Mr. Longini has been allowed to speak, sir.
Could you state your name, please, and spell it for the court reporter?
Mr. Longini, can you respond?
you have to unmute yourself right hi could you state your name and spell for the court reporter
you need to hover along the bottom of the left side of the screen to mute yourself sir
I hope you had it for a second. If you just place your mouse over the left bottom portion
of your screen, you should be able to click the mute button.
Mr. Clinton, you're your attorney. Okay. Could you state your name for us, please?
Please spell it.
My name is Alton Lugoni, A-L-T-I-N, last name Lugoni, L-L-O-G-O-N-I.
Do you swear for him to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir.
Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Longini, were you on the call when I went through the presentation of your project?
Yes, I was.
Okay. And I mentioned to the board that you took these photographs of the vacant commercial spaces on Frankfurt Avenue. Is that true?
Correct. It is true.
And when did you take those photographs?
Yesterday.
Okay. And are those photographs representative of the type of vacancies that exist?
And are those photographs representative of the type of vacancies that exist in commercial spaces on Frankfort Avenue?
Correct.
And if you had the opportunity to testify today, having heard my testimony, would you adopt my testimony as your own and as true and correct?
Thank you, Mr. Longini. With that, Mr. Chairman, I rest.
Mr. Clinton, what's on either side of the property?
Residential.
residential on either side yeah let me show you the yes sir let me show you the aerial photograph
whoa sorry mr chairman so the uh for me
let me just get to it i apologize for this
Mr. Clinton, if you know the page, you could type it in the top left and it should go to
it for you.
Thank you for that suggestion.
So yes, so Mr. Chairman, this exhibit shows an aerial view with the yellow dots indicating
multifamily duplexes and the red dot indicating a triplex.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Clinton.
Any other questions from the Board?
no mr chairman no mr chairman
and mr chairman questions or comments from the virtual audience
i see no further hands mr chair planning commission thank you chair bergman ian hegarty
for the philadelphia city planning commission that's h-e-g-a-r-t-y you've already been sworn in
All right. Thank you very much, Chair. Members of the Board, in 2016, the zoning map was amended to CMX2 on this block in accord with recommendations from the comprehensive plan.
While CMX2 requires ground floor commercial use, the subject property is situated mid-block on a block with very few buildings with commercial ground floor uses.
The immediately adjacent properties, as we've seen in the evidence, are purely residential buildings as well.
Given the unique context, the City Planning Commission recommends that the Board grant this variance.
Thank you. MI 2022-001-762-2448 Frankfurt Avenue. I vote yes.
Carol Tenere, my vote is yes.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Thank you, Mr. Clinton.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. Have a great day.
Number five, MI 2022 001716 418 Survivor Street, David Orphanides.
all right sir mr orphanetes has been promoted to panelists letter of support from the fishtown
neighbors association vote was 16 to 12 in support and also receive approval from streets
departments for plants. Mr. Orphanides, please state your name and spell for the court reporter.
Certainly. David Orphanides, last name is spelled O-R-P-H-A-N-I-D-E-S.
All right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
I do. Could you identify your client and the relationship to the property?
Certainly. Shane and Elena Souders are the owners of the properties, and Shane is on the Zoom today.
All right. Our vice chair has a few questions.
Hi. Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Waive the reading. I cannot stipulate to its accuracy in this particular.
Okay. Have you emailed the exhibit packet with proof of ownership, tax compliance, a copy of the refusal or referral, photos, and or plans of the property five days in advance of this meeting, in advance of this hearing, and have you met with the RCO, and do you have a letter?
Yes to all of those.
Okay, great. You may proceed and begin with sharing your screen.
Thank you.
can you all see the screen yes great terrific again my name is David Orfanides I'm with the
law firm of Orfanides and Toner and again I'm here this afternoon on behalf of Shane and Elena
Souders the owners of the subject property properties which are 418 420 and 422 set 5th
street the photo you have up in front of you right now everything I'm going to go through
The photo you have up in front of you right now, everything I'm going to go through, all the exhibits I'm going to go through were submitted to the zoning board five days in advance.
all the exhibits I'm going to go through
I would have asked that at the conclusion of my presentation, they'd be admitted into evidence.
This photograph, which is the first page of the exhibits I sent in, show the subject properties.
You'll see there's a wood stockade fence and then a single family dwelling.
The Woodstock Stockade fence surrounds what is 418 and 422 Survivor Street per the deeds.
They are vacant.
And then 422 Survivor Street is presently utilized as a single-family dwelling.
And this view is from the corner of Survivor Earl and Earl Streets.
You'll see in the aerials in the zoning map that 418 is actually located at the corner of Survivor and Earl Streets,
with Earl Street not having any parking on our side of that street, and that's important because
we are proposing, what we're proposing is to demolish the structure that presently exists
on 422 Survivor, to relocate the lot lines, to create two lots from the existing three lots,
and upon each of those to construct a single-family dwelling. The property, as you'll see from the
zoning maps, or you can see from the zoning maps that we've included with our exhibit book,
are zoned RSA-5, so there's no use variance here at all, purely dimensional variances.
And we'll be demolishing the building on 422, and we'll be constructing two single-family
dwellings. The one at the corner, which is going to include all of 418, surviving a portion of 420,
is going to be occupied by my clients, and then there'll be an additional single-family
on what is now 422, and then the other portion, the remaining portion of 420.
Again, our exhibit books, exhibits that we provided to you are all set forth.
The exhibits, individual exhibits are set forth in the index, all 18 of them.
I'll go through the notice of refusal now.
As I indicated, the proposal is to relocate lot lines and to change the three lots into two, the three existing lots into two, and then to erect two single family dwellings.
Now, in terms of the, we have a refusal for lot size.
So the properties, as I indicated, are zoned RSA 5.
The minimum lot size in this zoning district, because of an overlay, isn't the lower 900
some square foot lot size.
It's 1440, as it has historically been.
Now, the Planning Commission and LNI as a result wrote us refusals because they say
the two lots that are you creating out of the three existing lots, by the way, each of those
is only 560 square feet or teeny lots. I'll show you real quickly on the survey plan and zoom in.
You can see right here the three lots, 418, 420, and 422, which are each only 14 feet wide and 40
feet deep. And here you can see what we're proposing, parcel A and parcel D. So they say
Parcel A is only going to be 640 square feet, and parcel B is only going to be 1,040 square feet.
Both are less than 1,440, and as a result, you get a refusal.
Well, the zoning code in 14305 says that if you have nonconforming lots, which these existing lots are,
and there's a lot adjustment, which we have here,
that if you modify them such that the size of them is increased, that's permitted.
And we've gone back and forth with the Planning Commission, with L&I and the Planning Commission.
The Planning Commission has taken the position that because the OPA says that these are only two lots,
418 and 420 to 22 that we are we are making we're making them small we're not actually
making these smaller lots larger particularly as it applies to the northernmost and
our position in that respect and you know it may be a lot over nothing in the end because we do
as indicated have a letter of support from the fishtown neighbors association
is that the OPA can put lots together
based upon something that happened in the past.
We've submitted an application
to get separate OPA account numbers for them.
It's just an administerial task.
And if they were three separate OPA accounts,
we wouldn't have this issue.
So it's our position.
And when you take the reading of the zoning code
regarding non-conforming lots,
kind of, I won't say arbitrary nature,
but the fact that the way the OPA puts properties together
has nothing to do sometimes with how they're actually deeded and described.
And you can see here in the deed that you have three parts.
And you can see here in the deed that you have three parcels, A, B, and C.
So it's our position that that refusal does not apply.
And then there's a refusal for bringing the parking from Earl Street, which is the one side of this corner property.
And you would say, well, you know, we all know the provision that in RSA 5 with an attached building, which is this, you can't access parking unless it's from a shared drive, an alley, or a rear street.
And what's interesting is that the definition of a rear street doesn't say that the street has to be opposite the front.
It just has to say that it's one that's not designated as the primary frontage.
And then if you look at the drawings that we have, the planning commission has designated
Saviva as the front, and as a result, based upon that definition in the zoning code that
I just referenced, you have one street that's designated as a front, and in this case, the
other one should technically, may not be what they intended, but by the definition of a
rear street in the zoning code would qualify. You can see here from the complete streets that this
is a local street. This is from the city of Philadelphia, open maps. And again, if it's a
local street and you have a primary frontage and this is the other one, it technically qualifies
as a rear street. So for those reasons, we feel that those two refusals don't apply. The third
refusal regarding minimum rear yard depth, because these lots are all under 45 feet, they don't have
the same open, they don't have any open area requirement. They don't have the typical nine
foot rear yard depth requirement. They only have seven feet. And as you'll see in our zoning
drawings that we provide, and we do have revised zoning drawings, we've taken the liberty to
create egress across the corner parcel. So the northern parcel has the required seven foot rear
yard depth. But because we wanted to give them egress out to the street to take trash out for
emergency egress things of that nature our rear yard depth technically is only is only four feet
deep because rear yards get measured to the edge of an alley or an edge of an easement so if we
remove this we would be completely compliant we wouldn't be here at all if everybody accepted our
interpretations of the first two refusals but those are the three refusals that you have
As to Earl Street and the parking, and you can see here, we're located right across from Palmer Park, right off of Frankfurt Avenue.
And you can see Earl Street right here.
There's no parking on the street.
It's a very narrow street.
And so the idea is that, you know, we're utilizing, we're getting one car off the street.
We're reducing the number of lots.
You could have three single families here on the existing lots as a matter of right.
We're reducing the number of lots.
We're reducing the number of single-family dwellings.
And with one of those, we're actually getting cars off the street without taking any on-street parking.
Again, the properties are zoned RSA 5.
You can see them over here.
We do have floor plans at page 11 that throw the various layouts of the various floors.
The larger unit at the corner of Surviva and Earl Street is the unit, the house that my clients plan on taking.
So here is, let me just go back to here. Here are the elevations. This is from Survivor. They will front on Survivor. And here's the side Earl Street with the parking.
we do have revised drawings and the revised proviso plan forum it's one sheet
um it's minor minor revisions and they're set forth in that um the community group wanted us
to mirror the structures particularly in terms of the roof decks and the pilot houses and you'll see
here that we put the pilot house they weren't originally right next to each other
So we've mirrored them and put them right next to each other.
And that was based upon feedback we received from the community group.
We had certain, we provided some articulations in the facade.
Then we relocated the streets department elements, the stair and what have you.
Again, those are minor changes, but ones that we wanted to put in.
And they have already been reviewed by streets as indicated.
Here's the streets review authorization.
um we um we have tax compliance at tab 16 we have the posting of the photo of the notices for the
hearing and the notice of refusal at tab 17 and then at tab 18 we have um the 14 303 notice the
list of addresses to which it was served the notice provides uh the date of the community
group meeting uh this was the first notice that went out within the 20 days of the designation
This was the first notice that went out within the 20 days of the designation of FNA as a coordinating RCO. We did not have the date at that time, so we resent another notice of the June 4th meeting by certified first class as well.
of FNA as
So there was two notices regarding this project. So for the reasons that I stated, I don't think we don't believe that two of the refusals even apply in this case, or it's arguable that they don't. The third is really a function of us providing that easement for the benefit of the northernmost parcel, parcel A.
and there's still no it's still this building still the same distance away from the adjacent
or budding building on Earl Street which by the way is largely there's just a blank sidewall they
do have a window in that wall at the upper level which could be argued that it's not code compliant
because it's right on the property line and there were we did start a dialogue with that property
owner during the community meeting regarding that so with that I would rest the right ability to
respond to any questions that there might be. And again, I ask that our exhibits be admitted
into evidence. And then I have both Rost and Oller from Harman Deutsch Oller, who are the
architects, to adopt my statements. And then I have Shane Souders as well to adopt my statements.
So if they could be promoted to panelists, if they have not already been promoted, and that if
I can ask them to do so, I would appreciate that opportunity. Okay. Hello?
everything's we've taken everything that you've given us how about the is the uh uh the owner of