project i might have to just call them to be sworn uh bennis depani could you just raise your hand
and come off mute please been allowed to speak as well could you state your name jaren
spell for the court reporter? This is Ben Estepani, last name's E-S-T-E-P-A-N-I. Do you swear
for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman,
if you don't mind, if I could just have Ben adopt my testimony as well, just for the record. Sure,
go ahead. Ben, did you hear my testimony before the board today? Yes. And if you were to testify,
why would you adopt in front of that testimony as if it were your own?
Yes, I do.
Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, we're open to questions.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman.
Questions from the virtual audience?
I see no further answer, Mr. Chair.
Planning Commission?
Good afternoon.
David Vecto, City Planning Commission.
Chair Bergman, may I ask if we can get some clarification?
What what is the general industrial use that's proposed here?
Sure. Council, I believe that we're seeking a manufacturing use here.
I don't know that we have specific tenants at this point, but under the general industrial category of 1460110,
we would be we would be asking permission to utilize the property for those uses that are contemplated under that section of the zoning code,
which is fabrication, assembly, treating materials,
production of large equipment and machines.
And that we would have to conform with that provision.
Okay. And it would be entirely within the building?
It would be entirely within the building.
Okay. Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
All right. Mr. Chairman, members of the board,
the comprehensive plan recommends no change
to the residential single-family zoning at this location.
The zoning changed in 2021 in conformance with the comprehensive plan.
The current zoning creates a clear hardship.
for the properties reuse and so the city planning commission is going to recommend the board grant
the use variance. MI 2021-004-693-2100-02 Ruffner Street, I vote yes. With revised plan, two pages.
uh carol tenere my vote is yes with proviso thomas harlem my vote is yes with proviso
james snell yes with proviso
yes we're proviso thank you council thank you mr chairman thank you members of the board
MI 2021-004-691-2047 North Lawrence Street.
No RCO at this point that we see.
Mr. Nackamson.
Mr. Nackamson has been promoted to panelists.
In the meantime, Mr. Chair, just for the board to know that
But task compliance has been received and we're satisfied with that.
Oh, OK. All right. The vice chair was ready to ask that question.
I sure was.
Mr. Nakasim, state your name and spell for the court reporter, please.
Yes. Did you hear that, Mr. Chair?
I most certainly did.
It's my it's my Brooklyn attitude that came out there.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board, Alan Nockmson of Nockmson, PC, 123 South Broad Street, Suite 1600, Philadelphia, PA, 19109.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board, Alan Nockmson of Nockmson. Peace.
Just for the court reporter, spell your last name, please.
Yeah, N-O-C-H-U-M-S-O-N.
Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Vice Chair has a few less questions to ask you, but she has a few questions.
I won't ask anything about the taxes, but do you agree to read the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
And it appears, according to our notes, that you've submitted everything required. Is that correct?
Yes. Yes, ma'am.
Okay. You may proceed. Thank you.
Thank you. May I share my screen?
Sure you may.
All right. Thank you.
Okay. So this is a pretty straightforward project.
2047 North Lawrence Street is a property that goes street to street.
We're merely looking to cut the property in half, which is consistent with every property on that block, except one, actually, the one next to us.
But everyone else, the properties are cut in half.
So in my presentation packet, you'll see the notice of refusal.
We actually have a letter of support from the Norris Square Community Alliance.
This afternoon, we received a letter of support from Councilmember Sanchez, maps of the area showing and illustrating, you know, what we're indicating in terms of cutting the property in half and how it's consistent with every other property, photographs of the property in the surrounding area, our plans and drawings.
Again, we're just taking we're cutting this property in half. So one faces one public street, the other property faces another public street on those public streets currently is a pre existing single family home on North Lawrence on the rear portion of the property current property.
there's a garage right now.
We have proof of our meeting with the community group
as well as mailing notice of that as Exhibit 6.
Exhibit 7 is our application for appeal.
Exhibit 8 is our deed to the property.
And we have Tobias Biddle,
the owner's representative here who will adopt my testimony.
And Exhibit 9 is our certificate of tax clearance.
first things first this is an rsa5 property all we're trying to do is relocate the lot lines to
create from one lot to two lots and we're here today because that we're being refused due to
the size of these lots which again is not out of character with what's in on this block as you'll
see so before that um i did provide the letter could you just make the print like a little bit
bigger. It's kind of, it's hard to read. Yep. Is that better, Mr. Chair? Yep. Okay. You can see
there were a lot of people that attended this community meeting. There were 45 people in
attendance that were not members of the community board in support. Two opposed. One is support with
conditions. Of the board members, six were in support. One was in support with conditions and
and one was not in opposition.
Most equally important, we did receive a letter
from the district council member expressing her support
for this project as well.
And then just maps to the area.
Again, if you can see, this is our property right here.
It goes North Lawrence and it's escaping me
the property that's in the rear.
But most importantly, you'll see there's a line that goes basically across because there's a property that's facing North Lawrence, one facing the other public street as well.
And that's all we're looking to do.
And that is actually Lethgow is actually the property in the rear.
And then photographs of the property.
This is the property from North Lawrence.
Defining the property, again, is a single-family structure.
The rear of the property on North Lithgow, again, it's a garage.
My client anticipates putting a single-family structure there afterwards.
And again, just an aerial view of the project, North Lawrence here, Lithgow here.
But again, you can just see the line way across where each of the properties on North Lawrence Street has an address.
Each of the properties on LiftGal has an address other than our property and the one next door to us, who also, by the way, supported our project by voting in favor of our project at the community meeting.
Here's North Lawrence Street to the right of the property.
here's north lawrence street to the right of the property
here's north lift gow to the right of the property north lift gow to the left of the property
then our plans and drawings which i i don't think are relevant uh here i mean i can go
over them if you want but um again we're not doing anything this is an existing uh
single-family structure so but you know i can just show it just generally we have these plans
but again this is just the survey which shows the cutting of the property in half
and again just general floor plans and we can go over if you would like but
again this is just the pre-existing structure or structures
And then I'm just going to increase the size of this so you can see this.
We had a meeting with the North Square Community Alliance on February 9th at 5 30 p.m. We notified
205 addresses and here are the addresses and here's our proof of mailing of that notice to those
addresses our application for uh for appeal with the zba
along with our project information form our deed to the property uh showing that into mag
capital group llc and we have tobias biddle the member of that llc owns the property
and then our certificate of tax clearance there was an issue with some administrative matters
with the city it looked like there were some taxes owed in 2020 uh but we rectified the
situation we received a i guess a delinquent summary statement from the city directly from
the city of philadelphia showing that no delinquent taxes are due at this time and that's
dated as of february 14th of this year so with that being said um i would ask that mr biddle
virtually raise his hand
to adopt my testimony and then i would be more than happy to take any questions from the board
could you state your name please state your name and spell for the court reporter please
tobias biddle that's t-o-o-b as in boy i-a-s as in sam last name biddle b like in boy i d like in
david d like in david l like in leo e like in edward right do you swear or firm to tell the
truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do proceed counsel uh yes mr biddle you heard
everything i stated today yes i'd like to adopt your testimony as my own thank you for uh
streamlining the questions questions from the board no mr chairman no mr chairman no mr chairman
questions or comments from the virtual audience
i see no further hands mr chair planning commission good afternoon chair bergman
David Fecto, City Planning Commission. Members of the board, the comprehensive plan recommends no
change to the residential single-family zoning at this location. The existing lots on Lawrence
and Leithgow streets range in size from 420 square feet to 900 square feet, so the proposed
undersized lots are in keeping with this range of existing lot sizes, and the City Planning
Commission recommends that the board grant the dimensional variances to create two undersized
lots. Thank you. MI 2021-004691-2047 North Lawrence Street, I vote yes.
Carol Tenere, my vote is yes. Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes. James Snell, my vote is yes.
El-Shahid, my vote is yes. Thank you.
thank you mr knockamson thank you very much my 2021
zero zero four six nine four thirty sixteen to twenty east thompson street
rco southport richmond civic association letter of support councilman squill letter of non-op
richmond civic association letter of support councilman squill letter of non-opposition
brandon saverin mr saverin has been promoted to panelists
good afternoon mr saverin you were sworn this morning just state your name and then our vice
Chair has a few questions. Sure. It's Brandon, B-R-A-N-D-O-N, Saverin, which is S as in Sam,
A, V as in Victor, R-A-N. Right. Vice Chair? Yep. Mr. Saverin, do you agree to wave the reading
of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy? Yes, I do. It appears that you've submitted all
the required documents. Is that correct? Yes, it is. You may proceed. Okay. Thank you. May I
sure you may. Thank you. Okay, just to situate the board as to our location here, we're going to be
speaking about a property in Port Richmond with three street frontages on Thompson, Mercer, and
Elkhart. This down here is Richmond Street, Allegheny Avenue, and back here would be
uh somerset and aramingo um the building is um while not on the historic register itself um is a
um warehousing building that we um have reason to believe dates to the mid 19th century
um just sort of give you one other view um here is uh the thompson street frontage this is elkhart
If I kind of take you down this alley a little bit, you can sort of see there's this, this is the sort of full extent of the three-story portion of the building, which occupies most of the lot.
And then there is a one-story portion of the building in the rear that fronts Elkhart and Mercer.
Sure. We are aware that the property is zoned RSA 5, which means that the sort of central
by right use that would be allowed on this property is one dwelling. While it would,
I think, be pretty cool to have a mansion there, it's really not practical.
Um, the, um, there was a prior owner who, um, sort of tinkered with that idea, but, uh, sold the
property, um, and did not follow through on it. Um, the, the person who bought the property is
my client. Um, that is, um, Sturgios Ventoulas, um, who is his family is a mainstay in this
community. Um, they own and operate Ventoulas pizza on, um, Aramingo. Um, and, um, uh, Steve,
Steve, as he goes by, bought this property with really the goal of saving it, saving it from demolition.
And we went to the RCO and spoke to them about our hardship, which is that, you know, all we can really do here by right would be to demo this and then turn it into single family lots.
We could build seven single-family homes, but Steve didn't want that. The community didn't want that, which is reflected in this resounding vote of support. I believe the total is 46 to 6 at this in-person RCO meeting that I attended.
and what we're going to do with the support of the community if we get a variance today
is to transform this building into 15 apartment units and four car parking spaces on the ground
floor and five indoor bike parking spaces. As you mentioned, we have a letter of non-opposition
from the councilman, Councilman Squilla, and I will quickly just show you the refusal. As I
mentioned, 15 dwelling units with four car parking spaces and five bike parking spaces.
The refusals are for having more than one dwelling unit that's here, and that we have a refusal for
the curb cut that will serve the proposed parking off of Mercer Street. There is sort of
no conforming way to have a curb cut into this property from any of those three streets. So to
have parking, we need a variance for a curb cut. We're also requesting that. The community wanted
to see parking. That was important to them. So at this point, I'd like to turn it over to Scott
Murphy, who is the architect, and he can walk you through the plans.
Mr. Murphy, raise your hand and state your name and spell for the court reporter, please.
please put them out to speak all right uh can you hear me yes just state your name
He's been allowed to speak. Can you hear me?
last second change brandon sorry about that that's okay jimmy thank thank you for coming
my name is james harrah h-a-r-r-e right do you swear for him to tell the truth the whole truth
nothing but the truth i do proceed jimmy are you going to share your screen or would you like me
to do that for you uh i have the pdf open i can share yes that'd be great and just for the board's
benefit um jimmy is in the same architecture firm as scott is very familiar with these plans
so he'll be able to do an adequate job here
just need a permission to share
yeah i'll do that right now promoting to panelists
you guys can see all this yeah awesome so from what i heard brandon was able to give you guys