I spoke with the community group leader today, was advised to believe that the issue was the residential component of both of these projects.
My client was willing to remove those, and we were thinking that we would proceed today.
However, the leader of the community group preferred that we come back to the community group for another meeting.
advertise again or send out the notices again and see what and confirm that the removal of the
residential component does eliminate any community opposition to the project so that they can
hopefully revise their letter and the council member can then revise his letter so we respectfully
request a continuance thank you i might suggest that we'd be maybe be an attorney moving party
i'm not sure when they're going to meet i think maybe in january but i'm not sure
Okay. So, number seven, MI-2025.
I think Executive Director Haggerty actually has a date that would make more sense than attorney moving.
Okay. That's fine.
Thank you, Hillary, and thank you, Chair. Hey, David, how are you doing?
So, we've got nothing open in January right now. I think we have a resumption date that's being held, Chair. Is that in February?
2-3-2026.
So why don't we put you on for 2-3-2026 at 930, and you can have this cleared up by then, hopefully.
Yeah, I think they meet at the end of January, so that would be plenty of time. That'd be great. Thank you very much for the accommodation.
So the record, so for the record, MI-2025-004-494 and MI-2025-004495, both cases are continued for a resumptive hearing on 2-3-20-26 at 2 p.m.
Thank you.
Just to clarify for the record.
No, I'm sorry, that's in the morning, yeah.
Yeah, well, neither, but it won't be, and it won't be resumptive, technically, we'll be, we'll start the hearing over, but yeah.
So 2-3-20-26, I guess that's 9-30.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any other continuances?
I see no hands at this time, Chair.
Okay, thank you.
Number two, MI-2025-002-368-4821 Garden Street.
Al Nockmson is the attorney.
There he is there.
oh no i'm sorry yep we we have one more no exhibits mi 2024 006 752 45 18 old york road
third listing we have no um no uh no exhibits whatsoever
Elizabeth Johnson is the listed owner.
Martin Boyd is the listed applicant.
Did not appear the last time.
I see no hands, Chair.
Thank you.
So MI 2024-006-752-4518 Old York Road.
Third listing, no exhibits.
I vote to dismiss.
Michael Johns, my vote is to dismiss.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is to dismiss.
Tanetta Graham, my vote is to dismiss.
Ryan McAdams, my vote is to dismiss.
And we have a couple of add-ons I want to go over. Number one, MI-2025-004-256-753-North 44th Street. I vote no.
Michael Johns, my vote is no.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is no.
Tanetta Graham, my vote is no.
Ryan McAdams, my vote is no.
Ty Owen, my vote is no.
Number two, MI 2025-004-388-421-North Preston Street, I vote yes with proviso.
Maximum of three dwelling units.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes with proviso.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes with proviso.
Tanetta Graham, my vote is yes with proviso.
Ryan McAdams, my vote is yes with proviso.
Iowa, my vote is yes with proviso.
Number three, MI 2024, 006748, 4283 Viola Street, TA63838, I vote no.
838, I vote no.
Michael Johns, my vote is no.
Michael Johns, my vote is no.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is no.
Tannetta Graham, my vote is no.
My own, my vote is no.
Okay, so Alan, do me a favor.
Give me, give me, I got a quick case here I got to do for yourself.
I know, I saw you walk in and I, you know, I got you right away.
I never lead off.
Number four, MI 2025, 000025, 6617 Algar Street. Kevin Valentine is the attorney. It's a request for reconsideration.
That's just a vote on the request, Mr. Chair.
So I vote no to reconsideration and rehearing.
michael johns my vote is no to um reconsideration and be hearing
charles gaston my vote is no to reconsideration and rehearing
okay tayo in my vote is no to reconsideration and rehearing
and i mcadams my vote is no to require reconsideration or rehearing and now we'll hear mr
knock them soon
i think i did the last time now you want me to recertify on didn't vote on that matter before
no but i thought i'd recertify that i'd read it no i heard it no we wouldn't have because
we didn't vote on it yeah so we'll just re-vote that quick yeah okay thank you
a lot of pages here boys
mi 2024 006748 4283 viola street ta 633838 i vote no and i certify hold on here
i certify that i watched a video recording of the february 26 2025 hearing in this matter
Michael Johns, my vote is no.
And I attest that I watched the video and I can't remember the date.
September 16th.
Right, 16th.
2025, yes.
I attest that I did watch that.
In fact, this morning before all of our hearings.
And my vote is no.
Cheryl Gaster, my vote is no.
Sonetta Graham, my vote is no.
Hi, Owen. My vote is no.
Do we have a short one I can do real quick?
Here he is. Here he is.
mr knockamson we'll go again mi2025 002 368 4821 garden street would you state your name
is spelled for the stenographer alan knockamson a-l-a-n last name knockamson n-o-c-h-u-m-s-o-n
do you swear or firm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do to identify your
client and relationship to this property uh my client is 1934 diamond estate llc the owner of
the property and to my left is one of its members uh gentian cadrew and our vice chair has a few
questions good afternoon um have you submitted your documents and exhibits five days in advance
of this hearing i have okay and do you waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its
accuracy i do okay thank you you can share your screen and proceed with your case and just for
point of information your unanimous opposition from bridesburg community councilman driscoll
state representative hohenstein senator christine tartaglione and um numerous other people have
send in opposition yeah so accidentally when I uh when I shut my computer you know fold it down
it just disconnected me so just give me one second sure you know and I and I I know that there's
opposition although I do believe there's grounds uh for this variance request um let me just get
get back on here for two seconds and I am back so I just got the elevated to a panelist I am
thank you
all right let's get to the right screen
Hi, I'm going to share my screen.
I'm going to share my screen. Along with my client, Mr. Kadru, I also have Chris Karakoff
with Studio C, who's the architect for the project. He'll walk us through with a lot
of the architectural drawings. So I don't think that's working today.
It's not working. Okay. Yeah. And I understand we might hold this for something here.
Yes. And that was the other thing. I was going to do some housekeeping. I just want to make
sure you can see my screen yeah we can okay so this is 4821 garden street so we have updated
our our plans significantly for this project um and we'll go through that but right now it's a
three-story apartment building that we're proposing 24 units of residential use three commercial use
units and 57 parking spaces which increased so we decreased the amount of units and increased the
amount of parking, as you'll see. So during my presentation, we'll first review the notice of
refusal, the original one. We had a placeholder for the revised one. We've been begging L&I to
give us an updated refusal, but I'll tell you what we have in terms of how the changes are going to
be, and we would ask that the board hold the vote for the updated notice of refusal.
Then we have correspondents from Bridesburg and other groups. I don't know if the council
member sent the letter i did i didn't get it so i didn't include my packet maps of the area
photographs of the property surrounding area our plans and drawings which we'll go over with chris
our rco meeting notice or application for appeal deeds of property and certificate of tax clearance
so as you can see here um we are an icmx property we are a lot size of almost 30 000 square feet
um and what and you know my client purchased this property a few years a few years ago this
property was on the market for some time um you know he'll testify to the fact or he'll at least
adopt my testimony that this there's no use for this property as icmx like there's another property
to left of us which is also icmx but what's surrounding us is residential and while the
community may be opposed to this configuration of the residential use. Maybe they want to have
single-family homes. I don't think there's a dispute, and maybe I'm wrong about this,
that this should be a residential use of some sort on a 30,000-square-foot lot.
But what you would see from this refusal is this. There were 48 dwelling units. I don't know if I
stated the right amount before, but 48 residential dwelling units and three commercial dwelling units
after we heard from the community how upset they were with the density we half that to 24 we and
you'll see from the refusals we were doing a height as if icmx of 60 feet high we decided to go more
in line with the community what's surrounding us is rsa5 and our height is 35 and a half feet
we also increased the amount of parking spaces we went from 54 parking spaces to go to 57 parking
spaces. So if you have 24 residential units and three commercial units, that's 27 units. You have
57 parking spaces. That's more than a two to one ratio. We're not creating a curb cut out of thin
air. This is we're repurposing the curb cuts that's currently there. So if you look at this
refusal, the only thing that's going to remain on the new refusal is the multifamily household
living. And again, 24 residential units and three commercial units for a 30,000 square foot lot
is really a de minimis request under the circumstances. And again, my client is going
to be one of the commercial units. He's going to propose to have office built. He's going to have
his office there. And the other one, the updated refusal is going to say, specifying that the
commercial use will be for business and office use only. But the other refusals are these,
which will be eliminated. The height of the property, it's more of a technical refusal of
68 feet. I think we're at 55 feet from the roof line, but now we're going down to 35 feet, six
inches. We're also reducing the size of the pilot house where we are going down to 60 feet
in the area of the pilot house from 165 feet. We're getting rid of that refusal. And the final
refusal is about a front setback for a roof deck we got rid of that roof deck because you know the
community felt that was inappropriate because the roof deck was really facing i think it was one of
the residential units um or the residential property so we got rid of that so the only
thing that remains is essentially the use we're in a we're we're embedded in a residential
neighborhood we're trying to build a residential apartment building so then you know obviously we
have a placeholder here where we were expecting to have the refusal but we don't have it in time
and here's the correspondence and you know they lay out the legal standard of like why they're
against it ultimately again this property has been vacant for some time it was
um ultimately again this property has been vacant for some time it was on the market for some time
we think an appropriate the appropriate use is residential given that and have a mix right and
to have the least impact on the community we're repurposing a curb cut and we got rid of the height
issue that's not out of character and we're providing 57 parking spaces for 27 units which i
like again i don't know many developers who would do that this play a first i've done the two-to-one
parking ratio so again communities against it i think the two and i think the two reasons well
two reasons i understand it to be i didn't handle the community meeting mr goldberg from my office
did two reasons was they were concerned that the previous use of the property was icmx
they're concerned that there was an issue in terms of whether the site's dirty we have a phase one
report it's too big for me to like well it was like a thousand pages i have it but the phase one
came up clean so that's not an issue and you know i think we'll be responsible in terms of
construction and then the second issue was the width of garden street they felt that it was too
narrow to have the amount of 24 units there even with the off-street parking again previously there
was off-street parking there it was an icmx building so and the truck the vehicles you would
see from an icmx which is next door to us are more pickup trucks and bigger trucks so it's actually
going to be a lighter load for the community in a lot of respects because we're just having
very regular consumer vehicles of a sort and the street itself is 20 feet wide is it the ben
franklin parkway right here no but is it a reasonably wide street it is and we're not
affecting the community by providing 57 parking spaces so that you know they have a opposition to
this and then you know we got the the letter from the state rep as well you don't have the
letter from the city council member and again you get to see we're just off the water here
and we are really surrounded by these rsa5 properties and this is garden street as well
this used to be i think a paint manufacturer so i think that's the how we got the inspiration
the name and we'll go over that but this is the property at the front of it
from different angles but you can see there's a lot of parking uh back there but you can also
see there's lots of trucks not from us but by the next door neighbor i would presume this is our
hearing notice this is garden street to the right of the property and to left of the property and
then these are our plans so i would just ask that mr karikoff come on be promoted as a panelist
and then he could be sworn in and then he'll go through the plans with you i'm here can everyone
hear me hi yes you can sir could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
yes sir uh christopher karakoff uh it's c-a-r-i-c-k-h-o-f-f do you swear or affirm to
tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do counsel all right so um chris i figured
while we have the front rendering up here.
Why don't you just go over the materials