hardship you know that you know you don't have to do substantial reconstruction and or
revision of the property to use it as it is currently zoned and is your is your client
available this morning he is supposed to be on ask him to raise his hand we'll swear him in
mark are you on i can't i can't see from here who else is on what's his last name his coriolan
It's C-O-R-I-O-L-A-N.
It's C-O-R-I-O-L-A-N.
He's supposed to be.
The other person that's on is my paralegal.
It's Christine Schlosser.
But Mark, are you on?
He just raised his hand.
I'll promote him to our panelists right now.
Thank you.
Mr. Karolian, Mr. Karolian, you've been promoted to panelists, sir.
Good morning, sir. Please identify yourself with a record, spell your last name.
I can't see.
All right, he may be having technical difficulties. Ms. Gaston, as an officer of court, will stipulate that your client would be adopting your testimony.
Any questions from the board?
no no no anyone else like to testify in this case if so please raise your hand
i see no hands at this time mr chair you planning commission good morning david effecto f e c t e a
u with the city planning commission david you swear and affirm to tell the truth the whole truth
nothing but the truth yes sir i do thank you sir please proceed thank you mr chairman members of
the board the comprehensive plan recommends commercial mixed use for this property the
application appears to be a legalization of an existing condition we note that there are five
electric meters on the wornock street side of the property we have no objection to granting this
Mr. Chairman if you're speaking I'm sorry MI 2020-0022260 1017 West Huntington Street
my vote is yes.
my vote is yes my vote is yes my vote is yes my vote is yes thank you members of the board
that completes my business may I be excused you may and have a good day stay safe thank you you
too calendar number 1386 1325 Grant Avenue the attorney is Isaac Slepner
mr slepner has been promoted to panelists good morning uh mr chair members of the board
Isaac Slepner. Oh, and Tony Romo. Mr. Slepner, can you put your name and address on the record,
please, and spell your last name? Yes. Isaac Slepner, S-L-E-P-N-E-R. I am with Mattione Limited,
and our address is 100 North Independence Mall West, Suite 5A Northwest, Philadelphia PA 19106.
And do you swear or affirm to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Do you also agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Yes, I do.
Have you emailed the exhibit packet with the required documents, proof of ownership, tax compliance, refusal or referral, photos and or plans of the property five days in advance of this hearing?
And have you met with the RCO?
And do you have a letter?
We have sent all the materials.
We did meet with the RCO, and we do have a letter.
The letter was just sent to us yesterday at 6 p.m.
It was also cc'd to the Zoning Board's administrative email, and it was sent to Karima Quintana as well.
And then this morning, I also sent it to Sharon Saleta.
So that's a long way of saying yes.
Thank you. You may proceed.
Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board.
As I mentioned, I'm Isaac Slepner. I am counsel to M-Squared Developers. M-Squared Developers are the owners of 1325 Grant Avenue. And if I may, I'm going to pull up our materials and we can walk through those.
and my clients are also on this call and could answer any other further questions but as you'll
see it's pretty straightforward um our first item is everybody viewing uh the screen now can
everybody see the pdf okay we will proceed all right exhibit one is our tax clearance which was
Okay, we will proceed. All right. Exhibit one is our tax clearance, which was run on January 28th for M-squared developers.
Okay. Ah, I know what I need to do here. This will be better. Full screen mode.
Oh, look at that. Okay. Exhibit two is our notice of refusal.
And it's two refusals, even though they're identical, because the property is RSD-1, and the variances that we're seeking are for open-air parking spaces at a front yard and a side yard.
But I'll explain why as we go through the packet.
Exhibit 3, and I'll rotate that.
Oh, sorry.
Exhibit 3 is our site plan.
And how do I unfull screen it?
Ah, there we go.
I'm going to show you this.
So what my clients did, they purchased this house and went about rehabbing it.
And in doing so, it had originally had a garage.
It's in the far northeast, and it's set on a rather sizable parcel of land.
It's fairly well set back from Grand Avenue.
Grand Avenue is a fairly major thoroughfare up there in the far northeast,
pretty heavy and speedy traffic, and there's no street parking.
The house had originally had a garage.
Um, but as part of their rehab of the house, my clients had walled up the garage to create additional living space.
Now here you'll see at the front area here, these, this was the, um, original parking space that they had sought a variance for and then realized that they needed to go back and seek a variance for parking at the side yard as well.
Because in RSD-1, a garage is allowed by the code, and a driveway leading up to the garage is allowed by the code.
But since they sealed off the garage, that triggered a variance in that the driveway, which formerly was the driveway leading up to the garage, now became an open-air parking space at the front yard of the house, and as well as an open-air parking space at the side yard of the house.
And that is what triggered the refusals and the requests for variance.
I will move on to the next page, which is our, I believe it's our building plans.
Oh, Exhibit 4, sorry, that's upside down.
But this is the plans for the house, which were drawn up by our architect, Mark Pinard.
and it'll just show you kind of where it is that the work to the house was done.
The work to the house was done by Wright.
This is the former garage there you can see right here at the front elevation
and the parking space is directly here on the driveway in front of the garage
and then in the side yard here, which you saw on the site plan at the side of the garage.
So we'll move on to Exhibit 5.
This is our, these are floor plans for the interior of the house.
It's a pretty sizable, nice house.
But as I said, we're here about the driveway and the open-air parking spaces.
This is, again, a kind of a miniature of the site plan.
So you can kind of see, again, right here is our front parking space that we're seeking the variance for.
Over here is a side parking space.
You'll see them in photos in a second.
There's a big red space here because we submitted these materials before we got our notice, our letter from the RCO.
But we do have a letter from the RCO, which I will also share with you in just a moment.
These are photos, and I'll start with a photo of our property.
So this is a photo of our property looking up the driveway from Grant Avenue.
Starting down here, the sidewalk, behind the sidewalk is Grant Avenue.
This is the driveway of the house.
There's a vehicle parked at the side yard.
That's one of the two parking spaces that we're seeking a variance for.
And then right here at the front is the other parking space that we're seeking a variance for.
This is a view down the driveway to Grant Avenue.
This, I guess, was taken while new cars were passing by.
But if you're not familiar with Grant Avenue up in the far northeast, it's, as I said, a fairly busy road.
It's one of the more major streets up there.
And cars regularly will speed by here 30, 40, 50 miles an hour.
And there's no street parking.
Our next photos are of some of the neighbors.
A lot of the neighbors in this neighborhood do similar things to what my clients are seeking to do.
This is 1329 Grant, which is just two houses up Grant Avenue.
As you can see here, they have a driveway with a former garage that is now walled up in this additional living space at their house.
This is another view of 1329's driveway.
way this is the other side of 1329 just showing you know for for reference um this is 1331
This is 1331 Grant Avenue. Also looks like they did similar with walling up the garage, building additional living space at their house.
grand avenue also looks like they did similar with
And that's a second picture of 1331 Grant and a third picture of 1331 Grant.
Exhibit 7C, we had originally been scheduled for a hearing on this in January, but we had to continue this hearing.
So these are photos of the orange poster back when they were posted in December in advance of the January hearing.
So there's a second one that's posted right up there by the house, at the front door of the house.
And there's a wider shot view of it.
And then when our hearing was continued, we posted orange posters again.
This is a close-up of the orange poster advising of today's hearing.
I had pasted my business card to it. I put it up on a stake at the edge of the lawn right up at
sidewalk line next to the mailbox. There it is right at the sidewalk line there and there's a
little bit of a wider view of it. Exhibit 8 is our initial application and our initial application
had been for a single parking space but we came to realize that we were going to need
to apply for variances for two parking spaces and so we did but this is our initial um application
for appeal uh exhibit nine is our project information form um signed on august 24th of
2020 uh exhibit 10 10a this is our um affidavit of service of mailing notices to the neighbors
We had initially done a mailing in November, on November 10th, and that includes our letter to the neighbors of November 10th, our initial refusal, and our long list of addresses provided by planning.
10B was after we had continued, we did a mailing again to the neighbors.
We did a mailing on January 19th, again, our letter to the neighbors advising them of the variances that we were seeking and the time and place of the RCO meeting.
Sent to the neighbors, same list of neighbors, that would be Exhibit B to our Certificate of Service.
And Exhibit 11 is the deed to the property in favor of M2 Developers LLC, which was recorded on March 16th of 2020.
They are the owners of record of the property.
I have with me my client, Stephen Moffat, who is one of the partners of M2 Developers.
And I believe Billy Marnock is also here.
He is one of the other partners of M2 Developers and our architect, Mark Pinard.
um but that concludes my uh offering to the board at this point thank you if you like just one of
your one of the owners uh to adopt your testimony then we'll move on yes um uh steve steve moffitt
are you there moffitt please raise your hand if you're there
mr moffett has been allowed to speak sir okay mr moffett please identify yourself with a record
spell your last name good morning my name is steve moffett last name is m-o-f-f-i-t-t
you swear and affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth
i do thank you please proceed mr sluttner sure thing um steve you are one of the uh partners
of m squared developers correct that is correct yes and did you hear all the testimony that i
offered to the board today i did and is all of that testimony true and correct to the best of
your knowledge yes it is and would you adopt that testimony as though you gave it yourself
i would yes uh thank you i don't have anything further my notes indicate that there was a proviso
there was actually this is sharon saletta of the proviso is because there was an amended
applicant amended refusal that was issued on I believe January 26 there's been some confusion
getting permits when um there is an amended refusal so if you could just add a proviso
clarifying that the um I'm sorry
um if I could share that yes the application is approved with the new AP number
yes that's what it should hold on um is that the the the zero zero four two nine zero i i found the
language if approved with proviso as per amended application zb-2020-004290 the first part of that
again was if approved per? As per amended application ZB.
per as per amended application zb 2020 004290 okay thank you questions from the board no no no
anyone else like to testify in this case please raise your hand
mr chair i have an alice udovich with her hand raised i will allow her to speak right now
Thank you. Good morning, Alice. Please identify yourself for the record.
Good morning, Chairman, members of the board. Alice Udovich from Councilman Brian O'Neill's office.
The councilman has no objection to the granting of the variance at this location.
Thank you. Alice, would you just please spell your last name for the stenographer?
Sure. It is U-D-O-V-I-C-H.
Thank you. Anyone else would like to testify in this case? Please raise your hand.
no other hands at this time mr chair thank you planning commission good morning david
effecto city planning commission the comprehensive plan recommends single family residential use for
this property given the amount of available land on the property we do not believe the addition
of accessory parking will negatively impact the block we do not object to granting these variances
thank you mi 2020-001386 1325 grant avenue my vote is yes with the proviso
as per amended application the zb 2020-004290 my vote is yes with proviso yes for proviso
yes with proviso yes with proviso calendar number two six thank you six eight i have nothing further
thank you i was fast thank you number two six six eight 1331 north 17th street this is leo
mulvihill's case um i believe this is being continued with a um yeah with the condition
must be heard yes yeah zero zero mi 2020 does zero zero two six six eight one three one excuse me
one three three one north 17th street is continued must be heard calendar number two one nine eight
1904 south 7th street there are no exhibits with this um unless you have the mail sharon no we do
not have exhibits but unusual in cases where we have no exhibits we do have a letter of non-opposition
from councilman squilla that refers to an rco letter in support and this is the first listing
is the applicant here
is the applicant for 1904 south 7th street available
Mr. Chair, I see no one at this time. I'm sorry.
Okay, thank you. So MI 2020-0021981904 South 7th Street is continued.
Calendar number 2261, 1947 North 24th Street.
there are no exhibits is there anyone here for 1947 north 24th street
no hands for this one either mr chair has this case already been continued
i believe it's the first listing
Okay. MI 2020, that's 002261, 1947 North 24th Street is continued.
Calendar number 2199, 2060 East Rush Street.
That would be Henry Clinton's case.
I promoted Mr. Clinton to panelists at this time, sir.
Mr. Clinton, can you put your name and address on the record and spell your last name, please?
Certainly. Henry Clinton, C-L-I-N-T-O-N, Queen Memorial Building, 1313 South 33rd Street,
Philadelphia PA, 19146. Do you swear or affirm to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
I do. Do you also agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
And have you emailed the exhibit packet with proof of ownership, tax compliance, refusal
or referral, photos and plans of the property five days in advance of this hearing?
And have you met with the RCO and do you have a letter?