And do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
I do, but I need to give my address first. Ladies and gentlemen, for the last time, my address is 2424 East York Street, Suite 11, Philadelphia, 19125. I am vacating my office this week, and I'll be probably just working from home for the rest of this. So you'll get a new address next time.
also members of the board there's a matter i must address on the record as this is essentially an
administrative board that potentially could go to the court of common pleas should there be an appeal
Uh, last week when we had snowstorm, I don't remember which day that was, um, on Sunday,
last week when we had the snowstorm i don't know which day that was
I was arrested by the 26th district officer, David Chisel, who was the supervisor there.
He charged me with, uh, he said he was going to charge me with assaulting an officer.
Uh, I can tell you as a member of the court, I did not assault an officer.
However, I was placed in custody, eventually charged with various criminal charges.
There was an open case, my PP number, which is photo ID, uh, when somebody does get arrested
in Philadelphia. And I'm not making this up. It sounds like a fake bad password that someone's
grandfather would put together. My PP number is 1223344. My understanding is my case has been
assigned to District Attorney Leandra Rataco. That is L-Y-R-A-N-D-R-I-A, last name Rataco,
R-E-T-A-C-C-O. It's currently open, but I have to put this on the record now with every case that
I have in front of everybody in the city so that my clients are aware on the record of what's going
on. I have already advised my client, by the way, and the record is protected in case of an issue
in the future. That's all members of the board. So this is ag assault on a police officer. Oh,
I was not charged with that. No, I was not charged with that, despite the fact I had the entire
thing on video, not just my dash cam, but on BWCs from the officers in the 26th district and
on my phone, which officers took to prevent me from leaving because they would not let me
make a complaint. It would not identify themselves on the record, pardon me, to me with their name
and badge number. And this particular sergeant, Sergeant Chisholm, who has a history of allegedly
assaulting attorneys in the courthouse, including one of my friends and colleagues at the defender's
office, repeatedly refused to give me his name or badge number. And I did not find it out until
he threw a complaint form in my face when I was seated in the back of a police cruiser on Gerard
avenue after he had assaulted me he threw it in my face and said here's your complaint for him and
then he wrote his name on the bottom and that is when i determined his identity so i spent from
11 15 a.m on sunday until 2 a.m monday morning in custody by the way the roundhouse don't ever go
there don't ever get arrested it is terrible mr moverhill excuse me this is sharon i understand
that you had to put this on the record but i think you've probably satisfied
i will give you my apologies i'm just a little you as an attorney probably realize that the less
you say maybe the better it is for you uh not in this instance uh well no no yes in this instance
take it from me i understand i will continue then so members of the board i'm trying to share my
screen right now um again leo mobile hill i'm here on behalf of my clients uh ms marnie dreams and
Chris DeFino. They're a couple. I've had the pleasure of representing them for years.
They finally found a location for their dream home, which is at 428-30 West Thompson Street.
What I'm going to do first is show, try to share my screen to show the photos,
and then I'll get to the refusal and everything else too.
Are we able to see that, ladies and gentlemen of the board?
So what we have here is the actual lot itself.
I'm going to make this a little bit bigger so we can all see it, maybe.
There we go.
So this is the lot.
It's located in the corner of Thompson Street, I believe Cadwallader.
It is a trapezoidal-shaped lot.
Here's my zoning sign.
It's not orange because it ran out of orange paper.
Usually I would like to print it in orange so the neighbors can see.
And I'll get to the plans in a second.
This is looking northbound.
This is all on Thompson Street.
This is new construction. It's approximately 38 to 40 feet high. When we include the parapet wall,
these are 42 feet tall. As the members of the board know, new construction goes up to 38 in
your ladder parapet wall on top of that. So that's what we're looking at directly across the street
from our lot. More photos of that. And I will ensure that I get this all timestamps as a packet
to Ms. Suleta once I have everything from the architect later today. These are the photos I
took in the snow. I was walking with a cane because I had hernia surgery earlier this month.
I did miss you guys. This is a flat iron style building to the south of our lot. It's approximately
55 feet tall, if I recall correctly. Our architect may be on the line later. And if that's incorrect,
I will supplement the record with something in writing to indicate that. So this is a shot from
across the street. That new construction I showed you in the previous photos is behind us.
um here directly adjacent are new our older three-story homes directly to the left right
along thompson street is a three-story home that has 100 lot coverage um there's an alleyway that
runs about 20 feet back southwardly perpendicular to thompson street so it butts up upon this
little shed okay and then this house directly to uh right on the corner and then the house
directly next, which I believe the residents of this home are present and represented by
uh the residents of this home are present and represented by council mr mckelhatton who may
counsel, Mr. McElhatton, who may make a statement.
make a statement later regarding their position so these two homes here touch on this three foot
wide alley my clients are not building in that alley because they're not allowed to
see another page this is a current all street parking space we're proposing to maintain that
and i'll pull up the refusal in a moment as well members of the board this is looking on thompson
street westwardly this is taco riendo i stopped there for lunch when i took these photos it's
really good uh the chile llenos tacos are fantastic and this is just across the street
so we have a mix of newer construction and older homes so these homes are around 34 38 feet tall
not quite all the way to the height they can go under the zoning code again these are the photos
across the street older homes you can see the newer construction with the home that's lifted
out so they did not have to do underpinning uh for purpose of the record i believe that is number
443 west thompson street so i can identify that later should this be appealed since i don't have
my page numbers um where are we okay more photos just showing the surrounding context
so my client's deed for the property they purchased it from the estate of joseph c
brennan or brendman rather that's b as in bravo r e n as in nancy m as in mary a n
as in Nancy. And they purchased that back in 11-22-2019. That deed was recorded.
I'm going to pull up a different thing. I'm going to stop my share for a second just because I have
client files on here. I'm going to pull up the plans. So members of the board, all we're asking
for in this case is a single family dwelling and a single family lot. That's it. It's all we want.
The lot's weird because it's shaped like a trapezoid.
We want to go 40 feet tall, and here's why.
Because the lot's shaped weird.
It's not a regular lot in any sense of the imagination.
And we're asking for that slight height bump
because the interior dimensions of the lot are strange.
It's not rectangularly shaped.
It's shaped like a trapezoid.
Here we go.
So I think this is what I have.
My architect also has to get me revised plans that are stamped by him, but I'll go and I'll show you everything that we showed to the community group with respect to our original presentation.
And going back to sharing my screen, members of the board.
So we should all now be seeing my plan by Ambit Architecture.
This is the Z2 page.
This is the Fino and Drains residence, 428 West Thompson.
So it's actually two lots. Members of the board were asking to combine them into one because you can't build a house that crosses two lots, right?
Okay, so here's our plan.
There's a shadow study on our plan.
If you look to the neighbor's letter of opposition, they asked for a shadow study.
Here it is.
We show where the shadows will lie, and basically because the sun is where it is, we're not going to be casting the neighbor's homes in shadows.
with the exception very late in the day of the two homes that are here right to the west of the
property. The home with the 100% lot coverage is right here where I am indicating with my cursor
right by where the Ambit Architecture logo is. The other home is slightly south of that right by
where it says Ambit Architecture and they have a significant rear yard of approximately 14 feet
I believe. Don't quote me on that. I had to do the measurements on the fly using Philadelphia Atlas
and that's not always accurate. So the other thing that's interesting about this lot is
this right here. Okay. This is our three foot alley that I was talking about.
Neighbor, neighboring house here has absolute rights to this lot. This house is currently
vacant and the property owners are trying to do something with it. I've been in contact with the
attorney for the person that owns this home. So that's how I know that I spoke with him last week
about it this is where the protestants live um i just say protestants for purposes of being clear
at this hearing i don't think there's a lot of there's not a lot of animosity between us and
the neighbors we're just trying to talk it out and figure it so let me see if i can draw on here
real quick so the board sees this alleyway a little bit better i can't i don't know where my
tools are so let's try it this way i'll indicate with my cursor so originally this was the alley
Boom. One, two, three, four corners. It's three feet wide, approximately 21 feet deep.
The adjacent neighbor who's represented by Mr. McElhatton indicated that in the past they had
to get this corrected because originally they had no rights to this alley on their deed. They got a
new deed. They got that corrected. No problem. I have not pulled the deed for the property on the
corner, but I imagine they also have rights to it since there's 100% lot coverage and they must
have a second way of egress. This is currently covered by a wooden gate, where I posted my
It's where I posted my zoning sign facing Thompson Street.
zoning sign facing Thompson Street. Originally, the plan was to have
Originally, the plan was to have our entrance, have this gate be replaced,
have all the fence here for the neighbors be replaced,
and to have my client's entrance for their home here,
which I'll show you when we go to the floor plans.
We got a refusal for this setback right here.
Why did we get that?
Well, we can't build into this alley, which is indicated by this dotted line.
We therefore decided, well, instead of dog-legging the property
and making the house come out all the way up to the property line,
all the way up to the fence that currently exists,
why don't we just give the neighbors more open air and space
and continue the alley straight back?
So this is why we have a refusal for a three-foot side yard setback.
Other refusals we received, rear yard, we're at six feet.
Why are we at only six feet?
Well, the lot's weird, ladies and gentlemen.
It is very strangely chic.
So what we did instead was keep a nice, wide backyard
instead of like going up to five feet or whatever else.
We just try to keep it nice and big.
You also see when I go through the floor plans
that they have a lot of open area here.
What they're proposing is a roof deck.
We are proposing, because we're going 40 feet tall
and because we're not building a parapet wall,
what we're doing is instead having this railing be see-through
instead of a parapet wall.
So ultimately, this, the amassing of the structure itself,
the actual physical building will be less in height
then the structure is directly across the street then the house I think does 443 directly across
the street that is new construction and significantly shorter than the flat iron building
that is directly behind us on the corner and that's just up to Cadwallader Street from
the Indian restaurant Mood. We also received a refusal because we can't set back the deck
far enough on the property line here and I think about three feet instead of what we're required
to is five. This is only for the access stairs to get to the real roof deck, which as everybody can
see, is set back from the street by five feet. We just can't physically fit it. You can maybe throw
a spiral stair on here, but as you know, if you've ever been on those, they are treacherous.
We don't really want to do that. They're also kind of ugly.
This is a second story, or pardon me, fourth story deck area. It's basically used for access
to get on the stairs to get to the roof deck. I guess there could be a redesign made where
these stairs are all tucked inside in a pilot house. But again, that's a 10-foot pilot house
that's a structure on top of the building, which is going to be taller than what we're proposing
here, which is 40 feet with this railing. I'm going to also show you members of the board.
Here's our curb cut. We're rebuilding the existing curb cut to match what we need to do
under the code. 22-foot wide curb cut. We're not taking away any parking at all. It takes
a car off the street um which is nice because if we park in here it's a net it's a net negative
net positive here there's no change ultimately to be on street parking um moving now to the
elevation members of the board to the left of z2 the drawing indicated earlier we're still on that
first page here uh there we go this is our elevation we're going to 40 feet to the top of
this structure and we'll see what this is in a minute here's a three foot six parapet wall which
is just a railing so light and air can pass through so we're not obscuring the neighbor's
view. This is less height than any of the existing new structures directly across the street or
the existing large flat iron brick building just to our south. They get to about I guess about 43
feet 6 inches maybe 42 feet 6 inches I'm not quite sure because I didn't measure them but they would
be taller with the massing and the roof deck and the parapet wall than what we are proposing here.
That's all for that page, members of the board.
I'm going to move to the next one.
So here's our ground floor plan.
We are not excavating.
We don't want to excavate.
We don't want to disturb the older houses.
We're not doing a basement in this property whatsoever.
Here's where our cars fit.
I'm sorry.
I said it was one car.