It's actually two car parking.
So it's a net gain for parking in the neighborhood.
This is the alleyway that I was discussing, going back 22 feet of the 29-foot – excuse
me, that's incorrect.
of the 35 foot two inch property line. This was originally where the door was located. My clients
have since moved that to here. I just don't have the new drawings from the architect with the stamp
and their proviso plan at this point because he had this personal emergency where his spouse had
to go to work and he got stuck at home I guess with his kids and I just talked with him before
I popped onto this call. This is an elevator. It's a four-story house. They want to have a nice
elevator. Heck, I can't blame them. I wish I had an elevator but my house is only two stories and
it's tiny, so I don't need one. Go to the next page, members of the board, maybe.
Okay, so this is the second floor.
okay so this is the second floor and then maybe tweaked a little bit when when we fought when we
pushed the final plan out because we did have to move the front door um because neighbors did bring
up at our first community meeting where they did not hold a vote and i'll get into that later
uh concerns about us using the alley as an access way for the front door they prefer to have eyes on
the street they were worried about the door being directly behind someone else's backyard even though
is 20 or 30 feet away from the rear of their house. Cool. We hear you. Give that a shot.
That's the third floor. So I already showed you the first floor members of the board. That was
the unexcavated area where they're parking. The new plan is going to show door here.
The stairs are going to be moved around and things like that, if I recall correctly as well. But
let's just pretend for now that the door is here. This doesn't really affect the refusals at all.
We have two bedrooms, bath, bath, elevator, nice little den area on the second story.
Third story, we have the owner's suite, another bedroom.
And these bedrooms, I mean, Chris works from home as an interior designer, as I recall.
And these are all called bedrooms, but we could use them as an office or a playroom or a study or a bookroom or anything like that.
Big closets.
We have the shelves, washer, dryer, large bathroom.
Going up the stairs now to the fourth floor.
Okay, here we go. And this is actually a wonderful, wonderful fourth floor. And I really hope I get to have brunch at this house sometime because it's going to be gorgeous when it's finished.
Going up to the fourth floor. If you remember on the renderings, members of the board, you saw how, like, the top floor doesn't quite fit the entire trapezoidal shape of the underlying structure.
We have a little bit of a cantilever here. It's just like any other bump out. Instead of just being a box on a box, though, it looks neat.
in the rich villa the architect who i believe may be on the line or may not be due to his personal
issues this morning with his family um really did a nice job working with this strange lot
so here's dining room living room area kitchen all of the appliances along this wall a nice
little powder room of the dining area these are all windows to let in light it's going to be really
neat um you would come out the sliding door here and remember when i showed you before the roof
deck pattern on Z2H1. The stairs leading up onto the roof deck, that's how you get out. So you come
out the sliding door here, you come out into this deck, and guess what? We got a refusal for this
deck too. You can see now why members of the board, if we tried to put these stairs in here,
it really messes with the interior layout. If we put them here, we'd go over height, and we'd have
a pilot house here, which would cast a greater shadow as the sun moves in its arc. In the evening,
we'd be down some would be over here we'd be casting a shadow almost uh 50 feet tall on all
the houses across the street and on the rear yards over here and we don't want to do that
we put a lot of thought into this design um so yeah deck come out this is a nice little deck
it's not even really big enough to sit out on it's really meant for access to these stairs
i guess you could put a patio chair out here and like sit and enjoy the sunset
maybe, but it's not huge by any stretch of the imagination. So here we go. Here's our roof deck
now. So again, you saw it in that Z1 plan. This just has some measurements on it. Come up the
stairs. Here's the roof deck. It's set back five feet from the street as required by code.
It's only 13 feet by 17 feet, so it's not even huge. You don't even take up the entirety
of the structure with this roof deck. It's just a nice little area to sit and relax and enjoy some
outdoor space that isn't in this backyard or in this three-foot alley. That is essentially it.
Oh, it got renderings. I forgot about that too. My apologies, members of the board. Here you go.
This house looks really cool. It looks really cool. It looks from these renderings that perhaps
these stairs are jutting out into the street. It's just because of the angle. They're not.
Final materials, brick. We don't know what color. We showed white here. Maybe we'll keep that. Maybe
a little bit more uh in character with the traditional red brick fronts of the homes in
the neighborhood i know ms moss uh from old kensington usually prefers that as does the
constituency but there's a lot of new construction in the area as you saw across the street's gray
brick the protestants on the line i believe their house is stuccoed in the front
houses across the street have red brick and stucco and a mixed mix of different materials
so this is just for your edification it's not really important for the purposes of the zoning
hearing itself. I'm going to stop my screen share and get to the refusal just so we can identify
those issues because the objections that were brought up by the RCO namely have nothing to do
with the refusals here. Maybe I will find the refusal. Let's try this.
So the refusals as far as I recall along pulling this up have to do with the side yard. I've
explained that it's because we extended the three foot alley back if the neighbors prefer
we'll redesign the building and get a new and come back i guess for a second hearing
we'll redesign the building and get a new and come back i guess for a second hearing and dog
leg the property out and go all the way to the property line so they have less light and air
and less privacy i don't know why they'd want to do that but we can and then we would eliminate
that refusal we don't want to it seems silly we're trying to be considerate to the neighbors behind
us to the west long thompson street here we go i found my refusal members of the board
Here we go. So, here we go. Here are our refusals. We were issued the refusal 10-22 of 2020.
Leo, can you enlarge that?
Yes, absolutely.
Okay. So, we're RSA 5 district. We're building a single family home. Cool. We're asking for a lot
adjustment to create one lot from two. Cool. Size and location is shown in plan, which I've
indicated to you and we will be sending you revised plans but that does not increase the
refusal whatsoever single family fast single family household living two accessory all street
interior parking spaces i'm minimizing my video because it was in the way of me seeing four
refusals guys parking isn't one of them because the parking spot already exists so roof debt set
back um i showed you what our issues with that is it has to do with the roof deck that's above
that the third floor that you access from the fourth floor kitchen area so you can take the
stairs to get out to the roof deck um let me one moment you're on uh members of the board i just
need to send my client a text so they can pop on in case they popped off excuse me this is sharon
mr mulvihill can i ask one question yes um in the there's something i'm not understanding in
refusal underneath the different code sections the examiner wrote one use refusal three zoning
do you know which is the use refusal uh no i i don't i think that's probably a copy and paste
error and frankly i didn't even notice that until just now when you brought that up um one moment
members of the board i'm sorry but the link that my client had to pop onto the meeting is not working
so i'm going to resend it to them right now um let's go what we got here uh i guess while i'm
doing that i'm happy to take questions and i can go through the remaining refusals in a second or
if mr macklehatten is on the line wishes to say his piece while i'm pulling this up and my client
can pop on i'm happy to do that reserving the right to address the refusals in a few seconds
i just don't want to take any more time over the roof deck setback it says roof decks must be set
back at least five feet from the extreme front of the building did did i not see that well we have
two street frontages members of the board and the one that's set back is the one above the fourth
story where the kitchen area is and that's set back five feet from thompson street
so the refusal that we got is for that little access area that maybe you can fit a patio chair
on um which allows access to the roof deck what is the is that necessary that yes it's necessary
to have because otherwise what happens is we have to completely refigure the fourth story we'd have
to move the stairs inside the property um and then that would completely change the layout of the
fourth floor and excuse me excuse me leo this is new construction yes so you can make all the
arrangements to make everything fit i mean one could do that but it significantly reduces just
one moment i'm sorry members of the board i do want to address that i'm just trying to get this
link to my client very quickly um yes theoretically one could do that the the issue becomes if we look
to the letter of objection that was sent in by the RCO, I will have to detail that meeting process
myself in a few seconds. But their objections were to height, right? They didn't want it to be
as tall as it is. And we specifically designed the building to be shorter in overall massing
than the other new existing single-family dwellings on that block and the new building
that's direct or the older building that's right behind um if we put the stairs elsewhere in the
fourth store and there's going from the third to the fourth story and we move them inside
what would happen from my perspective is this we would have to have a pilot house the pilot house
would then be another additional 10 feet on top of the roof right and the neighbor directly next
to us who is represented by mr mckelheadon uh was very concerned about their access to light
and air and everything else like that could you go back could you show us that uh exhibit
yeah look as you're speaking for what i'd like to see i'm just getting that i'm getting my text to
my client okay he's running all right slow so i'm doing my best i'm sorry members of the board no
problem all right so deed to pheno and dreams uh chairman which page did you want me to pull up
uh chairman which page did you want me to pull up well the one that shows that small roof deck
well the one that shows that small
and the staircase okay so let's one moment let me just stop and reshare because i have to do that
all right uh the property is tax clear members of the board i i don't have the tax clearance
with me right now of course however if ms zuletta were to check the record um for brt it's it's paid
out. All right. My apologies. These files are very large, and that's why it takes so long for this
one particularly to load. Are there any other questions in the meantime while this is loading
that we can address while I'm waiting for this so we don't take up more time?
Anybody else on the board? Anyone else on the board has any questions?
no no all right right right here on the left on the left you're showing a staircase
right and then that small deck as you refer to maybe being able to put a lounge chair there
yeah chairman where's the five foot that overhang we're talking about well that's the issue because
these stairs are three feet wide i guess to address what mr holliman said earlier
Our kitchen itself isn't terribly deep as we look at it, right?
If we were to move these stairs anywhere in the interior, we lose a significant amount of space.
We lose windows.
We have an elevator here that really can't be put anywhere else in the house.
And I guess you can ask them to remove the elevator, but they want it, and it's not a zoning issue.
So I just want to address the stairs.
Where is the five-foot in question that kicks in right here?
It's all of this, members of the board.
This is Orkney Street.
I think I said Cadwallader before.
That was incorrect.
This is Orkney Street.
This is Thompson. We can't physically set back this. This is the roof deck in question, your refusal. We cannot physically set this back five feet because then we can't put the stairs out here.
We don't put the stairs out here. These are about three feet wide, you know, rise over run, whatever the tread height is. I don't recall. We have 10 foot ceilings in the building.
it could we can theoretically uh mr holliman put these stairs anywhere well somewhere in here
probably not here because that interferes with the elevator uh if you put it here interferes
with the layout of the room leo i'm missing i'm missing why can't the stairs stay where they are
and eliminate or reduce the size of the deck well chair let me see if i i'm sorry mr holliman i know
you're talking. Yeah, Tom, I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm confused. Okay.
Mr. Holliman, did you have a question that I can address for you while,
before I address the chair? The existing stairs that's inside the building,
why can't you extend them? So we thought about that too, but if we extend, let me get my drawing
tool out. If we extend these, draw, I don't want text. If we extend these stairs indicating in red
for purposes of the record, the stairwell on page, I believe, four, showing the fourth floor
interior layout, we could. We could just pop these stairs, pop a roof deck, a pilot house right up
here, and get another nine or ten feet of height on top of the building, which puts the building
significantly taller than anything else on the block other than the flat iron building that's
behind us. And it's really out of character for the block. So theoretically, we could do that.
We could get it by right, but then also we're going to get a – well, we couldn't get it by right because what would happen is we'd get a refusal because we can't have the pilot house up against the property line.
So we'd have to find a whole new place to put the staircase in the entire structure, right?
And it also adds to the height, which would – during the latter part of the day as the sun is here in the sky, this is the arc of the sun.
We have the sun's rays.
Sorry, it's all red.
I could probably change the color, but it's not that important.
that's going to cast a huge shadow to every house here as the sun gets to here
as this is to the west it's going to cast a huge shadow on the properties here and this neighbor
who mr mackleheadon represents is concerned about their light and air and we're trying to do our
best to facilitate this design to eliminate too much massing of the overall structure and that's
why we have the the see-through railing on the roof deck which is like here give or take set
back five feet from the street and that's why we have the staircase over here to the side of the
massing of the fourth story so we don't have that additional height and we're not casting shadows
on anybody where is that that staircase going the one you just this is yeah that's the staircase
for the entire house uh chairman so this goes it's all interior it's all interior yeah this is
like a switchback staircase from the ground floor up to the fourth story that's it all right i and
where it says up that's coming up from the third no no no on the other side go to your left again
here yep up where that's from that little deck yeah so let me where's that going where's
where that's from that little deck yeah so let me where's that going where's that going sure i'll
get my pen out to show you chairman so here's this is the sliding glass door you would come out
here right you go up the stairs and this is going up right up on top of this structure here because
let's get to the roof i have to clear my drawings very quickly so i can touch this they're all
drawings all right so just remember that and then let's go mouse when i get up where am i where do
i land one moment i'll answer your question i just have to get to my other drawing real quick
draw for you all right yeah draw all right let's draw so under this is the the top of the fourth
story right so this area right here this is the fourth story where you saw the kitchen so we're
standing right on the roof of the kitchen here okay and i'm going to draw the same drawing that
i did but on the next story up so you understand what we're talking about here so we're coming out
that sliding glass door and this this is elevated these are the stairs that are elevated at the same
height as the top of the fourth story so you walk under this no problem then you come around and you
go up the stairs and this is how you get to the roof deck above the fourth story and you just
there you go boom okay so where's the five foot refusal the five foot refusal is here
indicating for the record with my red pen this access deck to leave from that glass door I
discussed onto the tiny area where you can put maybe a patio chair or some patio furniture
this this is considered a roof deck under the zoning code even though it's not be reduced
couldn't that be set back no because chair what we do if we cut five feet off of this
looks like that and and and then you can't you can't get onto the roof and that's what I didn't
i understand it now and to go back to what mr holliman said earlier so the staircase