There's the back bedroom of unit one, bathroom, laundry room, kitchen, and living room area.
This is the upstairs bedroom of unit one.
And this is one of the bathrooms in one of the units.
This is another bathroom in one of the units.
This is how you access Unit 4, which is the bi-level that's accessed from, like I said, this driveway here, which is, again, the driveway unique to the property.
That's where the basement is accessed, and, again, that was a concern of the neighbors, and that's why we're going to be forgoing requesting that as a unit.
This is the roof deck that's accessed only from Unit 3.
It's at the rear of the property, and it has some nice views and just some nice open space for the third floor unit to use.
This is the paved rear space that would provide at least four parking spaces.
And this garage, my understanding, is the ownership intends to ultimately take that down and provide additional flat space, possibly parking for one more vehicle.
So we would have four units here with four individual parking spaces, which means that the parking ratio would be one to one, which for what it's worth is what's required in our RSA three, which is what this property is zoned.
Here's a picture from ground level looking up at the rear of the house.
And again, you can see the two driveways, which again are both unique to the property and do not are not for the use of any other neighbors.
This is Exhibit G, which is the letter from the RCO from Longcrest Community.
We did meet with them on 11-13.
They did vote 30-0 against us.
As a result of their vote and their input, we went back, we revised our plans to remove the use of the basement unit.
Okay. Exhibit H is I had some correspondence with Philip Grutzmacher, who is the RCO chair of Longcrest Civic, and I had informed him that we're going to remove the basement unit.
We would like to come and present it to their RCO. His response was that they would welcome us to come back to them, but that they would be very unlikely to change their vote and their opinion.
Their main concerns in their letter, and they did write this in their letter, was one, the parking.
They expressed a concern about on-street, I'm sorry, lack of on-street parking.
It's true, parking is a problem everywhere.
However, like I had shown the board and described, our plan for providing parking to the eventual residents of this property is at a one-to-one ratio of one parking space per dwelling unit, which is the requirement in RSA 3.
The fire safety issue, the units are sprinklered but I understand that the
main concern was the basement unit and we've eliminated the basement unit from
any request that's ongoing here. The hardship is again my clients purchased
this property as is and it had been billed out by the time they purchased it.
They are now seeking to get certificates of occupancy for the properties.
I also wanted to point out that the community expressed concern about the density of our property.
So I did a bit of a map, a bit of a neighborhood walkthrough, if the board will allow me here.
So this is a map.
The green one is our property, 6325 Palmetto.
And all of these little red flagged ones are nearby properties within a two to three block radius of multifamilies that I have located and noticed and I walked the neighborhood myself, took some photos, did some research and found a number of multifamilies.
So if you would, I'm just going to walk you through.
This is 6403 and 6405 Bingham Street, just about a block and a half away.
These are each three units.
They do not have any zoning permits or variances.
All of these properties, by the way, are zoned RSA 3.
This is 551 to 53 Hellermann.
This is 551 to 53 Hellermann. It's a corner property. It's got one, two, three dwellings that I was able to observe.
It's a corner property.
Again, no permits, no variances. 548 to 50 Hellermann, directly across the street.
This is a two-unit. You can see by the two mailboxes here, and there's some stairs going up that look to an exterior door there.
543 Hellermann, directly across the street, two units. You can see the two electric meters, two satellite dishes.
541 Hellerman, same thing, two units, two meters. This is 6451 Palmetto, about two blocks away from
the subject property. This is at least a two unit, one, two. 6417 Palmetto, another block and a half
away, two units, one, two electric meters. Again, all RSE3 didn't see any permits in my search of
Atlas. Here is directly next door. 6329 Palmetto. Two units. One, two. No permits, no variances.
538 Robbins. I see three doorbells. That would lead me to believe three units. I certainly didn't
go knocking on anybody's door, but I walked around and took photos. Council, look, I think
you've made your point. I mean, we need to go through the whole neighborhood. Understood.
understood mr chair um in any event uh that is my my testimony and i let me ask you this question
how about the property next door is a single family home have you have you knocked on that door
uh i have not but i um and how about the the one the one the other side is just a duplex am i
correct correct and did you knock on that door at all and talk to them i did not um my understanding
is that my clients have some some relations with their neighbors and I my
understanding is that they've spoken with them and I would like to call my
client to adopt my testimony thank you there's anything I'm going to call my
client George Groves who is out there to adopt testimony all right George will
will be joining us as a panelist and i'm going to unshare my screen at this time unless anybody
has well why don't you leave that there just in case people i'll leave all right okay george
just trying to get him on the scene here
chair he is a panelist he just needs to unmute okay george could you unmute please
hi george could you please state your name as bell for the stenographer
George, you need to unmute.
George?
Hello, sir.
Hi, George, could you please state your name and spell it?
George Groves.
G-R-O-V-E-S.
All right.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir.
Please proceed, counsel.
Thank you.
George, are you a primary member of 6325 Palmetto LLC?
And 6325 Palmetto LLC is the owner of 6325 Palmetto Street, correct?
And did you hear all of the testimony and see all of the exhibits that I showed and offered to the board today?
And was all of that testimony true and correct to the best of your knowledge?
yes but i'd like to say something mr chairman yes the single family home next door belongs
to the church and he uses it as an office okay thank you okay and um george would you adopt
all of the testimony that i offered today as though you gave it yourself yes thank you um
Counsel, let me ask you a question. None of this work was done by your client. It was all done prior to the purchase.
That is correct. OK, questions from the board.
Yeah, I have a question. Oh, go ahead, Mike.
I just wanted to say I don't know that presenting a number of the multifamily or duplexes that aren't legal kind of help.
I think it maybe is a call to L&I to go out and take a look at this stuff, right?
um uh so so that's that's all i really had to make a comment on for the moment
So that's all I really had to say.
understood i was you know i was trying to stress that we're trying to do things the right way
yeah i have a question it so it looks like your client purchased the property in 2023
is that correct correct yes and it's looking like if i go and i look at listings of this property
from 2023 it says that it was originally listed and marketed as a single family home
with four bath four bedrooms and two bathrooms
i mean i i'm also saying wait i'm also saying an lni history of violations for unpermanent
construction work and a number
of easy permits pulled that
seem to match a lot
of the work that has been shown in the photos
where there was additional
wiring, additional plumbing
and a bunch of demo
of non-bearing walls.
Could you walk us through,
understanding that you're saying that this is how
it was when you purchased it,
what work have you done since
2023 when you purchased it?
I'm going to let George show up that one.
So, Mr. Chairman,
we purchased the property it was finished we applied for the roof deck permit and we invited
it up and i into the property to look okay the inspector was inspector porter i knew the violation
and that's when we filed everything that we needed to file
george going back when you purchased it did you purchase this as a single property
with the idea or that
real estate thing was wrong?
We realized it was
wrong and started
to legalize to correct it.
Obviously, Mr. Higgins
is paying.
Mr. Groves, can you pause and repeat your answer?
We can't understand what you're saying.
Your audio is a bit garbled.
You're freaking out.
Okay. We
purchased free and we
started to legalize it. We're the ones who invited
it out into the property to
look at it i could i could barely hear it but i'm thinking he's saying and he bought it as a single
family but it already had been changed this way so they were seeking to legalize it that's what
i'm did i would i hear that right yes sir yes sir okay
okay but so when you bought it what was what was your process to try to legalize it
I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. This is the report.
I know. I know. I understand. George, we're going to have to figure out. We're having a hard time hearing you, George.
if I can if I can add on and confirm so ownership purchased it as it had been marketed apparently
marketed as a single-family but the work had already been done for the large part they went
and hired a consultancy to draft up these building plans and begin to apply for the building permits
from lni uh they were rejected because they needed zoning and which is why we're all here today
but i'm saying that the first zoning permit was filed in 2025 this property was purchased in 2023
and you've had a number of construction related violations since i'm trying to like in a timeline
you would have applied for zoning first to legalize or you would have applied for building
permits and gotten denied and it's
looking like a lot of work was started
and then it was caught
and then they went back and tried
to... It was not caught.
It was not caught.
It was not caught. So you're saying your consult
so you... Okay, we're
here. We're here. Okay.
So I'm just trying to like follow
the timeline. So you purchased the property,
it was already converted,
you hired this consultant
and then you tried to go and legalize it
and then I guess we landed on
you needing to refile for zoning
a year.
And what happened with the previous
consultant?
He filed the paperwork.
It's George.
We can't hear you.
Your audio is...
You can't hear me?
Your audio is cutting in and out.
Like, if you were driving through a dead zone?
i'm not doing it just keeps coming off too
I'm not in a dead zone.
It just keeps keeping me off.
we couldn't understand any of that i'm sorry hijack you can you answer these questions
your sound is your sound is very um garbled yeah it's getting choppy so my my understanding is that
The consultants have been trying to fill the gaps that were incurred by the prior owners prior to my client and get proper building permits for each portion of this thing, including the plumbing, the electrical, etc.
the fire suppression and they're on their way to doing so but they keep getting bounced because
they need zoning so they're kind of at a bottleneck if you will and and that's why we're here today
okay so can again can we talk through what constructions or minor alterations
have happened at the property since it's
purchased in 2023?
Nothing.
We didn't do anything since
2023 that was there.
The only thing...
I was the one to call L&I.
I was the one to invite L&I out to
the building so we could go through
and figure out what needed to happen
to make this
legalize the property.
This isn't my first time at the rodeo,
so it's kind of hard when you buy
something that's already done.
When you purchased it, did you have title insurance and did you run title?
Lawyers did that. It was handled through Andy Miller.
Okay. I have a question.