So, the first floor or the basement would be partially underground.
However, it's predominantly above grade, and the second floor, the first floor, is at grade level in the parking lot with the second floor office space above.
Again, similar to the building next door, given the grade, the slope of the grade, the basement levels are above grade, and then this will line up directly with our property.
The street views. This is the occupied home on the corner, followed by our our our building.
OK, and again, this is a picture of the rear of the property.
Here is the unoccupied home to to the right of our property facing from the boulevard to the left from the parking lot side.
But this is the 20-foot-wide driveway easement that goes, again, from Hellerman Street out to Busselton Avenue on the right there.
We had a meeting with Take Back Your – well, you had two meetings.
The first meeting was an on-site meeting with Community on the Rise.
That was on Tuesday, May the 2nd.
And then after that, on Wednesday, May the 3rd, we had a site meeting with the Take Back Your Neighborhood, who is the coordinating RCO.
We mailed out the notices for that meeting on April 27th.
Again, it was held by Take Back Your Neighborhood at the site.
It went to the 13 required affected property owners, and we have our certificate of mailing.
At that time, three persons showed up for that meeting.
Two were from the dental practice that I mentioned facing Busselton Avenue, and the third was the homeowner or occupant of the single-family home at the corner of Ellermann and Roosevelt Boulevard.
Two were from the dental practice that I mentioned.
Following that, a community on the rise invited the applicant to a community meeting that they were hosting.
Dr. Nguyen and her husband, Thomas, both attended that meeting.
I had a conflict in my schedule, so they attended on their own.
They made their presentation to the community, and that community group submitted a letter of support.
They had 25 people show up at that meeting, despite the fact that only three showed up at the Take Back Your Neighborhood site meeting.
so as a result of that meeting that group voted 24 to 1 in support of this application
and so that's why we are here today with their letter as far as the zoning history goes on these
two properties again i could not find any uh any permits on file however there were violations on
the property dealing with vacant structures and property maintenance items again the property
being vacant for quite a long time. Again, we submitted the petitions of support.
We have several pages of those.
And one letter of support submitted by residents surrounding the property. So
So based upon that, let me just double check the variances.
Again, we have the interior landscaping, the location of the parking and the side yard setback partially, the three use refusals, and then there's the setbacks, the front setback 10 feet required, 6.7 is proposed, the number of parking spaces, and the drive aisle, that's the one I did not address.
Let's go back to the plan because the parking is served solely for the use of the tenants
in the building.
We cannot accommodate a 24 foot wide drive aisle and therefore we're seeking a variance
from that.
The 20-foot wide driveway would serve as the ingress and egress to the site, with a driveway into the rear of the property to access the off-street parking spaces.
I have present with me today Crystal Nguyen and also our architect, Matt Milan.
I would ask that they raise their hands and be unmuted and permitted to verify and adopt and answer any questions the board may have.
Ms. Nyguyen you are free to speak. Hi could you state your name. Hi could you state your name
please and spell for the court reporter. Yes Crystal Nguyen. K-R-Y-S-T-A-L-N-G-U-Y-E-N. Do you
swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do. Mr. Ward are you
ready to go? Do you want the architect too? Well we'll go with Crystal first Mr. Chair. That's fine
Sure. Crystal, you've heard my representations to the board this morning.
Yes. And are they true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief?
Yes. And would you adopt them as your own testimony if called to testify before this
board today? Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Questions from the board? Yes, Mr. Chairman.
counselor you have uh you have nine uh zoning refusal
maybe this site is not the right site for your project because that's a lot of zoning refusals
well given given the location of the property it is owned rsa too so uh however it's on a
predominantly commercial block in a commercial zone uh on on roosevelt boulevard so three of
those variances deal with the use of the, you know, the property directly next door is an office
building with a large parking lot in the rear. And this property certainly doesn't lend itself for,
you know, continued residential use, especially being on the busy Roosevelt Boulevard and
Busselton Avenue. The others deal with the parking. We're trying to accommodate as much
parking as possible, you know, for the use of the building. And therefore, we slightly go
slightly into the side yard setbacks uh you know by a matter of feet and um you know so so that way
we can we can accommodate at least 13 off-street parking spaces again if we were to provide the
Again, if we were to provide the interior parking lot landscaping, that again would further reduce the number of parking spaces available.
interior parking
And the front yard setback is the same distance as the existing building to our left and would be de minimis, in my opinion, given the size and location of the lot.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. Ward, other than the squatter, how long has the property been vacant?
Mr. Chairman, it's hard to tell. I'm originally from Northeast Philadelphia.
I've been driving by this building for decades, and I've never seen it occupied in my lifetime.
Thank you. Any other questions from the board?
Yeah, Mr. Chairman.
Carol?
Am I muted?
No, Mr. Chairman.
he said no mr chairman questions or comments from the virtual audience
chair we have bob rudy okay
mr rudy could you state your name please and spell for the court reporter
yes it is uh can you hear me i can okay thank you uh yes my name is robert rednitsky it's r-u-d
excuse me n-i-t-s-k-y i am the zoning chair for take back your neighborhood
All right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Proceed.
Yeah, just give me one second. I was just doing a few things here.
Yeah, so as one of your board members had mentioned, this is a fairly complicated situation.
There are a lot of refusals, and we are the lead RCO.
So we hold public meetings and all are invited to attend.
And those who choose not to attend, we can't force people to attend the meetings.
But at our meetings, we did not have any attendance of the owner, which we had questions for.
And we don't know about this neighbor that Sean is saying attended the meeting.
The neighbors that we have been in contact with are very concerned with what's going on.
And even though the property's been vacant for a long period of time, it's not the property's fault.
It's the fault of the ownership.
We are concerned about what they put into the building.
There's concerns about parking.
There's concerns about the size and volume of the building.
And there's concerns about the entrance and egress of the building.
There is an easement in the back that is in question.
We're getting information about this property from Mr. Ward on the 11th hour, which is not the way that we would make a decision.
And we're still seeking more data.
So what we're asking for, plain and simple, is we're asking for a continuance.
Mr. Chairman.
Let me ask you a question.
Did your RCO originally meet at the site and tour?
Are you talking to me, sir?
Oh, yeah. We met there, and we met with the immediate neighbors, and no other RCOs attended. Nobody else. I don't know about these 24 people that were at this other meeting, but I do know that the people that were at this meeting were the immediate neighbors that are immediately concerned.
And we were not allowed to attend this other meeting, so we don't know what occurred at this other meeting.
And we also don't understand why Mr. Ward is spending the most of his time coordinating with the other RCO and getting these letters of support and not letting us know what's going on, because we're handling the case.
All right. Thank you. Thank you for your information. Mr. Ward, do you want to respond?
Yeah. First, I would object to Robert's submission today. Pursuant to the regulations of the City Planning Commission with regard to RCOs, the RCO is to provide to the Zoning Board a complete meeting summary as provided by the commission.
No such meeting summary was ever submitted, and there was no further contact with Take Back Your Neighborhood after the site meeting.
We dealt with the four of the other participating RCO because they contacted us and they scheduled a meeting and they invited us to that meeting.
I believe that we fulfilled our obligations to the coordinating RCO by notifying them of the application and appeal.
They scheduled a site meeting, a community meeting at the site for which we bailed out proper notice and only three people showed up.
I can't control the participating RCO and how they how they garnered 25 people to show up for a meeting, whereas the take back your neighborhood meeting only generated interest by three.
whereas the Take Back Your Neighborhood meeting only generated interest by three people.
Any submission or testimony by Mr. Rudnitsky regarding other people's comments is hearsay
and should be disregarded by the board. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the virtual audience has a comment?
chair we have maria last name ending in with a t okay
hi maria could you state your name and spell for the court reporter please
ma'am please unmute yourself
my name is maria m-a-r-i-a last name is theodorides t-h-e-o-d-o-r-i-d-e-s
do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
i do sir um i have a lot of concerns about what mr ward said today about the rcos and so forth
First of all, Mr. Ward is not getting our addresses correct when he's presenting.
Secondly, some of the RCO that he said, the other, the Take Back Your Neighborhood RCO meeting in the community,
we got messages like on Friday and the meeting was on Monday or Tuesday.
One of the individuals, Dr. Meshkov-Bried, couldn't attend because she had a scheduled procedure.
We met and basically he opened the back of his van.
Mr. Rudnitsky from Take Back Your Neighborhood was there.
He opened up the back of his van and he unscrawled some plans and pretty much told us this is what it is.
The owners were not there.
And I also want to note, he said that that property was vacant for decades.
That is not true.
It was an older lady that lived there for a long time.
It's been vacant for about eight years, not decades.
But the other thing that I wanted to say was the owners were not there and they were the
ones that wanted that meeting on May 3rd.
Apparently, there was a meeting on May 2nd.
I'm in that neighborhood.
I'm in that driveway.
I don't know where they met, but they didn't meet near there.
Maybe they did a tour, but there was nobody there.
The property was secure.
So there was no way there was a meeting on May 2nd at the site.
On May 2nd, those individuals that he has said were there.
one of the addresses um the 24 25 people that were there one of the addresses is a mile plus
away um and some of the other addresses i don't think are legitimate because um he's giving
addresses that are 64 60 busington avenue or something like that they don't exist but let me
start by saying that um i'm here to address the concerns of myself and my mother georgia theodoridis
same last name we are residents um and owners on the 6400 block of roosevelt boulevard
for 50 plus years we know our neighborhood we are the residents here and um we are really concerned
because some of this proposal is off first of all the zoning posters were not placed in front
of the property or the back of the property um the properties are 6410 6418 roosevelt boulevard
and i go by there um i drive by two times a week and i walk by once or twice a week around the
front and every day around the back there were no posters if there were posters they probably posted
them um in front or back if they did they if they put them up and they took a picture they took them
back down i don't know why the city allows this without inspection none of them were at eye level
um if they put them on the boarded up property on the window um that's about 25 feet away nobody
could see it from um from the sidewalk and um when people came by to ask me about the property
three neighbors were unaware and they were surprised the neighbors were on bradford
terrace albridge street and devro and they passed by on a daily basis because they compute through
there. Mr. Chair, I'm going to object. She can speak on her own behalf, but not on behalf of
others. Okay. In other words, let me say this. You're against the project. I'm against the
project. Can I actually say, I think there should be a continuance because I don't think our
neighbors know that this project is going on because there wasn't proper zoning posting.
There was no zoning post on 6418. He doesn't have any pictures. Can I ask the question? Is there
problems with the existing office building next door? There are problems with that existing
property. And what would that be? Can I give you the complete presentation that I would like to
make? It's not going to take very long, I promise. Just tell me about the place next door. How do
you see that? I mean, what's the problem there? Property, it has parking. It's an office building
That property, it has parking. It's an office building. At this time, it's 41% empty. The parking
And at this time,
lot fills up. What is happening there is there are 48 parking spots for the building, and there
are only six units there. These individuals want to put nine units in their new building,
and they don't have the parking space. And I do want to talk about the parking space,
because their parking spots are on the plan on may 3rd that i saw were small and the parking space
entrance is parallel to the building they will either need to trespass onto neighboring properties
to park or their or the easements or question to properties to get in and out um there's a lot of
issues because the easement that he is saying he can access sir you can i want to just um just want
to do my presentation a second I mean I think I think you've made a presentation I think your
main issue is you want to continue and we hear you and we're going to take everything into
consideration when we make a decision is there anyone else in the audience that has comments
about this I see no handshare planning commission good morning Mr. Chairman members of the board
David Fecto, City Planning Commission. The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the
residential single-family zoning at this location. The applicant has failed to show that a hardship
exists that would prevent this lot from being used in conformance with the zoning code.
There are plenty of other shopping centers located in the sixth council district where the applicant
could locate without triggering variances. The City Planning Commission recommends the board
deny the use of dimensional variances. MI 2022, 001-686-6410 East Roosevelt Boulevard.
I vote yes per amended refusal 712-22.
Carol Tenere, my vote is yes with provisors. Thomas Holloman, my vote is no.
ishmael shaheed my vote is yes with provisor
thank you mr ward thank you mr chairman have a great day
sure number number number 15 mi 2022 003 578 922 38 north broad street
uh michael phillips melanie lacy
uh our rco was meeting in the council district five hosted a meeting on 8 10 22
and i believe we have another letter that came in today from an rco yeah yes mr chair this is
this is Hillary, we did receive a recommendation of non-opposition from United Neighbors Alliance
Civic Association. Okay. Morning, Mr. Phillips. Could you state your name and spell, please,
for the court reporter? Good morning. Michael Phillips with Claire Harrison, M-I-C-H-A-E-L-P-H-I-L-L-I-P-S,
1835 Market Street, Suite 1400, Philadelphia, PA, 19103, here on behalf of 922 North Broad Associates.
Do you share a firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?