Hi. Is Mr. Clinton online?
Yes. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Mr. Clinton. Could you state your name and spell it, please, for the court reporter?
You are Henry Clinton, Clinton, C-L-I-N-T-O-N, and I represent George Moore and Luis Cruz, who are adjacent near neighbors.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Our vice chair has a few questions for you, Mr. Orphanides.
Good morning, Counselor.
Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that are needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
Basically, we're using the same exhibit book we were going to use back in February.
the only difference in exhibits was the posting photographs, which I did forward five days in
advance. We did not have a tax clearance. Then we were just today able to secure a document that
looks like the clearance passed, but we can't print the certificate. So I have that to produce
today as well. That was not provided five days in advance. Okay. Can you please send a copy of that
over to our council? Yes. So we can vote on this if we are today. Yep. All right. Thank you. Please
proceed okay so we also have a letter of opposition from the society hill civic association
And, Council, we also have a letter of opposition from the Society Hill Civic Association and a letter of opposition from Council Member Squilla.
Mr. Chair, excuse me, this is Hillary.
I just want to note in the prior exhibit package, there was proof submitted that taxes had been paid through 2023, so we are fine in terms of tax compliance.
Thank you.
Thank you, Hillary.
I appreciate that.
All right.
May I share my screen?
Yes, please.
Thank you.
Is this?
Again, my name is David Orfanides.
I'm an attorney with Orfanides & Toner here in Philadelphia.
My client is Phyllis Ellen Jacob.
She was by Ellen Jacob.
Ellen, I believe, is on this morning.
She's actually out of the country,
but she had notified me that she had zoomed in.
I also have with me Ryan Lucino, who's the architect for the project,
and Sean Graff, who's the contractor.
What I have up on the screen right now is a photograph that I took
of the front of the subject property.
It's located on the 300 block of Delancey Street,
right near the corner of the southeast corner of South 4th Street and Delancey.
And here you can see a picture of the property that's next to us
on the corner again. The second building in here that I'm circling to the right
from the corner, the first one is the abutting property to us that fronts on both
Galancy and South 4th Street. The next one to the right or to the south is a property that my client
also owns. She bought it at the same time she bought the subject premises and her daughter
resides in this property. There's actually a kind of a common area or shared courtyard or an open
courtyard between the two buildings. The next photograph that, and these are at tab 11 of my
exhibit book, and this is the top of page, I don't have page numbers, but I think it's the third one
of these exhibits, are two other properties that are the last two properties that abut my client's
property as it extends southward from Delancey Street, from the south side of Delancey.
The building that's located comes across the back of,
or portion of the back of the first building
to the south of my client's building on South 4th Street
where a daughter lives.
And then the other property to the right
that I'm now indicating with the kind of the maroon
or red bay is towards the rear of the property
give you a shot of the back. I think this is important. This application is for an addition
to the rear of that fourth floor. And unfortunately, that isn't in my aerials.
But I'm going to show you, this is what presently exists at the back of the fourth floor. So you can
see here in this picture, this is at tab five of my exhibit book. This is the fourth floor,
a fourth story, about 356 square feet. Mechanicals are on the roof. I've been moved up to the roof,
the condensers. There's a deck to the front, conforming deck of the fourth floor at Delancey
Street. And then the addition to what was originally up there, so on steel girders,
there's a door that right now you would go out, go down some steps to get to a door that would
access the mechanicals, the other mechanicals that there are in the building. There's a low
parapet around the rear here of this third floor roof. It's not designed as a deck. So this is
what exists there right now. So the plan, the original design, original proposal was to fill
in. This application was put in during the pandemic. So when everybody was home,
needing more space because they were cooped up, and because of the kind of odd configuration
of this fourth floor and the issues with maintenance, people having to go out to go in,
or Ellen to have to go out to go in to go get to the mechanicals, this application was put in.
And Ellen would testify and said to me, this is her forever home.
This is the home she's going to live the rest of her life in.
And so the idea was to kind of, it looks like this fourth floor was never really fully finished to the rear when it was done.
It kind of looks half baked and it was to clean it up and to enclose it.
So you can see here, these were the original zoning drawings that called, let me enlarge them.
It showed the existing fourth floor, the front deck, and then filling in that area to the rear, filling it in completely all the way up to the back of the parapet.
We were able to get, here are the windows of the first house to the south of the corner, and then as you go, proceed further south.
You can see there's an open courtyard and windows right here.
We were able to get into the neighbor's window. He allowed us to come in. I will tell you, Mr. Chairman, and I was joking with counsel for the neighbors a couple minutes ago, per square foot, when you see what's left of this proposal, this may be the most expensive case per square foot that I've ever done.
we've had two community group meetings there's been countless uh reiterations drawings redrafting
redesigning discussions with attorneys mr bonnie um so you'll see what we have left but this is the
existing what you see out of the window of the of the neighbor's property the existing uh the back
of the existing fourth floor here and here you can see the deck that's on top of the bay this is the
third floor deck at the back of my client's property. So to fill it in, originally, what you
had was, this is what we were talking about it looking like, and here, let me just go to here,
this is what it was going to look like originally, taking it all the way to the back, squaring it off,
cleaning up the back, getting some light in there, and that was the original proposal.
Being in the neighbors, one of Mr. Clinton's clients' window, we kind of put up, I think, Mr. Graff, the contractor, put up some kind of mocked up what that would look like back there.
And, you know, it came out looking like you would see it out the window.
Through the course of discussions and negotiations with
Saturday Hill Civic Association, what we have ultimately came to was, let me just do it,
and again, I understand their position presently as one of opposition, but this is while we were
working towards trying to come to an arrangement and negotiation settlement, is to simply, and this
what we're presenting today so we started out with an addition here that was 185 square feet
on top of the 356 that's there what we're what we're coming to the board today and what are in
the revised drawings that we provided is just to fill in that notch that that in this unsightly
is just to fill in that notch, this unsightly notch that you see here.
notch that you see
And that is an area of only 36 square feet. So what we are asking for a variance today,
there would be no other change to the parapet back here. The doors that you see in the back
of the existing fourth floor right now would no longer exist. There would just be windows,
so there no longer be ease of access to the back.
The mechanicals would all be that are presently accessed
by going down the stairs and then back up.
Again, as you can see here, going down the stairs
and then out to one door and in the other door,
that would all be accessed from the interior.
So that area, and you can see in the revised drawings
that we have at tab three, right here,
filling in that notch is 10 feet by 10 feet and a half inch by three feet, seven and a quarter
inches. It's roughly 36 square feet. And that's what we're looking for a variance today to,
I don't know why it was originally designed that way. My client did not put in that original
variance, that variance for the addition to the, what was up there before and did not leave it in
this condition. It's a hardship for her and for her workers to have to go this way to access.
Obviously, she bought the property, but not living in a house, it's hard to know how it's
actually going to impact you once you're in there. Again, you can see the property to the east of us
here. And here we are at tab five again with what's going on, everything that's going on on
the rooftop over there. We did do shadow studies. Well, actually, let me go back one second.
Here, I want to show you. So again, photographs, I showed you what it looks like presently existing
and what the original proposal looked like from the neighbor's window. And what you end up seeing
getting is a little more in this area right here. You can see a little more as that stretches across
stretches across and fills in that gap. Nothing meaningful. I actually had to look pretty hard
to notice that. I was like, well, is it different? If you really toggle back and forth between the
two, you can see that's the little bit more that would be visible from the immediate neighbor's
window. In terms of we did a shadow study of what's existing and what with this 36 square
foot fill-in, what it would be like at tab seven. And as you can imagine, this corner that we're
filling in is located, first of all, we're on to the north, relatively to the north of everybody.
We're also then to the northeast of the properties on South 4th Street, and we're filling in a notch
that's on the opposite side of their properties. And you can see, if you look at this closely,
that there's no difference in terms of shadowing
on any of the neighboring properties
with what we're proposing to do here.
So I have floor plans at tab eight that show,
and I'm sorry about this,
it keeps flipping out of those different zooms.
Here you have the existing fourth floor.
Here's the mechanical area that gets accessed.
um here's the access out to the front deck here's the stairway to the left of what says existing
loft uh it's not it's not particularly it's not very tall even though uh it exceeds the height
limit for the uh for the zoning district it is not um it does not exceed the height that's allowed
for for roof decks or pilothouse access structures. It's not a very tall, it's
only eight feet three inches above the floor at that fourth floor level, and you
can see that here in the revised zoning drawings.
Again, this is this section that shows what we're filling in, the area to the
rear being left the way it is with no roof deck, and then the deck to the front.
So, and here's the dimension of eight foot three. So, it's not like this enlarged pilot house is even higher than what would otherwise be permitted, but it does exceed the 125 square feet originally, I mean, as it is today for a pilot house.
So, as such, it counts in the height, overall height of the structure.
But back to the floor plans, again, you can see, and I do have interior photos at tab 12, the whole house, including the front floor.
But you can see that door where you have to go out and then go in.
You know, in addition to the unsightly aspect of it back there and the hardship and having the.
In addition to the unsightly aspect of it back there and the hardship and having to go out and come back in to get to the mechanicals, it does leak as well.
And that's been unable to be cured by the contractor.
So kind of tearing this all up and fixing it is also something that they're hoping to stop that leaking right now.
And then here was the original proposal. Again, to fill in all that area, create more useful space and close some mechanicals, make it all interior access. And then here's what we're looking at today. Again, 36 square feet. It's a very de minimis variance request now at this point.
I don't know, again, why this wasn't done when this was originally approved. It makes no sense why it was left this way. I've seen no record as to the reasoning behind it. And again, it does cause a hardship and doesn't impact the air and light to the neighboring properties.
is an RSA you can see here at the zoning maps at tab 9 it's an RSA 5 property we're all familiar
with what the dimensional requirements are for those properties the deed for my client is at
tab 17 showing that she owns this property and property next door copy of the hearing notice
for today's hearing is at tab 18 the additional the photos for the posting of that notice that
I forwarded last week were tab 19. And again, Hillary mentioned the prior tax clearance from
the hearing in February, and then the additional documentation that we have showing zero real
estate tax balance, and then the confirmation of the passing of the tax clearance, but we couldn't
print a certificate. And for now, I would rest. I can have my client and the architect and the
contract or adopt my statements, and I just reserve the right to rebut anything that's raised
by Mr. Bonney and Mr. Clinton, and they'll call any of my client's witnesses to address any of
the points that they raised. And counsel, what's there now almost has like an unfinished look at
the bottom there? Did I see that? This is what it looks like right now. Again, it makes no sense
to any of us. It's a head scratcher. I mean, when I went up there, the contractor, I mean,
it looks, this is the way it was when she bought it, you know, as far as the notch and the doors
and everything else. And again, this is, you know, this is what it's going to look like when it's
done. Why don't we adopt your testimony? Sure. Ellen, could you raise your hand, please?
She's still on? She has been allowed to speak. Please wait for the chair. Good morning. Could
you state your name, please, and spell for the court stenographer? Yes. My name is Phyllis Ellen
Jacob, P-H-Y-L-L-I-S-E-L-L-E-N-J-A-C-O-B. And I go by Ellen. All right. Do you swear or affirm to tell
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes, I do. Proceed, counsel. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman. Ellen, you're out of the country right now? Yes. Okay. And did you hear the
statements that I made to the board? Yes, I did. Are they true and correct to the best of your
knowledge? Yes. And would you adopt them as your own? Yes. And let me ask you a couple quick
questions. I mean, just one thing. What's shown right now I have up on the screen shows a rendering
of what we're left with at this point, filling in the notch with only the 36 square feet.
as I indicated, there's no, it's just windows in that back wall, no door. You have no intention
to utilize that area to the rear of the fourth floor as a deck, correct?
That's correct.
And that'd be as long as you reside there, correct?
Yes. And as you said this, I'm 65. I intend to stay here for the rest,
there for the rest of my life.
Your long life. Okay.
I hope.
All right. Thank you, Alan. Was there anything else you wanted to
add to anything that i stated no okay fine all right and then um brian lucino thank you alan
you can stay on brian yes proceed okay go ahead paul okay thank you
good morning ms jacob how are you fine thank you uh how long have you lived in this property
I purchased the houses. They were there on one deed on October 31st, 2017.