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.