ZBA Hearing - October 6, 2026

of parking to provide it more so so it's a more pleasant experience for the residents we still

have more than a one-to-one ratio between parking and units uh we increased the amount of garage

parking spaces from nine to ten and so the overall change in the parking went from 44 parking spaces

TO 36 PARKING SPACES FOR 34 UNITS. WE DECREASED THE OVERALL LENGTH OF THE REAR BUILDING AND INCREASED

THE LENGTH OF THE SIDE BUILDINGS. BOTH FALLS WELL WITHIN THOSE SETBACK REQUIREMENTS UNDER

THE PHILADELPHIA ZONING CODE. WE ACTUALLY ADDED 16 CLASS 1A PARKING SPACES TO PROVIDE

ALTERNATIVE FORM OF, YOU KNOW, OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF TRANSPORTATION, NOT

Not just vehicular use, but also by bicycle use.

We decreased the area of the parking lot and increased the area in some ways of landscaping.

And we adjusted the average grade of the building structures in the building footprints.

We reduced the occupied area from 36.78% to 34.7%, and we reduced the amount of units from 35 to 34.

And that would be if the board feels so inclined to grant these variances with a new refusal.

We would ask, well, I guess they would just grant it with an amended refusal at that point based on those changes.

And these are the changes that we requested.

All right, we have a letter of non-opposition from the community. There was some dialogue about many different things, which, again, if the board wants to go one by one, we can ask Mr. Woodruff to kind of go through that. Some of them were non-zoney related, like stormwater and such, which we would obviously adequately address.

and then we have a letter based on that letter based on comments from the cdr uh council member

cindy bass sent a letter of support uh in it she says the redevelopment of this site provides an

opportunity to return vacant land to productive use while adding new housing and residential

investment to the germantown community um yeah so this has been a dumping ground for years

unfortunately this property my client who only purchased who has purchased this property some

this property my client who only purchased who has purchased this property some time ago has been

time ago had

facing like you know cleaning up and and dealing with dumping here so i think to activate this

property which is approximately 42 000 square feet it's a good thing for the community and

to provide good housing for those residents and then here's the letter from the cdr um we did

you know again through the best of our ability address many of their concerns there's still

opportunities obviously even with the cdr letter uh to address more in terms of uh maybe how to

activate some of that landscaping towards the far right to maybe provide maybe benches maybe a little

park for the kids things like that and we're in the developmental stages of this project which

will obviously address if we if we're so um lucky to have a variance granted we'll deal with that

the building uh permit stage here's our petition along with letters to support i did not receive

any letter of opposition so i can't speak to that i would like that potentially shared with me as

well so it's called a petition yeah okay but whatever the petition is i haven't seen it so

one of the things that we would always like is as as attorneys representing applicants is to be able

to answer any concerns of the community so it's always good to have that beforehand just so we can

address that and then aerial view you can see where we are in the community on high street

here's two avenue a particular note this is a common driveway for the chew avenue properties

and so they're set back pretty far here there's a lot of vegetation high vegetation so we're

insulated in the communities insulated as well from our development and you can see here's the

chestnut hill east line as well and contextual photos this is the property from the front facing

the northeast from facing the southwest these are proof of our postings for today's hearing

this is high street to the right of the property to the left of the property and then our

architectural plan. And again, I'm just going to go quickly through it. If the board has some

architectural questions, I would ask that Mr. Woodruff be promoted as a panelist and be sworn

in. But this is from the high street perspective. These are the eight single family homes without

garages. This is the 10 single family homes with garages. These are the eight duplexes right here.

of particular note there's no like lower like underground or below grade living for these units

at all for the duplexes i know that's a particular concern for the board and then this is the driveway

for the chew street residents as well and here's a common you know parking area as well a couple

things that you can see and we'll show you a little bit more we added landscaping here in the

middle we added a trash enclosure that for all the residents to have obviously given the amount of

units we'll have commercial trash pickup and you know given the width of the drive aisles there'll

be more than adequate space both for emergency vehicles as well as for garbage pickup this is

just a different angle from a you know so you can see from high streets um the landscaping that we

We've added more than adequate parking.

These are the 10 single-family homes or garages.

These are the duplexes to the left of us.

And then this is just another angle.

Again, we wanted something that made sense from trash storage and maintenance

and to give enough parking for the residents there

and to provide more than adequate landscaping as well.

Again, there was a fight between the CDR who wanted even more landscaping,

But the residents also want parking, and I think to make it a functional plan, community, or a community, you need that parking there.

Uh, so while we would love to have even more landscaping, the practical effects of it too is to provide more than enough parking for the residents.

And then this is just another angle from high street. You can see this is 2 way again.

And we're dealing with sloping matters, which actually helped us out because with these duplexes here, because of the sloping of the property, the lower level units have no underground living at all.

And there's adequate light in there because of it. These are the changes that we made. There are bubbled here. So you see the extra landscaping here, extra landscaping trash.

uh we i think here increase this the depth of the rear yard setback as well as here is the side yard

setback um you can see here too how there's two-way traffic as well so it's not just

one car coming in and another car has to wait we want to give as much traffic flow and

one car coming in and another car has to wait we want to give as much traffic

maneuverability for the cars as possible and this is just in terms of the sloping of the property

and then talking about grading and such i'm going to skip over these because if the board feels

so inclined to ask questions i would ask mr woodruff to answer those but here's something

again i just want to really highlight here you can see there is no lower level or below ground

the living with the duplexes and again just to give you an idea of this this is the landscaping

here rudimentary look at it these are the duplexes this is the traffic flow two-way these are the

eight single-family homes on high street the 10 single-family homes to the back with the with the

garages and here's the trash enclosure in the middle and then just to go through the plans

so this is the first one these are the eight single family homes you come in

oh the whole you should have told me i could oh it says sharing

yeah you're a jew it's you yeah yeah yeah i can i can see it okay i can see it okay

all right i was like wow okay i thought i'm sharing my screen you see it now

no all right um yeah i i can see it i guess online i guess everybody would you

see it three minutes ago yeah okay um yeah so you go in the front door there's the kitchen area

there's a half bath uh here's the open you know living room area you go down a lower level as a

media room down there instead of you know going down to the to the lower level uh you have um

you know, two bedrooms, you have a bathroom, right, near the bedrooms, close, pretty close,

you have the washer and dryer here, and you go up and there's a master suite here with a little

balcony area. So that's one of the single family layouts. Now we have, I believe this is a duplex

layout, right? So you go to the entryway, which is above, you know, the ground, you have a living

room, you have a half bath, you have a kitchen area, you have the washer and dryer here, you can

get out to the backyard. That's unit A, you go up an internal staircase, you have two bedrooms and

another bath, which are pretty close to those bedrooms. Instead of, you know, unit A, you go to

unit B, you go up to the, I guess, technically the third floor, you have a kitchen area, a living room

area. You go up to two bedrooms, a laundry room, and a bathroom, which is next to the bedrooms.

And then finally is the one with the garages. You go through the front door, or you can go

through the garage. You get either through here for the garage entryway or the front door. You

have a bedroom a full bath you go up a flight of steps you have a half bath you have a living room

area you have a kitchen and and dining room area and then you have two bedrooms and two baths and

you can see that the bedrooms and bathrooms are close together and this is where the laundry

facility is here um you know kind of showing the sloping you know as a good example of what we're

dealing with on high street but it was a positive in that we were able to have as much light in there

that the architecture team really leveraged that as much as possible with a challenging site

you can see that we have sidewalks adequate sidewalks for the residents who are who are

entering their units as well which is i know is very important uh to uh this is for the duplex

maybe not the duplex this is a single family but you know we did try to put as much sidewalk curbs

uh to make sure that people aren't going from a parking lot immediately to their residence and

then just talking about plantings and such and then i'm just going to skip over this it just

shows like the elevations that's you know brick vinyl siding metal paneling as the use of materials

and then this is just the landscape plan um you know these are different types of of of plantings

that we have here and i can have mr woodruff go through it if the board feels so inclined

we met with the community sometime ago march 17th at 6 30 p.m uh we mailed that notice uh you know

two weeks beforehand we have proof of mailing of that we email it to the to the community

to the community organizers as well as the uh council member zoning aid two weeks in advance

organizers as well as the uh council member zoning aid two weeks

we sent it to 99 addresses these are the addresses proof of mailing to those addresses

our application for appeal that we filed on behalf of high street associates llc

on the nose refusal in the project information form the deed showing a high street associates llc

the owner and then the certificate of tax clearance with that be said i'm going to

temporarily stop sharing my screen i would ask that alan be sworn in i have a few questions for

him sure pull the mic real closely if you can please state and spell your name for the stenographer

alan borovitch a-l-l-e-n last name b like boy o-r-o-v like victor do you swear

do you swear or affirm to tell the truth told truth nothing but the truth yes i did also

Alan, you heard everything I had to state today about your zoning matter.

Yes.

Is it true and correct?

Yes.

And do you adopt this as your own testimony?

I do.

Thank you.

No decks right now anywhere?

There's balconies.

There's no roof decks.

That's what I'm saying.

No roof decks.

No, no roof decks.

Questions from the board.

Yes.

Where is the open space?

The open?

I would ask that Mr. Woodruff be sworn in.

Sure.

oops mr woodruff yes hi sir could you please state and spell your name for the stenographer

scott woodruff s-c-o-t-t-w-o-o-d-r-u-f-f right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the

whole truth nothing but the truth i do alan yeah let me just go to this simple illustration because

i think that's the easiest one to take a look at all right here um so mr woodruff

um board member gaston had questions about where the open area is so can you explain

uh to the board member where that is sure so um going through the cdr process uh there was um

a potential request for more open space landscape for the residents here so you can see in that

bottom right hand corner uh there's a large kind of square of green and open space uh we reduced

one of the the buildings um taking it from 35 to 34 to create this space in this back corner

it was important for us to try and create a space that was further away from the parking just from

a safety concern for kids and residents to have so it wasn't right up against some of the vehicular

traffic. We also expanded the island in the middle of the parking to provide a little bit more of

just visual vegetation and landscaping. And then, as Alan said, that back row of buildings, we ended

up pushing up another five or six feet to provide more buffer against those homes, to provide more

open space and landscaping against that back drive aisle. So those were the landscape adjustments and

kind of open space adjustments that we did make.

I will also point out there is a recreation center that's a block away, and the Arboretum

is probably less than a block away, it's right across Chew Avenue, which the residents will

also have use of.

So there's a good amount of not only on-site area and open area, but also access to parks

and recreation in close proximity.

And that also includes the compliance with the landscaping requirements for

parking lots. Did you? That is correct. Yes. So, we have

a total landscaping area for the parking of 2,162 square feet. The 10% landscaping requirement for

the parking lot size is 1,407 square feet so we're well above that requirement that's needed for the

parking lot yeah and those are on the site plan right here right correct yep okay all right and

then my only other question and it's just just a question so you well I guess I was thinking is this

a version of uh like a pud if you will and yes is that yeah yes i don't know if i don't know if

we're going to convert it into a pud but yes it's like legally you could convert this into a pud i

mean that was my thought i was sort of like i was wondering why you didn't do that initially but

okay well no that's something you do after the fact after the fact if we have the zoning then

and we would convert it into a PUD.

But we have to get this zoning approval first

get this zoning approval first for this multi-family use okay which is also include single

for this multifamily use.

family so if you wanted to you know sell some of those single families or even parts duplexes we

would do that after the fact okay so i thought okay well they may have changed things but i thought

But back in the day, at least, the PUD included the zoning.

No, it's for zoning.

It's for zoning.

Yeah, now they've separated it.

And that's fine.

All right.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Other questions?

Yeah, there are a couple of things.

I think on your original letter that stated your amendment, I think it said decrease of landscaping.

but i think you actually increased it correct but i think that the wording said decreased so i don't

know whether that's uh just an error or is that a decrease of occupied area no no no no yeah in his

in his letter the amended to whatever it said decrease it decrease in parking and landscape

yeah so that would again if that was an error i don't think it matters because we're going to get

an amended refusal now but yeah mm-hmm but I don't think yeah let me take a

look yeah yeah that was just something that came up the other thing is on the

site plan I think it's commendable that you added walkways or pedestrians the

only concern I have is that the units that have the garages there's no there's

no pedestrian safety area in front of the garages literally you've got the garage in your front door