coming from this particular use just just as a comment so um again and i guess i was worried
about the actual operating hours pick up drop off of the seniors and that kind of thing and
how that might affect um the kind of events that you're talking about
yeah um i i i understand that i i think i think it ends at five and they probably close up and
wind down through to 6 p.m um is my experience but i was over there in the evening for the
RCO meetings that we had. And the places shuttered 530. So I know the current business operates
generally what you would call normal business hours. And I think the event space, it's a little
dynamic, right? Whenever people maybe necessarily can get there after work, what their plans are
for setting up. I don't know that it's a fixed idea. I know the idea is to have everything shut
off and emptied out you know at a reasonable time in the evening later on but um i i don't know that
it's written in stone when events would necessarily start and and will there be any weekend events
that would seem more likely with the seniors yeah i my client mentioned a desire to meet the needs
of the community and really try to make this space welcoming, not just, you know, from
nine to five during the week, but a lot of the same people say, hey, I'd like to, you
know, I heard the phrase Bible study, and I understand that that potentially would be
during the weekend, an anniversary party.
I think that there's a desire to use the space during the weekend, and I understand that
it's very quiet there during the weekend.
Like you said, during the week, I think there's adjoining daycares, and there's a charter
i think there's adjoining daycares and there's a there's a charter school that appears to be
school that appears to be not small.
not small i think about a block to the west but during the weekend i i think it's a bit like a
ghost town there so um i think that it should be a lot easier to to make these uses happen
on saturday and sunday when the space is normally vacant all right and before not not quite a ghost
down there's a there's like a methadone clinic right down the street true that's true it's
on this block that's not yeah yeah it doesn't really affect that no and and your comment about
the seniors wanting to be in before it gets dark is kind of uh something that uh i think it's true
too anyway all right thank you so council let me ask you a question the the property has three
different condos are are they have the different addresses or or is 50 50 the three condos how does
that work? So the entire condo is 50-50 Parkside. They're divided into units 101, 102, and 101.
What unit is this? This is 101. Okay, good. All right, I see. Thank you. But it didn't show up
on the referral, and I did mention that to the plans examiner, but maybe for whatever reason,
the way this is broken up with tax IDs, it just seems to be a hard time for it to show up
Appropriately, uh, on the website and all right. Thank you. Council.
Uh, nothing chair questions or comments from the virtual audience.
I see no hands at this time chair commission.
Michael Gall with the Philadelphia city planning commission, the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the existing CMX 3 commercial mixed use zoning at this location.
The appellant has demonstrated that the proposed use as an event assembly facility would not cause undue detriment to the local community.
what beyond what might otherwise be expected this property is in a corridor of high intensity of
commercial uses has a rear parking lot that directly abuts a major auto-oriented commercial
shopping center and is located roughly across the street from a major regional performing arts
venue so the proposed use is in keeping with the property's context it is also nearly 600 feet from
the closest residential property lowering its potential for community nuisance therefore the
city planning commission recommends the board grant the requested special exception for event
assembly facility use thank you mi 2025 007 232 5050 parkside avenue unit 101 i vote yes
michael johns i vote uh yes did we have a proviso for uh 10 8 10 pm we we never had provisos michael
i thought that was a request from the community or something i thought this with the
let me let me hop over to the the letter uh
uh we we didn't i don't think we got that specific and i think that they approved their
end without a proviso it if you'd like that proviso that's fine i mean i think what happened
was you said everything be out of here by 10 o'clock at night right is that what you say
council we it was a little i thought it was something go ahead no no i thought there was
something that the community had requested no we don't see that anywhere maybe it is all right
all right michael johns my vote is yes cheryl gaston my booty yes
my vote is yes my vote is yes thank you council and we have one more for you right
that's right um mi 2025 007 235 1000 south 60 street just for the record could you please state
your name my name is michael eggnall m-i-c-h-a-e-l-e-g-n-a-l and you've already been sworn
and so council my understanding is that um we're going to go on with this we know there was no rco
meeting and that um uh we're we're set to go without the rco am i correct counsel yeah unfortunately
um we know we have all the information on it okay i i appreciate that we and and our our um
board secretary has a few questions uh good morning counsel did you submit your documents
and exhibits uh five days in advance of this hearing uh yes ma'am and do you stipulate to
do you waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy I do then
you can share your screen and present your case thank you okay is my screen
shared it is okay thank you so allow me to hop around a little bit we notify the
community we worked hard to coordinate with them since November didn't work
out but uh we we properly posted here's an image of the the pro
but we properly posted. Here's an image of the property in question to situate you with what
we're talking about. This is, you know, fairly standard masonry twin. It's at 60th and Washington
in the Cobbs Creek area. Historically, it was two residential units above and
uh a doctor's office below um that that seems to be the use for a lot of the 20th century or
the most recent kind of approved use um here's some photos of the interior my client uh purchased
the property uh i believe it was last summer um my client grew up in west philly but he moved away
He wanted to, you know, invest in Philadelphia, and he thought that this was a good way to do it.
He relied upon his real estate agent to help him do this in a reasonable way.
And I wanted to show you, you know, the headline here is that he has clean hands.
He tried to do the right thing.
He's not a real estate professional, so I don't think he really could have known better that the zoning was not, in fact, correct.
In fact, here's the the blurb that was marketed to him.
It says it's, you know, a three family residence.
And you saw from the photos that clearly it had been taken care of.
It was fully occupied when he purchased it.
So he could have been none the wiser that the zoning was probably two family and a commercial.
It's RSA three, by the way.
so I wanted to show you from his perspective I'm going to try to zoom in I can't see what you can
see so let me know if this doesn't really work out well he had a like an appraisal report that
he read through that indicated the zoning compliance was of a legal use as three
residences I want to highlight that to you there that I think he reasonably relied upon
on these professionals to help him navigate this
and they did not do a good job.
Okay, so I included a whole series of emails
trying to chase down the RCO
and coordinate with the councilwoman's office
since November to discuss this.
I think you know what happened there.
So I don't need to belabor that.
um so that's it but my client i i i have he got a violation i think in novella i i i could try to
dig it up but that he received a violation for not having a rental license i think in march maybe
and he was told to fix it by eight and we're here and um he just wants to make this kosher
What I wanted to show you, and I don't think I have the right picture up, the way these buildings are built here is that the third level is actually an at-grade quasi-basement.
The first floor, you go up a flight to access it.
So what used to be a doctor's office and what is now an apartment of about 1,000 to 1,000 square feet is not subterranean.
and it's a grade it's got multiple you know doors and windows uh off of it um which you know this
doesn't give you a good angle on but i can hop over pictures of that to cancel what what's that
you have pictures of the different grades and the oh there you have photos of the different
grades and different entrances i'm i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna open up i i had it i had an image
Okay, give me one sec here.
So, and that's really the big headline is that my client wants to make this kosher.
It is fully occupied.
He didn't understand what he was doing wrong by purchasing a building that was represented as a legal three-family, which you and I know is, in fact, not.
um i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna switch the sharing so you're saying the first floor is one
sorry what was that the first floor is one apartment and the second floor is two apartments
right are you now seeing a google street view image i see it okay so this this is um this is
OK, so this this is this is from like 17 years ago, which appears to be the latest street view image of this area.
from like 17 years ago, which appears to be the
So this construction is not going on now. And this picture looks different from the pictures I just showed you because the building has had work done in the last 17 years.
But this should give you a sense of, you know, that it has its own door. It has, I think, three or four windows down steps to get in there. Right.
That's right. So you go up a half flight to get to the front on the on the upper level and you go down sort of half a flight to be here.
And you see there's two doors there accessing the ground level.
Let's go back. So the apartments in the base, there's an apartment in the basement, we're going to call it.
That's right. There's three flats. So a second story, a first story and a lower level, each each individually.
have a apartment that's right questions from the board yes um are there tenants in the current in
the sorry are there tenants in the property currently it it was fully occupied when he
purchased it it is fully occupied today okay so there when he purchased it because i'm just
looking at the the violation history it looks like there was a violation for not having the
right number of rental licenses but it looks like the largest number that there were ever on record
were two um so i guess is uh what's your client's plan i guess this is the plan to rectify that and
has any work been done in the unit since purchase so uh right i agree with you the the largest number
of permitted units was what you saw, two, and a doctor's office on the lower level.
My understanding is that this was converted to housing a long time ago, and it was not properly
permitted and licensed. His plan is to, his expectation was to purchase three homes here.
His goal, why we're here, is to legalize this and then take the steps to, you know, operate it
uh in compliance with the the building code um property management code and proceed on
um yeah it also looks like he's done extensive work since he got there without the benefit of
permit well it wasn't him he bought it he bought it as is um it can you see it's something that
looks like homes.com now. Yep. Yes. Okay. So my client purchased this. These are the
listing photos that he purchased. So my client didn't do any work. He purchased this building
in this state. So, uh, he, he was, he was led to believe that this was a done deal,
that this thing was completely good. Um, my client hasn't done this work. He purchased it
from the person, I guess, who did this work. Okay, understood. And yeah, all of that's after
his purchase. And I want to say this also, my client worked with a real estate agent who was
also representing the seller who I suspect did all of this. So I think that, again, my client
has very clean hands because I think he was misled fairly maliciously by the person he was most
relying upon to protect his interest in buying something that was a compliant property
so um this wasn't done right if i were in touch with him when he was buying this thing i would
have told him to run away because this is just a problem but um he came to me afterwards when he
realized what was going on and he couldn't get a rental license okay how many bedrooms and how
many bedrooms how many bedrooms is the unit in the basement a single bedroom it's it's one bedroom
it's a one-bedroom unit and the doorway there's two exits out of there right and they enter into
what in that basement does one enter to the bedroom or does or do they both enter into
sort of the common area of the one bedroom are there photos of the basement so i i don't know
if you can see what i'm seeing here i can see the photos that you're where's the basement right well
right they all look like upper floors i i think i think this view now the the right hand
six photos i believe would be the basement you see an egress i believe you see i see that
okay so the one door goes into a sort of main area and just we can't see where the other door
goes to but there is a door directly out of the basement you know what here these all the way
left the two on the left i think give more of the picture i think it's a bedroom in a common area
give more of the picture i think it's a bedroom in a common area is probably you know most of
what's going on down there all right thank you all the questions yes last question where are
all the utilities for the three units in in the sense of the the water and gas coming in the
building or the meters so like typically if you have a multi-family building there's either
everything's in the basement and all the tenants have access to the basement or they're separately
metered in closets in each individual unit what's the setup here i looked at the clients
in the audience there's this group in the audience
what what's that it's your clients in the audience um i i i gave him an expectation to hop on in uh
later, but let me, can you join? Antonio Harley. Yeah. If you see somebody named Antonio in there,
that's him. I told him to come in after 12, so I just texted him. He did intend to join us. I was
speaking to him about an hour ago. Okay. So, right, to your question, I don't affirmatively know,
And if Antonio joins us, that would be great for him to tell us my my guess is, you know, and it's, you know, and it is a guess.
So take it for what it's worth. I think in my experience, first of all, in the street view photo, I don't see a single meter outdoors.
Yeah, so my suspicion is that I saw what appeared to be a small door, this photo. In my experience, there's, it's likely that there's meters behind one of these doors, but I don't know, that would be speculation.
Is this a common lobby? I think one, I think because of the history with this property, it's sort of hard to figure out what's going on without floor plans because like, is there a common space?
It just brings up all of the spaces where now you've got three people living in our three families living in what used to be a single family home.
there's lots of spaces for overlap it's a corner unit so there's a lot of
opportunity here but like trash packages well it's five meters it's five of 12
right you're saying he's gonna get on at 12 and we did put that information out
but we did say that yeah I forwarded him the alert I got so I think it was 12 20
ish but I spoke to him an hour ago and he did intend to join us after 12 I just
shot him a i shot him a text uh i told him to join now but i i don't know if he's well i mean i just
say that um with regards to the meters if he's he's got to get ultimately a co he's got to have
separate meters he's got to do it you know for code so i don't know that we necessarily need to
hold on for him to say where the meters are because if they're not they're not in the right
place he won't get a co i i agree but that's up i mean i'll defer to the chair but
ty i i think you make a a good point i i would just say that this isn't any building that was
probably at one point a single family home this was a building that has been divided into three
units since at least 1958. okay so yeah no i'm talking to our council here
Thank you, Chair. I know this was already touched upon, but I just, again, just wanted to formally
note for the record that Mr. Agnell did provide email correspondence showing their attempts to
reach out to the RCO for a meeting, also provided correspondence of them reaching out to Council
Office. Staff did send the warning letter to the RCO, and Council also provided notice to neighbors
regarding the ZBA application and provided group emailing to confirm that we have all those
documents. Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
i see no hands at this time chair
michael gall with the philadelphia city planning commission the comprehensive plan recommends no
change to the existing rsa3 residential single-family attached zoning at this location
this property appears to be physically configured for use as a three-unit layout with a documented
history of use as a two-unit residential building with a medical office use beneath
therefore the city planning commission recommends the board grant the proposed
variance for multi-family use. MI 2025-007-235-1000 South 60th Street, I vote yes with Proviso.
C, it will be obtained. Michael Johns, my vote is yes with Proviso.