Yes, sir, I do.
Proceed.
Thank you.
Members of the board, the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the existing single
family zoning at this location.
However, as we've seen in the presentation, the proposed use is consistent with the physical
configuration and the historic legal use of the structure for one commercial unit and
one dwelling unit.
And so the city planning commission would recommend that the board grant this variance.
Thank you. MI-2021-003852, 1007 South 10th Street, I vote yes.
Carol Tenere, my vote is yes.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Thank you, counsel.
MI-2021-003290, 1300 North Howard Street,
rco south kensington partners community partners opposed rco western rod letter of support
rco fishtown kensky and airy business improvement letter of support
Letter of support.
Gusie O'Neill is listed.
There may be another attorney.
I'm sorry, Mr. Hercules Griegos has been promoted to panelist, sir?
Mr. Griegos?
Good afternoon, members of the board.
Hercules Griegos.
Could you spell it for the court reporter, please?
H-E-R-C-U-L-E-S.
Last name G-R-I.
do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
i do our vice chair has a few questions for you sir hi mr griegos do you agree to waive
the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy i do it appears that you've submitted
all the required documents is that correct i have you may proceed thank you very much
Good morning, members of the board. Hercules Grigos, 1835 Market Street, here today representing
Orvo Properties, LLC, and their JV Partners, six-acre capital, owner and developer of the
property located at 1300 North Howard Street. We're here today with an application for construction
of a mixed-use multifamily building with ground floor retail and accessory parking. I have with
me today, Jake Borden and Mark Landsman from Six Acre, as well as Joe Volpe, owner and developer,
as well as Rustin Oler, the project architect. Just for some background, Mark and Jake are
developing a first-class multifamily about two blocks from here in the South Kensington neighborhood.
And of course, you may know Joe Volpe from Chess Cafe Event Group, who has been in the neighborhood
for almost 20 years as a business owner, job creator, and really proponent of the city.
So this is a joint venture between those two groups.
Council, pardon me, would you want to start sharing your screen with us?
Yes, yes. Apologies.
Let's see if we can find the right.
Okay, get everybody oriented here.
Okay, so we're here today with a mixed-use multi-family project, where I believe there's been an unprecedented amount of community engagement.
We're pretty far off from where we started, but I think we landed in a great place, and we're really happy of how we've had a lot of engagement, and I think we've been responsive to all of the comments from all the divergent groups.
And I think that's noted by, you'll see some letters of support, lots of petitions of support, and of course, the letter of opposition that gave us guidance on what they wanted to see.
And we're proud today to, and we'll give you those details of how we've acceded to those requests and come in with a project that I think is responsive to the concerns.
um property is approximately 34 000 square feet located north howard thompson master street
in the city of south kensington neighborhood um i think the existing use was beautiful blooms
flower company um you know they have just if you follow the news they've just relocated to ninth
and fairmount um this was this industrial building here if you can see my cursor um as the neighborhood
grew and changed. And I think, you know, we did a lot of these projects over the years
of multifamilies, the industrial character began to change. And I think it was lamented that a lot
of the industrial buildings in the neighborhood were demolished to make way for the $600,000 plus
townhomes, etc. So one thing that was important as we went through this process was, was there
way to adaptively reuse the existing warehouse and create that industrial history and adaptive
reuse that I think is important to South Kensington. And I think the design team did a great job in
doing that. Just to orient you a little more, you'll note this is Thompson Street here and
connectivity through Front Street, the Fishtown neighborhood, the business district, and Thompson
connects to a more denser multifamily portion which is this is the 300 plus unit dwell there's
about 300 units here at the Liberty Square projects in multifamily. Laser Wolf is right to our
east here so we wanted something that gave us you know commercial ground floor
um strong ground floor parking and then multi-family above um
So when we started, I think we came in with a much denser, you know, IRMX style, over 70 feet, 150 units, and, you know, there was quick pushback to that.
so when we started i think we came in with a much denser
We modified our plans, and as we went through the CDR process, we were at a 60-foot building with 112 units.
Like I said, about 7,500 square foot of ground floor commercial.
A little technical difficulty always.
So this was our original site plan we modified.
We went through the civic design review process, and really where we ended up, that was ground floor parking at the rear, the residential lobby, and then ground floor commercial at about 7,300 square feet on Thompson.
As we went through CDR, we came through in, and I just want to get to the renderings to get everyone sort of oriented.
So as we came through CDR, we went in through one meeting. It was unanimous support. It was very positive. And in the process, what was important to us was adaptive reuse of the property, strong parking ratio, strong commercial presence.
and then at the upper floors we had you know mixed units with 10% reserved as affordable
at an 80% AMI and we met with the stakeholders and some stakeholders what was really important
was that we had inclusion in our construction and my client can talk a little bit more of that but
we worked with West Girard Progress to make sure that we had a plan or process for training
of construction workers and we can get into more details on that so I think that was
really important to my clients, and we were very successful. In the process, we had six meetings
with SKCP, three public meetings, going back from June 23rd, July 28th, and then again in January,
and we met with their design committee along the way. We met with Westgerard Progress. We have
petitions from over 31 near neighbors, and then support from businesses, and letters of support
from both West Gerard Progress and the Fishtown Vid RCOs. So just to orient everybody, this is the
ground floor commercial space along Thompson. Here's your residential lobby, parking access,
and what we did and what was the biggest issue that we heard from SKCP was really this top floor
at 60 feet. And they asked us in their letter, they specifically stated that they thought a 50
foot maximum height was a very fair concession that they made and was a big concession and
we've agreed to remove that and i'll show you um here's some more renderings but i'll show you um
if i can get there um the details of that
so as part of this if the board's inclined to grant this we have revised plans but we've
essentially removed this top floor. We've added a little bit of the square footage back on this
end piece for a total height of 50 foot maximum. And I think this is the Howard Street view.
And you'll note from our neighbors to the north, we're almost 20 feet set back at the upper floors.
And we've had a reduction of almost 17 or over 17,000 square feet of GFA. So I think that's
um what was important that came out of it um again um if you'll note and i i'll just scroll
through the to the letters i'll talk about the refusals in a second also um but this is the
letter from skcp that you should have in your files but uh the committee believes that you know
project that 50 feet could have been supported and frankly the vote was was fairly close um i think
a lot of people came out. It was 34 against to 21 in favor at a 60 foot height limit. So we believe
that reducing to 50 feet is responsive to the concerns that we heard. And I think that's
important. Here's our letter of support from WestJarad Progress, the Fishtown bid, as well as
some neighboring projects to the north the 1400 north howard street project is in support
our neighbors laser wolf is in support lutheran settlement and i i show this
what's really important is i think my clients really this is this is near neighbors
What's really important is I think my clients, really, this is near neighbors support petitions.
And ultimately, what I think I'm trying to convey here is they did a lot of work over the last nine months to really engage the community and meet with the neighbors and get a lot of feedback.
And you can see from the multiple design changes.
I'm sorry, I'm just trying to scroll up to the plan here.
from the multiple from the multiple design changes you know they've been very willing to
make the changes to get this right and admittedly you know they don't always get it right the first
time but we've been trying to push and pull the project to make it economically viable meet the
goals of having lots of parking you know a high ratio robust ground floor commercial
um the affordable component an inclusion component and training component during construction
and um so i think that's that's really uh important to note and i think ultimately we
we gave the final concession to take this top floor off um this is the site is zoned rsa 5
but if you note from the aerials we are this is south kensington is a diverse neighborhood with
lots of different housing stocks. And we think that on this existing warehouse building that
operates as a warehouse, this is a much better use. We're able to adaptively reuse the building,
which is much more sustainable. And I'll also note that I don't believe that the
community opposed the multifamily use. So our variances are for the multifamily use,
and of course the height. But at 50 feet, we're really only about 10 feet, less than 10 feet
over our adjacent neighbors. They're about 42 foot townhouses. So with that, I will just ask
Jake Borden if he's heard my testimony and if he'll adopt it as his own. And as he's being
promoted, I'll say this is the minimum relief necessary. It will not alter the essential
character of the neighborhood. In fact, we believe it is consistent with the industrial
history of the neighborhood and the diverse housing stock. It will not impair appropriate
use or development as evidenced by our petitions, will not impair adequate light of adjacent
properties, and will not substantially increase congestion. And I'll offer Rustin Oller is here
to answer questions as well. I think you're muted, Mr. Chairman.
You're muted. I have no questions.
So why don't your client first raise his hand?
We'll swear him and he can adopt the testimony. Okay.
Thank you. He's been allowed to speak, Mr. Chair.
Can you state your name, please, and spell it for the court reporter?
Hi, everyone. My name is Jake Borden, J-A-K-E, last name B-O-R-D-E-N.
Jake, have you heard my testimony? I'm sorry.
you swear referring to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
yes i do proceed sir thank you mr chairman uh jake have you heard my testimony and do you adopt
it as your own yes and i'll just ask the board questions questions from the board no mr chairman
no mr chairman no mr chair no mr chairman questions from the virtual audience or comments
sir i have a miss elise redding with her hand raised i will allow her to speak at this time
uh hi thank you could you do me a favor could you state your name and spell for the court
reporter please sure my name is elise reddig e-l-y-s-e-r-e-t-t-i-g right do you swear or
a firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. So, thank you for
letting me join this meeting. I've joined all of the community zoning meetings that Hercules and
his group have been to. I live right adjacent on North Mashner Street to this warehouse in a
development of 20 townhomes, and we have a driveway that runs adjacent to this new
development that's being proposed and our issue has always been we're not entirely opposed to it
but we want a traffic study done because our driveway right now is being used as a throughway
unofficially between Hancock and Masher we have people driving through there at all hours of the
day pretty quickly and we have you know families who live on this street and we're very concerned
with the parking being put on the master side of this building that our
that our driveway is just going to become an on-ramp to this building and we really wanted
driveway is just going to become an on-ramp to this building and we really
wanted
to make sure that our concerns about the new traffic that's going to be created from this
building would be addressed um no one from the develop the developers has reached out to our
community matcher street manners to talk about it we've been on the calls numerous times and
have brought this up um you know through voice over the the chat so i'm calling in to represent
um our neighbors to just say that we do have a lot of concern about the traffic that this is
going to cause on our driveway and we really just don't know how we're going to be able to stop it
right thank you very much for calling in your comments yeah thank you i'll just respond mr
chairman we we have taken this through the streets department and we're happy to continue that
dialogue i it seems to me that you know that that's a design issue with a with a perpendicular
street on their um building i don't know that that where we orient our driveways has impact
but they may need to um do something like speed bumps or gates or something on theirs but we're
happy to continue that dialogue and make sure that um our process and our designers can meet
with them and continue that dialogue thank you any other questions or comments from the virtual
audience mr chair i have a david sternman with his hand raised i will i have allowed him to speak
mr sternman thank you can you hear me mr sternman did i swear you in earlier today
yes sir yes do you hear me just state your name and then you can your start your comments right
i'm david sternman and i'm a resident i live on uh 1200 block of north howard so um yes so i i
understand the zba has the authority and the final decision on this and i'm just offering a point of
view in the neighbor's point of view for some of us living immediately in the neighborhood uh of
this block that's being developed and uh went around and collected some signatures so you have
a petition with 150 signatures on it so i'm just i've never seen that i just want to object to that
you don't have it it's it's you have i i hear your petition but get get to tell me your points
where where do you stand with this okay so one is a question the variance to be granted to the
property owner requires that they have a special circumstance with an unusual hardship for the
zoning for the city to be uh zoning to be saying so the hardship can't be something that's created
by the applicant i'm just going to ask the committee sort of what is the hardship and two
if the variance is being granted with the idea of the current ordinance for zoning in this these
blocks which defines a current plan for the development of building in the area if it doesn't
really apply or shouldn't apply to this parcel is that because uh there's a special benefit to the
community or is the planning itself uh for the zone the city plan should be modified at 1300
however or potentially for the whole south kensington area because i do have a a picture
i can present project up here showing the current um zoning according to the cba site
and and it shows the entire area outside of so let me say that there are bounding streets that
are very large and they have certain zoning and inside is a residential area which has a different
zoning so I was wondering you know if I presented that I can make my point more clearly but I'll
state the specific things that uh are an issue of opposition so i i oppose the granting of the
zoning variance because of following concerns this residential community interior to um front street
under the l gerrard avenue second and american these large industrial streets the within that
is this community this project's being built on three streets which have kind of low height
spaced out single family homes and it proposes these towering you know buildings of unlike the
typical homes around it taller than anything that's ever been constructed on these residential