MI 2021-004-548-4306-08 Parkside Avenue.
Darwin, Bovet.
Excuse me, Mr. Chair, do we want, so we are going to have an alternate board member joining us shortly, but should we, don't have, sorry, give me a second to find the number.
Should we do number six first?
We could, sure.
okay number six then we may be able to do the north 11th street cases followed by parkside
okay all right okay we should have we should have our alternate board member joining about
10 o'clock okay number six mi 2022 003 270 2301 east tayoga rachel pritzker and brandon
sabrin are the attorneys involved letter of support from harrogate civic association letter
of non-opposition from councilman squillett good morning brandon good morning good morning count
or rachel yeah i just want to make sure that chris class can be added as well just it'll save some
time okay he's the architect sure um rich why don't we start with you why don't you uh state
your name and spell for the court reporter? Sure. Thank you, Chairman. Rachel, R-A-C-H-A-E-L,
Pritzker, P-R-I-T-Z-K-E-R, 1521 Locust Street, Suite 605, Philadelphia, PA, 19102.
And Brandon, could you please state your name and spell for the court reporter?
Yes. B-R-A-N-D-O-N, S as in Sam, A, V as in Victor, R-A-N, with the same firm at the same
address okay do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth
yes i do yes and mr class could you state your name and spell for the court reporter
sure christopher class of design blends architecture uh chris c-h-r-i-s class c-l-a-s-s
right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth
i do miss pritzker could you identify your client in relationship to the property
yes absolutely our um i apologize brandon do you have the llc yeah our our client is sep viva
lofts llc um they are authorized to act as the applicant by the property owner who is the city
of philadelphia okay and mr shaheed has a few questions for you good morning council do you
agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy? Yes. Yes, we do.
Have you all sent in all of the required documents five days in advance to this hearing? Yes. Yes.
All right. You all can proceed to share your screen. Thank you. I'm going to be brief,
Chairman and members of the Board, and then turn it over to Brandon. Again, this is for 2201 East
Tioga. My name is Rachel Pritzker. I also represent the applicant again who has permission
from the Philadelphia Land Bank to move forward with this application. I was involved with the
submission of the application to the Philadelphia Land Bank back in February 15th of 2021. I also
was responsible with the applicant and with the land bank to make sure we had a completed application.
it's worth noting in the event that there's any opposition to this case that I spoke with the
executive director of the land bank who has let me know and allowed me to share that we are the
only qualified application that this property has seen the property has been held by the city for
almost two decades and again we are the only qualified application that the city has seen
for this property I worked through the process to obtain the community support as the board has
written notice of, in addition to obtaining support from Councilman Squill's office and
working in completing the civic design review process. I'm happy to be here for the board in
um for the board in the event there's any questions related to that process but i'm going to turn over
the event there's any questions related to that process, but I'm going to turn it over to Brandon
to brandon saverin to present the case and um again i'm here if you have any questions or need
anything related to what i mentioned thank you so much okay thanks uh mr chairman and members of
the board so um if you are inclined to grant the variance today we have submitted revised plans
that are two pages long. The revised plans simply remove three units from the project. So
this is a 70-unit proposal to be developed on a site that has been vacant, as Rachel mentioned,
for several decades and is contaminated to some degree by the industrial activity that occurred
there prior. I'm going to get into that shortly. I will mention that there's two refusals that
this application triggered. One is due to the fact that in the property's ICMX district,
there's no residential use allowed. The other has to do with the landscaping that is being
offered around the property. So I'll share that refusal in a moment. But before I do that,
I'm going to allow Chris to share the project plans and go into specifics on that landscaping
refusal.
I'll then go into specifics on the use refusal.
So Chris.
Brandon, you have a picture of she could you show us something first, like what we're going
to look at?
Yeah, absolutely.
And Chris is going to do the same.
But you know what, Chris, Mr. Chairman, I'm so sorry, but I sort of figured Chris would
do that.
He probably.
That's fine.
That's fine.
Go ahead.
okay so i'll share my screen thanks chris
okay is it able to see that yes okay um so i'll try to be brief but uh what you can see is uh the
site is currently vacant it's just over 31 000 square feet uh with street facing east tayoga
CEPVIVA, and Witte Street, there is adjacent development across from Witte Street of a
residential property and some existing larger scale buildings, but predominantly the neighborhood
consists of residential zone districts that have been split by a rail line and its associated
to industrial districts.
Let me just skip to a floor plan.
So we've identified two areas,
Sebiva Street being primarily dedicated
to vehicular access and Wade Street pedestrian access.
We're proposing a significant amount of parking
on the ground floor, knowing that that's a desire
to hire for this location with some public space
fronting Tioga Street and its associated utilities
along Sepp Viva Street.
From the two refusals that were generated,
first being the residential use.
As I mentioned, this fabric consists of predominantly
residentially zoned districts.
And this lot that we're looking at is capped by residential
development to the plan east. You know, we feel that it is certainly appropriate to continue this
fabric into this location. The number of dwelling units that were selected for this property was
based on the significant environmental cleanup and costs associated with the stormwater management to
to make the project feasible.
As it relates to the variance requests for the landscaping,
the zoning code requires us to provide landscaping,
not only to buffer areas of parking,
but also to provide interior landscaping
that intends to break up long spans of spaces.
In this plan, you can see that a majority
of the site building is being covered up by the parking,
which makes it difficult to provide interior landscaping to break up the spaces because it can't be put in areas where it is mostly drive lane.
In an effort to meet the requirement or, you know, fulfill the spirit of the code,
we provide a significant amount of landscaping that surrounds the drive lane so that it screens it from the public right away.
the reason that this refusal was generated was because of its location and not being dispersed
between the parking spaces which we elected not to for reasons I previously mentioned
so we are still exceeding the amount of landscaping but the refusal comes into its
actual location which would require it to be dispersed and between the spaces and lower our
between the spaces and lower our actual yield. Moving up to the typical level as you can see
actual yield.
the remainder of the building is predominantly one and two bedroom units. Building forms still
complying with all the dimensional constraints of the ICMX district. Our building design consists of
predominantly brick facades that try to tie into the uh the nature of the adjacent buildings and
their uh factory inspired designs uh while still maintaining a residential feel and proportion
uh because of the the more residential oriented districts uh surrounding it
brand is there anything additionally that you'd like me to touch base on while i have the
presentation. Chris, let me just ask you a few questions. So to reiterate, there were no
dimensional refusals triggered by your design. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. And the project
offers 62 car parking spaces. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. And as far as that landscaping refusal,
I think what I heard from you were the couple factors making it hard to comply were one,
that a large majority of that parking lot is covered by the upper floors of the building.
So those plantings wouldn't be able to get a lot of natural light.
Is that fair to say?
Yes, exactly.
And then secondly, you know, it's sort of a compact design in the interior of the lot.
So you don't want to be doing plantings like very close to drive aisles.
Is that also fair to say?
Right.
This allows the site to operate much more efficiently for vehicles passing, you know, through the site, allowing a wider drive lane.
Okay. And, you know, to sort of make up from that, both on the interior of the site to the east and south, and then in the street, you know, the sidewalk right of way on the other sides, it looks like we're doing a pretty, pretty good amount of interior, sorry, perimeter planting on your landscaping plan that you're showing there. Is that correct?
Yeah, so on the areas of the right-of-way, we're providing a significant amount of new street trees along the sidewalks and then internally landscape buffers that will screen all the parking within the site.
Okay, and Chris, last question. This is just so the board can identify within the exhibit packet. This landscaping plan was something that you submitted to the CDR review board, is that correct?
Correct. We had a civil plan, which I can attach here. This was presented both to the Civic Design Review and to the community.
Okay. Thank you. So, Chris, if you could stop sharing your screen, I'm going to take over there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. Let's see if I can. Okay. Members of the board, I'll pick up from there and I'll also try to be brief.
So what I have on the screen right now is a portion of the application that one has to make to the land bank to apply to acquire the property.
And the acquisition of the property would be completed if the board chooses to grant the variances we're seeking today.
This is one of many pages of the application, but the reason I'm highlighting this one is this sort of paragraph is a written commitment that half, 51% or more of the units, and that's right here where my mouse is, would be set aside for affordable housing, meaning that half of the units in the building have to be rent limited so they're affordable to people making 120% of AMI or less.
And I think within that, there's actually 10% of units that would be dedicated to folks making 80% of AMI or less.
But a full half of the units in this building are going to be rented at a controlled manner that's not market rate.
Let me see if I can get to my next page here.
So just to give the board a quick sense of where the project is located, where my mouse is, a little difficult to see is the property.
Here's Aramingo Avenue, the portion that has a lot of drive up shopping centers, if the board members are familiar with that area.
And then here is I-95, Betsy Ross Bridge.
And here to the west of the property is Frankfurt Avenue and then the L on Kensington Avenue.
So this property is sort of, you know, in the middle of the Aramingo corridor and the Frankfurt and Kensington corridors.
And as Chris mentioned, this is an interesting little neighborhood in that there are perhaps one or two active industrial uses across the streets on the south side of Tioga Street, but our north side of Tioga Street is almost entirely residential.
but our north side of Tioga Street is almost entirely residential. A lot of it's been
residential for many decades. And then within recent decades or the last decade, the industrially
zoned parcels that immediately surround the property were converted to residential.
So as a result of that, I'm sorry, and this is our refusal just to kind of get back to that for
two seconds. Here's our refusal that says that residential living is prohibited in this ICMX
district. Here's our refusal regarding the lack of interior landscaping. Let me go to this. So
this is a report that the applicant had commissioned by a city planning firm. And that
land planner who authored the report, and he's available today for questioning, his name's
George Ritter. This is a field study that his firm completed. What this map looks at is not
what the zoning designations are, but what the actual uses of the properties are that surround
the subject property, which is here. And what you can see is that this large parcel to the left on
your map, this would be the north, still is industrially zoned, but this is a warehouse or
factory that has already been converted to residential use. This is called the frame factory
lofts. It is permitted and therefore I believe has 52 dwelling units. This is another residential
building that is another conversion, which I think may have just completed construction or
is under construction that has 47 units at 2215 East Tioga. And these, I'll call them
tan parcels here are largely lower density, like single family home residential blocks.
So sort of the point of this map is to say that while across Tioga Street, there may be more
diversity of uses, this cluster here, which again is represented on the zoning map here where my
cursor is, despite the zoning, this is truly a residential neighborhood. And what that means in
terms of impacts on this site, to go back to our map, is that this is a very poor candidate at this
point for residential, for commercial or industrial use, which is what the zoning designation would
allow. So why is that? Our frontage on Tioga Street is only 100 feet long. And as a result
of that, to avoid cars or trucks from backing out onto Tioga Street, which would be dangerous,
one or both of our side streets would have to be used for circulation and these are residential
streets because that's what the uses along these streets are they're residential as a result of
that putting an industrial or commercial use here especially with deliveries which would be made by
truck almost certainly would introduce really a noxious hazard to the neighbors and as a result
of that, we have support to make this property a residential property from the RCO. This is our
RCO letter. We also have a letter of non-opposition from the councilman. So what we did beyond sort
of having this planning evaluation made is we had a commercial development firm called Wright
Partners evaluate the site. This is a firm that actually builds small commercial buildings like
like drugstores, banks, urgent care centers, sort of like your smaller end of new commercial users
because the property is vacant. So anything here is going to be brand new. It's going to be ground
up. And what this firm concluded is that, as I mentioned, the property can't accommodate the
circulation of larger medium trucks. And that further, the development of a smaller commercial
structure is infeasible on this site because it's not at least 200 feet wide. So because of that,
this would be an unusual building for a new commercial building. It would be a very narrow
one that would be unlikely to attract sort of a grade A commercial tenant. It would not be the
kind of building that a good commercial tenant would be looking for because it would be very
narrow and it would have very poor car and truck access. So as a result of that, that's a problem
particularly here because of the past environmental contamination on the site. So I only have a couple
minutes left. I'm going to take you through the history of the property very quickly and explain
how that led to the environmental contamination and how that contamination means added cost to
develop this site, which we need, you know, very sort of safe, sure use of this property to pay for.
sort of safe sure use of this property to pay for so this in front of you is a permit that shows
that and there's many of these in the archives since 1933 the advent of the zoning code
starting then and for a few decades after this was a galvanizing plant it was a plant for the
the galvanizing of metals. And what happened, if I can flip to a permit from the 70s here,
is that by 1974, at the latest, the archive reflects that that use had been abandoned.
The planets had shut down. So this is a 1974 permit indicating that the building was vacant.
And then by 2013, sorry, 2003, another permit indicates that L&I had come along and demolished the plant building for lack of maintenance.