to have you gather updated information as you did up the street in 2021. So I have no further
questions for this witness. Okay, thank you. Mr. Whelan?
No further questions. I think Mr. DiMartino opined expertly.
are there any other witnesses uh not on my end madam i understand that there are a number of
people who wish to speak and support um from the community but uh they will be doing so on their
own or on behalf of their organizations so at this time i would close for uh paul to or mr bonnie
So at this time, I would close for Paul, or Mr. Bonnie, rather, to proceed with his case so we can get this done.
rather.
Okay, Mr. Bonnie.
I have a relatively brief opening statement, as Mr. Whalen did, and I'm not saying that my statements are evidence,
but I want to give the board an understanding of what our case is and a little bit of a roadmap as
to the evidence that we're going to present. And without further ado, generally speaking,
we believe that this is a massive overdevelopment of the site given the environmental constraints.
Those constraints are, of course, the steep slopes. And we will get into that. And when I say steep slopes, I'm talking about 25% grade or greater.
And also, we believe it's a massive development of overdevelopment of the site, given the surrounding areas on this hill, the small houses, both rental and home ownership on this hill.
And we will give some history with this area, this precise area, because, of course, this was a complex, if you will, a public housing complex known as Schuylkill Falls, owned and operated by the Philadelphia Housing Authority since the 1950s,
with two very large high-rises and then a lot of low-rise residential development
as part of the public housing development.
That was demolished in the 1990s and redeveloped in phases.
So we think that's critically important to understanding the context in which this parcel sits.
um to to touch before i expand on that a little bit as far as our legal argument is we're going
to we we believe the facts that we'll be presenting will demonstrate that there is no hardship
because the site can be developed in a reasonable way without impacting any of the steep slopes
and so that therefore um there is no hardship we have a secondary argument sort of an argument in
the alternative. And that is that if the board does find that there is a hardship, that there
is a much lesser variance that could and should be granted to cure that hardship. And as you saw
on one of Mr. Whalen's exhibits, and as we will go into, you know, there's largely two bands of
steep slopes on this property. They run horizontally. The upper band is much larger
and wider than the lower band. And as I said, our first argument is that
a reasonable development can be made on this site without impacting either band.
But if this board does find that there is a hardship, we believe that certainly only the lower band need, the much smaller lower band need be impacted to reasonably develop the site and that that lesser variance would be the variance that this board should grant if it does find there's a hardship.
Of course, this stands in contrast to what the developer is seeking, which is 100% alteration of all of the steep slopes on the property.
Moving on, we are going to present testimony about the Schuylkill Falls public housing development.
And we're going to explain, as we touched on obliquely during the first hearing, that the site was to be redeveloped with PHA and real estate partners in three phases and that the very low density development was done in the first two phases.
And this is the now sort of the third phase referred to as phase three, and that PHA, in fact, proposed to the community and to the tenants and residents of Schuylkill Falls, a 30 unit, 30, 30 units of an apartment house of 30 units for this property.
30 30 units an apartment house of 30 units for this property and we think that's very relevant
in terms of explaining to the board that a much smaller project is is reasonable for this
for this site um uh you know we will have testimony from uh neighbors and people who
lived through that process about the redevelopment of this site. And we're going to be providing
other evidence about how the site can be reasonably developed. But at the end, at the end of the day,
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mr. Bonney. When you've referenced other evidence, have you produced
any exhibits to the board? No. Okay. And it's not our obligation to do that. We're members of the
public and um we have no such obligation it's we've confirmed with the board solicitor in other
in other cases i make no statement as to whether you're obligated to or not i was simply going to
ask that you email me copies of whatever you were going to present um madam chair again just to
move this along i certainly understand mr bonnie can present what he wants to present as long as
as long as you allow it. But I would suggest that anything with regard to or any kind of
agreement, written or otherwise, there is no mean PHA and the neighbors in history would be a third
party agreement that is irrelevant to the present application in front of this board.
The present application is based on the underlying zoning. It is revised as we've set forth and any kind of agreement or lack thereof between PHA and the individual neighbors or community groups would be a third party agreement that could only be enforceable by the court and would not have any bearing on this matter. Thank you.
I'm not making, let me stop sharing. I'm not making that argument, Mr. Whalen. I'm not making that argument. And I'll be clear because there is a couple of documents in which PHA had proposed a much smaller building.
And one of them is this settlement agreement that we referred to last time and that we will be showing today.
And yes, it's an agreement between community stakeholders, including my client and others, and PHA.
But we are not introducing it here today by any stretch of the means for saying that it's an enforceable document and that we're asking this board to enforce that document.
We are not. Even if we ask the board doesn't have the authority to enforce contracts, and we know
that, you know, people disagree as to whether it's enforceable or not, we don't want to get into any
of that. All we're doing is we're showing that PHA did propose a much smaller project. And we are
using that for the sole purpose of saying it is reasonable to put a much smaller project
on this property. We would assume that without any pronouncements from PHA,
if we said something smaller could go here, that the applicant would say, well, it's not reasonable
to have something that small. And we think this evidence says the opposite, that it is reasonable
to have something that's possible.
It's not our entire case.
It's part of the story that we're telling
and we don't even need to,
we're not trying to enforce that document.
So we don't need to get-
Mr. Bonnie, I'm sorry.
I don't need to interrupt you,
but I think we understand that you are submitting this
in order to go to the least minimum requirement.
We have such limited time now, if we could move on.
I'd like to call my first witness.
Okay, was all of that your opening argument?
Okay, first witness.
How many witnesses do you have?
Okay, and they're going to be brief.
Well, we...
You know, let's not get into this back and forth.
Call your first witness.
My first witness is Ms. Emily Nichols.
Ms. Nichols, you can unmute yourself and please wait for Madam Chair.
Ms. Nichols, put your name and address on the record and spell your last name.
My name is Emily Nichols, N-I-C-H-O-L-S.
My name is Emily Nichols, N-I-C-H-O-L-S. Address, 3655 Stanton Street, Philadelphia, 19129.
Thank you.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Thank you, Ms. Nichols. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions a little bit later, but
But, you know, I understand you have sort of some opening statement to make.
And why don't you just take it from here and I'll jump in when I need to.
What is the opening statement?
Is it a letter that's going to be read?
No, she has some remarks.
Ms. Nichols is the president of the RCO, the East Falls Community Council, and she's going to introduce her organization's position and reasons.
and you know to tell you why we're opposing that's great um thank you very much to the committee um
and and of course i'll try and keep this brief um i'm a 13-year resident of east falls i've been a
member of the community council for the past 10 years i was on zoning for seven years our zoning
committee and a member of the executive committee since 2015 since october of 2020 i've served as
elected president of the East Falls Community Council. Both as a homeowner and the president
of Community Council, I am in support of any and all developments that enhance our neighborhood
and benefit our residents, including the various projects we've supported in the past. Unfortunately,
the proposed development before you today is not that sort of a project. We don't take lightly
opposing uh a development in our neighborhood um and i i just wanted to make sure that that was clear
please tell us a little bit about the community council's engagement with the neighborhood
on this one um since the beginning of this year the community councils hosted multiple
public meetings they were all virtual uh on zoom meetings of course because of
the pandemic um public meetings with the developer as well as arranging some conversations
with some of the near neighbors and conducting tours of the community.
We've sought to provide a TAPCO with an understanding of the sort of developments
that would enhance the neighborhood in the hopes that they might revise their plans
to be less disruptive and detrimental to our community.
We've been frustrated by their unwillingness to engage in meaningful discussion
and particularly disappointed by their lack of concern for the negative impact
this development will have on residents, owners, and renters closest to the property.
At every step, we've hoped for substantive changes to the project design, size, density,
traffic, parking, environmental impact, changes that would allow us to come before the ZBA
today in support, but that hasn't happened.
At every opportunity, ATAPCO has responded to our concerns with implicit and explicit
threats that if we oppose the development in its current iteration, they would build
bigger and denser and fully exploit the boundaries of zoning.
regardless of how it impacts the community and the neighbors.
I'd like to share my screen so that we could show a couple exhibits, some exhibits. And the first
is, so let me just move this around a little bit. For, since Ms. Nichols is East Falls Community
Council, her exhibits are EFCC, not numbered as EFCC 1, 2, and 3, I believe, maybe 4 also.
So the first is a number of aerial photographs, and I'm sure you can see my cursor. This area
here is the subject property. This is Ridge running left and right, and this is Merrick
going up the hill. And this area here is the subject property. Ms. Nichols,
can you describe what's happening here in the top right-hand corner here where my cursor is?
That area is Falls Ridge. Okay. And those are small houses?
Or clusters of houses?
What's down here?
That's a senior building apartments with commercial, ground floor commercial.
Is it 50 units of senior housing on top of commercial?
And what is, and what, is that what is referred to and what we will be referring to, well,
referred to by PHA as phase one of the redevelopment?
That's correct.
How about over here on the left-hand side? What's going on here?
That's Hilltop, or the hilltop at Falls Ridge.
Okay. And that's the phase two of the redevelopment?
Okay, and that's the phase two of the redevelopment?
Okay. Now, going back to Merrick Road, which is right here, these houses right here, again, these are small houses.
I want to, let's just go a little, this is a different view, is that correct?
little close up this is closer up so that the board uh and and everyone can see um these
houses on this side and then this is hilltop now i'm gonna uh go sort of more from a over
up from uphill near the near the ridge if you will uh looking down towards the river and you
we can you know see a little bit of the sloping that we're talking about uh falls ridge is on the
left those houses those houses with the peaked roof the 50 unit senior housing is along ridge
to the bottom left and then hilltop uh is is here to the right um but these houses here on merrick
road um and these these houses right here uh is this an accurate this is from merrick this is what
they look like right on eric road yes those are the houses two stories two stories and an attic
right yes okay and this is what would be right opposite um the 90 foot high building uh in fact
it would be right there would be those folks would come out their door looking at this
garage and then you know this 90-foot building that's being proposed is that correct that is
correct okay um did efcc generally support that phase one and phase two and that senior housing
that we all talked about yes we did okay in fact you were um efcc was intimately involved
as were other community stakeholders with the redevelopment of the Schuylkill Falls
public housing complex and these new phases. Is that correct?
Mr. Barney, I'm sorry to interrupt again, but we are so short on time. We understand that your
witness has been supportive of development in the past, but if we could focus on this project and
what her objections are please well we we are i'm around i'm trying to round third to head to home
for this this witness um but um you know we have documents to introduce about the redevelopment and
it's it's important so we're we're still we're still making that part of the case and i i hear
you i want to expedite as quickly as we can um mr bonnie i would simply uh obviously object
now to any uh presentation of evidence i literally four minutes ago asked you if you
were presenting any documents you said no i asked you for copies of them uh you said there'd be none
presented um i didn't say that i i will request them again from you to be emailed to me so i can
see them while you're presenting them um but you know go ahead obviously um madam vice chair i'm
happy to uh stipulate to what we can stipulate that you know the the projects that are existing
that have been testified to by Ms. Nichols are existing uh they were built in coordination with
or connection with uh PHA and that our project is not being done so um and is different than
those individual houses. I have a suggestion at 639, it's not likely that this can finish today
and I'm wondering if we need a resumption hearing. Madam Chair, with all due respect,
and I know Mr. Bonney objects to this, there is a clear pattern of delay here. This matter has
already been continued in April. It was continued again in June. There's always another meeting,
another continuance request, and we had extensive delay in the first hearing, and now we're getting
the same thing. This is already a resumption hearing that's now almost six months after we
were supposed to be heard for the first time. Excuse me, Mr. Whelan, I don't think it's fair
to suggest that Mr. Bonney is doing this only to delay.
He believes this is a complicated case.
He believes that this evidence is necessary.
So I think the objective here is to get what he needs to submit in as quickly as possible.
And Ms. Saleta, it has to be a little more organized.
I understand.
I understand we're running short on time. I would like to try and finish this witness today. It would not take probably five minutes. I'll try my best to get through in five minutes. But at least let's get through this witness. This is an important part of our case.
That's great. That's great. Then why don't you just follow through with that?
Okay, thank you. Ms. Nichols, PHA applied in 1997 for federal funding to redevelop the entire site, and your organization supported that funding request. Is that correct?