Just a few pictures of context around the site.
I'll kind of bounce back to some of these later, but we've got a significant amount of multifamily around us.
You can see, you know, quite a few of these structures have two mailboxes or three mailboxes, as well as the structure immediately across the street, which includes 12 units as a sort of a men's home.
We posted the site. These pictures are from March 17th.
We posted all three of the posters as requested by the RCA, including the zoning posters as well as the flyer for the meeting.
Here's a copy of the deed.
Here is a revised zoning plan submitted to the hearing.
The application consists of subdividing the lot into two equal sized lots.
equal-sized lots. So to the screen left, we have Price Street. Screen right, we have Stafford
So to the left screen left, we have.
Street. There's a new lot line running directly down the middle, dividing it into two 30-foot
wide lots. This gray area on the plan denotes the occupied area of the zoning plan. Each of these
buildings is a semi-detached four-family house. And to the rear, each of these lots has four
parking spaces. And there's a shared access easement between the two of them to allow
all of the parking spaces to be accessed. A modification we made after meeting with the
RCO includes a one-story porch on the front and a segment of the building set back to match
the frontage of the adjacent building, as well as, you know, they have a porch in front of theirs.
There's a vacant lot is on the other side, so there wasn't anything to match there.
As you can see in this zoning section on Price Street here, our first story is just a few steps
above grade. But as the site drops down Stafford Street, we were able to take advantage of that
change in elevation to have a parking level with some slight retaining walls that allow for a
direct walkout from what is a cellar so that each of our proposed units can occupy one entire story
and the the basement unit is able to have a full access door and full windows at grade at the rear
as well as windows you know full windows above grade before the elevation rises too much
along the side. Now, our refusal, as previously stated, we are in a single family district and
we're proposing four family structures in each of these two lots. And then the parking that we've
proposed sits within the required side yard. So we have a, you know, it would be required to set
those parking spots back eight feet from the sidelines which would make them impractical.
We also have an amended refusal the initial there's no change to the actual refusals but
the description of the original one said that there were only two parking spaces per lot where
there's actually four and here's the original with that slight error. These are our proposed
building plans. I don't mean to interrupt. There's going to be four units on each lot? Correct.
So from floors one through three have an identical plan. We've got this shared porch at the first
story. Each of these units, and this holds true for all four of them, are two bedroom and two
bathroom units. They're a little bit over 1,000 square feet each, and each of them contains a
private deck to the rear um it's it's eight feet by 11 foot seven which gives it a fairly
you know decent private exterior area um there's a slight difference in our basement unit which
is our type b accessible unit it has an entry directly off the parking area which allows for
accessibility without any ramping. The bathrooms end up being slightly different, and the front
bedroom functions with a window well. This is our current rendering of the proposed concept.
We had a bit of revisions to this concept working with the community group. Initially,
we had had a full balcony across the entire back and we were our building was set fully up
to our front setback line without a porch and our stair had shifted back a little bit to allow for
entry from the side closer to the parking the RCO felt strongly that there should be a porch
on the front that this segment should be set back and that the stair the front entry should be the
main entry to the stair and we've we've fulfilled all of those requests to their desire they also
requested that the building take on a more traditional character and bring incorporate
some of the red brick from the neighborhood we've done that as well in our concept renderings
here's a rendering of the side of the building we've provided for trash
here's a rendering of the side of the building we've provided for trash storage and these fenced
storage in these fenced off areas along the side walkway along the front price street
start.
frontage where trash collection will be you can see the single story porch now on the front of
the building and the setback as well as the private balconies to the rear here's a rear elevation
this would essentially be standing in the parking lot looking at the building
uh we had a we've got a summary of the meeting with uh the faith um development community
sorry the faith community development corporation here this is a letter of support
They've included some proviso language, part of which in this, we had a little bit of a difficult time meeting with the group.
We weren't able to get an original meeting scheduled until March.
There were no attendees at the meeting, so we rescheduled for a meeting April 25th, which was just last week.
Again, there were no attendees.
One neighbor did join the meeting.
The other two non-applicant members of the meeting were both representatives of the RCO committee, and I do not believe either of them were actually living within the affected neighbor area.
um one proviso they included was a brick firewall between the two buildings we object to this
proviso as we we do not feel um that the the reverend chester who made that recommendation
um has the necessary expertise for a building code situation like this we believe
The building code provides for adequate protection between the buildings, and it was not something that was agreed by our party during that meeting.
We've got copies of the zoning notices.
The second zoning notice that RCO requested, we provide it according to their proposed method of flyering, which includes these several pages as well as this document.
this is our hand flyering inventory which marks all the addresses which we're able to deliver
the flyers to as well as those which are vacant or otherwise not possible because they're you
know combined lots with a single building or parking lots or other things like that we've
got three pages of these as well as our original RCO meeting notice that went out according to the
zoning board standards. I've got the bulk certified USPS form here.
I did want to jump back to the original aerial image here just to point out some of the other
variances that have been granted in the community. The most on point is 222 East Price Street,
which received a variance for four units in a very similar block to the one or the very similar building, the one we're creating existing, but, you know, same block, same depth.
And that was in 2020. We've got the variance for the 12 units across the street.
We've got some commercial variance. We've got, I think, over here on Utah, we've got nine units.
and over here on written house we've got some six unit variances so we're essentially we're asking
something um in line with what's already been granted in this neighborhood this is a blighted
neighborhood um and we do not believe that the current lot uh supports a large footprint
single family housing we're also there's a financial justification due to the fact that
the existing building had to be demolished at the owner's expense we've got an application for appeal
we've got our product information form included in the packet and then we've also we were unable
able to obtain a tax certification due to some unrelated issues with businesses that are no
longer existing, which have overdue tax filings for years in which they weren't in existence.
you know, overdue tax filings for years in which they weren't in existence,
but we are able to show that the property, the real estate tax has a balance of zero.
But we are able to.
At this time, I'd like to ask Mr. Causey to join the meeting.
So first, let me ask you a question. What's the property next door? How many units are the
property next door? The property next door is a duplex. That's a duplex? Yes. Okay. The property
on the other side is a vacant lot owned by the city. Okay. Thank you. Bring your client on,
please. And one other question. How did you get to eight units? I mean, how did you get to eight?
Explain that to me. Sure. So initially we looked at a by-right subdivision
to see what we could do with single family on the site.
And we were thinking if we could divide it down the middle
and then again, you know, that we had two lots facing Price Street,
two lots facing Stafford Street.
If we could do four units by right, you know, single family homes,
maybe that would work.
But the lot's not big enough to subdivide by right into four.
The most we could subdivide by right was into two.
And once we got looking at multifamily, considering, you know, the demolition, the change from front to back, the desire to put parking for the community, the amount of retaining, you know, the new sort of excavation requirements, it pretty quickly, you know, realized that if we could do one unit per floor, we could, you know, this building would be feasible.
Bring your client on, please.
Mr. Elsie, what is your client's name?
Mitchell Causey.
Mr. Causey, if you're in the virtual audience, please raise your hand.
Mr. Causey, please unmute yourself and wait for the chair.
Good morning, sir. Could you state your name and spell it, please, for the court reporter?
Good morning, sir. Mitchell Causey, M-I-T-C-H-E-L-S.
l-c-a-u-s-e-y proceed council good morning mr cossey were you willing to uh hear and observe
my presentation yes i was are you willing to verify the veracity of my statements and adopt
my testimony yes thank you questions from the board yes mr chairman yes mr chairman
Councilor, you have a refusal for parking in side yard.
Could you park in the rear yard and less cars?
So that is not a question we directly addressed.
Now, there are some new landscaping requirements that have come into effect more recently.
We have a 20 foot rear yard setback and I, you know, we did look at other ways to arrange parking. This gave us a one to one parking. If we remove this eight foot stretch from the parking lot.
um there's a potential that we could fit two or three parking spots um directly behind the
building although I don't know how easy it would be to maneuver in and out of them
as a direct pull-in um you know this was one thing that the RCO did not seem concerned about
i believe they were happy to have the parking and i this will it's essentially a retaining wall
along this side separating it from the adjacent building um and there will be
a slight retaining wall on the other side so we did we entertained a few parking scenarios
this was the one that gave us one-to-one parking and it's a working thing or maybe not for general
with what I believe to be the least amount of disturbance or the least amount of variance.
But with two cars, you could fit that in the rear, though?
Potentially.
Now, we would still have some issues.
So they'll want it would be an eight, you know, be an 18 foot parking spot.
you know it would be an 18 foot parking spot and then we would need to have a I believe that's now
And then we would need to have a.
at a 16 foot aisle so I do think that that aisle would go into the landscaped area I'm not sure
that we could even with two spots that we could get by without a refusal thank you any other
questions from the board no questions or comments from the virtual audience chair i don't know if
uh mr lc's client mr causey was sworn in oh i'm sorry my my mistake do you swear or firm to tell
the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth mr causey yes sir okay proceed counsel any more
questions, please? All right, questions are coming from the virtual audience. Chair, we have Charles
Richardson with his hand up. Mr. Richardson, please unmute yourself and wait for the chair.
Good morning, Mr. Richardson. Could you please just state your name and spell for the court
reporter? Certainly. Charles Richardson, Office of Councilwoman Cindy Bass. Richardson is spelled
R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S-O-N, room 508 City Hall.
You swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Proceed.
The councilwoman is not opposed to granting the variance based on the meeting summary as provided by FAIF CDC.
We do note that there were no near neighbors that were present, except for the one person living on the block in that second meeting.
but uh the councilwoman is not standing in in any opposition at this point thank you thank you for
your call um anyone else in the virtual audience
chair i see no other hands at this time planning commission thank you chair bergman david fecto
with the city planning commission the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the residential
single family zoning at this location there is no unique physical condition or circumstance of
this property that would prevent it from being used in conformance with the zoning code.
The applicant has not shown that four times the allowable dwelling units on each of the
proposed lots is the minimum needed to afford relief, so the City Planning Commission recommends
that the board deny the use of variances.
MI 2022-006-868-212 East Price Street, I vote no.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is no.
James Snell, my vote is no.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is no.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Number six, MI 2022, 006903, 1619 Master Street.
Zen Jin is the attorney.
Letter of support for the United Neighbors Atlantic Alliance Civic Association.
with proviso, no roof deck.
Mr. Jin is coming back in now as a panelist here.
Good morning.
Good morning, Sheriff.
Could you please state your name
and spell for the court reporter?
Yes, my name is Zen Jin, Z-H-E-N,
last name J-I-N, 1617 John F. Kennedy Boulevard,
Suite 1838, Philadelphia PA 19103,
here on behalf of the applicant.
Right, you swear for him to tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Could you identify your client, your relationship to this property?
My client is Kristen Brown, who is the owner of the property.
She unfortunately cannot be with us here today.
She does have a project manager who is here, Mr. Tim Gu.
If the board would like him to speak, I can certainly let him.
And we'll see how the testimony goes, okay?
Our vice chair has just a few questions.
Good morning, counsel.
Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to his accuracy?
Have you emailed in all the exhibits and documents that are needed and required to proceed with
the request five days in advance of this hearing?
Thank you.
Please proceed and share your screen.
Thank you.
I'm going to share with the Board the documentation previously submitted.
We have submitted the refusal support letter from the UN ACA RCO, photos, plans, tax, and related documentation.