Okay. I have three documents here, but the first is just to refresh your recollection is, this is the 19th
The first is, just to refresh your recollection, is this is the 1992 variants.
And as you can see in the middle of the screen, let me see if I can make this a little bit bigger.
There is the Nippon uses as prior uses.
they called it, I'll refer to it as mentally challenged, to assist the mentally challenged
citizens. Could I jump in here for a minute, Mr. Chairman? Mr. Bonney, were these submitted to the
Zoning Board five days before the hearing? No, I understand. No, it's not a requirement for
the protestants.
Well, I think it is a requirement
that you provide them prior to the hearing.
Otherwise, it's up to the board
whether or not they're going to admit them.
I think, is that
accurate, Sharon?
No, it is not.
We do allow protestants, they are not
held to the same five-day requirement
that applicants are,
that appellants are.
Okay, I misread those
instructions.
I mean we we prefer it but um especially if they are just as if you're the appellant and you have
rebuttal materials you can submit those okay and mr bonnie did you provide me a copy with these
of these documents uh no but i can okay all right i would appreciate that absolutely absolutely i'm
Sorry, gentlemen, I hate to interrupt. But chair, I would like to request that all participants
here understand that they should not use the q&a for testimony. We're getting a lot of testimony
in the q&a. If you wish to speak on behalf of any project, you have to raise your hand when
the chair allows. Thank you all. Okay, so this is just prior treatment of these properties
here at the zoning board this is you know these are matter of matters of record here at the zoning
board this is a zoning board document as you can see at the bottom the variances were granted
and as I've indicated in the yellow highlighting that the application was to convert the existing
structure into a church with seven off-street accessory parking spots whereas what was required
i'm paraphrasing here was 74 off street accessory parking spots um
and and it was granted as you can see at the bottom um a church with seven accessory parking
spots um so i just wanted to sort of put you know this is sort of already in the zoning board's
files. This is from the city's atlas website. And here we have the transcript of the zoning
board hearing from March 30, 2016, when the church came to the zoning board to get a variance
for 1122 which is the corner property which is where the project is proposed to be built
and it's a vacant lot and at that time the church was acquiring it and wanted to get
um as the pastor said a variance to use it as a parking spot um the parking lot the pastor
testified and his recollection is is that at the zoning board hearing that he or and or his
colleague mentioned to the zoning board that within three to five years um i'm going to object
to this statement um if the pastor said it i'd like you to point to the the portion of the
transcript where the statement was made rather than assert what the pastor said that's fine
my point mr kerr is that um this is a very short transcript and nowhere here did the pastor or mr
Staley say anything of that sort. In fact, the community members were concerned that that might
be happening. And neither the church nor the zoning board said anything of that nature and
said, don't worry, the underlying zoning is not going to change. And of course, what the purpose
of this variance was, as I'm reading from page 18, it says, okay, we've been here for about 30
years. That's what Mr. Staley says. And the chairman said, and if this goes, and prior to
utilizing this parking lot, if it goes through, your congregants would come to the area and have
would come to the area and have to park on the street.
to park on the street. Yes, sir.
Yes, sir. And the chairman says, so now we're going to take all of those off the street.
And Mr. Staley says, yes, sir. So I'm just establishing for the record that, and this,
you know, this is not a, that the church came, that the church was parking all,
that the parishioners of the congregants were parking in the area on the streets for decades
and then obtained a use variance for a parking lot for a levy to oak lane to use it as a parking
lot to get all those cars off the street and that there was no mention at this hearing of
the church intending to use the property for anything else in the future the community was
concerned that it was going to be a slippery slope, that this variance would somehow make it
easier to use the property as commercial or something like that. And the chairman said,
don't worry that this is just for a parking lot. Nothing's going to change other than the parking
lot. And I just want to mention that the rest of this is just to show that the variance for the
parking lot was in fact granted but I think the pastor admitted that so as you can see on April
5 2016 the city website is indicating that that variance for the parking lot was granted so
I'll wrap all this up in in my closing argument but I just wanted to establish those facts
you know whether whether the pastor thinks that they mentioned the intended future use or not
You know, maybe memories can be faulty, but I think this transcript is pretty clear.
That's all I have for the pastor at this time.
Thank you.
I'd like to reserve the right to review these documents and potentially redirect Pastor Richardson on some of the points that were made.
So noted.
Okay, thank you.
So I think that's it for Pastor Richardson.
My next witness, I'd like to call Mr. Bruce Morgan.
Bruce, could you raise your hand?
Mr. Morgan has raised his hand.
If you could admit him to the room.
hello can you hear me yes good afternoon mr morgan please identify yourself for the record
first and last name my name is bruce morgan if you can speak a little bit more into the microphone
or increase the volume that would be helpful
can you hear me now yes my name is bruce morgan
uh this and your interest in this application um i'm the developer along with conifer realty
okay you swear and affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth
yes i do please proceed mr carl okay mr morgan um you heard you've been on this call for the
entire length is that correct yes and you heard the statements i made uh as as we were opening
up the hearing yes and were those statements accurate yes and you adopt those as your own
testimony? I do. Okay. And just some additional background. Did you testify at the February 12th
hearing in this matter? I did. Okay. And since the February 12th hearing, have we made some
modifications to the property? We have. And talk a little bit before you get into your testimony
about your experience developing these affordable housing properties
in conjunction with religious facilities,
churches and similar types of religious facilities?
A large part of my affordable housing development practice
involves partnering with churches,
typically in urban areas which have aging congregations
that can no longer help in a healthy way live in their homes.
The homes typically have stairs and they can't navigate those stairs
or they live in apartments which are not well maintained.
The most recent project I did was in West Oak Lane with the Mount Airy Baptist.
I did was in West Oak Lane with the Mount Airy Baptist Church at the corner of Haynes and
I'm drawing a blank on Haynes Street and we built 50 units of affordable housing. It's about a mile
away for seniors. This project is 40 units, correct? This one is 40, yes. And that property
and other properties that you've built in conjunction with the churches,
are they typically on the menu?
Mr. Kerr, I think we can stipulate that Mr. Morgan is familiar with
developing this type of, I'm calling it senior for a lack of a better description.
I think we can stipulate to that.
Okay, I just wanted to get to one point that.
Yeah, let's do that. Thank you.
The developments are just, Mr. Morgan,
are typically on or adjacent to the church property, correct?
Okay. So, Mr. Morgan, if you could just. Sure. I lost that. You said Mr. Morgan and then we
couldn't hear you. I'm sorry. Mr. Morgan will now present his testimony. Thank you. Okay. Good
afternoon. My name is Bruce Morgan and my firm BCM Affordable Housing has joined with Conifer
Realty to bring Pastor Richardson's vision of new, safe, affordable senior housing to the East
Oak Lane community. The pastor and his church have provided a petition of support for this project
that has been signed by 95 community residents, the vast majority of which live within a half a
mile of the property, many of which live within a quarter mile of the property. Additionally,
we have provided 13 email letters of support for the project, along with 44 traditional letters
via the United States Post Office of support for the project.
All three of these documents have been submitted to the ZBA in my package.
To further the pastor's vision, we informally met with our neighbors
at the Refuge Evangelical Baptist Church.
We then formally met with the RCO at the Oak Lane Presbyterian Church,
which is across the street from Refuge.
We then met with the RCO a second time on a Zoom call two weeks ago.
And finally, we toured a group of RCO members through our similar project gala that we did with the Mount Airy Baptist Church in West Oak Lane last week to answer their questions and show them examples of our work.
At each of these meetings, we have heard the community's feedback, and to the greatest extent possible, we have amended our project to incorporate the community's feedback into the development.
Specifically, the project's density was deemed to be too high by the community, so we reduced the project's size from the initial conception of 60 units down to 50 units and subsequently down to the present 40 units, a 33% reduction of units.
Parking. Initially, this project offered no on-site parking, which was unacceptable to the community.
To solve this problem, we repositioned the building so that we can now provide for nine parking spaces to the rear of our project, including two handicapped spaces, while not changing the building's front or side yard setbacks.
Additionally, we have hired a parking engineer to study the availability of on-street parking.
David Horner of Horner and Cantor's findings are that there is sufficient on-street parking to go
along with the off-street parking that we will now be providing. David will go over his findings in
detail later in the presentation. Traffic. The neighbors contend that the project will cause
traffic congestion in their neighborhood. David Horner studied the traffic patterns in the
neighborhood at various times of the day during various days of the week. His findings indicate
that we will not create traffic problems for the neighborhood. And once again, David will go over
his findings shortly. We added higher income units at 80% of area median income to ensure that the
largest swath of the community could qualify within the project's income limits. The neighbors
claimed the facade of the building did not meet the standards of the other structures in the
neighborhood. As such, we eliminated the siding previously slated for the building and replaced
it with an all-brick facade along with simulated limestone on the first floor which mimics the
limestone found at the library across the street. This change added $75,000 to
the project's costs. The neighbors were concerned that the building's entrance
initially was too close to Oak Lane Avenue, so we moved the entrance further
so we moved the entrance further down 12th Street away from Oak Lane.
down 12th Street away from Oak Lane.
The neighbors were concerned that we did not properly account for handicap access,
so we added a dedicated handicap entry off of the parking lot to the rear of the building.
Finally, the neighbors were concerned that we did not properly account for trash pickup,
so we added a dedicated trash room with direct access to the rear of the building
for refuse removal. Finally, our submission includes several photographs of the neighborhood
taken on May 19th of this year at 9 30 a.m. and then again on Wednesday, May 20th at 6 30 p.m.
These photos were taken in the heart of the pandemic when residents were sheltering in place
and the neighborhood arguably was full of residents. The photos which are included as part
my package indicate that there is ample on-street parking all around the proposed site. Once again
these photos were included within my package. Now I would like to introduce David Horner
of Horner and Cantor. David graduated from the University of Delaware with a degree in civil
engineering in 1987. He has a license to practice engineering in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and
florida david is also certified as a professional traffic operations engineer with over 30 years of
experience in traffic i would stipulate that mr warner is an expert thank you okay um now i'd like
to introduce yeah before we bring him on uh mr bonnie you have any questions uh for mr morgan
I do have a couple questions. Yes, thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Morgan. How are you?
Good afternoon.
Thank you. I just want to clarify something that I think was mentioned earlier, that the application that you made for the tax credit was not granted this year. Is that correct?
this past year, correct. Okay, so you'll have to apply, reapply for that? In February of 2021.
Okay, thank you. I want to give you an opportunity to I think correct something
that you said incorrectly in February, which I see from the transcript that says that
you say the remainder of the neighborhood is single family homes but along oak lane avenue
they are all institutional commercial uses and if if we could put the site plan up again i just
want to ask you to agree with me if you if you would that across oak lane on the left hand side
of this photo you can see essentially three. We don't see any photo. All I see is the site
plan. The site plan. The site plan, okay. Yes, I'm sorry. Thank you. The drawing has
green areas on the left-hand side on the other side of Oak Lane, just on the left-hand side
of the page. And would you agree with me, sir, that that block on Oak Lane across the
street from you is single family homes and is not commercial. Can you see the pointer that I'm
pointing at? Yeah, exactly. Mr. Bonney is accurate. This side of Oak Lane where my pointer is are
single family homes, but on this side, and this is my reference point, here's our project. On this
side of the street is a library. On this side, right below the homes is the school. I would agree
with you, sir. I would agree with you. My point that I was making, though, sir, is on the side
that the building is, in the line, is our building, the church, a second church, and then a
rehabilitation center all in a row going one direction, and a library and a firehouse going
the other direction. Well, I don't think we disagree with each other. So all I'm pointing
out is that across the street on oak lane there are single family homes and you're correct that
and i agree with your characterization of the other properties in the area although i'm not
sure you i don't i don't know where drug rehabilitation center is but i'll take your
word for that it's not i didn't say drug i said rehabilitation i'm sorry thank you and that and
that's one that's on the far side of the presbyterian church the
That's on the far side of the Presbyterian Church.
I understand that.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Over near 10th Street.
Is that a question?
I see it here.
Yeah, I was just waiting for this photo to come up.
So I agree with you.