you
raise your hand, please? Mr. Sher, it looks like someone else may be present for him. I have a
Joseph Rutella in the audience with his hand raised. I will allow him to speak. Can you hear me?
Yes. Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter? Yes, sir. My name is
Joseph, last name is Rutella, R-U-T-A-L-A. I'm here on behalf of Mr. Benedetto. Okay. All right.
Do you swear or refer to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes. Sir, this is
the fifth listing. We want to know where you stand with this case. Mr. Chairman Board, we had an
attorney in the office who was working on this. He had a very sudden, and I don't want to put it on
the record a very sudden and unfortunate departure from our office sure
A very sudden and unfortunate departure from our office for some personal medical reasons.
We were unaware of this hearing and the file until this literally happened maybe three days ago.
Until then, we're pulling together the file and we need just one more listing.
He did inform us yesterday, late yesterday, that the RCO didn't attend the meeting.
um but we're still we need to find the file to put the exhibits together to turn them in
so so sir mi 2021 001 959 2349 north 20 street this case is continued and mark must be heard
thank you and with that may be excused yes you yes you can thank you
Um, number 14, MI 2022, 000435, 7137 Woodland Avenue.
Vern Anastasio is the attorney.
This case is continued.
Mark must be tried.
Number 15.
Chair, excuse me, Chair, I have a Craig Melodosian with his hand, with the hand up.
May I allow him to speak?
Good morning.
Craig Melodosian.
Good morning, Craig.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, Chair.
Craig, C-R-A-I-G, last name Melodosian, M-E-L-I-D-O-S-I-A-N.
Right.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
And you're here for 7137 Woodland Avenue?
Yes, Chair and Board.
I am the coordinating RCO.
We do support the request for continuance.
There was a productive meeting this past Monday night with Mr. Anastasio's colleague, Mr. Cook.
There does need to be issues that are ironed out in writing, most likely by Proviso.
Uh, there's also an issue of a trailer on the, uh, on the parcel that was used previously for used car sales, uh, representatives of the, uh, application team indicate that they are willing to give up, uh, their, their portion of their application for sales, uh, therefore that, that trailer needs to be addressed.
I would like to point something out. I hold Mr. Anastasio and the members of the zoning bar in
the highest regard. We do not swear people in at our RCO meetings, but we always expect the
applicant's team to be truthful and honest. We're not there to embarrass anyone by showing pictures
that conflict with their testimony. We're always trying to constructively engage, and we appreciate
and all the support that the board gives our community.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for taking the time to call in.
MI2032-000666-2452 West Toronto Street.
This is a request for continuance
from Swampoodle Neighbors.
is Lynn Nichols, Lynn Nichols is the attorney. So this case is being continued. Mark must be
tried. So that's MI 2020. Yes, Hillary. No, I just want to note for the record that
I communicated with Ms. Nichols and she was in agreement with the continuance requested by the
RCO. Thank you very much. So MI 2022 000 666 2452 West Toronto Street at cases to continue must
must be heard next case. And then I have a few cases with no exhibits. Number 13 MI 2021 005034
169 West Spencer Street.
Tamika Pearson is the owner. No exhibits.
This is the third listing.
Ms. Pearson, if you're in the audience, raise your hand.
Do we see a hand?
I don't see any hands here. Thank you so number 13 MI 2021 005034 169 West Spencer Street we have
no exhibits third listing no one appeared for the last listing. I vote to dismiss.
I vote to dismiss.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is to dismiss.
Jane Snell, my vote is to dismiss.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is to dismiss.
Thank you.
Number 17, MI 2021-004-975-5840 Willows Avenue.
Olivia Manuel is the owner.
No exhibits.
this is the third listing. Ms. Manuel, Ms. Olivia Manuel, if you're in the audience,
can you please raise your hand? And I see no hands here. MI 2021-004-975-5840 Willows Avenue,
this is, there's no exhibits, third listing, I vote to dismiss.
Thomas Holloman, I vote dismissed.
James Snell, my vote is to dismiss.
Mishmel Shahid, my vote is to dismiss.
I also, I'm going to move on to withdrawals.
Number nine, MI 2021-005-117-534 South 4th Street.
This case has been withdrawn.
Number 10, MI-2021-002-835-235-North 31st Street, this case has been withdrawn.
And number 12, MI-2021-005-118-426-28-Centner Street, this case has been withdrawn.
And number 16. MI 2022-000-646-5100 Graves Avenue. This case has been withdrawn.
Hi, Chair. Excuse me, Chair. I have a hand up from Strawberry Mansion Community.
I will allow them to speak.
strawberry mansion hi can you hear me okay good morning it's bill could you please state your
name and spell for the court reporter it's bonita cummings b-o-n-i-t-a c-u-m-m-i-n-g-s
the strawberry mansion community concern rco okay do you swear to firm to tell the truth the whole
truth and nothing but the truth miss cummings yes i do what case you talk want to talk about
Well, I thought I heard you just say 235 31st Street, but it's 2351 for the withdrawal.
So I just wanted to get a correction for that.
Or I didn't hear you say 2351, but 235.
Okay, let me see here.
2351 North 31st Street.
Thank you.
That case has been withdrawn.
And thank you for calling in and helping.
Okay, we're going to move on to our add-on list.
number one, MI 2022, 005-154-4720 Madison Street, I vote yes with proviso.
Excuse me, Mr. Sheriff, sorry, that's Manchin Street, not Madison Street,
so I have to be clear for the record. Okay, 4720 Manchin Street, I vote yes with proviso.
Her amended refusal dated 4-21-23.
Thomas Holliman, my vote is yes with provisos.
James Snell, my vote is yes with provisos.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes with provisos.
Number two, MI 2022-006-535-118 Hillcrest Avenue.
appeal dismissed as untimely filed
appeal dismissed to untimely
appeal dismissed
ishmael shaheed appeal dismissed
Jim, could you go over one more time? We lost you.
We lost Jim for a minute. We do have the three votes.
We do have the three votes.
Number three, MI 2022, 003-780-1916 West Burke Street.
I vote yes.
Thomas Hullman, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Number four, MI 2022-003-781-1920 West Burke Street, my vote is yes.
Thomas Solomon, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Number five, I recuse myself, our vice chair will take over.
Number five, MI-2022-003311, 1023-27 West Susquehanna Avenue.
Brandon Saverin is the attorney.
This is going to be a vote only.
Is Brandon Saverin in?
We don't need Brandon.
You just vote, Ish.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is no.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is no.
James Snell, my vote is no.
Thank you.
We're going to go to number 11 on the regular list.
MI 2021-003-544-5007, North Fish Street.
Natasha Hentz is the owner.
letter of support from the new 42nd ward with proviso
miss miss natasha hence can you raise your hand please
good morning good morning this applicant could you state your name please and spell for the court
reporter? Natasha Hentz, N-A-T-A-S-H-A-H-E-N-T-Z. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole
truth, nothing but the truth? Yes. Could you please turn the video on on your computer so that we can
see you? Yes. Okay, this application is for use as Assembly and Entertainment. The proposed use
as an assembly and entertainment requires special exception approval in the cmx 2.5 zoning district
our vice chair has a few questions for you okay yes good morning ma'am have you emailed all the
required documents and exhibits to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing
yes thank you please proceed to share your screen
It will be that green share button at the bottom of your screen.
Okay, I'm trying to find the document. I wasn't aware that I had to present. Sorry.
I cannot find the documents.
Hi, Chair, this is Tanya. May I ask a question?
Executive Director, you can always ask a question.
Good morning, Ms. Hentz.
Do you have your exhibit package prepared for a presentation or do you need more time?
No, I think I'm prepared.
And you can share the screen so we all can see?
Thank you.
um so are you on your phone yes right and do you could you have the documents that you can get off
the phone yes well could you please put them up oh i thought it was is it not showing i thought
I screen shared. No. We don't. We see you.
Did you hit the share screen button? Yes. I click screen.
And then it should ask you. Okay. Here you go. Okay.
so is it this document
is there a way you could just make it just a little bit bigger is that possible
just a little bit yeah okay all right all right it would be the documents that you
email five days before you're hearing all right keep going
That's the meeting, right?
The meeting notes.
Keep going.
That's the provisos.
Go ahead.
And ma'am, this is the email that we sent.
You will want the documents that you sent us five days before your hearing.
Do you have photos of your project?
Yes, I'm going to that right now.
I cannot.
Hi, Chair, this is Tanya again.
If we are not ready to present the exhibits, we could give her a short continuance.
Why don't we do that?
Yeah, I think, Ms. Hentz, it's very hard to do it in the car, number one.
And I think what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to continue it.
And our office will be in touch with you to give you a shorter continuance than what we normally give, okay?
okay thank you all right so mi 2021 003 544 5007 north 5th street this case is continued
is there anyone in the virtual audience whose case has not been called on the morning list
i see no hands chair okay everyone see everyone at 2 p.m thank you
See you, Chair.
Good afternoon.
My name is Bill Bergman, and I will be chairing the 2 p.m. ZBA hearing.
With me is our Vice Chair, Ismail Shahid.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
Our Board Member, Thomas Holliman.
Our Board Member.
Thomas Holliman.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
And also with us today is our backup board member, Baron Leonard Palmer.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
Also present, Hillary Emerson, our attorney, and our executive director, Tanya Sunkett.
Here's our virtual format.
Be advised, the proceedings are being recorded.
The video will be available by contacting TanyaSunkett at philo.gov.
For the benefit of our court sonographer, we ask attorneys and witnesses to identify themselves
before testifying. If you're participating by phone, you wish to testify, press star 9 to raise
your hand and star 6 to unmute. To enter an appearance statement, call 267-270-5548. Leave
your email and the address of the property in question. And finally, the question answer box
on the screen is not for comments. Any comments should be directed to our executive director,
Tanya Sumpkin. Let's look at our continuations for this afternoon. Number five.
Let's look at our continuations for this afternoon. Number five, MI 2022, 007-291-430 West
Burke Street. That case is continued. And number two, I have a request for continuation from one
of the attorneys involved. MI 2022-007-347-224-30 West Topohokin Street. Augusta O'Neill is one of
the attorneys and the other is Steve Masters. Mr. Masters has a request for continuance.
Mr. Masters has been promoted, Chair. How about Ms. O'Neill?
Ms. Augusta O'Neill, if you're in the audience, raise your hand, please.
I see a Michael.
Oh, there she is.
Yes, please.
Yes, please.
Please promote Michael Phillips.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, I'm doing it now.
Mr. Masters, could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the board.
My name is Steve Masters, S-T-E-V-E, M-A-S-T-E-R-S, and I represent the four objectors,
who are the near neighbors in this matter.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth,
nothing but the truth?
Mr. Phillips, could you state your name, please,
and spell for the court reporter?
Good afternoon, Chairman Bergman, members of the board.
Michael Phillips, M-I-C-H-A-E-L-P-H-I-L-L-I-P-S
with Claire Harrison Harvey Bransberg
on behalf of the applicant, Copahawken Mansion, LLC.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth,
the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Mr. Phillips, are you prepared to move forward today?
We are.
Okay. Mr. Masters, you have a request?
Yes. Within the last 24 hours, basically yesterday evening, we received for the first time three supplemental exhibits from Mr. Phillips and his co-counsel.
Included in these were some letters of support for his project, but one was reputedly an expert study of traffic flow from up and back along Pastoria Street.
That study indicated that the data was collected through March, the end of March of 2023.
It is now April 26 of 2023.
And instead of providing that kind of an expert report within the five days that's mandated by the Zoning Board's regulations, he chose to submit the report to you and to us less than 24 hours before today's hearing.
We haven't been able to properly evaluate and respond to that. We actually have our own, some of our own clients who live on Pastoria Street have been tracking traffic and will be presenting that in a more formal way.
And our results are significantly different than the results that Mr. Phillips presents by a group of students who I don't even know who they were supervised with and who made the protocols.
We don't even have any expert resumes or any vetting of this, but it was highly prejudicial, Mr. Chair, for us to receive this less than 24 hours.
And as you know, we have been litigating this case for quite some time. And over the past year, there's been appeals that we brought against L&I concerning the same property, the same owner with the same opposing counsel.
And in one of those cases, we mistakenly did not submit some of our expert reports within the five days.
And at that point, Mr. Chair, you ruled that we had to have a continuance because the rules are to be followed without exception.
And this would be, you ruled that it would be highly prejudicial to Mr. Phillips and his side if we went forward without him having the five days of seeing our expert report. So we are asking for the same consideration this time.
Okay. So, Mr. Masters, this is what we would like to do. Let Mr. Phillips make his presentation. We will then stop the hearing and resume it at another date with you coming in to do yours. That way, we're going to move this ahead because, you know, this could take some time. And I think if we get Mr. Phillips' presentation done, and then you'll have plenty of time to come back, look at what you need and things of that nature.
And then you'll have plenty of time to come back, look at what you need and things of that nature, and then we'll move forward.
I understand, Mr. Chair, and that's certainly your prerogative to do it that way.
We do have a hearing within the next month in May on a new hearing date for the appeal against LNI that we brought.
And we felt that it would be important to consolidate those two at that time.
And so to have if we are going to move forward today with the applicant's case, we would ask that this hearing then gets continued to that to that date next month.
I believe it's at the end of May so that we could we could move everything together and we would have like a special.
What we're going to do for the sake of time is we're going to move forward.
Mr. Phillips today and we will check to see what we can do with dates and things of that nature.
And but we will stop after Mr. Phillips.
So this is going to be the last case in case it takes a while.
OK, thank you, Mr. Berg.
Can I just state one thing just for the record, just to be clear?
It is not an expert report that we submitted.
So I just want that to be clear that this is not we're not reporting it to be an expert report.
All right. So I'm going to call this case last and that's how we're going to handle this.
And thank both of you. OK, thank you.
Okay. Number three, MI 2023-00125, 2620 North 22nd Street. Darlene Treat is the attorney. Also,
Swamp Poodle neighbors are requesting a continuance.
Ms. Treat has been promoted.
Hi. Could you please state your name and spell, please, for the court reporter?
on behalf of the applicant okay thank you is is swamp poodle residents on the phone
do we see a hand is that that phone number i believe yes it's for adrian fernandez thank
you okay i could miss fernandez could you state your name and spell please for the court reporter
could you speak up we're having a hard time hearing you yes i'm sorry i do not speak no
that's okay adrian fernandez and my last name is spelled f-e-r-n-a-n-d-e-c right do you swear
a firm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth yes i understand you're requesting
a continuance um yes for the reasons that are in the letter and the main one being the building
wasn't posted also there's been no um public meeting or a notice of a company so uh we're
going to move forward with this. We've checked our records. There was a public meeting. There
is an RCO that has sent a letter. We also have photos showing the property was posted
and all the letters that were mailed. So that's going to be the second case. We're going to
move forward with that today. Okay. Okay. Did you see our photos? I did see your letter
earlier. Yes. Okay. Okay. We'll call you back very shortly. Okay.
okay all right is there any other requests for continuance
i see no handshare we're going to go to our add-on list mi 2022 006 987 1682 north 54 street
I vote yes with provisos. One page, stamped by ZBA on April 26, 2023. Maximum of four units.
Thomas Holland, my vote is yes with provisos.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes with provisos.
Thank you. And number two on our add-on list, MI-2022-007-250-1732 Catherine Street. The vote on this matter will be held on Wednesday, May 3rd at 2 p.m.
We're going to go to our regular list. Number one, MI 2022-001-919-1831 East Air Dry Street. Alan Nocklinson is the attorney. Letter of opposition from Harrogate Civic Association, a letter of opposition from Council Member Squad, based on the letter from the original RCO.
Hi, Mr. Nockamson. Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, Alan, A-L-A-N, last name Notchamson, N-O-C-H-U-M-S-O-N.
Yes, Alan, A-L-A-N, last name Nockamson, N-O-C-H-U-M.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Do you identify your client in relationship to this property?
Yes, my client is the property owner, Shane Holdings, LLC, and in a virtual audience
would either be one of its members, Keith McHenry or Tom Moses.
Right. Mr. Holloman, could you do the follow-up questions?
Mr. Shahid had to step off the phone.
No problem, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Counselor. Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Did you email all the exhibits and documents as required five days in advance to this hearing, and did you meet with the RCO, and do you have a letter?
Yes, in response.
Thank you. Please proceed and share your screen.
Thank you.
So I'm here to present 1831 East Air Dry Street.
You can see that this is a corner property at the corner of Castor and Air Dry.
I believe this is a straightforward case.
I know we do have opposition here.
But even though this is an RSA 5 property, this speaks nothing as to an RSA 5 property the way it looks.
It has a history as a duplex, although on the public records we couldn't find it.
It was confirmed during a community meeting that this has a long history of multifamily use.
And if this board is so inclined to grant this variance, we would ask a variance be granted with a proviso maximum of two units, which was this most previous use.
During our presentation, we'll be reviewing the notice of refusal of correspondence from the Howard Gates Civic Association.
a petition which shows that many many neighbors nearby have signed in support of this project
as a three unit we're only asking for two units maps of the area photographs of the property
or plans and drawings or rco meeting notice our application for appeal our deed to the property
showing that shane holton's llc is the owner of the property and a certificate of tax clearance
showing there's no real estate taxes due on account to this property at the conclusion my
presentation, I would ask that either Keith McHenry or Tom Moses virtually raised their hands
to be sworn in and to adopt my testimony as their own. So this is an RSA 5 property. Originally,
we were just seeking to use it as a three-family dwelling, not to change any of the structure of
the property. There was a lot going on in terms of whether we're going to do an addition or not.
Ultimately, my client, looking at the situation, has stated that he's willing to put it as its most previous use as a duplex.
So again, if this board feels so inclined to grant our zoning variance request, we would ask for a proviso of maximum of two units.
But we're just using the existing structure and the existing configuration.
So the correspondence from the Harrogate Civic Association, there were 12 or 13 people who were there. Now, I would say that at the meeting, there was one person in particular who confirmed the use as a duplex.
I assume that was the person who actually supported this project.
But, you know, in bold, they state that the reason why they're against this project as a community, the property will look different than any other property on the street.
Hardship cannot be found with the neighboring legally zoned properties on the street.
And this use would go against the single family zoning outlines and the planning commission's rip awards thing.
We're not changing the look of the property.
It already looks completely different than any of the single-family properties in the neighborhood, and you'll see from the pictures.
The most recent use, which was confirmed at the community meeting, was a duplex.
So it would be out of character for this property to be forced to be a single-family structure at a very significant cost.
So my client made a concerted effort before the hearing to meet with as many of those nearby neighbors as possible to confirm that they were in support of a triplex.
So we have 1831 air dry, 1838 air dry, 1832 air dry, 1834 air dry, 1830 air dry, 1824 air dry, 1822, twice, 1818 air dry, 1812, 1810.
And we also intersect with Jasper Street. So 3704 Jasper, 1823 Air Drive, 1821 Air Drive, 1820 Air Drive.
I mean, I can go on and on and on. But these are all properties that, you know, there are a catty corner from us at 1831 Air Drive.
that, you know, there are a catty corner from us at 1831 AirDry. As you can see, here's the backup
signatures with telephone numbers to, so they can verify that as well, that they're in support.
And then just to look in the maps of the area. So this is Castor Avenue here. Here's AirDry,
here's Jasper Street, and here's Sedgley. But most importantly, here's, again, we're not located,
Yes, there's a pocket of RSA-5 properties, but we're surrounded by I-2, ICMX, and RM-1.
And right here is a shopping mall right here on Kensington Avenue.
So we're near a commercial corner.
We're trying to help support that commercial corner by way of this increased density of
a duplex, which, again, this property has a long history as a duplex and it's configured
like a duplex.
So again, you can see here from the Google Maps of what I'm talking about.
You know, there's an auto parts place, there's a multimedia place, there's, I don't know what
this type of place is, but there's a UPS drop box store, there's a pharmaceutical corporate
center here.
There's significant non-residential properties.
And again, we're kind of pointed to a commercial corridor on Kensington Avenue.
So this speaks nothing of being a single-family neighborhood.
And then photographs of the property.
Right now, the property is boarded up.
But we go back as far back as 2008 on Google, and this is as far the property goes.
It was boarded up in 2008.
A single family would not succeed here because it would have to be completely reconfigured.
And it wouldn't look different than anything else that's out there.
This is the property from Castor Avenue.
as you can see there are multiple entrances here it's just it's on a triangular shaped lot
so it's not we're not talking about a rectangular lot so this would complete completely out of
character to make this a single family structure and this is just the posting of the for the for
today's hearing um multiple angles one on caster one on air dry and then i agree we're catty corner
to single family, but these are two-story porch single family homes, which is completely different
than what we are. And if you look at it, that's really the strip of single family homes that
exist. If you look further down the streets, there's some type of industrial commercial use
there as well. So what we're asking for, again, is not out of character. We're not trying to change
to composition in a neighborhood given its history and the given the way it looks if we
had a property that looked like one of these two-story porch uh properties and we asked for
anything other than a single family yes this board should deny our request but the way that
our property look the way it's configured the way it's on the triangle shaped lot uh this board you
know should respect the fact that this is a has a due for long history and a duplex
and then this is this air drive uh to the left of the property again you're seeing these
properties that are two-story in nature and then you can also see the fact that the commercial
which is across the street from us where where we are
would you be out of character to have a single family home facing that tip
and then this is caster avenue uh to the right of the property caster avenue to the left of the
property as you can see where we are in castor avenue there's a it's very industrial and
commercial in nature so having a single family on that tip to enter that neighborhood would be out
of the category and again there is rm1 nearby on the other side which would be like a bookend to
what we're asking for and then these are our plans and drawings oops these these are our plans and
drawing. It's very basic. Each unit has its own entrance. So you go up that little landing that
you saw. Unit number one is on the first floor. It's a two-bedroom, one-bath. Instead, if you want
to go unit two, it has its own entrance, which is also a two-bedroom, one-bath. Again, two entrances
would not speak to a single family structure rather than it being a duplex. Originally,
we're hoping to add a third unit because of the construction costs um that you know rather
expensive you know rising interest rates but we're willing to make this into its most previous use
as a duplex and then here's our meeting notice we had the meeting some time ago in may of last year
we're trying to see if we can you know increase you know increase the you know the building
structure ultimately my clients stated to me that they just want to proceed forward with a duplex
with no change in the building structure at all 61 properties were notified again the fact that only 65
61 properties were notified. Again, the fact that only 61 properties are within a 250 square foot radius speaks volumes about the fact that this is not a highly dense area for single family usage.
Rather, it shows what is truly there is that there are some giant properties which are commercial, industrial in nature, and there's a small pocket of single-family homes within this commercial, industrial core.
And then this is proof of mailing for those properties.
Our application for appeal showing that Shane Holdings LLC is the owner of the property.
And then finally, our deed, which also shows that.
And then finally, our certificate of tax claims.
With that being said, I'm going to share my screen temporarily.
I would ask that either Mr. Moses or Mr. McHenry virtually raise their hands.
Mr. Moses has been allowed to speak.
Mr. Moses, can you unmute?
Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
Sir, could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
It's Tom Moses, T-O-M-M-O-S-E-S.
right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth
yes proceed counsel yeah mr moses you heard everything i had to state today about your
zoning matter correct and is it doing correct yes and do you have your own testimony yes thank you
mr knockam send a question the uh harrogate did they write that letter off of three units
They wrote it off for three units.
That's when we reduced it to two.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
LeBaron?
No, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
I see no hands, Chair.
Planning Commission?
Thank you, Chair Bergman.
and David Fecteau, F-E-C-T-E-A-U, with the City Planning Commission.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir, I do.
Proceed.
Thank you, sir.
The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential single-family zoning at this location.
The city changed the zoning maps in Harrogate from residential multifamily to residential single-family in 2017
to conform with the recommendations in the comprehensive plan.
The building appears to have been used for two dwelling units prior to the zoning change.
The City Planning Commission recommends granting a use variance with a maximum of two dwelling units.
Thank you.
MI 2022-001-919-1831 East Airdrie Street.
I vote yes, proviso.
Maximum two units.
Thomas Holloman.
My vote is yes, with proviso.
LeBaird and Leonard Palmer, our vote is yes with proviso.
Thank you, Mr. Nockmson.
Thank you. Have a great day.
Number three, MI 2023, 000125, 2620 North 22nd Street, Darlene Street is the attorney.
um letter of support from all in the family cdc with provisos
miss threed has been promoted chair hi could you well i think i've already
swore did i already swear you in darlene
commission i'm not sure that just wore me in okay so i'll you know
Please state your name and spell for the court reporter, please.
Good afternoon, Commissioners.
Darlene Threatt, D-A-R-L-E-N-E, T as in Thomas, H-R-E-A-T-T, 45 East City Avenue, number 496,
Vala Kenwood, PA, here on behalf of 2620 North 22nd Street and Daring Creative Solutions.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Our board member Thomas Holloman has just a few questions.
Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to waive the reading? Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Yes, I do.
Do you meet with all the documents as required?
Yes, I do.
Do you meet with the RCO? Do you have a letter?
Yes, I do.
Thank you.
Please proceed to your screen.
Share your screen.
Share your screen.
Take a minute, I apologize.
Okay, good afternoon, Commissioners.
I submitted a package to the Zoning Board of Adjustment for 2620 North 22nd Street.
Contained in this package is the refusal, the appeal, the project information form, the deed, tax information, property history, plans, pictures, community flyer, certificate of mailing, and I sent the letter of support a little bit after I submitted my package.
I didn't have it at that time.
A commission is basically my client and daring solutions purchased this property in July of 2022. They submitted an application for a takeout restaurant on the first floor and basement and a one family dwelling, which is already legal on the second floor.
Basically, what we really want to have is a water ice cream place at this location.
I want to give you a little background on this location of the property.
Here's just our appeal.
I'm not going to go through every single document.
The project information form.
I have a deed.
here's the certificate of a tax clearance. I wanted to just show you a little bit of history
about this property. This property is a corner property that's almost always had
a commercial use on the first floor. You can see back in 1956 here, there was a beauty shop on the
first floor and there was also a two-family dwelling. Currently, it's a commercial on the
bottom. And there's just a one family dwelling on the top of
this structure. Back in 1983, you can see that it was a takeout
restaurant, and a one family dwelling on the second floor.
In 1979, it was a one family dwelling on the first floor, and
they had a candy store on the second floor excuse me vice versa it was a candy store on the first
floor and a one-family dwelling on the top and back in 1984
there was a one-family dwelling on the top and there was a takeout restaurant on the first floor
we want to do something similar that has always been done in this property we like to keep the
top as a one family dwelling and the bottom we would like to have a ice cream shop. Now I'm
going to reduce, I have a site plan for you here. And as you can see, we're a corner property. We're
located on the corner of North 22nd Street and Harold Street. It is currently a two family
dwelling there's a two-bedroom apartment on the top and we propose to have a ice cream store
water ice place along the the first floor i have a layout of the first floor and basement for you
we're not proposing any commercial use of the basement there is an exit out of the basement
here basically this basement will be used for storage and the owner will have a little office to
to run his administrative stuff for employees, et cetera,
out of the basement.
The first floor we're just proposing,
and let me just enlarge that a little bit for you.
Basically, we're proposing an ice cream shop on the first floor.
You would enter right through the corner.
Here is the counter space for the shop.
Back here is a bathroom, which patrons can use.
Can you speak up just a little bit?
We're having a hard time hearing you.
Can you hear me now?
Yeah, we can.
Absolutely.
This is where you would enter the shop here. This is the counter display that would have the ice cream in it. This is a bathroom for patrons and employees. And back here we have the prep area. And further back we will have some storage back here.
The second floor is an already established two-bedroom apartment, which is currently legal, and I won't go through that for you.
I have some pictures of the property for you.
You can see it is a corner property, and here's a picture of the posting.
Across the street, as with many of these corner properties, is currently a beauty salon, which has been in existence for a while now.
I took the liberty of taking some other pictures.
I took a long shot of the property so you could actually see the length of the property here.
In the back here is like a little shed garage area, and that's where we would be storing the trash.
There's an entrance here to the upstairs unit, and then there's another window to the facility here.
That's a better look at the entire property on the Harrell Street side.
It's a pretty long property, suitable for commercial use.
There's a breezeway alley in the back of the property.
I just wanted to show you the entire property.
Here's a picture looking across the street at Harrell Street.
Again, a commercial dwelling here with one family on top of it.
It's currently being used again as a beauty salon.
that's just another look going down north 22nd street to the north
that's directly across the street which is a high school which is a dobbins high school
it pretty much takes up the entire block this is the school area in back of it i have another
picture for you to just show you the yard that's the parking area for dobbins high school
and down at the other end is this the yard and a playground associated with the high school
a commission is uh that's another long look looking south
down north 22nd street i just wanted to show you how the corner properties are generally have a
commercial uses um on 26th street they're long established uses so what we want to do is nothing
out of the ordinary is consistent with what's being done um there and the uses of the properties
I did send out a flyer for the civic meeting.
We did meet with the Civic Association on February the 6th.
Could you enlarge that for us?
Let's see one thing in a second.
We did have a meeting, it was on April 6th, it was a zoom meeting held by all in the
family uh we did did notice 117 uh residents and we did get the proof of mailing i would also like
to add uh there was not one person that attended the meeting that was in opposition um to the
request everyone was glad that this property was going to be renovated and thought that at ice
cream parlor would be a nice addition um to the community i also had the opportunity to talk to
the block captain who was very interested in it and had support for the project and wanted to
know whether or not we would hire individuals from the community and we indicated that we would
I mean with that that's all I have a commissioner I'm willing to answer every question that you
picture the posting yes
I did post this property, and I did provide Ms. Emerson with a timestamp.
Okay. All right. Do you have the owner here to adopt your testimony?
Yes. Mr. Owens, could you raise your hand, please?
Mr. Owens is going to be allowed to speak.
hi sir could you state your name and spell it please for the court reporter
uh good afternoon my name is dean owens
spell please for the court reporter yes sir uh dean owens d-e-a-n-o-w-e-n-s as in sam
right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth sir
I swear. Okay, counsel? Mr. Owens, are you the owner of 2620 North 22nd Street? Yes, I am.
Your company, I'm sorry, Darren Creative Solutions? Yes. And Mr. Owens, did we have a
meeting with the Civic Association on February 6, 2023? Yes, we did. And did they fully support
this project? They did. And Mr. Owens, have you heard my testimony as presented at this hearing
today yes i have and would you adopt my testimony as truthful i do adopt it as truthful thank you
that's all i have commissioner questions from the board
no mr chairman no mr chairman questions or comments from the virtual audience
i see no hands chair mr chair this is hillary i just want to jump in quick
um there's three the rco did ask for provisos for um hours of operation um basically seasonal hours
we have no we have no i was gonna ask if you agreed yes we agree okay thank you excuse me
chair two hands sorry two hands just went up looks like one is from swan poodle and the first
one is from a number ending in
Shall I give the 0681
first? Yeah, give me the first one first.
Yep. Okay.
They've been allowed to speak.
Hi, could you state your name, please, and spell for the
court reporter?
Caller ending in 0681.
Can you unmute yourself, please?
Star six on mute.
they're not unmuted yet okay go go to number two okay it's going to be um adrian fernandez
yep yep he's been allowed to speak miss just state your name for the record please
Ms. Fernandez
She's muted
Ms. Fernandez can you unmute
Is her hand up
no her hands down now but she's muted
can you hear me now yeah we'll hear you now could you just raise your voice just a little
bit just state your name for the record oh sure
all right you've already been sworn but we're having a hard time hearing you could you get
closer to the phone or raise it a little bit can you hear better now absolutely thank you
proceed okay um i did send a request for continuance um there was a neighbor calling
in i think she's going to try to call in again um we did not receive any notice at all for this
um meeting i did speak to the rco coordinator about 10 minutes ago and she said a meeting was
held but she wasn't aware that we did not receive a notice um this type of business um the neighbors
in that area do not like this type of business because there's too much traffic, too much trash,
noise, and loitering. Just a half a block away we had meetings and VBA hearings for a similar
request and that property chose to restrict themselves to businesses like a church or
accounting office or a law office. So it would be really unfair for a half a block away for there
to be a takeout business with lots of traffic, especially from the school across the street.
take out business with lots of traffic especially from the school across the street we have a mall
on the north border across the street from the north border of Dobbins High School and that's a
more appropriate place to have a business with a lot of traffic a lot of trash sugar water and
just other concerns that the neighbors have we are asking for a continuance because also the
building was not posted. So the chance for neighbors to come to the ZBA hearing was sort
of taken away from them. We're opposed to this project. As, as it's presented, I did
not hear a trash management plan. I did not hear a traffic management plan. So we're opposed
to this project. Thank you. Anyone else in the virtual audience? I see no handshare.
um council you want to respond yes commissioner uh commissioner
just that property and i posted it uh with the required sign not only that i walked the property
and i walked the neighborhood and i spoke to uh at least four neighbors on the block captain
no one person had an opposition um to the use uh the meeting was publicized
I sent out 117 notices. Not one person who attended our meeting had any objection to the operation of a ice cream, water ice store.
We did address the trash. We addressed how the trash would be removed.
We addressed the number of employees that we would have and how the outside of the property would be well kept and broom swept on a daily basis.
And for those reasons, Commissioner, I am asking you to approve this application.
Thank you.
Planning Commission.
Thank you, Chair Bergman.
David Vecto with the City Planning Commission.
The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential single-family zoning at this location.
This building has a documented history of use as a storefront, sometimes occupied and sometimes vacant, dating to the 1950s.
The City Planning Commission recommends the board grant requested use variances for takeout restaurant and multiple principal uses on a lot.
Thank you. MI 2023-000-125-2620 North 22nd Street.
I vote yes with provisos.
Hours of operation 11A to 630P, September 1st and May 31st.
not 11 a to 9 a June 1st to August 31st sorry Mr. Chair there's an error there that should be 11 a
to 9 p okay 11 a to 9 p.m June 1st to August 31st thank you counsel Thomas Holloman my vote is yes
with provisos.
LaBara Leonard Palmer, my vote is yes,
but proviso.
Council.
Thank you very much, commissioners.
Number four,
MI 2023
000124
1330 to 32
North 5th Street.
Matthew Monroe
is the attorney.
Letter of support
from South Kensington Community Partners.
Mr. Monroe has been promoted, Chair.
Hi, Mr. Monroe.
How are you, sir?
Could you please state your name
and spell it for the court reporter?
Yes, Chairman Bergman.
Matthew Monroe, M-A-T-T-H-E-W-M-O-N-R-O-E
with Monroe Law.
All right.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth,
the whole truth, nothing but the truth. I do. Could you identify your client,
the relationship to the property? Yes. I'm here today with representatives from the FS Family
Limited Partnership, as well as from Parallel Productions. FS Family, the partnership owns
the building and the Parallel Productions is going to be the new tenant. All right. Mr. Howlman has
just a few questions for you, sir. Yes. Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to waive the
reading of the refusal and stipulate to his accuracy? I do. Did you email all exhibits and
documents as required five days in advance to this hearing? Did you meet with the RCO and do
you have a letter? Yes to all with the exception of the certificate of bulk mailing which I sent
over and I'm showing on the screen right now. Thank you. Please proceed. Good afternoon Chairman
Bergman, members of the board. Today I'm here and happy to be here on behalf of my client who owns
this building, which is a single-story warehouse building. From what we can tell, this building was
From what we can tell, this building was built pre-zoning code. There's not much in the archives about it, but we're here with their proposed tenant, Parallel Productions, who is an established production services company.
built pre-zoning code. There's not much in the archive.
They do photography. They also provide support to many of the film, video, TV, movie, commercial productions in and around Philadelphia, and they also have some back office storage, and they're planning on moving their operations here to North 5th Street, which has a burgeoning artistic and creative community around it.
So the proposed uses that we have for this building are for artisanal studio, artist studio, business and professional office because Parallel Productions plans to use this as their headquarters and their back office, as well as for storage of some equipment that they're going to be taking out in the mornings for use on site at productions and then bringing it back.
I'll just quickly run through the exhibits that we have. And just to kind of go back, this is in an RSA 5 district, even though the building itself is an old industrial building.
We have here at Exhibit 1 the deed. At Exhibit 2, we have the refusal, our application and petition for appeal here, the project information statement, as well as the notice that went out timely, and we just showed you the certificate of mailing up on the screen.
here the building was properly posted more than 21 days before the hearing here you can see the
photographs and in here this is just some sketches of the building there's not going to be any
changes to the exterior of the building it is as it is this is just to give you an idea of what the
floor plan looks like in case that becomes an issue and here to provide some context this
highlighted strip in the middle of your screen is it's a street-to-street lot and you can see
there's nearby IRMX so there are industrial uses. To provide some context this building
as I said before it's been there for a while it's also not an outlier so this is not an ask where
we're requesting to put a commercial or industrial use in the middle of a neighborhood. There are some
existing structures across the street. You can see there's a single-story warehouse building
that's similar with a roll-up garage. And then if you're looking down, looking south on North
5th Street, you can also see some other single-story industrial buildings. And then looking
up North 5th Street, you can see some new development as well as some older office and
industrial spaces that pre-exist the building. This is on North Randolph Street, as I mentioned
before. This is a street-to-street building, and this is the rear of our property that we're
talking about right now that's going to be used. I've included also what is available in the zoning
archive. I think it's important to note that because the building was at some point just
built as an industrial building, it was later rezoned as RM1, but then later as RSA5. So in
order to continue to utilize the building for as it is, the owners needed to get a zoning
variance each time. So the last use, which was approved after the zoning board found at that
time that there was a hardship on the building, was for storage of bikes and repair of bikes.
it was an indigo bike storage, and they're no longer there, obviously. And so my clients were
looking for a use that would be appropriate, given that there are some residential properties
around there. And they did their due diligence, they had lined up a potential tenant for CrossFit
gym. But before they signed the deal and moved forward with that, they hired an acoustics
expert to determine whether the music and some of the louder noises that you would hear at a
CrossFit gym might be heard outside. And they determined that you could. So instead of trying
to move forward with that, which was a tenant who was ready to go forward, they stopped and
they looked for a better, somebody who might be a better fit for the building in light of the
nearby residential homes and condominiums. So they did that. And William Figg, the founder of
the company, has been involved in this process along the way. He's been talking to the neighbors
and making sure that they understand what's coming here and that they're comfortable with it.
and that they're comfortable with it. Mr. Figg also appeared with me at the South
Mr. Figg also appeared with me.
Kensington Community Partners RCO meeting and you can see we do have a letter of support.
There was the vote for near neighbors was seven in favor, one opposed. The only opposition or
criticism that we heard was related to a legal dry vial that they intend on using
because it had not been enforced for some period of time
and people parked in front of it.
But aside from that concern
that Parallel Productions does intend to use
the legal drive aisle,
there was no opposition
and we heard a lot of support for this type of business.
We do have, in lieu of a tax certificate,
we do have a balance showing
that there's a zero uh tax balance on the property taxes uh here for the uh the property and with
that um i would just say it uh to just i'll bring up my screen in just one moment i could show you
a little bit about um parallel productions though i'm not i've actually only closed that down but
in any event they're um they're an established company uh and um we'd like your support but
with that uh i think that is the basics of my presentation uh if uh chair or the board or
anybody have your uh is your client here to adopt your testimony uh yes actually um mr on behalf of
parallel productions mr fig could you raise your virtual hand hello sir could you state your name
and spell please for the court reporter sure it's william fig w-i-l-l-i-a-n f-i-g-g right do you swear
or affirm tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do proceed counsel hi mr fig how
are you doing today great thank you how are you i'm doing well thanks uh did you hear the uh the
statements the factual statements that i made on the record yes uh were they accurate yes and and
would you adopt them as your testimony yes thank you all right questions from the board
no mr chairman no mr chairman questions or comments from the virtual audience
i see no hands here planning commission thank you chair bergman david fecto with the city
planning commission the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential single
family zoning at this location. This building has a documented history of use as a warehouse
dating to its construction. Given that, we believe that the applicant has a clear hardship,
and given the nature of artist studios and storage, we would not anticipate the impacts
of this use to impair the use of adjacent properties. The City Planning Commission
recommends that the board grant the use variances for artists and studio, business and professional
offices and storage. Thank you. MI 2023-000-124-1330-32 North 5th Street, I vote yes.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes.
LeBaron Leonard Palmer, my vote is yes. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Thank you.
Number six, MI-2022-007-113-2301 East Butler Street.
Ronald Patterson is the attorney.
Letter of support from Harrogate Civic Association
and letter of non-opposition from Council Member Squilla.
Mr. Patterson, can you raise your hand, please?
Mr. Patterson, could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, I can. Good afternoon. Ronald Patterson, P-A-T-T-E-R-S-O-N,
Claire Harrison Law Firm, 1835 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA.
You swear a firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Do you identify your client in relationship to the property?
Sure. The owner is BDP Realty 2LP. My client is Chick-fil-A.
One of our board members, Mr. Holloman, has just a few questions, sir.
Good afternoon, counsel.
Do you agree to wait for reading of the ritual and stipulate to a mercy?
Yes, I do, Mr. Holloman.
Did you email all of the exhibits and documents as required five days in advance to this hearing?
Do you have a letter?
Yes, all of you, Bob.
Yes, all of you, Bob. I don't have a copy of the Harrogate letter, but I understand they issued one.
I don't have a copy of the Harrogate letter, but I understand the issue.
Thank you. Please proceed and shoot your screen.
Thank you.
Okay. Can you view my screen?
We can.
All right. Thanks.
So, yeah, this application regards 2301 East Butler Street. It's also known as 3800 Aramingo. It's at the Long Aramingo Avenue. It's the Aramingo Shopping Center.
It's populated by a Lowe's, a Walmart, Five Below, Sonic, other smaller stores, and a Chick-fil-A quick service restaurant, which is located here where the little ID is.
And here's a closer picture.
It's a general sense of the area where the property is located.
This viewpoint is important as we'll go through.
So Chick-fil-A has been here since 2007.
When approved with a drive-through, it met the then current design criteria of the pre-2012 zoning code.
Although it is a part of and functions as a shopping center with other lots that comprise the shopping center and under a unity of use, it does retain its own lot lines.
Let's see here.
All right, I'm going to delete this here.
So this is the current configuration of the Chick-fil-A restaurant and the drive-through.
This is where the ordering menu board here is here.
So this application is to redesign within the lot line parameters here of designating to create a second adjacent drive-through lane.
Can you see this new plan? Yes. Okay.
So what we're proposing to do is redesign and try to retrofit, as are other similar Chick-fil-A new stores, as the case may be, and other quick service restaurants, to provide a second parallel stacking lane that then funnels into this one lane for ordering and pickup through the drive-through window.
The property is located in a CA2, a shopping center zoning district. We filed the zoning permit application, and we received three refusals that regard design issues.
I'll find it here in a minute.
First one is the lanes need to be separated by a raised concrete medium, a concrete curb or landscape area.
The second refusal, the drive-through stacking lane proposes 9 feet and not required 10 feet.
And the stacking lane setbacks from lot lines, one is 16 and not 20.
And I'll take them in reverse order if you wouldn't mind.
So, the setback, as I mentioned, we're supposed to have at least 20 feet. Here is where the refusal is for this rear, I'll call it rear setback. Although the pertinent setbacks here where the actual stacking lanes are is 31 feet at least, 31, 7 inches on this line to this line.
So the fact that this is 16, this is still an existing condition, I think is irrelevant as a zoning refusal. It's not a stacking lane. The second refusal is a stacking lane width of 10 feet, and we're providing nine each.
And it's related to the last one that the stacking lanes are not separated here by some type of physical barrier.
And as you'll hear, we chose to not put the physical barrier because that would allow at least a safe area here between the cars.
This hasn't, if we were to put the extra foot, this drive aisle here, which is 15, would be reduced to 14, which as a tradeoff, we thought that would not be safe.
I would mention that the configuration was reviewed and approved by a streets department.
that the configuration was reviewed and approved by a streets department.
So this lane separation is unrestricted, as I mentioned.
All in all, the design works.
The hardship exists due to the current configuration, the past approval, the current conditions, albeit they are dimensional variances,
yet we believe they will create no adverse impacts, as evidenced by the streets department sign off.
We did meet with the Harrogate Community Association on April 6th, and we have a letter of support, as you have a letter of support, as you mentioned.
With that said, I would like to promote Eric Glock, G-L-O-C-K.
Mr. Glock has been allowed to speak.
Okay, you can hear me?
Yes, please state your name and spell it for the court reporter.
It's Eric Glocki. That's E-R-I-C, Glocki, G-L-O-C-K-E.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
I do, sir.
Proceed, counsel.
Thank you. Eric, what is your occupation?
I am a design engineer for Collier's Engineering and Design, and I've been working with Chick-fil-A for the past four years.
Okay, so you have prepared or you are familiar with the site plans that I've shown that were submitted as part of this application?
That is correct, sir.
And this is the area here we're speaking about, right here where the drive-through lanes would be?
You see on my screen here?
You've heard my presentation and testimony. Would you agree that it's true and accurate?
And would you adopt it as if it were your own?
Yes, sir.
Okay. And as to what I've mentioned about the drive-thru lanes, if you could have briefly, can you explain how the design still functions and is safe despite the fact that it has no physical barrier between the two lanes?
Correct. The store, as far as operations and drive-thru function, will continue to operate the same as it does today.
We are obviously expanding to create the additional second drive-through stacking.
Team members will have that team member safe zone, which is striped between the cars to facilitate and increase the ordering capacity to help facilitate that extra stacking moving through.
And you mentioned that you're familiar with the Chick-fil-A design, and I assume this is the current design.
of displaced on all new and retrofitted stores. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. Thank you. That's
all I have, Mr. Chairman. No question. So we stack the cars so that they don't go through
the parking lot and go into a cause problems. Is that right? Say again, Mr. Chairman?
Well, we're stacking. The purpose of stacking the cars, right, is so that you don't have a
single line that goes way out. Yeah, that's correct. If you take this double file and
make it a single file yeah we would be out so if not the cars would be way down the street down
no no the way that the way the uh alignment is it would be back on here which is butler street here
okay okay good all right questions from the board
no mr chairman no mr chairman questions or comments from the virtual audience
no hands chair planning commission
thank you mr chairman david fecto with the city planning commission comprehensive plan recommends
no change to the commercial shopping area zoning at this location dimensional variances for vehicle
stacking lanes are minor and will not impact the use of the property however there is no condition
of this lot to prevent the stacking lanes from being separated in conformance with the zoning
code so the city planning commission recommends that the board grant the variances for vehicle
stacking lanes, but then denied the variance for stacking lane separation. Okay. MI 2022-007-113-2301
East Butler Street, I vote yes. Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes.
LaMara Leonard Palmer, my vote is yes. Thank you, counsel. Okay, thank you.
Number seven, MI 2022-007-103-2926 West Oxford Street. Jared Klein is the attorney.
letter of non-opposition from brewery town shardswood community civic association
although although there are concerns about living space in the basement
mr klein good afternoon could you state your name please and spell for the court reporter
certainly it's jared j-a-r-e-d last name is klein k-l-e-i-n uh from blank rome 130 north 18th
from Blank Rome, 130 North 18th Street, Philadelphia.
street in Philadelphia.
Do you swear or affirm to tell
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Could you identify your client, the relationship to this property?
Certainly. My client is Bancroft Property Holdings, LLC, and they are the equitable owner.
They're under contract to purchase the property.
Mr. Holloman has just a few questions, sir.
Good afternoon, Councilman. Do you agree with the refusal and stipulate to his accuracy?
Good afternoon, Mr. Holloman. Yes, I do.
Did you email all the documents? Are these in advance to this? Did you meet with the RCO and do you have a letter?
Yes, to all of the above.
Thank you. Please proceed and share the screen.
Thank you.
Okay. So we're here for 2926 West Oxford Street, which is currently a vacant lot
that is under agreement of sale for Bancroft property holdings to purchase it. The application
is for a four-family dwelling and the erection of a new structure for that purpose on this lot.
The refusals that we received involved the occupied area and yard depth and the use as multifamily, given that this is zoned RSA 5.
To give the board some context, this is the vacant property here.
I can zoom in a little bit.
This has been vacant for some time and is a corner property.
And so we back up to the side of the row homes that run here.
And that is a factor that goes into the hardship for the rear yard depth and that we're not backing up to someone's rear.
So the area that we have back there is less useful to begin with, given that it abuts the side wall.
The zoning map is here.
This is, again, the relevant property here coming off of North Myrtlewood Street.
The area around it, as you can see, is primarily zoned RSA 5, but as we discussed during the Civic Association meeting, there are several properties located on this block face and on this block face that are zoned for duplex, triplex, and up to six or five family use spread throughout this area here.
There were multiple people who attended the RCO meeting who shared their thoughts about the amount of existing multifamily in this exact area.
This is what the property looks like now and copies of the zoning notice.
As the board can see, this is not a large lot.
It is narrow and runs along the side of an existing structure here that needs to be attached to and backs up to the side of an existing building there.
These are additional photos of posting of the zoning notices and some shots of the immediate surrounding area for some additional context.
This is part of this would be the vacant lot here.
And there's multifamily located in some of these structures and in these structures across the street.
This is the zoning site plan.
plan. We are attaching, as I said, to this existing structure here. There is going to be
roof deck access. It is set back, but the upper units, units three and four, which are located
on the upper floors, will have access to that roof deck area. Floor plans are here. As I mentioned,
there is units three and four, which have access to this roof deck. These are units three and four.
And units one and two are bi-level units. As the chair noted, there was a comment about
living space in the basement from the RCO. We designed this in a way that there are large
window wells located both in the front and rear of the property to have natural light and an
egress point. And there are additional window wells located here on the side to provide additional
natural light to the bedrooms located in the basement area. We think that given the amount
of natural light that we're able to provide and the fact that these are bi-level units, that that
ameliorates some of the concern that's generally associated with basement living. We're not
having any units that are totally subterranean. They're all split level between the first and
second floor and then the third and fourth floor. Give the board a sense of what the
Give the board a sense of what the building would look like in context.
building would look like in context. We're using high quality.
We're using high quality materials, red brick to be consistent with some of the housing stock that's around us and bay windows to give natural light and a little bit of extra space.
A side view. And I'll point out that we do have a secured trash enclosure, which we're going to utilize.
Every member of the building will have access to that.
And as a building with more than three units, we'll have commercial trash pickup to minimize the disturbance to anybody to the maximum extent we can.
We did have a petition of support that we shared, and I'll share it with the board.
These are neighbors from the immediate area who have all signed in support of the application.
um there is and i i had a back and forth with miss miss emerson um prior to the hearing i
wanted to show the board the property as i mentioned is under agreement of sale uh and it
is zoning contingent um so i i mentioned that only because the existing owner does have a
fifty four hundred dollar real estate tax balance that will be cured at closing uh if the board is
inclined to grant the variance. These taxes will be paid and we would be happy with a proviso that
a permit can't be issued absent proof of payment of taxes. We met with the brewery town Sharswood
Civic Association. They initially sent us an email of non-opposition. That's on your screen here.
And then it was followed up more recently with their formal correspondence.
So with that, I would like to ask my client, Mike Randolph, if you're here, can you raise your virtual hand, please?
Mr. Randolph has been allowed to speak.
Mr. Randolph could you state your name and spell please for the court reporter
yes Mike Randolph m-i-k-e-r-a-n-d-o-l-p-h do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the
whole truth and nothing but the truth yes Mike Mike did you have a chance to hear my
presentation this afternoon yes I did and do you adopt my statements as true correct and
your own as though you've been given a chance to more fully testify? Yes, I do. Great. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, we're happy to answer any questions the board may have. Mr. Klein, what's next door?
What's the property next door? Is that a multiple? I believe it is a triplex located immediately next
door. Okay. And just out of curiosity, how did you get the four? Is that the minimum number you need?
It was not the minimum number. We believe that four worked well because of the bi-level unit configuration. So with the size and to meet the height limit without going over that, four units worked to be able to do two bi-level units and provide equal space for all those units.
Questions from the board?
Yes, Mr. Chairman. I like to recommend that we hold the vote until we get a tax clearance. And second, I'd like some provision for no sleeping space. Thank you.
whoops i'm sorry could you repeat your votes
tom wants to hold it we're gonna tom wants us to hold the vote
i agree mr mr chair can i can i briefly respond to to that excuse me just with regard to to
holding the vote. So this property is scheduled to close on May 5th. And that is contingent,
the closing is contingent on a decision from the zoning board. We won't be able to get a tax
clearance until the property closes. My client doesn't own it. It's owned by a current person
who is delinquent. We're going to cure that when we close, but we can't close without some sort of
vote from the zoning board so okay so what what what we'll do is if i remember correctly
next next wednesday is the third i believe that's correct yes okay we will vote on this
next wednesday okay at 2 p.m okay very good okay very good thank you very much i appreciate your
time uh mr chair did you want to have the planning commission uh weigh in so we can oh i'm sorry
you're right planning commission want to make sure the record i'm sorry let's go to the virtual
audience anyone in the virtual audience no hands chair planning commission thank you chair bergman
No hands, Chair.
Planning Commission.
Thank you, Chair Bergman.
David Fechtow with the City Planning Commission.
The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential single-family zoning at this location.
The homes on this block face on the south side of Oxford Street from Myrtlewood Street to 30th Street are all triplexes.
These homes all have legally non-conforming rear yards and occupied area.
The conditions of the proposed triplex, or I'm sorry, proposed fourplex match these conditions.
The City Planning Commission recommends that the board grant the use and dimensional variances with a maximum of three dwelling units.
Okay, so we're going to hold this vote until next week, okay?
Okay, understood. Thank you.
And thank you, counsel.
Thank you.
Number eight, MI 2022-007361-764-South 18th Street.
David Orfanides is the attorney.
letter of support from South of South
Neighborhood Association.
Mr. Orphanidis has been promoted, Chair.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, sir.
Could you state your name, please,
and spell for the court reporter?
Certainly.
My name is David Orphanidis,
O-R-P-H.
A-N-I-D-E-S.
Right.
Could you identify,
do you swear or affirm to tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Could you identify your client
and the relationship to this property?
My client is Arden Cass.
Mr. Hallman has a few questions for you.
You seem to be freezing up, David.
Yeah, I had to change.
If you can hear me,
I had to change from my monitor to my laptop.
So hopefully we hear you, but we've got a frozen photo of you, but that's, that's okay.
Mr. Good afternoon, counsel.
Good afternoon, counsel.
Do you agree to wait for the refusal and stipulate to his accuracy?
Yes, I do.
Did you email all of the exhibits and documents as required five days in advance to this hearing?
Did you make it with the RCO when you had a letter?
um as the chairman uh indicated we have the letter of support from the coordinating rco after
and we did meet with them uh we did provide all the required documents save for the tax clearance
which i believe we provided to hillary on monday and that's included um with my exhibits uh the
position letters uh received on sunday and i do have a letter of support from councilman johnson
which just came in a couple minutes ago that i've included with what i'm presenting today and i will
provide to council for the zoning board with an updated exhibit book um but um france emailed it
i think just when we were starting uh today's proceedings so hillary may have it
thank you please proceed
you see my screen yes okay fantastic so again my name is david orphanetes uh i'm an attorney with
Orphanides and Turner here in Philadelphia. My client is Arden Kass. Again, first name is spelled
A-R-D-E-N, last name is spelled K-A-S-S, and she is the owner of the property that we're here for
this afternoon, 764 South 18th Street. As you'll see, 764 South 18th Street is one of four
properties on the 700 block of South 18th Street that extend through to the 700 block
of South Cleveland Street, from the west side of South 18th to the east side of South Cleveland.
In my exhibit package, you'll see at Exhibit 1 is at 1A, is the letter of support that we received
from SOSNA, the South of South Neighborhood Association, which the Planning Commission
designated as the coordinating RCO for this property and this matter. As you can see, they
They address what the application is, which in this case is in the area of the property, the rear yard functionally.
But according to the zoning code, the front yard, because it abuts Cleveland Street, we have proposed a one car off street surface parking space with a gate, a six foot gate at the sidewalk, which you'll see, which is what our refusals are for.
The letter goes into describing some of the aspects of the project.
This is part of an overall renovation of this project, which is being undertaken by Miss Cass to eventually market this property as a single family dwelling and some of the other.
But the aspects of the proposed parking as well as the building itself were addressed in the.
The proposed parking, as well as the building itself, were addressed in the letter from SOSNA.
As you can see, the SOSNA zoning committee voted five in favor, one in opposition with no abstentions.
And the community at large, there were 17 people that voted in support, including eight near neighbors, and only one near neighbor voted in opposition.
It was a packed house.
There were a number of other matters that were heard by SOSNA.
a review by Sassana that evening including ours and as I mentioned just this afternoon I received
a letter this letter from Councilman Johnson's office dated today and this is at tab 1b that
indicates based upon Sassana's position of support that the Councilman is writing submitting his
support for this for the granting of the variances in this matter tab 2 you'll see the zoning
drawings that were submitted to L&I. You'll see in the bottom left-hand corner, those zoning
drawings were reviewed and stamped off by the streets department as part of one of the prerequisite
approvals. You can see here to the right, South 18th Street and the existing building. It's a
three-story building, as you'll see in the photographs that I'll go through. Throughout
the building, full width at the front, narrows in the back, very typical center city row home design.
And then there's a very large, extremely large rear yard area that extends from the back of the existing building all the way to South Cleveland Street.
So it's about 46 and a half feet deep.
And in that area, we propose the single parking space with the new curb cut and bifold gate that folds interior to the property, not onto the footway.
And that would be six feet high.
Here is a rendering that was provided to the community group. I have with me also, you can see that my client dropped it off. Here is a prototype or a mock-up of what the ornate decorative gate is going to look like, the bifolding gate.
one of the refusals that we have is under the zoning code again because this property fronts
on two streets both frontages both at south 18th and at south cleveland are deemed a front
and under the zoning code fences that are located between the building and the front property line
and we have two by definition here can be no more than four feet tall and no more than 50 percent
opaque. So we have a refusal, as you'll see in a minute, both for parking accessed from this rear
street. In other words, it's not accessed from a shared driveway or an alley. And the fact that
the fence is over four feet and over 50% opaque. You can see in this crawling right here, which
is also a tab three, that we've calculated the amount of open area openness, non-opacity for
this fence and we're about 34 percent. You can see back in the rendering that there is a solid
six-foot fence, board-on-board fence, directly abutting us to the north. And obviously, as you
can see in the rendering, we're going to be letting a lot of light in. As you can see in the rendering
here, by the post, on the post, there will be low illumination lights that will help to light the
sidewalk. And those are only also reflected here in the drawings that are also here at tab three.
And then here's just a photograph, an image for the exhibits of what I just showed you, held up to you on the Zoom screen, which is the prototype of what the fencing is going to be looking like.
It's going to be powder-coated metal fencing.
As part of our project, although it's not a requirement of the zoning code, we do show interior landscaping that we're going to be either maintaining or providing.
and some other aspects of the project that I'm going to get into in a minute,
which are, while not zoning-related, I think add to the benefit of this project,
both to the neighborhood and to the Philadelphia community as a whole.
You can see here indicated on this landscaping plan the intention to use pervious pavers
where the parking area is, rock garden, and as you'll see, there's some other aspects of the design.
There are and there is an existing fencing on either fencing or fence wall on either side of the property that we're also looking to legalize.
It's six feet high.
The notice of refusal that we appeal to the zoning board, which is dated November 14th, calls out two things.
One is the height of that fence being more than four feet tall.
And obviously, as we indicated, being near 50 percent opaque, but not quite, but obviously much more open.
being near 50 percent opaque but not quite but obviously much more open uh less opaque than the
fence that's next to us and then the other refusal is um and you can see your note is for parking
from a rear street as opposed to a an alley or shared drive and at tab six i've included the
applicable provisions from the zoning code typically in rsa5 you can park from a rear
This property is owned RSA 5, as we'll see in a minute, and as you can also see here at tab 4 on the notice of refusal at the top, when the building structure is attached or semi-detached, you can have parking.
Parking is allowed from a rear street upon which there is no parking on the side of the street abutting the property, which is a condition that exists here.
There is no on-street parking on our side of South Cleveland Street.
There is on-street parking on the opposite side.
However, because of the property is located in the Center City Overlay District, the overlay applies.
And in this overlay, it excludes, it takes out of that exception, the parking from the rear street.
So the only way that you can have parking by right in Center City in an RSA 5 zone property,
if it's accessed from a shared driveway or rear alley when the building is attached or semi-detached.
Some aspects of the project that I had mentioned are at tab 7. I'm not going to get into all the details. It's going to be a passive house, as you can see at 7B.
The rock garden that we talked about in the side part is shown at 7C. The type of permeable papers we're going to be looking to utilize for the parking area set forth at 7D.
well leading up to the parking area that is the actual parking area is going to be these types
of pavers where grass again permeable is permitted to grow up through the grid system that supports
the weight of the car and at tab 7f we have interior photographs of the property
I've walked through it it's really it's really wonderful project that Arden is undertaking here
There's a tremendous number of eco aspects here regarding the heating and cooling system, the insulation of the building, the windows, which, again, don't relate to zoning here, but I think speak to what the intentions are regarding this building and the development of it.
In terms of the refusals themselves, and I'd be happy to go back through those, or, you know, we can talk about the eco aspects, but if we had more time, or if you have any specific questions.
In the Sanborn maps, Mr. Holloman will see that back in 1946 or 1951, it shows that this property actually had garages, structures, which for automobile parking.
Now, as you can see in the photographs, those structures no longer exist.
But this property does have a history of off-street parking for cars.
You can see that here again, 46 and 51.
As indicated, the property is owned RSA 5.
I think what's interesting to see is that we are one of only four properties remaining on the block that goes through from South 18th to South Cleveland Street.
There was one at 760 South 18th Street that was subdivided with variances from the zoning board just recently.
I've included the copies of those records at tab 13 that used to go through but were granted variances for a subdivision in more in keeping with the other properties on the block between South 18th and South Cleveland.
um one is the property right next to us um the two properties to the south of us that go through
from street to street already have off-street parking um at their at their properties and
you'll see those in the photographs we are located and you can see this in the aerial
we're located across from marion anderson the rec center and park here's our property over here to
the left that goes through from south cleveland from south 18th to south cleveland you can see
here um the two properties to the south of us 768 and 770 um that have uh the off street existing
off street surface parking similar to what we're proposing although they're just the paved concrete
pad and we're talking about a lot of eco aspects to what we're looking to propose here adjacent to
north of us is the existing property that runs through street to street that has this six foot
high fence surrounding its rear slash front yard. So these aerial images, the zoning map was at tab
So these aerial images, the zoning map was at tab 9, the sand boards were at tab 8, and the aerials were at tab 10.
nine, the sandboards.
And again, here you can see photographs, three-dimensional photographs of our property, different angles, north, south, east, and west.
Let me just fix this view.
There we go.
So here's our property.
This was taken months ago, earlier on in the construction process, as it presently exists.
You can see there's an existing structure that was adjacent to us on South Cleveland Street to the south, and then their open rear yard or front yard, however you want to call it, to the left of us or to the north of us.
And just some photographs of the back of the property under construction where the parking pad is going to be located.
At the bottom of page three of tab 11, you see the property, budding property to the south of us, 767 South Cleveland.
And then here are the two properties at 768 and 770 South 18 with the existing off-street parking.
The remainder of the images, tab 5, shows some more pictures of that parking.
And then as we scroll around the south end of the 700 block of South Cleveland, and then heading up again to the properties across the street from us, as you can see, and that's on the west side of South Cleveland Street, that there is on-street parking on the opposite side.
As you can see in our zoning drawings, there's a really wide turn.
We're able to make the turn because of the direction of traffic, how our property is situated, the width of our property.
We're able to we have a really nice radius, wide turning radius to get into our property, to clear, to get in, to make the turn completely within the extension of our side property lines out to the curb without coming into contact with any of the property or the cars on the opposite side of the street.
I did include the zoning archives for 768 and 770 at tab 12. As I mentioned, at tab 13 is that subdivision at 760 and south 18th, which then became 760 south 18th and 761 south Cleveland Street.
And the reason I bring that up is, as you go back to the zoning map, as I indicated, almost all the properties except for ours, the abiding property to the north and into two to the south that already have off-street surface parking, are split in different locations between South Cleveland and South 18th Street.
And in developing or renovating this property, one of the things that was considered was to do just that, to subdivide our property, get a variance if need be from the zoning board similar to 760 South 18th.
But this is what you were what you were left with. You're left with a by right building that would dwarf. And even if that's what's going to happen out up, it's or has already been permitted. I checked the zoning archives, couldn't find an actual building yet permitted for that subdivided lot at South Cleveland, Office 760 South 18th.
But this is what can be built there as a matter of right. Not only does it dwarf the buildings to either side of us on our side of South Cleveland, but absolutely dwarfs the buildings to either side of us, I mean, to the opposite side of us on South Cleveland.
um i did we did do shadow studies that showed the difference the impact of shadow air and light
upon the property surrounding us the difference between a by right building if we were to
subdivide versus the um the six foot high fence with the open parking and i think you can see
if you take a look here where i'm circling at the top to january 1st versus this is the shadowing
from the by right building
And then February 1st, December 1st, you see the same thing, you know, no shadowing.
All the shadowing that's with what we're proposing is within the shadow of the surrounding
structures.
But then with the by right building, you see the shadowing over on 762, 760, 758.
That's February 1st and December 1st.
You can see as you scroll down, as I scroll down, and then March 1st, November 1st, you
You see the same thing, no shadowing from ours, our fence, our six-foot, 30-some percent open fence versus the shadowing of 764, 762, and some of 760 across the street.
and then April 1st and October 1st, you see we're completely shadowing the property directly across
the street with the by-right building at 760 South Cleveland Street. So the idea here is,
although it looked like, you know, the subdivision was granted for the couple properties to the north
and that presumably a by-right building similar to what's shown in the shadow studies could be
built, my clients didn't want to do that. They don't want to do that to their neighbors. They
Even if they sell it, somebody else could turn around and do it if they sold it just as it is with the single family at the front at South 18th, and they feel that getting a car off street with a six-foot fence that's as open as it is, as decorative as it is, that provides some lighting of the footway, is going to be a lot better situation for the near neighbors and for the community than what could otherwise be done as a matter of break.
if they sell it somebody else could turn around and do it if they sold it just as it is with the
I do have a video that shows a different shadowing, but I don't know that we need to get into that.
I think you made your quote with the shadowing. We understand.
So real quickly, at 16, we have our appeal and our project information form.
17, the ownership showing that my client, Arden Cass, is the owner of the property, owning it for over 20 years.
Arden and her husband have lived in the neighborhood for decades, raised their children.
Children went to school in the neighborhood, so they're not Johnny-come-latelys that are looking just to develop something.
They are longstanding, long-term residents who will remain as residents.
They live in another property on the block, and this was an opportunity for them to do something that they thought was a nice development as opposed to some of the other development as far as they feel, adding the eco aspects to it.
Our tax compliance that I mentioned was forwarded earlier this week is at tab 18.
You can see here, owner, hour, and cast.
The copy of the hearing notice for today's hearing is at tab 19.
That was posted at the property.
You can see at tab 20, we posted both.
Just change the view on this.
South 18th Street, which you can see here.
both a copy of the notice and the notice of refusal and then also posted at South Cleveland
Street and that was done in conformance with the zoning code 20 days in advance as mentioned we
met with the community group the 14303 notice for that is attached to tab 2021a the meeting was
back on March 15th as I mentioned well advertised also noting today's zoning board hearing
copy the notice of refusal SOSNA has a zoning notice and poster that they also ask us to
distribute which we did and then the list of addresses that we pulled from the planning
commission's link along with you know the zoning board planning commission
RCOs and the councilmen that notice went out to 186 different recipients
so with that I'd like to ask my client Arden to be sworn in and to adopt my statements
Could you state your name and spell it, please?
It's Arden Kass, A-R-D-E-N-K-A-S-S.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I should cancel.
Thank you.
Arden, did you hear the statements that I made to the board today?
I did.
And they true and correct to the best of your knowledge?
Absolutely.
And would you adopt them as your own?
I would, yes.
And then I also have the architect on the on the meeting now. His name is Tim Kerner. If you could have him promoted to adopt my architectural statements.
Sir, could you. Mr. Kerner has been allowed to speak.
Yes. Can you hear me? State your name, please, and spell for the court reporter.
My name is Timothy Kerner, T-I-M-O-T-H-Y. Kerner is K-E-R-N-E-R.
All right. Do you swear or affirm, tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Tim, did you hear the statements I made to the board today?
Yes, I did.
Regarding this project.
And are they true and correct to the best of your knowledge?
Yes, they are.
And would you adopt them as your own?
Yes, I would.
Thank you.
I've just asked that my exhibits be entered into evidence and reserved for any rebuttal.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Chairman.
questions or comments from the virtual audience yes chair i have two people with their four people
with their hands up first is the miss mr thomas smith i'll allow him to speak and mr smith could
you state your name and spell for the court reporter hi yes my name is thomas smith it's
t-h-o-m-a-s-s-m-i-t-h right do you swear or firm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the
truth yes i do are you a neighbor yes i am i'm uh yeah right across the street all right proceed
yeah so uh years ago the neighbors too that at 762 south 18th with the wooden fence wanted to
also put parking in and we as neighbors uh didn't want that and we all went to a zoning meeting and
and our voices were heard and they were denied that parking spot Arden was there he knew about
that parking spot Arden was there he knew about it and years later now he's here wanting to do
the same thing and a lot of the concerns is too is you know the car parking getting in usually
not a problem but getting out is an issue with people on the sidewalk the cars directly across
it's a very small street they're going to get banged up they already get banged up a lot of
times with cars just going down the street it's a such a tiny street but um you know it what he's
trying to do is nice but the other thing is too it's just i like to ask is once someone is granted
don't they have a certain time frame where they're supposed to finish this up he's been working on
this property for over over 10 years i thought there was like i don't think that's the question
and the question is are you are you're you're against the parking i am against it yeah because
of of all of these issues with you know the people down the street with the double parking they
they did that all on their own anyway they never actually got uh the street approval and
so i'm just noting that as well uh but yeah for a single person for getting in here and out of
this street it's it's getting the car out it's more of an issue than getting a car in all right
Thank you. Thank you for calling in. We appreciate your input. Thank you.
Anyone else in the virtual audience? Yes, chair. I have four more hands.
The first one is going to be Mr. Art, Artum Ginsberg.
Could you state your name and spell for the court reporter?
Good afternoon, commission. This is Lionel Artum Ginsberg.
l-i-o-n-e-l last name a-r-t-o-m hyphen g-i-n-z-b-u-r-g and i'm hold on hold on do you
swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do are you a neighbor i
am i live eight doors down on the okay all right proceed sir uh i just wanted to speak strongly
in favor of it. There are other parking spaces on that side of the block. I recall them as being
legal, actually. I'll have been living in my house 20 years come May. I recall them as actually
being legal. And the fact of the matter is, is that street, other than the residents of Cleveland
Street and a few dog walkers, does not get that much foot traffic. It's mostly people either
parking cars are are leaving and I think the design is absolutely beautiful and I'm in strong
support. So you're you're so the question is sir you're in favor of the project. Yes I am. Thank
you very much for calling in we appreciate it. Who else is in the audience? Miss Brittany Joaquin.
Hi could you state your name and spell please for the court reporter? Hi can you hear me? I can
And state your name, please, and spell it.
My name is Brittany Joaquin, B-R-I-T-T-A-N-Y, last name Joaquin, W-A-K-I-M as in Michael.
Right.
Do you swear, Fern, to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir.
Are you a neighbor?
I am the neighbor.
I'm the house with the American flag on it.
Okay, you're the neighbor.
Okay, proceed.
Yes, so I'm the house that keeps getting popped up in some of the photos with the American
Perfect.
um i just two things number one i have a quick question if i'm able am i as a resident allowed
to access this packet mr orphanetes yeah i mean it'll be i can forward it to you at any time so
if you oh great i'm just curious um first of all i think it looks great i'm also really curious if
the side where my house is if that part of the fence is getting bolted into my house or not
um but separately for the purposes of this hearing and keep it moving for chair bergman
And I'm in favor of this project because the alternative is so much worse of a three-story by right house that would cause just more destruction of our two-story home block.
But I just wanted to say I'm, as the person that would be physically directly next door, I'm in favor of it.
I do have a question about the curb that would have to be cut and how far it would be cut because I think it would start getting cut on what is to be where I'm responsible for the property.
but I can handle that with whomever offline unless this is the correct forum.
I'm not sure.
Yeah, you'll let me know on that.
But I did want to say that as the direct effected next door, I'm in favor of this.
Thank you so much for calling in.
We appreciate it.
And I only live about two blocks from you, so I could stop by at any time.
But obviously, you know, Arden and Juan, so we'll get to you.
Is there anyone else in the virtual audience?
Yes, Chair.
Shania Ferguson, been allowed to speak.
I'm not allowed to speak.
Could you state your name and spell, please, for the court reporter?
Could you state your name and spell, please, for the court reporter?
Good afternoon.
My name is Shani Ferguson, S-H-A-N-I Ferguson, F-E-R-G-U-S-O-N.
I have lived at 748 South 18th Street, just up the block for 20 years.
All right.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Are you in favor of the project?
Strongly, yes.
Thank you for calling in.
We appreciate it very much.
Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience? Yes.
Ms. Anna Marie Naples is allowed to speak.
Ms. Naples, could you state your name and spell please for the court reporter?
Anna Marie Naples, A-N-N-M-A-R-I-E.
And my last name is N as in Nancy, A-P-L-E-S. Strongly in favor.
Right. Well, do you swear or affirm, tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yep. And still strong. Thank you. And you're in favor of the project. Is there anyone else?
there's no more heads here okay thank you planning commission thank you chair bergman
david fecto with the city planning commission the comprehensive plan recommends no change to
the residential single family zoning at this location the proposed addition matches the
character of the block and will not remove an on-street parking space so the city planning
Commission recommends of the board grant the proposed variances. MI 2022 007 361 764 South
18th Street. I vote yes. Thomas Holloman. My vote is yes. Thank you, Mr. Orphanidis. Thank you very
much. That concludes my business. May I be excused? Yes. Thank you. Have a good day. Number nine. MI
2022-007-445-
1007-13 New Market
Street. Stephen Pollack is the attorney.
Letter of non-opposition from Council Member
Squilla.
Letter of support from Northern Liberties
Neighbors Association.
Mr. Pollack is in as a
panelist. Hi, Mr. Pollack.
How are you, sir? Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, Mr. Chairman. Stephen with the P-H-S-T-E-P-H-E-N, Pollock, P-O-L-L-O-C-K.
I am the attorney for Proud American LLC and William E. Proud.
I have Mr. Proud and his daughter, Sarah, with me, as well as could I have Nico Realbuto?
Hold on a minute. Hold on a minute. Do you swear for him to tell the truth,
the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
I do, Mr. Chairman.
And Nico's going to work your IT?
My screen, yes, sir.
I got it.
Thank you.
Mr. Holloman has just a few questions for you, sir.
Good afternoon, counsel.
Good afternoon, Mr. Holloman.
Do you agree to waive the refusal and siglate to sign a thing?
Do you agree to waive the refusal, okay?
Did you email all exhibits and documents as well?
five days in advance to this here did you meet with the rco and do you have a letter we met with
the rco we have a letter we were on it we didn't get a tax clearance until this late this morning
which we uh sent to hillary um there and it was given to us in the name of bill proud himself
william e proud himself even though we sarah can testify and would testify that she went to the
actually go down to revenue, tell them that the OPA, our deed, and everything else shows that
it's in the name of proud American, but they issued us the tax clearance that we've submitted
through to Hillary this late this morning. We have it. We have it. If you're good, then we're
good. Okay, great. Why don't we share your screen? Nico, share your screen. Board, we're here for the
third year in a row to get a temporary variance once more for the open area lot across from
Jerry's Bar that Bill Proud and his family own. Northern Liberties has again issued a proviso
letter that dovetails with all the provisos that have been granted by this board in the past.
And so if you want, we could show you very quickly what the, it's the open air lot. It's
a triangular lot irregularly shaped right across the street there it is uh again uh ready for
open season again with the streetery ordinance tightening up the rules and regulations
the space that uh jerry's bar had across the street has been really truncated so this will
be a great relief valve for um for the restaurant as well as providing open space for those people
who are worried about the next COVID variant
that's come out again.
So there's our project.
So we would really, I know you've got a tight schedule and you've got a big case coming up that has contests.
So we would really,
I know you've got a tight schedule
and you've got a big case coming up.
So we would introduce all our exhibits, A1 through A12, and deem them read into the record.
I would like to call Bill Proud up just to confirm and adopt my testimony, and we would rest.
And you're in agreement with all the provisors.
As we have been for the last, as the board has done in the past.
Thank you, Mr. Pollock.
So, Bill, could William Proud be brought on?
Mr. Proud, could you state your name, please?
Bill, are you on or Sarah, can you get on?
Okay, Mr. Pollack, you're an officer of the court.
You've presented this to us before.
Your testimony is fine.
Questions from the board?
Mr. Chairman, appreciate it.
No, Mr. Chairman.
LeBaron. No, Mr. Chairman. Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
Chair, I do have William Prout with his hand up. Okay. Okay. Okay. There's no more hands. All right. That's fine.
Planning Commission. Thank you, Chair Bergman. David Fecto with the City Planning Commission.
The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential single-family zoning at this location,
the proposed sit-down restaurant is consistent with prior approvals and permits issued for this
property. The City Planning Commission recommends the Board grant the proposed use variants for a
sit-down restaurant. Thank you. MI 2022-007-445-1007-13 New Market Street. I vote yes with
provisos. Temporary variants ending 12-31-23. Hours of operation. Monday closed. Tuesday to
Thursday, 3P to 10P, Friday 3P to 11P, Saturday 9A to 11P, and Sunday 9A to 10P. Maximum of 35
seats, no live or amplified music, trash slash recycling to be stored in existing restaurant
facilities. Thomas Holliman, my vote is yes with provisos.
move. LeBaron Leonard Palmer, my vote is yes for provisors. Thank you, Mr. Powell. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman. We made it short and sweet for you. Thank you. Thank you. Number 10, MI 2022-007-388-2321
Spruce Street. Darwin Beauvais is the attorney. Letter of non-opposition from Center City
residence association applicant applicant provided 25 form letters of support from neighbors
including the adjacent neighbor. Mr. Bovee is coming in as a panelist.
Hi Mr. Bovee could you state your name please and spell for the court reporter? Of course. Good
afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name is Darwin Beauvais. That's B-E-A-U-V as in
victory, A-I-S as in Sam, from the law firm of Obermeyer. And I represent the applicant today
who owns 2321 Spruce Street. And if I remember, I swore you once today already?
Yes, the 930 listing. So Mr. Holliman has just a few questions, sir.
Sure. Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate
to its accuracy? Yes. Did you email all of the exhibits and documents as required? Five days in
advance to this year, did you speak with the RTO? Do you have a letter? Yes, we do. Thank you.
Please proceed and share your screen.
Thank you.
And I would like to start here.
This is 2321 Spruce Street.
And I would just like to walk around the corner.
I'm using Google Earth just to orient the board as to where we're going.
Turn down South 24th.
We are now turning right onto Manning Street.
And this is the middle of the block.
But we are, it went down too far.
We are looking...
We are looking at the rear view of 2321 Spruce Street.
This is the essence of our application.
If I can just stop sharing and re-share my exhibits.
So before the board, we submitted 16 exhibits,
exhibits one through 16, that includes our refusal,
our tax clearance, our deeds, our application,
site plans, elevations, aerials,
references to the codes and the mapping, prior permits,
history of the prior use, as well as our notice,
notices and a petition and photographs. So just by way of background, this is an RM1 property
sitting in Center City that has been recently conducted into a one-family dwelling. Exhibit 10
shows our permit that converts it to one family and Exhibit 11 shows that it used to be
a one family. And if I can just bear with me, just
this is our permit. And that is current that it's a one family dwelling. And
this is from the LNI website that it used to be six units.
so my client actually took the time to purchase the property spent significant amount of money
in order to convert it the property sits in a historic district is designated as contributing
and in essence like I showed at the beginning of my my presentation we're looking to just
deal with the parking in the rear now we did get a refusal uh one use one zoning our our use refusal
is simply because parking is not allowed in four single-family homes without a shared driveway.
And second, we received a zoning refusal because our intention is to place a fence or a gate much
like what was next door. And if I can show the board.
We can go back again.
Not quite like this, but our intention is to just have an open air parking, private
parking, much like what's being provided next door.
So we can go back to our exhibits.
So as I stated before, this is a six-unit dwelling.
It was a six-unit dwelling that's now converted to a single family.
We did. And let me just go over the site plan. That is Exhibit 5.
Okay, once we've submitted, here's the essence of what we're trying to do.
I can zoom in. Here's our site plan. This, where my cursor is.
We don't see that. Darwin, Darwin, we don't see it.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Here you go.
There we go. All right. So this is the site plan. The front of the structure is here. So this is Spruce Street.
but the essence of our application is in the rear you see two car opens open air parking
and what we're proposing and if i can zoom in
we're looking to create a brick a support pair on both sides that's covered
a support pier on both sides that's covered and made out of brick.
We're going to create a structure where it can hold a roll-up gate in order to protect the cars at night, much like the neighbor next door.
We can see here's an elevation of what we intend on putting out there.
We have the brick facade. This is proposed lighting. And our intention is to line it up as the same as next door, just beyond, just at our property line.
Here is, we're actually going to beautify the concrete as well.
Here are elevations.
We're proposing a 20-foot wide garage door, but when we go peer-to-peer, it'll be 23 feet, 7 inches.
Again, we're looking to have the brick facade and lighting.
And that will pretty much consist of all of what our intentions are.
Here's some concepts or just to give you an idea of where this project sits.
and also if you notice the plans that I'm that that are before you have this green stamp
we already had this approved by the historic commission
so with that you know the rest of our our our our exhibits do can do do reflect the support for
for this project we do we did meet with CCRA they had they gave us a letter of non-opposition
But what we also do, we also stood around and approached every neighbor that we possibly could and received an overwhelming amount of support via petitions, which is part of our Exhibit 14.
And if I can show that.
There's got to be a better way.
So, like I mentioned, CCRA, we met with them on March 28th.
It was a full-blown meeting.
They went through all of our application, and they concluded that they were not opposed.
we received actual petitions well the letters of support we went out in and knocked on doors
and asked them and those who did respond totaled out to be about 34 residents
having said this I want to just present the board just a couple of photos just so you can see
what is nearby.
In here, you can see this is our property,
the building next door.
You can see there's parking directly across the street.
Another view, there's a photographer standing at the parking lot across the street.
A different angle, looking more west.
they post the property
The post of the property.
Mr. Beauvais, do you have your client to adopt your testimony?
If we could promote David Krupnik, or if you can raise your virtual hand.
mr krupnik has been allowed to speak sir could you state your name please and spell for the
court reporter sure my name is david krupnik d-a-v-i-d k-r-u-p-n-i-c-k right do you swear
or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth yes i do proceed counsel
uh mr krupnik did you hear everything that i explained to the board today and would you
adopt it as your own testament? Yes, I would. Thank you. With that, Mr. Chairman, I'll open
ourselves up for questions. Questions from the board? No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Chairman. Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
No hands, Chair. Planning Commission? Thank you, Chair Bergman. David Decto with the City Planning
commission the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential multi-family zoning at
this location the proposed addition matches the character of the block and will not remove
on street parking spaces so the city planning commission recommends the board grant the
proposed variances thank you mi 2022 007 388 2321 spruce street i vote yes thomas halliman my vote yes
LaBarra Leonard Palmer, my vote is yes.
Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councilor.
Thank you.
Number 11, MI2023-000120-520 West Roosevelt Boulevard.
Terry Nace Pouse is the attorney.
Letter of non-opposition for Esperanzo with provisos.
Ms. Nace Pouse has been promoted.
A letter of non-opposition from Council Member Lozada.
Hi, counsel.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Good afternoon.
Carrie Nace Paust, C-A-R-R-I-E, last name Nace, N-A-S-E, hyphen, Paust, P-O-U-S-T, with
the law firm of Fox Rothschild.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
would you identify your client in relationship to this property yes my client is rock and shield
llc they are the owner and developer of this property all right mr hollman has just a few
questions for you certainly
Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to make the reading of the refusal to speculate to its accuracy?
Did you email all the exhibits and documents as required five days in advance for this hearing?
Did you meet with the RCO? Do you have a letter?
Yes, I did mail in the exhibits. We met with the RCO, and a letter was submitted with the exhibits.
Thank you. Please proceed and share your screen.
Great. Thank you. One minute while I share my screen.
Can you see my exhibits?
We can.
Great. So what I've submitted here is Exhibit 1 is a copy of the Notice of Referral. We have an application for the Appeal for Special Exception, completed project information form, copy of the deed to the property, confirming standing to bring this application, tax clearance certificate showing that we are compliant.
As I indicated, a letter from the RCO, which is NSPRAN Housing Economic Development Group.
Also copies of the notice letter and certificates of mailing to the surrounding area, zoning
notice poster, photographs of the notice, as well as photographs of the property, a
location plan of the property, the site plan, architectural floor plans, which we'll go
through.
as i indicated the owner of the property is rock and shield llc the property is located at 520
The property is located at 520 West Roosevelt Boulevard.
west roosevelt boulevard
Let me just bring down my site plan.
Just to give you an idea of location.
These are the zoning notices, just confirming they've been posted.
uh the my client has owned the property since 2016. uh it's zoned cmx2 it is currently improved
with a one-story building and parking lot it was previously used for a school that has remained
vacant for numerous years and actually has been many trespassers have come onto the property to
analyze the building and have graffitied the building. The Rock and Shield is an affiliate
of Accel Medical and they're proposing to improve this property and convert it into a medical use.
As you can see here, the property again, 520 West Roosevelt Boulevard, founded by West Wyoming
avenue there's a better location map of it properties here west roosevelt wyoming
this is a copy just of the zoning site plan and an aerial showing the existing improvements
as you can see highlighted in pink are the cmx2 properties bounded in the dark black line is the
property boundary and you can see the existing building that's currently located there
um as i indicated the my client is proposing to improve the property they are not making any
site improvements they're not changing the footprint of the building they are simply
renovating the interior so as to allow for a primary care physician's office
They will fit out the first floor for medical offices, exam rooms, waiting area, lower level will be administrative offices.
They will replace windows, paint the exterior of the facade.
Just to, let's see, view.
Is there just a couple photographs of the interior of the building?
All right, here's the lower level.
This is the exterior, as you can see,
West Wyoming looking east.
This is where a patio area will be.
This is from West Wyoming looking west,
the existing lower level patio area.
This is another parking area.
This is the back of the building here.
Just another photograph giving a site perspective.
here's the front of the building along this is roosevelt boulevard
so again we'll be painting the exterior facade replacing all of the windows
and cleaning up the paved area here for parking just a few more other
rotate this
and here's a copy of the lower level floor plan
and this is a copy of the upper level floor plan just showing the exam rooms nurse station
um here's the waiting area
this is just the exterior facade elevations
another uh rendering of the existing building again wyoming avenue roosevelt boulevard this
is the existing area and these are the current parking areas um they are they do currently have
14 locations across philadelphia they provide patients with primary care internal and geriatric
medicine. We will be serving the surrounding community, anticipate that many of the visitors
coming to this site will use public transportation or may walk to the property. They are intending
to combine two of their existing locations located on North 5th Street into this area.
All patients will be seen on an outpatient basis. No procedures or surgeries will occur
no procedures or surgeries will occur at the facility. Their proposed hours are Monday through
at the facility, they're proposed.
Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, they will be open, but by appointment only.
The zoning under the CMX2 does allow a group practitioner medical use, which is what's
proposed, by special exception. All other aspects of the project, including parking that's being
provided as well as the setbacks and everything else that's existing. It does comply with zoning.
It is by right. We did meet with the RCO. We addressed they had questions in terms of how
cars could park on the property, which is what we show in this plan. Red being where we would
expect employees to park. Blue being where the visitors will park. They also asked that we agree
that no pharmacy would be provided in the building, which we did agree to. We did receive
a letter of non-opposition, which has been submitted in the exhibit packet. So with that
being said, as I indicated, this is a request for a special exception, not a variance. The use will
serve the surrounding community. It would be a benefit to the neighbors in the area and will not
have an adverse impact. In addition, we believe the redevelopment of this property in terms of
the improvements that are being made will better an otherwise vacant building that is underutilized.
So if I may, I'd like to ask, I have Gilbert Ovide, who is a representative of the owner,
as well as Kevin Dow, who's the architect.
are they able to join
do we see any hands
mr kevin dow he's going to be allowed to speak okay i'm mr dow could you state your name please
and spell for the court reporter
Mr. Dow
counsel you're an officer of the court
we gladly accept your testimony
thank you questions from the board
no Mr. Chairman
no Mr. Chairman
questions or comments from the virtual audience
uh no hands chair planning commission thank you chair bergman david vecto with the city planning
commission the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the commercial mixed use zoning at this
location the applicant has shown that the proposed group practitioner will have no detrimental impacts
to the neighborhood beyond what might be expected from this use so the city planning commission
recommends that the board grant the special exception for a group practitioner thank you
MI2023-000120-520-West Roseville Boulevard.
I vote yes.
Tom Solomon, my vote is yes.
LeBaron Leonard Palmer, my vote is yes.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you.
Have a nice day.
Hey, everyone, we're going to take a five-minute break.
Let our court reporter get set up.
We'll come back.
we'll hear the one more case we have in this group
and then we'll move right to the 330 list.
Thank you, Chair.
Case number two, MI 2022-007-347-224-230
West Topo-Hawkins Street.
Councils have already been sworn.
We have letters of opposition from West Germantown neighbors.
We have letters of support from Council Member Vaughn, State Representative Kinsey.
Applicant provided letters of support from entities and individuals.
We have a petition signed by 67 people.
ZBA has received 12 letters, eight in support and four in opposition.
Mr. Phillips has been promoted
and Ms. O'Neill promoted
We have both one
Yes, thank you
Mr. Chair
Counsel, you've already been sworn
could you just state your name for the record
Certainly, Michael Phillips
Certainly, Michael Phillips, on behalf of the applicant slash property owner, Topohokin Mansion, LLC.
on behalf of the applicant
slash property owner
All right. Mr. Masters, just for the record, could you state your name?
Absolutely. Steve Masters with the law firm of JustLaws, representing the Pastoria Street neighbors.
Okay. Mr. Holliman, Mr. Phillips has just a few questions for you.
Good afternoon, counsel.
Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
I agree to waive the reading of the refusal.
I do not stipulate to its accuracy.
I do believe there is one of the three refusals is mistaken.
Otherwise, the other two refusals, I believe, are accurate.
And I will get into that in my testimony.
Did you email all the exhibits and documents as required five days in advance of this hearing?
Did you meet with the RCO?
Do you have a letter?
yes to all um mr thank you we object to that he he clearly did not submit all of his documents
i i think i remember your earlier uh comments yeah i would appreciate him i would appreciate
mr phillips correcting the record well i'll i'll put it this way i'll withdraw the uh the traffic
letter for now that that was uh submitted i don't think it it has a substantial bearing but i do
reserve the right to present any rebuttal exhibits or witnesses during Mr. Masters's
presentation, which I understand is not happening today. So, Mr. Phillips, just for a point of
information, we would like to see your presentation be under 45 minutes if possible.
Certainly. And Mr. Chair, is it possible with opening statements that I gave a brief opening
as well as Mr. Phillips so that you can so that the board can see the the contours if you could
yes Mr. Phillips why don't you why don't you start with your opening statement sure well I had a bit
more of an uh opening statement the intention was uh and can everyone see my my screen or did I just
we see everything yep okay um so um right now are you I just don't see what you see and I have
multiple screens up do you see the uh we see the blue yep yep we do the blue okay um so this is
the property 224 um west top of hawkins there is a uh long uh backstory uh to this that i don't
believe is uh entirely relevant for purposes of uh what we are here for today uh but i will
um first just go through i'm going to pull up the refusal so you have an understanding of
why we are here uh here we're seeking to add 15 parking spaces uh to uh this property uh in 2017
there was uh approval from the zoning board to convert uh the former nursing home that was
at the property into multifamily residential.
Altogether, there are 20 units at the property.
These are larger size units, predominantly two and three bedrooms.
And there are 21 interior parking spaces.
We are seeking to add an additional 15 parking spaces along the pastoral frontage of the property.
And I will show the photos and get into that in a moment.
Now, the opposition will point to the prior zoning hearing and the appeals to the Court of Common Pleas, the Commonwealth Court where provisos were issued, reversed, et cetera.
We believe that is not relevant or before the board today, which before the board today is our application for these 15 parking spaces.
Now, in all my time practicing zoning law, I believe this is the first time that there is opposition to adding parking spaces, to relieving the burden of parking and congestion in this manner.
And you'll note in looking at the vote from West Germantown neighbors that the near neighbors actually voted in support 40 to 34.
And of all the letters of support that we submitted, I will also point to and particularly point out during my presentation,
the letter from Robert Lane, co-chair of the West Germantown neighbor civic, who wrote in his
individual capacity as a near neighbor, but in strong support of this project. And there were
a number of individuals waiting to testify as a strong support. So where does the opposition come
from? Well, it comes from other individuals who utilize West Pastoria Street for their own personal
other individuals who utilize West Pastoria Street for their own personal parking,
parking.
who want West Pastoria to remain essentially their own driveway or to remain, you know,
that way for their own personal use. And, you know, don't adhere to the old adage,
what's good for the goose is good for the gander. They want this for themselves and they are
motivated uh to prohibit recording uh my client's parking so uh if we first look at the refusal
there are three refusals uh the parking itself is not the nature of the refusal really we're
looking at the the location of the parking uh here uh i will show um this is west pastorius
And so the parking spaces are proposed along Pastorea Street. There's one here and the other 14 are here. And they are all surface parking spaces in front of these units that were converted from the nursing home and in front Pastorea.
The refusals received were one for the location of the parking within the required front yard.
Now, due to the configuration of the lot, which I will pull up here, you see that there are actually three front yards, one, two, three.
So, and this building was existing in its, you know, the footprint was what it was in 2017 during the development.
So this counts as a front yard and the parking is prohibited there.
The second basis for the refusal is the number of curb cuts.
Now, this curb cut right here is existing and I won't get too far into the weeds, but this is the curb cut that's at issue in Mr.
Master's appeal against the buy right zoning permit that was issued back in October of 2022.
But this curb cut was existing and this curb cut was existing. But these additional curb cuts received a refusal as well, just because there's more than one to access the property and the width exceeds 24 feet. We have 34, 26, 34 and 26.
Now, originally, back in 2017, there was proposed one single 115-foot curb cut, but after discussions with the streets department at the point in time when this parking was legal and allowed prior to the Commonwealth Court holding, it was modified to shrink the parking and shrink the curb cut.
And also, one other point of distinction between that prior approval and now, there were some stacked parking spaces here for a total of 18.
Those have been eliminated as part of this proposal.
The last refusal was for having a drive aisle of zero feet.
I'll pull this up now.
Minimum aisle width should be 18 feet, whereas the proposed space is located directly along the front line of pastorious, resulting in an aisle width of zero feet.
We disagree with that refusal because there is no drive aisle, so therefore we cannot, you know, we don't fail to meet the minimum aisle width.
That would only come into play if we actually had a drive aisle.
Here we do not, there's no requirement that we do have a drive aisle, so I believe that refusal is inaccurate.
But we do agree that, you know, for the location of the spaces and the curb cuts, we need relief from the zoning board.
with that i'll i'll i'll cede to mr masters i know he wants to give his uh his opening and
then i'll go into my presentation all right thank you i appreciate it mr masters um thank you uh
michael can you just uh i will stop for sharing thanks all right good afternoon again members of
board. I'm with the law firm of JustLaws and we proudly represent the Pastoria Street neighbors,
all of whom are property owners on the 200 block of West Pastoria Street. Back in 2017, when many
of the members of this board were not on the zoning board, this zoning board granted numerous
variances to Darren Bilby, the developer, to create more multifamily units on his very large property.
He had some units already multifamily at the time, and he wanted to expand and create some townhouses with second stories.
At the same time, the zoning board was very concerned about the impact that these multifamily dwellings would have on Pastoria Street.
So you, as a zoning board, placed conditions on those variances.
Back in 2017, Darren Bilby applied for...
So back in 2017, Darren Bilby applied for the exact same front-loaded parking and driveways that were fronting onto Pastorius Street.
He asked for the, actually, I guess, according to Mr. Phillips, he asked for slightly more parking along Pastorius than he is now.
He's asking for 15, and he had, I think, a few more that were in a corner of the property.
The zoning board denied those front-loaded parking spaces, they denied the curb cuts, and you denied the driveways going from Pastorius to the front of each of these new buildings, because you felt that that was endangering and having a negative impact on the surrounding property owners on the street, and you put a proviso into place.
The language of that original proviso was clearly intended to protect the safety and utilization of what is both a public street, a very narrow 14-foot wide public street, but it is also a public sidewalk.
There are no sidewalks on Pastoria Street, so all pedestrians must use the same cartway as vehicles. There's no other alternative. When you're walking down Pastoria Street, you're on the same territory that the cars go down.
This can be verified in terms of what the what the proviso was by a careful reading of the transcript of the 2017 hearing, which we've included in our exhibits, and we hope that the zoning board has at this point read.
read. Darren Bilby fought this zoning board's conditions every step of the way. He filed two
appeals and got a common police judge to overturn the conditions. At that point, he started to build
his project without knowing whether the ruling of that judge would ever be overturned. Twice,
we successfully appealed to the Commonwealth Court, which reinstated all of your ZBA provisos.
Now, the key one that we're here for today is Mr. Bilby wants to remove the condition that there is no parking along Pastoria Street.
He's not asking for a new variance.
He's basically asking for the condition that you put on in 2017 to be removed.
but if to the extent that he wants to maintain that this is a traditional variance case there
is clearly no hardship for these front-loaded parking spaces because the original 2017 plan
showed sufficient parking on the interior of the two-acre lot there was multiple testimony
from both Mr. Bilby and his attorney at the time that they could accommodate all the parking they
needed on the lot. They didn't need to put the parking along Pastoria Street. In fact, when he
built these new townhouses, he had rear yards, and he could have allowed parking behind those
townhouses, but instead he fenced them off, put landscaping up, and prevented his tenants from
having parking literally right behind each of their homes.
There was also a stipulation by the law department in the course of the Commonwealth Court litigation that we'll get into in our part of the presentation.
But for the purposes now, I wanted to just flag that the law department assured the Commonwealth Court that no certificates of occupancy would be issued to this project until all of the property was put into compliance.
There was no parking and there was and everything was was was basically supposed to comply with the with your conditions.
The city issued temporary certificates of occupancy, which allowed the developer to fill all of these new units with tenants and then allowed them to vote as near neighbors in the RCO meeting that happened.
So when Mr. Phillips tells you that there was 40 neighbors in favor and 34 opposed, virtually all of those 40 are actually tenants on Mr. Bilby's property. Those are not neighbors of the property. They are actually residents in that property.
and your conditions that were put in place were not to benefit them at all.
It was to inconvenience them to some extent because you said,
no, we don't want you to have parking along Pastorius.
These are the people who are now telling you that they want parking across Pastorius,
and that's fine, that's their position, but they're not near neighbors.
They're literally part of this project.
We will present testimony that the RCO's vote tally undercounted near neighbors
We will present testimony that the RCO's vote tally undercounted near neighbors, and we will have a statement also from Mr. Lane.
years.
Apparently, he's popular today on both sides of this case, in which he realized too late that he could have extended the near neighbor status to include everyone on Pastoria Street, and that was not done.
The developer's application used West Top O'Hawken as an address as opposed to West
Pastorius because they have not gotten official OPA addresses for West Pastorius, but that skewed
the pool of who could qualify as a near neighbor. We are also going to be presenting expert
testimony from our planning expert, Nancy Templeton, from CH Planning, and also from
Deputy Streets Commissioner Richard Montanez. In addition, we're going to be presenting testimony
from some of the near neighbors, including some who collected over 110 petition signatures in
opposition, which sounds like double the number of petitions that Mr. Bilby collected. And we also
have 43 individually written letters in opposition, including letters from two principals of nearby
nearby elementary schools who are concerned for the safety of their students who walk
through Pastoria Street. Finally, we provided the board with a memo of law, and it's in our
Exhibit 1. And this memo provides you with the legal standards for adjudicating this challenge.
It's a challenge to conditions that are imposed prior to this date by the zoning board, and it
is not a traditional special exception or variance case. And so we commend the board to review our
memo, and we will be going through it with our planning experts when it's our turn for testimony.
But these are the standards that Mr. Bilby needs to meet, and he cannot meet them because there
has been no change of circumstances and changing the conditions and allowing the parking of people
to back out blindly into an area where there is no separate sidewalk is a significant danger to
pedestrians and vulnerable passengers in along the street. So that is our opening. Thank you so
much for allowing us. Thank you for your opening. Mr. Phillips, please present. Thank you. Let me
just share my screen again. Okay. So I want to just first address the individuals who live at
the property. Yes, they are affected. They are near neighbors. They're residents of 224 West
It's actually the only address that there is, although for USPS purposes, they use 225, West Pastoria is 224, West Alpahakon is their legal address.
And I'll get into the remainder of my rebuttal, including the 110 signatures that Mr. Masters submitted, of which only 36 were on the neighbor notice.
But I'll get into that at the next hearing.
And for purposes of today, I want to go through and orient the board to the plan.
And there are a number of members of the community who have lived in the community for a long time, who are not just residents and tenants, who will attest to the store demand for parking that exists in this area.
And with respect to the change circumstances, there is additional multifamily development going up in Germantown right now, and parking is at a premium.
And it is extremely difficult for individuals, for churchgoers, for businesses, or for occupants, and for patrons of businesses to find parking here.
This will alleviate that congestion and that concern.
I've already shown you the refusal and the site plan.
I want to just go through some photos of the property.
And again, this is the property, it is bookended by Topohockin to the front, which is a, has
parking on both sides, much more frequently traffic street, and over here we have West
Walnut Lane.
So these homes or multi-family buildings that front West Walnut Lane, as well as these properties
on Topohockin, almost all of them have parking access and along West Pastoria.
Just to take you on a street view, this is looking at Green Lane, you'll see the parking
right here.
And then as we turn, you see additional parking.
and then as we turn you see additional parking this is now we're on pastorious
This is now we're on Pastorius.
right here is a parking garage that serves uh the wallingsford apartments it is um i believe
18 parking spaces you see it exists here as we head up uh this is the prop this is the rear of
the property at top pocket i just want to go back quickly um this one parking space at this property
that reference is 215 again that's just a uh an address purposes of uh the post office this is
part of the development and one of the parking spaces that we're seeking uh is uh right directly
adjacent to the property at 215. here are the additional units that have been redeveloped in
In these parking spaces right now, it's just, you know, surface paved area, but this is where the parking spaces would be.
And this is the existing curb cut that leads to the interior of the property.
We have one of these spaces is ADA accessible.
I just want to take you down, Pat Sturridge, quickly.
Here is a home.
I'm sorry, I just want to briefly object that Mr. Phillips' reference to an existing curb cut is not correct.
That wasn't an existing curb cut in 2017 at the driveway.
That was a new curb cut that your client put in at that point.
Steve, I didn't object or speak during your opening.
I could have objected to a number of things that you said.
If you don't believe that's a curb cut, we can take that up, or an original curb cut,
we can take that up during your appeal of that issuance of the permit.
However, there was a curb cut in practically the same location that provided access to the interior of the property.
There was a utility pole right there, so there wasn't a curb cut.
So, Mr. Masters, I think you'll have plenty of time to respond to that.
So here's one property under development.
This is one of the appellants' funds property.
I believe this is Connie Winters' funds property, provides for parking.
The streets department actually provided those plans.
As we continue to go down pastoral, you will see additional homes that have parking right here, access.
I believe that's another of the appellants.
more parking accessed off of Pastorius. But virtually all of these properties, as we
continue to go down, have this parking accessed off of Pastorius. And it makes sense. This is an
old carriage street. This is where, you know, horses would bring individuals to their carriage
homes. And it is a low density rear street. You'll see here's another parking lot. We're still
on pastoria and you see all of the parking that is uh along the rear and that is exactly you know
the condition that um we are seeking as well looking at our some more photos just want to
run through some photos of the property and this is from the frontage looking uh from topahawken
Here's Mr. Beale, who also owns the historic property next door at 240 West Tulpahawken.
Here's an aerial where you can see Tulpahawken.
Here's Pastorius.
These are the newly renovated units, and this is where the proposed parking is located.
Just some more site photos for context.
Next, you'll see here are, you know, multifamily, the Wallingford apartments that we had mentioned
earlier.
Here's the garage at 6120 Green Street.
We have, you know, 70 units here.
I believe there's, you know, another 77 unit development going up in the vicinity.
So there's a lot of multifamily here and parking is absolutely at a premium.
215 West Walnut Lane, you see here.
uh is parking that uh empties onto pastorius this is the interior of that parking garage
243 west top of hawken also with the curb cut um historically this is what the nursing home
looked like again with west pastorius and uh and then you see you know the development
um you know this is what it looked like here we have that property showed you before 229
Walnut Lane, this and 240 West Bath Storage. This is owned by Nathan Kapp and Frederick Winters.
This is Connie Winters, who has the house behind it that fronts Walnut Lane, the appellant. This
is her property. 251 West Bath Storage. This is Mr. Master's client, Susan Wright.
251 West Pastorious. This is Mr. Master's client, Susan Wright, property with parking that exits
onto Pastorious. This is 265 West Pastorious. This is owned by Carla Willard, who is one of
Mr. Master's clients as well. All four of Mr. Master's clients have parking that accesses
uh pastoria however they seek to um deny that to um topahawk and mansion and in turn uh deny that to
um the residents of uh of the property and mr blb uh will testify in a moment regarding the need
uh of uh of his tenants and the and the desperate need for parking uh in this area as i noted i do
want to um just look at some of these letters uh or one in particular letters of of support uh i do
note that uh uh councilwoman bass did have a letter of support that then uh is now uh she's
taking no position um given the very close community vote when we respect uh um you know
we respect that we do have letters of support though from state rep stephen kinsey and and
council member at large, Sharon Vaughn, who both support this project. And of these many letters
of support, I think this one from Mr. Lane is very telling in that he noted that they're very
familiar with this property. And West Pastorious, as Mr. Matt just noted, you know, they walk their
dog or ride a bike on that block several times a week. And, you know, he did note the relatively
narrow street, but notes that 200 block of West Pastoreas is flanked by these two larger and much
busier streets, West Topohockin and West Walnut Lane, which have these large houses and mansions.
This isn't a row home neighborhood where you have a lot of street parking. Really, everything is
oriented along Topohockin and West Walnut. And Pastoreas that served as an alley or lane for
the carriage houses during the earlier era, that for the most part now all have off-street parking.
and Mr. Lane's position that he believes it's unfair that some of the residents of West
Pestorius should be permitted to have this off-street parking, but at the same time opposed
the efforts of the other individuals living at the property to have their parking and strongly
supports the granting of the variance. And I would just encourage the board to really look at
these letters of support, you know, Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, which is a historically
designated property that uh is not a but um our property it's at the corner of pastorius and
green lane strongly supports it um and you'll also notice in in these letters of uh support
uh they directly all speak to the the dire need for parking this neighborhood and uh and and
applaud mr blb's efforts um to uh rehabilitate this property in a character that's consistent
with the neighborhood and the efforts to bring the traffic off of Topahawk and West Walnut Lane
and really, you know, would place this in a logical place for Mr. B. Lee's tenants who include
disabled individuals, individuals with children, and, you know, this, due to the unique condition
of the property and the changed circumstances, this is really a significant need. I would like
to first call Darren Bealby, who is a member of Topahawk and Mansion LLC, to briefly testify,
and then I have a number of other witnesses as well.
sir could you state your name and spell please for the court reporter
my name is darren bilby it's d-a-r-i-n b as in boy i-e-l b as in boy y you swear a firm to tell
the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do proceed counsel uh darren uh just
Just for the purposes of brevity, and I know we're on, Mr. Chairman would like us to keep
this under 45 minutes.
The first question I have is if you heard all of my testimony earlier, did I?
I did hear all your testimony earlier.
And do you agree to adopt my testimony?
I'll strike that.
Is my testimony, was it truthful and accurate to the best of your knowledge, information,
and belief?
And do you agree to adopt my testimony as if it were your own?
I just briefly want to ask you about this problem.
I just briefly want to ask you about this property.
How long have you owned the property?
I'm not only an owner, I live here.
I purchased the property in 2010.
I was crazy enough to buy a nursing home
going out of business and make it residential.
And you live in one of the 20 units at the property, correct?
I do, yeah.
I live here.
And I just want to cut this off at the head and get ahead of this, because I know there's been some opposition, and Mr. Masters included in his packet, Airbnb listings at the property.
You, at times, will rent out for Airbnb your own personal unit. Isn't that correct?
I do. I've got all the licenses. I pay taxes to the city for it.
I'm here now.
I work out of my home, so I'm here most of the time, but I do occasionally do that.
The properties are expensive, as you might imagine, to own.
But none of the other 19 units, to your knowledge, are used as Airbnbs?
They're not used as Airbnbs.
And are you fully leased up?
I am, yes.
okay uh and i believe that you had uh mentioned uh to me earlier but but if you could just tell
the board how many adult individuals live it uh at your property there's currently 34 adults and
then their children that live at the property okay i would it be fair to you know nine children
no there's um i think children now there are three there's nine uh senior citizens that live
here. There's a number of folks that qualify for disabilities, you know, eight African-Americans
and Asian, there's six Jewish people, 21 of the folks are women. So I built a really nice diverse,
you know, group of renters, you know, the units, particularly the new ones are between 1200 and
2900 square feet. So they're very large units. And as you might imagine, you know, virtually
every person who lives here has a car. And so that just goes for, you know, virtually all the
adults that live there, those 34, virtually all have cars, correct? They do, yes. Okay. And
do you have sufficient parking right now with just the spaces that you have, not including
these ones along Pastorea to service the needs of your existing tenants? No, I don't. Right now,
all the spaces are assigned to folks. Folks are parking their extra cars on the street and all
their guests have to park on the street as well because there's not enough spots.
And can you just tell the board a bit about what street parking is like
and the availability of on-street parking at the property?
I mean, street parking is a challenge.
You know, people walk all the way from Walnut Lane over to Topahokan to park their cars.
You know, Green Street and the other streets, Wayne, are always, you know, full.
It gets worse when there's, you know, church on Sunday.
There's two churches within a block. The Maxwell Mansion often has events, which leads to additional need for parking.
And just down the street at Topolhocken and Wayne, they're planning, I think, an 80-unit building that's been approved with, I think, 20 parking places.
At the other end of Topolhocken and Germantown, they put another 75 or 80 units with no parking.
and the co-op on Wayne between Pastorius and Philpahawken Street,
my understanding is they're going to have to take down their garage in the back,
which is another 42 cars that will end up on the street as well.
So there's already a lot of issues with enough street parking.
And, you know, my goal from the beginning was to be part of the solution
and have, you know, enough parking off street to be able to accommodate all my folks
so they're not taking parking from folks, you know,
who don't have driveways and don't have parking.
and can you uh just tell the board a bit about uh west pastoria street is it a heavily traffic
street it's not okay um i think my i think my opposition actually testified in the 2017 hearing
the closest near neighbor that 15 to 20 cars a day maybe drive down the street and from our
review it's it's about that there's very limited cars and folks who use pastoria street simply
because it only goes between Green and Wayne, anybody that would be traveling through the
neighborhood could easily go through on Tulpahakan or Walnut Lane, which travels much longer than
one block. And when you purchased the nursing home, it was the footprint of the building. I
know that you expanded that at the second floor, but its actual footprint was as we're seeing right
now on the screen is that correct yes we had to stay we chose to stay within the footprint
of the building and not not expand the building in any way okay and these these proposed you
Okay. And these proposed, you know, the parking spaces right in front of the unit, what's the intention? Who would utilize those specific parking spaces?
know the parking spaces uh right in front of the unit
They would be, well, you know, each of the new units would get assigned a spot. You know, they would be used by the, if you look to the left where there is no street, those units there, and then also the two-story units in the back.
And I'll also note that those units to the left, we were required by the city and the state to make them all ADA compliant as one-story units. They're all graded and there's a handicap ramp that leads right to the parking. And right now that parking is closed.
So anybody that would be handicapped, and I've gotten calls from individuals looking to rent, and I had to tell them they're going to have to go 350 feet or 500 feet to their parking, as you might imagine, that didn't work.
And so we're in violation of the ADA compliance requirements because the zoning board currently has the parking closed.
um can uh and you have uh a number of individuals i know we have a number of individuals here
um that uh are looking to testify in support um of the of the project in terms i just want to speak
you know in in terms of the uh the community meeting you were at that meeting right i was
And with the issues in that meeting, would you characterize them as related to this location of this off-street parking, or were there other issues that were brought up at the meeting?
I'd say less than 10% of the discussion was related to the parking.
The vast majority of the conversation was about how many cars drive on any street in the city, the width of streets, my driveway, whether people access from the front and the rear, a number of other topics.
It was very limited discussion at all about the parking.
I think there was general consensus that, you know, basically saving a nursing home and the OIC building next door and converting them both to beautiful residential was great for the neighborhood.
We didn't really spend much time talking about parking.
And lastly, with respect to Mr. Masters, his client, Carla Willard, Connie Winters, Michael Ramos and Susan Wright, they all have parking access from West Pastoreas.
Isn't that correct?
Not only do they have access when they moved back to the street, but both Susan and Carla used to live on Tulpahawk.
And when they moved to the back, they applied for additional parking.
And I've got those L&I letters.
In fact, Carla and Mike Ramos share what is an eight car parking lot on on Pastoria Street that they added once she moved back there.
And Connie took it a step further.
She doesn't actually live on Pastoria.
she owns the apartment building on West Walnut Lane, which has an existing driveway leaving out
on Walnut Lane. There used to be a 180-foot wall there. She believes so much in the sanctity of
Pastoria Street that she took down that wall, built a house, and had her driveway exit across
from my property on Pastoria. All her contractors parked in my parking during the time that it was
under construction because there was not enough parking. And what I'll note is that my property
has a sidewalk, she's chosen to not include a sidewalk for that total 180 foot street. So when
we get into issues of walkability on the street, I've, you know, done the right thing and added a
sidewalk. My greatest opposition has chosen not to put a sidewalk in and the other neighbors
down the street have sidewalks but have chosen not to maintain them. And the sidewalk is where
I'm running my cursor right now. Is that correct? Exactly. Yes. Where you place the sidewalk. And
And it's fair to say you've been involved in litigation and appeals and disputes with Ms. Willard Winters, right, and Mr. Ramos going back more than five years, continuously.
Yeah, I mean, I think there was an initial lack of knowledge when we had the original zoning meeting.
I always had a driveway on Pastoria Street.
the nursing home that was there before had had a driveway both there and on tulpa hawkins street
and that came up at the very end of the zoning meeting last time i don't believe that the board
understood that their driveway already existed and that there was access and i think it's led to this
you know five years of this conversation again a you know a judge awarded of um parking and then
we built the parking you know for that award understood now i don't want to uh you know
belabor too much and get into, you know, that history, because I know that is another subject
of another hearing. I know there are a number of individuals waiting to testify whom I would like
to call, given our timing. So, you know, at this point, I don't have any further questions for
Mr. B.O.B., but would reserve the right to call him as a rebuttal witness in response to any
questions raised by Mr. Masters. No, I appreciate it. Thank you.
No, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Okay. I'd like to call Carleen Neal.
I would like to cross.
Yeah, that's right. Mr. Masters, you want to cross, right?
I was surprised when I didn't hear you at first, and that's where I was going to jump to that.
I appreciate your indulgence, Michael.
So can I have the screen again, please?
All right, let me find...
I am looking for a site plans, let's see.
uh good afternoon mr bilby good afternoon so um i want to talk first about um which um
which streets have access you have access to from your property um so right now um we're looking at
this drawing, which is your drawing, do you recognize that? Yes. Okay. You live in the front
of the mansion up here. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. And this street is Tupperhawken Street.
Yes. Do you have a driveway that connects and a curb cut that connects your property to Tupperhawken
Street? Yes, there's a driveway that runs straight through from Topohockin to Pastoreas.
Is that what I'm looking at right here with my cursor? Yes. Okay. And the green area here,
is this where you park your cars or people connected to you and your family? Yes. Okay.
So would you say that you, what percentage of the time do you use Topohockin Street to
to, to, to, to enter and exit your property? 90%. Okay. And at this point, have you put a
landscape barrier to block any, any cars from moving from Tublehawken into the, into the middle
of your property? No, that's completely open. Completely open. Okay. So anyone could come from
Tublehawken Street, go past your parking spaces here and park in these spaces that are for
tenants. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. You also have not a driveway, but you have frontage on
Green Street. Is that correct? I do. And is that this area that I'm looking at here?
And then this area with the tree canopies, is this mostly like open green space and foliage?
Yeah, that's a lot of mature trees, you know, foliage.
It's kind of a nice park.
The nursing home did a good job of putting a lot of trees there.
And I've planted, I think, 45 more trees, a couple hundred shrubs,
about 3,000 flowers on the property since I owned it.
Okay. Now, for a while now, you've had tenants in these new units here and also had tenants here and tenants back here, right? In this part of the building?
Yeah, I've had some tenants since probably 2011 and the new units were finished, you know, end of 2021.
Right. So in 2011, you had tenants here and then you had some tenants back here also. Is that correct?
uh in 2011 it was just the kind of oddly shaped house the that main building was converted into
five units the rest of it that's that l shape which was the former nursing home wing right
that was the additional 14 units that you got um approved in 2017 uh i got a building permit in
2019 yes to do those that that those buildings were there right we converted them into residential
Right. So these parking spaces that you want, these are the 15 parking spaces up here that you want to add in the application today. Is that right?
There are 14 of them there, and there's one by that little single-family home.
There are 14 of them there and there's one by that little single family home.
Right over here?
Right over here?
Yes, exactly.
Yes, exactly.
So these folks live in these townhouses already, is that correct, the folks who would be parking here?
Some of them live there, and then some, if you go down to the right side of your thing, they live in that unit.
That's actually sort of my retiree row, so I've got a lot of folks that live there that used to live in the neighborhood of retirees.
Those are the handicap accessible units there to the right.
Got it.
So, when you put these tenants in these buildings, but the Commonwealth Court had told you you're not allowed to have parking on Pastorius, did you inform your tenants where they were allowed to park on your property?
I don't think your statement was correct. Can you say it again?
For a time now, your tenants are not allowed to park along Pastorius. Do you agree with that?
uh the yeah that that parking has never been open for tenants so the people who moved into
your property do they have parking spaces somewhere else on your property uh there's
some parking on the property that you know if you go kind of 500 feet all the way around from those
units or 300 feet they park on that interior and then the rest of them like what i'm looking at
here with my cursor are these the parking spaces for those tenants uh yes and the rest of them
park on the street because there's not enough spots got it now back here you said you had some
ada compliance issues um not not back there that's just a that's there's a pond there's a
trees there's a courtyard back there well aren't these aren't these backyards of all the units in
the townhouses with fences and gates uh there those six units have a grassy backyard behind them
Uh-huh. Okay. And then this area here is more open space?
There was a pond there that the nursing home put in. There was trees and flowers. Yeah, it's green space.
Is there any reason, a physical reason, a structural topographical reason that you couldn't put parking in this area back here?
Yeah, it's not big enough.
It's not big enough to fit a car in there?
You could fit one car.
did you do any traffic studies or or or engineering studies to to figure out whether
you could have the turning radius for cars back here i've lived here since 2010 i i ate my lunch
out there this afternoon there's not a turning radius you could put a car there's a bunch of
mature trees and there's a pond so you'd have to move some trees around uh there's not enough
space you could drive a car in but you could maybe get what one two cars in there do you remember at
the 2017 hearing testifying and having your attorney testify that you had enough space on
your property to accommodate all the parking for your tenants without using the parking on
Pastorius? No. You don't remember that. In this area here, would you be able to put parking spaces
in this area that my cursor is here now? We could have removed more of the green space and trees and
put parking there even farther away from the tenants. But again, that's not going to solve
the ADA compliance issues. Well, my question, Mr. Bilby, wasn't for you to give me a speech about
the ADA issues. My question was, are you able to put parking spaces in this area here on your
property? Does the property allow you to put parking spaces there? We would be physically
able to cut some trees down and remove more green space and put some parking there as opposed to
near the units and near where the handicap ramp is. Oh, maybe that's the best answer I'm going
to get. Now, do you have specific leases that you give all your tenants? My tenants have leases.
Okay. And on these leases, does it specify to your tenants where you want them to enter and
exit the property, which street to use? My tenants are exiting and entering from both
past stories until hawken street would it surprise you to know that tenants of yours have have told
us that they had instructions in the release that they weren't allowed to direction i'm asking him
if he'd be surprised to hear that i'm not asking him whether he whether whether someone is saying
around the answer. Can you ask the question again? Sorry. Sure. Would you be surprised to
know that some of your tenants say that they have instructions in their lease that they're
not allowed to use Topple Hawkins Street? In the past, I had said to the tenants that I'd prefer
them to leave on Pastoria Street just because I have the front area for myself and it's a safer
street back there, but I no longer have those anymore. Okay. So you altered the leases or you
Okay, so you altered the leases or you modified them at some point?
modified them at some point?
Yeah, I've not, you know, a new lease is not including that language anymore. So tenants can leave both via, tenants could always leave via both Passtorius and Topol-Hawkins Street.
Mm-hmm. So, Mr. Bilby, you've lived in this property quite a long time, and you seem to be familiar with the other properties on the block. Can you tell me which other properties on the block have access to both Pastorius and to Topolhawken Street for their ingress and egress with their vehicles?
of mine is the only of all the properties that are between topahawken and pastorius on this
200 block of west topahawken and 200 of west pastorius can you name even one other property
that has access to both to the streets both with topahawken and pastorius besides your own
when i thought i'll object to the relevance of this thing as though the access from the curb
cuts of the pre-existing condition we're here today for the legalist to uh for these this is
this is cross-examination michael and and your client testified to all of these other properties
that use pastorius for for for the storing that for parking their cars who live on pastorius
and i'm asking him uh because because it happens to be the case that isn't a true mr bilby that
Your property is the only property that accesses both Topohockin and Pastoreas for entering and exiting your property.
Actually, my property has a drive aisle that goes between the two.
The property next door, when I purchased it, had a drive aisle that went from Topohockin all the way through to Pastoreas Street.
What the neighbors on Pastoreas wanted was for us to subdivide that and not have a drive aisle anymore.
And so now it's been separated.
The front house has a driveway on Topolhockin and the back house has a drive aisle on Pastorius.
One more house over my next door neighbor, the house is on Topolhockin Street, but they
leave the driveway on Pastorius and they're supporters of this and are going to be testifying.
And then a couple of houses down, your clients, Mike Ramos and Carla Willard,
the house is on Topolhockin Street, but they park and drive out on Pastorius.
When you say the house is on Topolhockin Street, what I'm asking you is to name properties that have physical access for vehicles from Topolhockin and Pastorius that people can choose which street to use to access their property.
And that's not the same as having an address on Topolhockin Street.
Would you agree with me, Mr. Bilby?
I just answered your question.
There were two properties that had a drive aisle that goes all the way through.
One of them has been terminated so that those cars don't drive through anymore.
Two other houses.
And you own both of those properties?
I do not.
I own just the front house.
The back, we sold to a nice couple.
But you did own both of them.
I purchased it when that house got filled with water and mold and then fixed it up to
historic standards, yes.
But all the other properties that are along Pastoria Street, none of the other properties
have access to Topohokin.
Is that correct?
Like I said, Mike Ramos, whose house is on Topohokin, can walk out on Topohokin.
actually walks back. I'm talking about a driveway. I'm talking about driving access from a car.
I don't understand the relevance, but there is now no other people or no other streets that
drive all the way through. Right. So when you're making a point that all these neighbors of yours
use Pastorius to have their cars enter and exit their property, what other way could their cars
enter their property? Isn't Pastorius the only street that these other neighbors have
to pull into for their cars?
I think my attorney stated it best.
Every other house on that street has parking in front of it
and attached to it.
Why would my property be any different?
Are you testifying that other properties
have front-loaded driveways onto Pastoria Street
where they park right along the sidewalk area
or where the sidewalk area should be?
Yes, a couple of them do for sure.
And I'm testifying that every house,
every property on pastoria street has parking in a driveway every house and there's also a 20 car
18 car parking garage right across the street from me yes and they also only have one one way
of getting into their property via pastoria street and you've admitted to that right now
yes right whereas your property everyone could come in topahawken theoretically if there was if
there was no access given to um to tenants from pastorios i guess i don't understand the the
relevance we put the parking where the city wanted it right next to the units and again
handicap accessible units right the relevance mr bilby is that the zoning board in 2017 when they
tried to explain and clarify the the conditions significantly said that only emergency vehicles
significantly said that only emergency vehicles would be allowed to access to. I think Steve,
would be objection
Thank you.
as you know, your, as you know, your clients had ex parte communications were caught going behind
everyone's back and were sanctioned. Okay. All right. Okay.
I don't focus on the parking questions. All right. No further questions. Yes. Okay. So Mr.
Mr. Phillips and Mr. Masters, we're going to have to cut this.
We're at 55 minutes now.
We'll have a resumptive hearing, but I would appreciate if Mr. Phillips and Mr. Masters both could, you know, maybe tell Hillary how many more witnesses you think you're going to have so that we can have some planning about when we have the next hearing, if that's possible.
So, Mr. Phillips, you know, just let our attorney know, hey, I think I have three more, four more, and Mr. Masters, the same thing.
and I'm not I'm not talking about like when we put open up to the community how many people there
but just individuals that you would call yourself right and these would be individuals from the
community but we would call them in our that's up to you it's up to you yeah if they're your
witnesses just let let us know how many witnesses you have and Mr. Masters the same thing when you
get in okay yes we can tell you and we have a couple experts and then we have some community
right okay and I thank you very much I think and but we're gonna have to move on we still have the
330 list. Mr. Bergman, could I ask just a favor? I had a lot of individuals attend today as
witnesses who, you know, I guess we're expecting to speak. I mean, a number of them are, you know,
one person just got out of the hospital, they're disabled, they're elderly, they're, they all were
here for, you know, three and a half hours. It's bad enough, you know, I'm paying my attorney,
which I get, it's part of the process. But if we schedule another hearing, I'd love to be able to
give them a timeframe where they know that they'll get the opportunity to speak just to value.
I think we would gladly try to work with you the best we can.
But, you know, as you see today, we get a little involved and it gets a little carried away.
But I guess this is my apology to them.
Yeah, I'll try to do is we'll try to plan it the best we can.
I really appreciate it.
I'm asking how many witnesses people think they have.
Yeah, these people have been walking, you know, extra 500 feet to their cars for a long time and are ready to park.
And so we're looking forward to having an end to this.
I understand that. I understand.
Thank you to everyone.
Okay, we're going to move to our 330 list. Thank you. All right. Thank you.
Hey, excuse me, Mr. Chair. Leonard Reuter from the city, who was here on behalf of Mr. Montanez, who was called via subpoena. He did want to make a comment, a brief comment based on the testimony that's been given.
Sure. Well, I talked about calling before. I didn't think we were going to get to him, but.
yeah no he he just let me know that he would like a comment yes yeah because mr montanez is not
testifying today but he okay fine leonard still on the hearing could you state your name and spell
for the court reporter please uh sure leonard reuter r-e-u-t-e-r for the senior attorney for
the city of philadelphia firm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do proceed
sir i just want to make it clear on the record that the city uh would not object to uh a new
subpoena for Mr. Montaignez for another date provided that he is available on that date
and also so long and there's not additional records that have not been provided that would
be requested because we'd have an opportunity to object to any of that I also though
when the hearing started was the first time that I had heard that there was a challenge to the
refusal uh based on the dry vial uh issue um i am going to ask uh our people um in planning and
streets because i think the decision about the dry vials is reviewed by one of the two i can't
remember exactly which one does that uh to review that and if we need to issue an amended refusal
um we'll we'll advise all the parties of that but i just wanted to let you know that
we were not aware that there was going to be a challenge to the refusal uh and michael you're
looking confused but i don't remember anybody saying there was a challenge to the refusal on
the drive aisle requirement uh so again we'll look at that i mean it's probably in the scheme
of things not a big deal uh compared you know it it's just something that would get rolled into
everything else but uh but you know to the extent that there might be an issue about dry vile or why
uh mr phillips is alleged is is claiming that a dry ball is not required here
um we'll just we'll let everybody know uh and we'll provide that to the board uh and to ms emerson
i appreciate that thank you thanks everyone thank you all right thank you mr
Good afternoon. My name is Bill Bergman, and I will be chairing.
Let me double check. Is there anyone still in the audience whose 2 p.m. case was not called?
I see no hands, Chair.
See no hands, Chair.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
My name is Bill Bergman, and I will be chairing the 330 ZBA hearings.
With me is our Vice Chair, Ismail Shahid.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
And our Board Member, Thomas Holloman.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
Also here is Hilary Emerson, our Attorney, and our Executive Director, Tanya Sunke.
Here's our virtual format. Be advised the proceedings are being recorded. The video will be available by contacting TanyaSunkett at phil.gov. For the benefit of our court stenographer, we ask attorneys and witnesses to identify themselves before testifying.
If you're participating by phone and you wish to testify, press star 9 to raise your hand and star 6 to unmute.
To enter an appearance statement, call 267-270-5548.
Leave your email and the address of the property in question.
And finally, the question and answer box on the screen is not for comments.
All comments should be directed to our Executive Director, Tanya Sunkett.
Let's take a look at our continuances for this afternoon.
Number two, MI-2022-003-199-7050 Woodland Avenue. That case is continued.
Number five, MI 2021-005-416-3847 Germantown Avenue, Continued Attorney Moving Party.
Excuse me, Mr. Chair, this is Hillary. I just wanted to note for the record that we also have
LeBaron Leonard Palmer here as our alternate board member.
yeah i i yes but when i heard he was back but you're right you're absolutely right he still
yes it is a no and i decided he announced that mr shaheed was back all right he's back thank you
okay um number eight mi 2022 000 672 8107 bradford street that case is continued mark
must be heard. Number nine, MI 2022-006-49-2717 Federal Street, that case continued, must be heard.
And number 10, MI 2022-003-306-1513, Widener Place, that case is continued,
mark must be tried. Is there any other requests for continuances?
No hands, Chair. Okay. I also have a few cases that,
number one, MI 2023-000-953-250-Buyberry Road, that case has been withdrawn.
Number four, MI 2021-005-014-4234 Germantown Avenue, Glenn Clennon is the owner.
No exhibits, third listing.
Glenn Clennon, no hands, Chair.
MI 2021-005-014-4234 Germantown Avenue.
No exhibits.
This is the third listing.
I vote to dismiss.
Ishmael Shahid, I vote to dismiss.
Thomas Holliman, he voted to dismiss.
That was Thomas Holliman.
He voted to dismiss, too.
Number six, MI-2022-000-648-2901 South Randolph Street.
John McCrillo is the owner.
No exhibits, third listing.
No hands, Chair.
No John McCrillo.
Number six, MI-2022-000648-2901-South Randolph Street.
No exhibits.
Third listing.
I vote to dismiss.
Thomas Solomon, I vote to dismiss.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is to dismiss.
We're going to go to our regular list.
number three, MI 2022-002-679-515-17 West Erie. David Garcia is the attorney. Letter of non-opposition.
David Garcia Garcia is the attorney letter of non-opposition from Esperanza letter of non-opposition from Council Member Lozada applicant also submitted a petition in support signed by approximately 31 neighbors.
Mr. Garcia has been promoted to panelists.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Mr. Garcia, could you state your name and spell, please, for the court reporter?
Mr. Berger, my apologies. We got cut off there for a bit.
No, no, sure, sure. State your name and spell.
David Garcia, ID number 54351. Council here for the owner. Applicant AC, Property Management, LLC.
see all right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
sir i do our vice chair has just a few questions good afternoon counsel do you agree to waive the
reading of the refusal and stipulate to his accuracy yes i do have you emailed into our
office all the required documents and exhibits that are needed to proceed with this case
five days in advance of this hearing yes they were thank you please proceed and share the screen
Mr. Burbin, we're seeking a variance to legalize the existing three apartments and an office space
that's on the first floor facing, in this case, 51517 West Erie Avenue. If I may share my screen,
Mr. Chairman, on the reason we're here, the copy of the refusal, if I can just
kind of make this a little bit bigger for everybody.
on the copy of refusal on the bottom floor uh there needed to be a death of about 30 feet
and it's only about 17.6 or 17 and a half uh that's for the basis of the refusal on this
property i'll show you photographs of the front of what i'm talking about
this would be the property here's here's the entrance to the office where my what my hand is
up here is the second floor then the third floor apartments there's an entry for the first floor
apartment which is in the rear and i'll show in photographs in a bit but this would be the the
entryway for it this is a zone commercial mixed use number two property the three stories you can
You can see masonry building, about 4,000 square foot lot, 3,700 square feet of that have been improved.
It was purchased by my client bank in January of 2020.
I have copies of the tax-clear certificates that were part of this package.
And again, Mr. Bergman, I'm not quite sure if I heard you, but there was a letter of no opposition.
Councilperson and Esperanza both.
Absolutely.
If I can show you the drawings, just before we go into some of the paragraphs.
This is.
This would be the first floor.
The first floor apartment is in the rear.
And the entry to that apartment, there's a door here as you can see on the drawings.
This is somewhat of an alleyway.
It's covered and Erie Avenue would be here.
the first bedroom window the way you would gain access to it is on the side here in this foyer
and you would go up the steps and then here it would be the landing on that that would be again
the the first bedroom unit on the second floor and then the third one just following um up the
steps you would get the landing and there is there is the third floor there's no access from the
foyer into the space where it's denoted as its office that's that's the reason that we're here
That's that's the reason that we're here today. I can just look at some of the.
today, if I can just
look at some of that.
These are all existing conditions, right? Yes, sir. They are. There's no additional.
There's not going to be any additional construction or or or any sort of any sort of work.
Your only refusal is supposed to be 30 foot. You have 17.7. 17.6. I think that's what it states.
but that is correct. Again, here's the photograph. Here's the front entrance.
That's better. Here's a better photograph. Again, this is the front entrance where I have my scroll.
Now, this would be the front entrance to the office, but this would be the front entrance
to get to any of the other apartments because they are separated yep and here is uh the notice
of today's meeting here i have it and that was posted on the uh beauty salon that's next door
this was posted on the door for today's meeting uh we did hold again a meeting with the rca these
just photographs this is the side entrance and this would go this would be for the landing
on the second floor that would be the one of the apartments um then the other one
and if i could just scroll quickly
this is the entrance for the third floor
okay bedroom and this is the one for the rear that's wanted to show
this would be eerie out here you would enter there's a door overhead lights yeah so could
you mr chairman this is pretty straightforward sure do you have the three apartments are also
attached to the packet and i would introduce the entire packet uh okay the record all right and is
your client here my client is here mr bergman he he's a little a bit challenged speaking english
As an officer of the court, what I would assess the board is that everything that I've said, if asked, my client would adopt and would also state that it's correct.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Garcia. Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Chair.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
No hands, Chair.
Planning Commission?
This is Ron Bednar, City Planning, first name Ron, R-O-N, last name Bednar, B-E-D-N-A-R.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, sir?
Proceed.
This property is indicated for commercial mixed use on the city plan, given the physical
circumstances of the site.
We recommend the request of variance be granted.
Thank you.
MI 2022-002-679-515-17 West Erie Avenue.
I vote yes.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you, Mr. Bourbon. Thank you, members of the family.
Number seven, MI 2023,
000756, 1003 West Dauphin Street.
This is a reconsideration hearing.
Zen Jin is the attorney.
Mr. Jin has been promoted to panels.
Good afternoon.
Hi, could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, my name is Zen Jin, Z-H-E-N, last name J-I-N, 1617 John F. Kennedy Boulevard,
Suite 1838, Philadelphia PA 19103, here on behalf of the applicant, Olympia Holdings LLC.
see. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do. This is a reconsideration hearing, so we have all your materials, right? Yes, that's correct.
Why don't you start, sir? Thank you. I'm going to share with the board the information related to
this reconsideration. Essentially, we had come before the board before with a refusal.
So after the board made its initial decision, the examiner sent us an amended refusal, which actually added a parking refusal.
In our reconsideration request, we made it clear to the board, we're not seeking the sixth unit.
We understand that an additional unit, there's no hardship for this property and that the planning commission is looking to reduce the density in the area, not increase.
And that the planning commission is looking to reduce the density in the area, not increase it for the future.
However, in this case, if we were to do what is permitted under the current REM1 zoning of five units, we would face the one parking spot refusal that is now added to the refusal list.
And in this situation, there is a hardship to the property for this particular additional one parking space refusal.
That is because this property is facing a street with its rear side landlocked.
And even if we were to try to put a garage in the front, which no one else on the block has, and would take away an on-street parking spot, we're not able to get access to the rear, which is what is required under the code to have a parking spot.
Other than that, all the parking is on the street on that block.
The entire area is still currently zoned RM1, and the RCO and the community, when they met with us, actually supported six units without parking.
So we're asking the board for what is normally permitted under RM1 based on the size of the lot.
Even with the overlay of 425 square foot per unit, we're permitted five units and we would like to move forward with that request, except we would need a waiver of this one parking spot, which unfortunately to put into this particular location because of the layout of the lot is just simply not possible.
So that is why we asked for reconsideration from the board of its prior decision to deny the six unit. What we're asking before the board today is five units without the one parking space. So I'm happy to answer any additional questions from the board or show any other exhibits.
Is your client here to adopt your testimony?
Yes, I believe Mr. Shagai Bader should be here to adopt my testimony.
uh if if he's not yeah i hear mr bader's in the audience hi could you state your name please
and spell for the court reporter yeah my name is chagai bader c-h-a-g-a-i my last name bader
b-a-d-e-r do you swear affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
yes proceed counsel thank you uh mr bader uh you did you see my presentation and hear my testimony
before the board yes uh can you verify what i've said is true and correct and adopt it as your own
testimony yes thank you questions from the board no mr chairman no mr chair questions or comments
from the virtual audience there's no hands here planning commission
Ron Bednar city planning is properties indicated for residential use on the city plan or adopt the district plan recommends no change in existing zoning at this location, the applicants hardship is not supported with evidence of any physical physical circumstances or condition of the property would prevent it from being used in conforming with the code, therefore we recommend the request for grants not be granted.
i'm not sure i understood the uh the we're asking for a parking waiver i i don't understand
the physical location the property really doesn't allow a by right parking um even if we were to try
to put a garage in it would be a actually its own variance so right i understand thank you mr
M-I-2023-000765-1003 West Dauphin Street, I vote yes with provisos, per amended refusal
dated 12-9-22 and a maximum of five units.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes with proviso.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes with proviso.
Thank you. Thank you, counsel. Is there anyone in the in the virtual audience whose 330 case has not been called?
No, A.J. Chair. LeBaron, are you still on?
Yes, I am, Chair. LeBaron, thank you very much today.
We gave you a workout and we kept you a lot longer than you normally do.
We do appreciate your help and your work.
Absolutely.
Thanks, everyone.
It was a little bit of a longer day, but we got through it.
We got a lot of good work done.
So thanks, everybody.
Have a good night.
And great job, everyone.
Thank you.
Good night.