to the rear and the new addition of the second and third floor on top of the distributor
as well as a fourth store story addition
This is the letter of unanimous support from RAH Civic Association, which hosted an in-person
meeting at St. James School on June the 14th, 20 community members attended, everyone voted
in support of the project. I know the owners want to thank in particular Ms. Rosalie Cooper.
I know the owners want to thank in particular Ms. Rosalie Cooper for convening near neighbors
on that row home block to discuss and collaborate on the project.
Here are some of their signatures.
The signatures also include some of the business owners across the street in support of this
project.
And to summarize this presentation, Mr. Chair, members of the board, for the reasons I've mentioned, the neighbors have been very supportive because of the owner's direct involvement in the business and in the management of these rental units, as well as the community-driven design.
We submit that this requested relief of a long landlocked mixed use building has never and cannot strictly conform with the ICMX based zoning district requirements, but that this relief is minimally modifying and beneficial, not adverse investment in the neighborhood's character congestion.
health and safety, adjacent properties, public facilities, and built environment, all as
per the code, and as underscored by the community's support of this application.
And with that, I'd love to call up the owner, Mr. Masiri, to adopt and affirm my testimony.
And they will be coming in. Yep. They will be coming in now as a panelist.
and he's available chair okay sir could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
yes anthony massiri first name a-n-t-h-o-n-y last name massiri m-a-s-c-i-e-r-i do you swear
or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth yes i do please proceed
counseling good afternoon mr massiri how are you good thank you uh have you heard the entirety of
my testimony to the board this afternoon yes i have and the information i provided to the board
is it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge yes and would you now adopt and affirm
my testimony as your own. Yes, I do. Thank you very much. Eric, just out of curiosity, could you
show me where the nine unit, how do you get the nine units? Tell me, tell me that.
Sure. Three units on each floor. So three on the second, third, and fourth floor. I'm sorry,
one bedrooms in the front. I think I glossed over that. And the rear studio space in the middle,
all with those nice
lighting through the
So everything is one bedroom?
one bedrooms, three studios. The studios
are in the middle. Okay, I got it.
Okay. This is the second and third floor.
This is the fourth floor
right here.
Questions from the board.
Yeah, where is the trash? How is the
trash managed, going to be managed
for all those units? Yes.
So the trash is located in the first-floor commercial space right off of the rear stairwell.
The trash for this building is already regularly serviced three times a week by Radix Property
Group's commercial provider.
Radix owns about 200-some properties locally in Philadelphia.
and has been using this servicer because of the existing ground floor commercial.
But you're adding like a multiple, several more units.
So is that trash space going to be large enough
or are they going to have to increase their trash pickups?
So this trash room is, as well as the rear stairwell and egress,
is newly designed here to specifically accommodate the nine units in ground floor.
I believe. So the previous units, the units that are already there won't be able to use it like.
No, they will all be able to use it.
No, they will all be they will all be able to use it. There was. I guess my question is, is it going to be large?
I guess my question is, is it going to be large enough because you're adding more units to the building?
So with this trash space, is it going to be large enough to accommodate all the units?
So we do have our design professional, Ben Estepani, on the line.
Ben designed this trash room with this unit count in mind.
It wasn't there previously.
I do believe Anthony and his team have also discussed, if necessary, increasing the regularity of trash service from three times per week.
But Ben's best equipped to speak to the dimensions, if we can bring him on.
Ben, can you raise your hand in the virtual audience?
And he'll be rejoining us shortly as a panelist.
And while he's on, I guess adding to the question from board member Graham,
Is there space for trash storage in the units, particularly the studios, where you're not going to have much?
I'm curious, too, when Ben gets on, how big are the studios?
Studios are 337 square feet.
kind of hard to without a without a sort of symbolic layout it's hard to
yeah so um do i need to be sworn in first all right could you could you please state your name
and spell for the stenographer sure first name ben last name estepani e-s-t-e-p-a-n-i
do you affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth
Please proceed, counsel.
All right.
Good afternoon, Ben.
How are you this afternoon?
I'm good, Erica.
Ben, can you describe the plan for trash storage and collection for both the residential and commercial units of this property, as well as the design and dimensions of the trash storage and the ground floor?
yeah so every unit will have access to the trash um it's accessible through that second means of
ear grass at the rear um so you go down the stairway exit that door into that roll-up
garage door essentially area for the trash room um we enclosed it just in case bad weather like
that trash doesn't get distributed all through that back alleyway so it's enclosed
just for further weather protection as far as unit layouts for the studio the intent
would be since they're all identical as you walk in as you face that door would be essentially
an efficiency layout along the party wall for refrigerator stove sink dishwasher
There is, and then the plan would be that living and bedroom area adjacent to the light well, and we'd be able to fit in a small trash closet essentially in that corner where you almost see the green outline in front of the,
in front of each egress stairwell
to fit a small two-by-two closet in there for a trash room,
assuming the studio wouldn't make as much trash
as one of the one-bedroom units.
So efficiency kitchen along the party wall,
open floor plan for the living room,
bedroom towards the light well,
and then having a closet in that kind of left bottom corner of the studio.
Mr. Chair, if I may, if we still have Mr. Massiri up on the screen,
if I may ask him a follow-up question.
Mr. Massiri, do you have anything to add to Mr. Estepani's testimony
about the trash rooms including um your experience uh servicing um
apartments uh buildings of this nature and particularly studios of this dimension
and the trash configuration here.
and the trash configuration here yeah absolutely trash from that side
Yeah, absolutely.
Trash from that size would be more than adequate.
We could easily fit six 96-gallon cans in there.
And what you do is you just increase the frequency of the trash collection.
So we go through this when we lease up buildings.
We'll start off with two cans, and then as the building leases up,
we keep adding another can until it's at full capacity.
Then we kind of assess.
We listen to our tenants.
um we you know we service all our properties weekly we're there all the time so we can see
how the trash room is being used if it's overflowing and then we can adjust the frequency
of the pickups from two days a week to three to four as needed to properly service the building
so can i ask this question and so each floor you have three with three
all the way going up you have the
smaller units. Had you thought of two on each floor
to make it like two fairly nice sized units?
Or is it just, is it an economic issue or do you
think there's a need for the studios? Well, it's certainly
an economic issue. We don't like having buildings with too many studios.
We certainly like to stay
away from for example trying to like we thought about proposing an additional floor but we wanted
to be uh kind of sensitive and aware of the neighborhood we didn't want to build as high
as the or propose to build as high as the storage facility next door so we thought the studios would
be a nice product mix to be able to to rent to people um slightly more affordable um it is a high
traffic part of the neighborhood um so we do think studios there would be you know a
successful and and a good sort of product to offer and so what are the size of the other two
apartments they're about 600 square feet each which is a very good 600 each yeah and then and
then you have three something for the studio in the middle correct yeah okay other questions from
the board. Yes. Are we missing a floor plan? Are there four stories? Yes. So on this slide is the
first, second, and third floor from right to left. And then on the next slide, we've got the fourth
floor as well. Okay. So we're adding seven units to the existing two. Is there a plan that shows
what part of the building is existing
and what part of the building is new construction?
Thank you.
This is the plan that ties it together.
As I mentioned,
this piece is also existing.
If you consider this pink,
this is what exists.
That's that one story rear?
Correct.
This is correct.
That's correct.
So one story addition on the front, three on the rear as the existing second and third
stories are extended.
And how are we counting this piece where the trash room in that goes all the way down
to grade?
I guess that's not being considered a four story addition?
the building will be four stories in total right but right now it looks like the new construction
extends deeper than the existing building the existing building is about yeah approximately
eight feet short of the property line in the back seven and a half eight feet okay and then
just a few things one i think four stories to have it be a walk-up feels like a stretch i know
there's two stairwells but people don't really there's a lot of density here for there to be a
lot of stairwells so many stairs and then a question i have is for the residential portion
of the building practically where are they like getting their mail where is amazon dropping their
packages because it seems like the entry vestibule is really small compared to the entrance to the
commercial space and then how how do you plan as the as the like property owner manager to segment
between the commercial the existing commercial space and this now residential light lobby i mean
you have up to 30 you know 35 possibly even 40 people living in this building and so i'm just
trying to understand how people will be moving in and out sure um if you look at the plans the
as it currently the building currently exists it's actually going to be almost identical to
it's actually going to be almost identical to how it is currently if you look at the front entryway
how it is currently if you look at the front entryway there are
there already is an existing front uh apartment entryway and the um and the roll-up door for the
beer distributor so that that sort of layout's not going to change um we would have some sort
of intercom or entry system um that people could use to buzz you know open the door and handle
packages and uh and obviously there would be a mailbox a multi-unit mailbox in the vegetable
there um with the you know the usps would have their key keeper to be able to access
is it very rare in this vestibule i don't see space to put a mail box in this vestibule which
is part of why i asked so we either put them in the vestibule or we'll put them on the uh the
outside of the building depending on you know uh historic concerns which isn't which isn't
applicable here but certainly yes we would need a nine unit mailbox and we found we manage a lot
of one-bedroom units, you know, I can almost guarantee that we're going to probably have
nine people, maybe 12 people total for the building. Maybe some couples, but oftentimes
most of our tenant mix tends to be one person renting these units.
Okay. And I have one last question. Who has access to the roof? Rooftop? Everybody?
only the tenants only the residential tenants yes
why should you kind of everybody in the building right excuse me all the all the units in the
building have access to the roof correct yes correct yeah thank you and then the trash room
is accessed by foot so all tenants like the fourth floor tenant will be walking down the
rear stairs to take their trash
to trash and there's no chute or
correct got it
we have the same same layout
we we we manage you know
several four story
buildings in uh in written house
and um it's a the same exact
procedure that that we manage in those
buildings as well okay
questions from our attorney hillary
emerson
not at this time mr chair
questions or comments from the virtual audience
here i have a hand up from naya richardson i will allow them to uh
speak i'm bringing them back in right now sure
hello my name is nia richardson hi um could you could you spell your name just for the court