you're live
thank you good morning everyone my name is frank de chico i'm the chair sorry
i'm sorry if you recall we're going to pause for like three minutes
oh you're right apologize thank you
Thank you.
okay chair looks like it's enough people in thank you tanya good morning again everyone
my name is frank de chico i'm the chair of the zoning board of adjustment i'll be participating
in today's hearing along with our board secretary confessor plaza and board members mr thomas
Holloman and Mr. James Snell. Board Administrator Tanya Sunken and Board
Attorney Sharon Saleta are also in attendance. For those of you who haven't
participated in one of our virtual meetings,
I'll go through some of the basics of what you can expect.
First, we'll begin this morning's session by reading a list of cases to be
continued. If you believe any announced cases
being continued in error, we will give you an opportunity to
respond. After reading the continuance list and receiving any feedback, we will
take any additional continuance or and or withdrawal requests. Then once we've
confirmed which hearings are being continued, Confessor Plaz will begin
calling the remaining cases listed for this session. When a case is called, we
ask that attorneys representing applicants or other interested parties
in the matter identify themselves for the record. We will then hear the appellant's presentation
followed by any presentation by attorneys representing other parties. Interested parties
and members of the public not represented by council will then be given an opportunity to
testify. We will finally hear the recommendation of the planning commission. At the hearing's
conclusion we will either vote the matter immediately or hold it for discussion and
Executive Session. Any case held for discussion will be voted at the next scheduled Wednesday
morning Executive Session. Please note the following changes related to the virtual format.
First, we will be administering oaths to individuals prior to their testimony.
Second, for the benefit of anyone participating by phone, we ask that attorneys and witnesses
identify themselves prior to speaking and testifying. Third, we'd like to advise everyone
that this proceeding is being recorded and that by participating you acknowledge your agreement
to be recorded. Fourth, anyone participating by phone, if you wish to testify, you must raise your
hand by hitting star nine and then star six to unmute yourself. I'll repeat, for anyone
on participating by phone. If you wish to testify, you must raise your hand by hitting star nine
and then star six to unmute yourself. Finally, to enter an appearance statement, call Google
267-270-5548 and leave your email address and the address of the property at issue,
and I'll repeat that as well. To enter an appearance statement, call Google 267-270-5548
and leave your email address and the address of the property at issue. With that said, we will
begin. But before I call our secretary, calls our first case, we'd like to announce that the
following matters are being continued. MI-2020-000809 100 Herman Street,
Calendar number 39747, 1838 North Front Street, MI-2020-000309-000806, 33 North 22nd Street.
33 North 22nd Street, calendar number 39712, 3639 North 19th Street, calendar
number 39711, 410 Kerper Street, KERPER Street, MI-2020-000886, 650 North 32nd Street are being
continued. The following two cases are being withdrawn. Calendar number 39711, I believe that
was 36th Street? Yes. Yeah, 650 North 36th Street. Calendar number 39018, 6215 North 13th
is being withdrawn, as is calendar number 39017, 6217 North 13th Street. Again, if anyone believes
the case has been called in error to be continued or withdrawn please raise your hand at this time
no hands chair thank you with that we will begin with our hearings confessor please call the first
case. Okay. MI 2020-000763-1300-50 North 10th Street. Attorney is David Guest.
mr guest you have been promoted to panelists you can share your screen and unmute yourself to speak
thank you morning sir morning do you swear to affirm to tell the truth the whole truth
for nothing but the truth? I do. And do you agree to waive the reading of its refusal and stipulate
to its accuracy? I do. Thank you. Please identify yourself, name and address for the record.
Thank you. My name is David Guest. I'm an attorney with Ballard Sparr at 1735 Market Street in
Philadelphia. I'm here on behalf of the Philadelphia Housing Authority and their general contractor,
Perry Minshew Maker. Before I begin, I just want to make sure we have the appropriate people
available and unmuted. So that would be Nicholas Dima, Nick Dima, who will be speaking shortly.
If you could please have him available for unmuting, as well as Eric Ray from BLT Architects,
E-R-I-C-R-A-H-E. And most importantly, Ms. Sunkit, if it's possible, I'd like to have a different
member of our team with the slides. That's Milton Lau, M-I-L-T-O-N-L-A-U. He's with BLT Architects. He
has the presentation ready and can share his screen. Is that possible to give him those privileges
right now? So anyone you need would have to raise their hand so that I can identify them and promote
them forward so milton hopefully you're on right now and can do that um
uh so hopefully miss uncle let us let me know if you don't see him and milton is doing a
presentation yes he he's doing he's not speaking but he'll be the one with the slides so he'll be
sharing okay so he has been promoted to panelists and you said the other one was eric eric ray r-a-h-e
hopefully eric you can raise your hand and nick dima you can raise your hand as well
so Eric I have Rick I have Eric and Nicholas but I would request that you
keep yourself muted until question thank you Eric you can be yourself and
Milton if you can try to go ahead and share your screen and get that get that
going that would be great and then we can get started I'll give it a minute
before i begin hopefully it's not too much trouble for him to there we go terrific okay thanks very
much um okay we're gonna wait to be sworn in okay sure yes
mr guest you swear for him to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
I do. Please proceed. Thank you. So good morning. As I said, I'm David Guest with Ballard Spar here on behalf of the Housing Authority and Perryman Shoemaker, their general contractor. Just for the record, I'd like to refer to the exhibit book that we submitted about a week ago to the board, which includes various materials such as the zoning plan.
about a week ago to the board, which includes various materials such as the zoning plans,
the refusal, tax clearance certificates, and the like. We have our presentation materials
loaded up here. They're also in the exhibit book. First off, I want to thank Diane Monroe and the
14th Ward Democratic Executive Committee, RCO, for hosting our RCO meeting a few weeks ago.
We received their unanimous support for this proposal, and that support letter is included
as Exhibit 12 in our book.
Council President Clark's office also provided us
with a letter of, excuse me, of non-opposition
that came in yesterday and was emailed
to the board administrator.
I'm gonna give a brief introduction
before turning it over to Mr. Dima and Mr. Ray,
who will describe the project in a little more detail.
And then we will wrap up with a little more discussion
of the nature of the refusals
because it's a little bit complicated,
but as you'll see the actual proposal is not very complicated um so milton if you could please
advance the next slide thank you you might want to zoom in slightly if you can but um to orient
you here um this is a block bounded by master street to the north thompson street to the south
10th street to the east and 11th street to the west it is one existing parcel right now a full
block. What you see in the red area is, Milton, if you could kind of highlight it, just the
footprint of the building, is a 15-story existing low-income housing tower operated by the Philadelphia
Housing Authority. In the blue area, the remainder of the block are also low-income housing units
operated by the Housing Authority that are low-rise, and you can see there are several
buildings there. The reason we're showing this as a red area and a blue area is because the nature
of the proposal here today is to rehabilitate that building in the red. It was constructed
around 1956. It's in need of some upgrades. And so as part of a low-income housing tax credit
financing for the project, we need to subdivide off that parcel for the financing to create a
legally divisible interest in just that parcel to finance that rehabilitation. So that's really the
focus of our presentation which you'll see today and just to confirm the blue
area is not really affected in any way by this proposal those residents are
there they will remain there there are no changes to that part of the parcel
except for the fact of this subdivision occurring so that's just to set the
stage I'm gonna have mr. Dima very briefly go over the project in the
context of the housing authorities overall plans and then mr. ray will run
through some more visuals, and then I'll wrap up, as I said, on the refusals. So with that,
I'd like to turn over to Mr. Dima, who's the Executive Vice President of Planning and Development
at the Housing Authority. Good morning. Again, this is Nick Dima from the Philadelphia Housing
Authority. Just briefly to build all that. Dima, excuse me, Mr. Dima. You're swearing the firm to
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I do. Please proceed. Just to build
off of what David has described. The tower is an existing tower. It is part of PHA's
Harrison Plaza conventional public housing site. It contains approximately 267 units,
including the tower. The tower currently has about 112 units. The remaining units are low
rise units that surround the existing tower. One of the initiatives of PHA is to really
address the remaining towers that have not been redeveloped within our portfolio so the plan for
this one is given that we know multi-family really doesn't work in high-rise buildings
and given that this tower is in need of major capital improvements we decided to really renovate
the tower and convert it to senior housing because we feel senior housing works within towers so the
plan will be basically to gut the entire building we will come back with pretty much all one bedrooms
right now as a multi-family tower it includes majority two and three bedroom units
so we will completely rearrange the entire floor plate of every floor we will put in senior
amenities the units will really be meeting today's standards over 900 square feet on average
which for a one-bedroom unit in today's standards is probably considered extremely large.
This is a large undertaking. As David said, it'll be financed using low-income housing tax credits
along with money from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency.
And we'll come back with approximately 116 units, so we'll be able to actually provide four more
more affordable housing units.
So I think that's the summary in short.
So I think that's the summary in short.
Great, thank you, Nick.
Great. Thank you, Nick.
I just want to clarify the photos, the interior photos you were just seeing are existing conditions.
And so now I'm going to turn it over to Eric Ray, who's a principal at BLT, the project architect.
And he's going to run through the plans and you'll see some new photos, renderings of what the interior will look like after the renovation.
So, Eric, you can take it from here.
good morning mr radius we're affirming to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
eric are you unmuted i'm trying to there we go
yes i do thank you please proceed good morning eric ray blt architects philadelphia architects
for the project as you notice as nick noted in the photos the building is in need of repair both
inside and outside and so this is a full renovation the slide on the screen now is a site plan of the
new conditions moving clockwise from master street we have a new parking lot for the convenience of
residents and access for vans to take residents out from the building to appointments etc as you
move across master we have the existing loading dock being renovated and then
down 10th Street we have a new entry canopy glass and metal canopy new stairs
and walk a fully accessible entrance and then as you move to the south we have a
new outdoor terrace for residents for outdoor socializing some mechanical
equipment that needs to be provided for the new building and then going north
again a small canopy that allows residents access to this new parking area next slide
this is a plan of the ground floor the yellow is the circulation the turquoise or light blue
color represents resident amenities including a tenant council room health screening management
office etc and the two amenities on this floor are a new multi-purpose community room in the
lower right and a new laundry upper left the orange color next slide and the next
few images show how we're completely renovating the building taking it away
from an institutional look to a more high-quality residential book this is
a rendering of the entry and you see some of the tenant service or the
excuse me resident services immediately to the right and then the next image is
a rendering of the new community room set up for in this case some kind of a
viewing but this is a flexible space can be used a number of different ways and
it does include a full-service kitchen as well the next slide is the ground
floor excuse me a typical floor of the building and as Nick noted we have eight
units per floor and mix of primarily one bedroom some one-bedroom deluxe and a
few two bedrooms fully renovated next slide these are plans of the typical
apartments they are large by market standards they also have been designed
to accommodate accessibility requirements for the various governing standards of
this project and on the exterior we're fully renovating and repointing the
brick facades the existing area where you see the multicolored panels is
currently stucco that is really deteriorated so we're providing a new facade here in multi-colored
panels both to warm up the building and give it a little bit of personality and then the last two
slides are renderings of this new development here you see the the new glass and steel canopy
as well as the new multi-colored panels running up the building and then finally a similar view
where you can see that this featured panel of the building occurs on all four sides.
Great. Thank you, Eric. So I'll just wrap up really quickly by going through the refusals to explain
their nature and the hardship here. So we have four refusals. They're really all related to the
fact that we're doing the subdivision as required as part of the tax credit financing. So two of
them relate to yards. There's a side yard and rear yard refusal. In this district, Milton, you can
just leave it on this slide. That's fine. The technical requirement is that the setback has
to be three quarters the height of the structure. So of course, because we have an existing 15-story
structure, that generates a very large setback requirement of 97.5 feet. And obviously, we don't
meet that because it's an existing building built in the 1950s. So that's part of it. And then
there's a floor area ratio refusal which is very similar because we're creating that smaller
subdivided parcel technically we have a larger building on a smaller lot which
subdivided parcel. Technically, we have a larger building on a smaller lot which
exceeds the permitted floor area and finally there's a refusal for surface
parking spaces in a yard area so it's the same situation where we're installing
new accessory surface parking to serve the residents which is technically
within one of the those big technical yard setbacks so that's the nature of
the of the refusals you can see that it's an existing condition and really
it relates to the fact that the financing for this project requires the subdivision. So really
just in conclusion, as you've heard today, denial of the variance would result in an unnecessary
hardship by preventing the rehabilitation of this building using tax credit financing. So it's very
important to be able to perform that subdivision. And because we're simply rehabilitating an existing
building and improving the area surrounding the building, there of course are no adverse
environmental traffic or light and air effects on the surrounding neighborhood because it is
in condition and to the contrary in fact the proposal will improve the existing affordable
housing stock in philadelphia and um will actually help with the parking because we'll be adding