on this side of Titan Street, which makes this a good idea to bring cars off the street
at this location. The second page of Exhibit 7 is just the proposed floor plans.
The basement level is for storage, non-living space. The first floor is the entryway and the
two-car off-street parking. Second floor is living room, dining room, and kitchen. And then the
bedrooms are on the third floor. It's three bedrooms, two-bath house with a roof deck. And
again, this is a property that's individually owned by Mr. Hausler, and he's looking to basically move
into this as his primary residence and start a family at this location. With that, members of
the board, I'd submit that the subject property, that there's a hardship and that the variance is
in keeping with the characteristics of this block in that there's no parking on this side of the
street. Other properties have off-street parking on this block of Titan Street. And we will be
able to remove cars from the street, reduce congestion. And as I mentioned, to start the
matter, the neighbors are in full support of this request. And counsel, I understand that
council member is not in opposition to this. We have not heard from the council directly.
We have a we have a letter. OK, he's in non-opposition. I did not know that. I thank you.
Would you bring your client on and adopt your testimony? Mr. Housler, can you please raise your hand?
Mr. Housler, please unmute yourself and wait for the chair.
Why could you state your name, please, and spell for the court reporter?
Francis Housler. F-R-E-N-C-I-S.
H-A-E-U-S-S-L-E-R.
Right.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir.
Proceed, counsel.
Mr. Heisler, did you hear the statements I made to the board today?
Were they true and correct to the best of your information, knowledge, and belief?
And would you adopt my statements as your own?
No further questions.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Chairman.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
I see no hands at this time, Chair.
Planning Commission.
This is Ron Bednar, City Planning.
This property is indicated for residential use on the city plan or
not the district plan recommends no change to the existing zoning at this location.
Applicant's hardship is not supported with evidence of unique physical circumstances
or condition of the property which prevent it from being used in conformity with the
parking restrictions of the code. Therefore, we recommend the request of advantage not be granted.
MI 2022-006-874-534-Titan Street, I vote yes.
Dr. Holloman, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you, Madam President. Take care.
Number three, MI 2022, 006902, 3223, Hollyoak Road. Henry Clinton is the attorney. There's no RCO, but there was a meeting held with the Northeast Community Civic Association on 42723.
Chair, Mr. Clinton is coming back in as a panelist now.
good afternoon mr chairman mr clinton you've already been sworn today just state your name
for the record sure henry clinton and could you identify your client the relationship to this
property sure my clients are peter and monica pellegrino and they are the owners of the property
and the applicants okay our vice chair has just a few questions good afternoon counselor do you
agree to waive the reading of the refusal or stipulate to its accuracy? I will agree not to
read it, but I don't think it's correct, and I'll explain why. Okay, no problem. Have you emailed in
all the required documents that are needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of
this hearing? I have saved for the letter from the RCO since we just met with them on Thursday.
okay thank you please proceed to share your screen all right thank you mr shaheed appreciate that
can i share my screen mr chairman sure absolutely
is that visible yes all right uh again mr chairman members of the board good afternoon
uh i'm the attorney for denise and peter pellegrino uh they
I'm the attorney for Denise and Peter Pellegrino.
They have owned this property at the corner of Holyoke and Academy Road since 1998.
Prior to that, their brother owned the property from 1979 to 1998.
So this has been a family-owned property for over 40 years.
This is a table of contents, AA through A10, and I'll walk the board through these documents
and ask that they be admitted into evidence.
The request today is simply for a driveway. When I show you the aerial photographs,
you'll see that every property on Academy Road has a driveway and most of them have garages.
So my client is asking for a driveway and for a garage. So this is the refusal. We're an RSD3
District, which is a detached single family, and there's two refusals. One is, I don't have any
qualm with that, the proposed garage and surface parking are located within the required rear yard
depth of 25 feet. That's a refusal I have a contest with, and I'll explain why when I show
you the aerial photographs. The other refusal about having two principal residents on the lot,
I don't have a qualm with because, like most of the other properties in this neighborhood, they all have garages as well as driveways, and their home is situated on the same lot.
Again, we just met with the RCO on Thursday.
I got the sense that it was going to be fine.
The only issue they had was should the driveway or the garage be pushed back further than the planned show.
So let me just give you some perspective on what's happening here. So this is my client's property. It's a very large property. It's 8,500 square feet. For instance, the property next to it is only 7,500 square feet.
However, this property next door to the right of my client's property, which I'm using with
the cursor, is on Academy Road. This is 29,000 square feet. It's a little bit more than half
an acre. It's a gigantic property. And the house that is situated on this lot is about 125 feet
from the side yard of my client's property. So the issue I have with the refusal is,
this is the front yard of the property. And I'll show you the front door. This is the pathway
leading up to the front door. And so this is the side yard. The way the examiner viewed this
property was he considered this the front yard and then this the rear yard. So if you consider
where my cursor is on Holyoke as the front yard, he would be correct that you need 25 feet
for rear yard but since this is the front yard and i'll show you the rsd code regulations since
this is the front yard this my cursor is between my client's property and the very large property
this is the side yard and in the rsd3 zoning district on a corner property the side yard
you only need to be seven feet away from the property line to be compliant my client's
proposed garage is three feet away from the side yard so it has a real bearing on the board's
consideration in this case and the reason that we have side yard requirements is for a number of
reasons one is for fire and safety you don't want the houses too close even though you can see
in the development itself, the houses are relatively close, but I'm going with a strict
interpretation of the code. So you have a side yard requirement for fire and safety purposes so
that if you have a fire in one structure, it doesn't leap to the home next door. You also
have it for purposes of light and air. And also you don't want overcrowding of the land.
Well, because my client's property happens to be adjacent to a lot that's 29,000 square feet
and the residence upon which that lot is situated is 100 to 125 feet away we really have no issues
with regard to fire safety light air or excuse me or overcrowding of the land because of the
great gap between the two properties the other reason this aerial photograph is significant is
because if you look at academy road uh there's there's parking obviously in front of your house
but every property has a driveway right this there's a driveway here that goes all the way
in the back to this apartment complex it's a very narrow driveway you go in they can turn around
and come out you know the front of the car first but most of the other driveways the the homeowners
The homeowners, like, for instance, this house here on Academy, where my cursor is, there's a driveway and a garage.
like for instance this house here on academy where my
And I've seen it most, frankly, residents on the block have to back out and then go forward on Academy.
And then if you look across the street, there's other driveways.
Again, you have to enter off Academy and you typically would back out.
And some of the driveways are wrapped, excuse me, some of the garages situated on the lots across the street are rather large.
You can see where my cursor is, that this is the house and this is the garage.
The garage is almost equal in size to the house.
The adjacent property, again, there's a very large garage and it's almost as big, if not bigger, than the house.
Our proposed garage is half the size of the existing property.
But again, my point is that every house where my cursor is, there's a driveway with a garage.
Here's a driveway with a garage.
Here's a driveway, no garage.
Here's a driveway, no garage.
And on and on and on.
I don't want to belabor the point.
Basically, what we're asking the board is, can my client be treated like every other house that is on Holyoke Street?
Now, if you look at my client's property, he has a pool and there's a shed, which you can't see, where my cursor is over the L in Holyoke.
My client has removed the pool and has removed the shed that's there.
So now there's ample room for a garage and for a driveway.
So this is the front of my client's property.
This is what I'm saying.
This is the front yard and this is the side yard where this railing is.
And the sidebar requirements, which I'll show you later on in the presentation of a corner lot, is seven feet.
My client does not use this as a driveway now.
You can see it looks like some tire marks.
Basically, he pulled an old trailer onto the lot, and that's where it's situated.
Again, another perspective of just a closer view so you can see the size of some of the garages across the street.
You can see the driveways.
You can see the cars coming in all along Academy, and you also can see it across the street.
Some have double-wide driveways.
Some are just single-wing.
And so these are some photographs as you were approaching my client's property.
My client's property is where the cursor is down where this car that I'm circling.
And I just wanted to give you a perspective on, again, here's a driveway where this homeowner will have to back out on the Academy and drive away.
And in this part of Academy, it's narrower, the parking lane, because it turns and there's a curve.
As it gets down to my client's property, the area between bike lane and the curve is a little bit wider.
So this is my client's property, again, where the cursor is with the white fence.
This is a photograph I took just showing directly across the street.
This is the posting of our notice on my client's property, and directly across the street, you can see there's a driveway with a garage in the rear.
And this is a photograph taken from the side of my client's property where the black metal fence is to the residence on the other side, and we've estimated that to be about 100 to 125 feet away from the side yard.
Again, just some more perspective photographs for the board to consider.
And this is the plan for the property.
So on the left-hand side, and I'll try to blow that up.
so this is academy road uh this is the proposed concrete driveway in fact the concrete is is
actually going to go over all to the side of where the end of the garage is uh right now we have
nine feet from where the apron is. And then from the property line to the garage, there's another
20 feet. So there's 29 feet from the edge of the apron all the way to the front of the garage. So
the reason I point that out to the board is when I show you the dimensional requirements in the
RSD3 zoning district, you're supposed to have a front yard of 25 feet. And if you count from where
the apron is to the driveway it would be 29 feet now just in all candor to the to the board
we had a discussion with the community group about whether this distance from the property
line to the garage should be 25 feet and since we don't have their letter i don't really know
should be 25 feet. And since we don't have their letter, I don't really know how they weighed in
how they weighed in on
on that. But I just want to let the board know there was a discussion there. And there was a
suggestion that my client might want to move the garage back five feet. If the letter comes in,
Mr. Chairman, and if the board looks kindly upon this application, if the community group suggests
that we move the garage back five feet, we'll do it. We want to make sure that we're in good
stead with the neighborhood group. They were very kind to us, you know, very cordial. And my clients
lived in the neighborhood, his family's in the neighborhood, his son-in-law's in the neighborhood,
he doesn't want anybody to think that he's trying to, you know, pull a curveball here
with anybody, at least of which are his neighbors and or the community group. So I guess we'll have,
we may have to see what that letter says, Mr. Chairman. The other thing that's important here is
because the concrete is going to be all the way over to the side of the garage,
we're going to have about 40 feet here.
And that's going to allow my client,
the garage bays are right over here, right where the parking spaces are.
But this is going to allow my client to pull in with the front of a vehicle.
And then when he wants to exit,
he's going to be able to do a K turn and come out front first.
Again, I'm not saying the other neighbors, you know,
aren't safe and careful when they back out,
but we're not going to have that situation. The other question that might be, the board might be
asking is why now? Why are you, you've been there, now he's been over there 40 years, why are you
proposing the garage now? And the reason being is my client's gotten rid of the pool when it was
out there, it's already taken down, and the shed that he had here, he's actually moved over here.
So, and it's time basically that, you know, he wants to be able to come in and not be fighting
the weather, having the car covered so he doesn't have to worry about shoveling snow.
He's getting a little bit older and things like that.
So that's really the impetus for this request.
And I just wanted to show you, here's the front elevation of the car, of the garage,
two bays on the left with the door access to the right.
And as I said, there's going to be concrete along the entire front of the garage area.
And then here is the RSAD zoning requirement, which I'll blow up.
So we're in this column. So our SD3 is a single family detached minimum lot width. We have that minimum lot area with 8,500. We have the occupied area. And here's what I was talking about, Mr. Chairman and members of the board was the minimum front setback of 25 feet. We have that to the curb 29. If the community group wants us to move it back five feet, we'll certainly do that.
And then here is the minimum side yard requirements. If you have a corner lot, you're only required to have a side yard dimension of seven feet. And our plans indicate that our side yard is three feet, if I could show it to the board.
Let me bring your client on.
Here it is. It's three feet right here, Mr. Chairman.
Okay. Yep.
So, basically, I'll rest my case.