mentioned suggestions. So we revised our zoning plan in accordance with those suggestions.
I submitted a proviso change form and a revised zoning plan to board staff last week. So if you
are inclined to grant the variance, we would ask that you do so with a proviso referencing
our revised zoning plan, which is one page. I want to give my thanks sincerely to the NTIT RCO
for really working with us, having multiple discussions, and helping us sort of get the
ideas needed to revise the physical plan, as well as prepare to have a positive impact in the
community, both during construction and beyond, which is to say that we intend to follow all of
their suggestions and are appreciative of their support. As the chairman also mentioned,
we have, I believe, about a half dozen letters of support from surrounding property owners,
including the only two adjacent properties, one of which is a letter shown here from the St.
joseph's retirement home and the other is uh the the uh building on the other side and a letter
from that owner is here um this is a section of our own that shows the front and rear elevation
of the property um so as you can see this is going to be a six-story building as proposed
with the units on the upper five floors and a parking level on the ground floor.
Give me one moment.
I'm just going to pan over to the other parts of the sheet.
We have a ground floor site plan here and an aerial site plan here.
This shows the features of the ground floor, which is four parking spaces, an elevator lobby.
All floors are served by elevator. A trash room that collects trash from two trash chutes
to make this sort of a building that is easy to use for all users, regardless of age. We also have
utility room, storage room, and a little bit of bike parking in the rear of this lower floor.
We're showing a sort of circular seating area that, if we can get permission from the streets department, we would build in the beginning of the sidewalk right of ways.
This is a very wide sidewalk, but that would be subject to their discretion.
In addition, which I'll sort of skip over, we have turn radius data down here.
This is a sample floor plan of one of the upper floors.
They would all basically be the same, with the exception of the common roof deck at the top.
So all the floors, including the roof deck, would be served by elevator.
And what you're looking at here are basically three two-bedroom units and one one-bedroom unit.
Keep going here.
All of the units, because they are served by elevator, we designed to be considered type B under the International Building Code, which means that they are able to be modified with fixtures into, you know, disability compatible units.
Let me go to our refusal.
So the underlying zoning district here is RSA 3, both in terms of its allowed uses and its
dimensional rules. The RSA 3 designation really compels the construction of single family homes
on lots that are to be left 50% unoccupied. So this is the planning commission zoning guide.
This is the Planning Commission Zoning Guide.
This here is a sample.
This here is a sample image of an RSA 3 property in their eyes, which is sort of a twin, as we like to call it in the city.
So the refusal, the top one, is that you can't have more than one dwelling unit in this district.
The others sort of flow from the fact that the rules are designed for a single family house.
For instance, there's a 38-foot height limit. There's that 50% open area requirement I mentioned. There's a rear yard depth of 20 feet requirement. So we're proposing 25% open area and a 10-foot deep rear yard.
the RSA 3 district would require 20 parking spaces we're only providing four we also have
a dimensional refusal at the bottom there for proposing a 16 foot wide drive aisle rather than
a 20 foot wide so there's sort of two reasons that there are hardships with regard to all
these variances the first just to go back to the parcel map is that the property is a little bit
sort of long and thin. And as a result, you know, to get sort of a product that matches the
surroundings, we're doing something that, you know, occupies most of the depth of the property,
but we'll still have a small rear yard and a side alley that separates it from the St. Joseph's
home. That's also why we couldn't provide more parking spaces because each floor plate basically
only accommodates four spaces. So, you know, to do 20 spaces, you'd be looking at occupying
multiple floors of the building, which is prohibitively expensive to build. The other
reason that we have a hardship, which is probably more compelling, to be honest, is just the nature
of the surroundings. So our property has no known history of single family use. The block,
at least per the permit archive, currently has no single family use. Let me say that again.
This block has no single family homes whatsoever. You can kind of see I'm panning through.
It's different apartment buildings that are in different states of repair, some good,
some not so good. And then there's some office and other use. I actually went through the archive
and listed every building out. So very quickly, there's a couple houses of worship. There is
an apartment building with 16 units, an office, 56 unit building, six unit building, 46 unit
building, and the St. Joseph's home, which I believe has a better part of a hundred rooms
in it. That was the property that was directly to the left of us there.
um so um why does that create a hardship um there is a concept called a validity variance which
basically says that if you can't build the product that the zoning code commands you have a hardship
and to quote from one commonwealth court case very briefly that discusses the concept of a
validity variance that case held that um a validity variance is deserved when quote the regulation is
confiscatory and that it deprives the owner of the use of the property, the applicant can establish
the confiscatory nature of the zoning regulation by proving that the land has no value or only
distressed value as a result of the regulation. This case is called Shehola Falls Trails for
zoning hearing board. So what I would propose to you is that based on the total lack of single
family homes on this block, we can't build and sell a single family home that's going to cover
the cost of construction. It is simply an unsalable product in this location, given the
surroundings. The last thing I want to touch on is the North District portion of PCPC's
comprehensive plan. So we are one of these blocks, I believe here, that is shown in tan. And that,
as you see, is surrounded by this C caption. And what C says is that in this location on Allegheny
Avenue, the comprehensive plan recommends a rezoning to RMX3 for the purpose of promoting
the development of large apartment buildings, preferably for senior housing. So we're not an
age-restricted product, but I would say that we are fully compatible with as many seniors as we
would like to live there. Um, and, um, this is also highlighted on another page of the plan
and the housing recommendations for the North district that says that, uh, the, um, that zoning
should seek to quote, increase the allowable density near major transit stations, such as
such as Allegheny Station. Again, we are a block and a half from Allegheny Station.
Allegheny station. Um, again, uh, we are a block.
And here is finally an image from that Planning Commission zoning guide I mentioned,
showing their sort of sample image of an RMX3 housing product. RMX3, again, is the designation
that the Planning Commission recommended for this block. Our building would not be anything
near the size of this building shown again we would be 20 units so with that i would like to
see if my client is available to adopt my testimony and again if you have any questions i do have the
architect here noreen cody is her name noreen could you please raise your hand she's going
know how to speak, sir. Hi, could you state your name and spell for the court reporter, please?
Noreen, N-O-R-E-E-N, last name Cody, C-O-D-Y. You swear to affirm to tell the truth, the whole
truth, nothing but the truth. I do. Proceed, Ms. Saverin, Mr. Saverin.
Noreen, were you able to hear the full extent of my testimony today?
Yes, I was. Okay, and was it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge?
Yes. And are you an authorized representative of 1511 Allegheny LLC?
Yes, I am. And would you adopt my testimony as if it was your own?
Yes, I would. Okay. Thank you very much. Mr. Saverin, I'm going to open it up to the board,
but a couple of quick questions. One is, is the height consistent with the St. Joseph's property?
You know, I really would like to bring the architect on, but just eyeballing myself.
yeah that's all i want you to do is eyeball yeah i i think it is because the saint joseph's home is
sort of one two three four four stories with sort of a large fifth story that is partially
submerged okay all right that's fine and then the second question is if you know how did you get to
20 units um so i think if you look at that floor plate you have you know four units per building
and for for i apologize um the rmx designation that i mentioned which was recommended um zoning
for this parcel the rmx3 designation allows a 500 uh percent floor area ratio um so that's right
about where we are i think if you um exclude the access structures we're just under 500
percent far we might be at four quickly so we felt that this was appropriate given the heights of
the surrounding buildings um the the content of the comprehensive plan and also that we wanted
this to be an elevator building in order to um you know make it senior friendly and in order to do
that we sort of needed a critical mass of units to justify the cost of the elevator um you know
it's four units per floor so it's it's a rather sort of um spacious you know layout i don't
think it would be okay all right good questions from the board yes mr chairman a counselor
you have uh six children refusal six you send something refusal right your revision uh form
reduces to what how many refusals um mr hollman i'm quickly going to pull up my proviso form
would you allow me one moment to do that i don't think off the top of my head
gesturing scale windows front back so i don't think that the um changes um remove or add any
refusals they're agnostic to their refusals the changes are uh things that the rco recommended
in terms of creating additional public and green spaces, so additional balconies, additional
windows, a lot of landscaping both on and around the building. The refusals that you mentioned,
Mr. Holloman, none of those would have been generated with the exception of the parking
count and the drive aisle refusal if this property was indeed RMX3 as the comprehensive plan
recommend so again absent the parking none of the other refusals would have been generated at least
that's my best understanding um and you know that is basically because the code is designing for
a single twin house which as i showed you in the context of the block it's just not what's
here i mean nobody has the open space or the side of rear yards that the code compels right so we're
really just trying to fit in and propose a product that's
and propose a product that's going to be useful to the community.
going to be useful to the community.
Arnold, did you have a question?
I have another question, Mr. Chairman.
Go ahead, Tom.
You have a curb cut?
Has it been reviewed by city?
The requisite reviews were made by streets.
I don't believe that city planning has touched this yet because we only front on one street.
but i know david facto may be able to shed some light on this and one other thing i'll
add is that the rmx3 designation would have compelled six spaces um so we're proposing
four um so we're only a couple short we tried to get in as many as we could there
um any other questions about yes i have one more you have parking uh four spaces yes and you
required 20. How do you justify less spaces? So again, the RMX3 designation, which is recommended
by the plan and really is in keeping with what is on the block currently, only would have required
six spaces, not 20. You know, 20 is a one-to-one ratio. The way that we brought this up with the
RCO, it's a very fair concern, Mr. Holloman. I'm not trying to make little of it, is that the St.
Joseph's home, which is behind and to the side of us both, it sort of semi-surrounds our property,
has an enormous parking lot with probably over 100 spaces, just guessing, that goes largely
unused on a given day. So as is mentioned in memorialized in the RCO letter, we're in contact
with them. We're trying to work through a lease agreement for spaces. But the sort of point here
is that none of the surrounding buildings have one-to-one ratio parking many of them don't have
parking at all and you know the four spaces was the most we could do without getting into
subterranean parking or multi-level parking and i think those are both sort of offensive to the
aesthetics of the community for their own reasons so this is what we could fit on the floor of the
building i think you're trying to put too much on the site that you want to get city council to
change the zoning so you can put what you want on the site well i i think that a rezoning is not
legal on a parcel by parcel basis as you probably know um and it's a major action for the city
council person who i believe is councilwoman bass to rezone swaths but let me say the rsa3
zoning is appropriate for many places in the city just not this block specifically so even a rezoning
may not be appropriate because a rezoning is typically done when many blocks need a fix
this is a unique thing on sort of these you know 14 and 1500 blocks of allegheny i suppose in a in
in a fictitious world she could have done legislation just to address this block but
it's not been done i think a variance is uh under state case law appropriate therefore
um and if i don't know if charles richardson is on here but i i would welcome his input if he is
i i think he his office is at least not opposed to this project with its current density
thank you questions from carol did you have a question no i do not questions from the board
more questions no okay questions from the virtual or comments from the virtual audience
mr chair i have mr charles richardson with his hand raised i will allow him to speak at this time
mr richardson hi good afternoon mr richardson good afternoon mr chair and board
Charles Richardson from the Office of Councilwoman Cindy Bass, room 312 City Hall.
Hi, Mr. Richardson, just for the record, could you spell your name for the court reporter?
Sure. Richardson, R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S-O-N.
All right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Proceed, Mr. Richardson.
As Mr. Saverin did allude to, the Councilwoman does not spot zone,
So that would not be something that she would be able to, would be willing to do with that one parcel.
I am aware that Mr. Saverin has worked diligently with the NTIT RCO and they came up with a lot of different suggestions and things along those lines.
We have kind of laid back and allowed them to do what they needed to do with regard to coming to some conclusion.
We have kind of laid back and allowed them to do what they needed to do.
If they've got a letter of support from NTIT, then the councilman will not stand in the way and will not have any opposition to this project at this point.
Thank you, Mr. Richardson, for calling it.
Is there anyone else in the virtual audience?
No further answer, Mr. Chair.
Planning Commission.
Thank you, sir.
Good afternoon, David Fecto, City Planning Commission, Mr.
Chairman and members of the Zoning Board.
The zoning maps for Tioga were changed in 2006
in response to a community request.
However, the Comprehensive Plan recommends this property
for residential mixed use three zoning.
The hold on, I lost my place.
So residential mixed use three zoning
would allow the proposed use to be permitted except for the proposed parking count and drive
aisle width. Since the applicant would only be short two parking spaces, the proposal complies
substantially with the recommended zoning in a comprehensive plan. The City Planning Commission
recommends the board grant the use and dimensional variances. Thank you. MI 2022-002-212-1511
Allegheny Avenue. I vote yes with Proviso. Revised plan, one page, stamped by ZBA on August 3rd, 2022.
Carol Tenere, my vote is yes with Proviso. Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes with Proviso.
James Snell? Sorry about that. Yeah, no, a little technical issue. Yes with Proviso, James Snell.
Thank you, Mr. Saverin.
Thank you.