mr richardson i'm so sorry no problem uh charles richardson office of the council and cindy bass
room 501 city hall uh the councilwoman has no opposition to granting the variance
thank you very much we appreciate your service um thank you with burn thank you so for the people
on the uh 330 list we're at least an hour away we have four more cases on the the two o'clock list
so if you want go get a coffee may take a drain you can't walk around the block but i'm just if
you want to sit there and listen you can listen but it we've got at least four more cases and i
think alan you have three of them am i correct okay so you know if it gets too late you could
stare at uh alan oh no no we don't want coffee though okay number seven mi 2024 006 751 2648
to 52 north 15th street brandon saverin is the attorney
there's a letter of support from all the family cdc a letter of support with provisos from uptown edc
and a letter of support with provisos from swamp poodle neighbors parcels
hey mr chairman good afternoon hi brandon could you uh you've been already been sworn today could
you just state your name for the record yeah brandon saverin okay um could you identify your
client in relationship to the property my client is g choice funeral chapel inc who is the owner
of the property right so um our vice chair is going to get on in a minute uh and during your
presentation if you would go right to what the refusal is and then start your presentation
sure because everything that's on your list we have so you don't have to go over your list and
and tell us because that's what our vice chair is going to do right now do you understand
i think so yeah well what i'm saying is you don't have to say here's the deed here's this here's
that. Oh, sure. We know all that. So what I want to do is to go to the refusal to start your
presentation. Okay, sure. All right, sure. Okay, here we go. Counsel, do you agree to waive the
reading of the refusal or stipulate to his accuracy? Yes. Have you emailed in all the
required documents and exhibits as needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of
this hearing? Yes, with the exception of the proof of tax clearance, which I sent today.
all right and we will need to see proof of that and i i can show that yep please proceed okay thanks
okay um well just as you said mr chairman here's the refusal so um this is a vacant lot i'm going
to show you some photos of it in a second been a vacant lot for decades um and we are proposing
to build I'll actually just flash the elevation before you and I'll come back to the refusal this
which is a three-story mixed-use building um so um you're making me go a little out of order but
I'll start here so what what refusals did we get um starting in the bottom uh we we had originally
a refusal for uh height so we have proviso plans three pages um and we no longer have the height
refusal or I should say it no longer applies because we are now below 38 feet because in
our proviso plan we eliminated what was the fourth floor. The next three refusals all pertain to the
fact that we're in the RSA 5 district and we're proposing a commercial space on the ground floor
which we think is appropriate because we're on Lehigh Avenue at an intersection with another
commercial use. So those proposed uses are, I'm going to sort of shorten the text here,
grocery store, retail sale of other consumer goods, and prepared food shop. So that would
be something like a cafe or selling, you know, sandwiches within the store. We are not a takeout
restaurant. We are not a sit down restaurant. And then finally, we have a use refusal for the
apartments upstairs, which I'll address in a moment. We also have a refusal because we, at the
best of the community, have seven on-site parking spaces, but given that we are at an intersection
of 15th and Lehigh, we do not have like a rear alley or a shared driveway, and therefore
um we do not have like a rear alley or a shared driveway and therefore um any manner of access
to that parking requires a variance we think we've designed a safe parking access which i'm
going to show you um so moving right along here's an aerial of the subject property it's here where
my cursor is on the left hand side we're on the corner of 15th and lehigh um just want to mention
really quickly. There is some debris and a tree here. This is not our property. There is a slice
here of vacant land that is beyond our boundary. And you'll see in photos in a minute that our
property is very clean and fenced. There's no litter on our property. Didn't want that to get
mixed up. And just for other context, here's the site again. Here's zooming out. So 15th Street
running along the side of our property, Lehigh Avenue in front of our property, and we're one
block away from Broad, where you have the North Broad Regional Rail Station and the North
Philadelphia stop on the Broad Street subway. I showed you the elevation, so let me go ahead to
the zoning map. So as you saw on those aerials, three of the four corners of this intersection
are vacant, and the only corner that's occupied is occupied by a beer store. So this corner could
you some love. And we are in a position to do that. I will note in a, come back to in a second,
the fact that we're also the other, the only corner with a pure residential designation.
The other corners are zoned CMX or industrial, which is going to be relevant to my argument in
a moment. So why is my client a funeral home? A block and a half away on Broad Street, some of
you may recognize this red awning this is the g choice funeral chapel it's a third generation
black owned family business started by eddie and gloria choice eddie was an army veteran and an
architect who built this himself designed it himself and then purchased some properties in
the immediate area the property i'm here about today is the furthest of the other real estate
holdings from the funeral home. It's never been used in connection with the funeral home. So
the current owner and president of the funeral home, Brittany, who's here with me today,
determined that it is time to do something else with this particular property.
And rather than sell it and not know what's going to happen to it, because it was vacant long before
before my client owned it, Brittany has decided to develop it, hold it as an asset that she can
pass to her children and do something that's beneficial for the community rather than just
continuing the vacancy. So the lot is over 8,700 square feet. It is about eight and a half more
or less times the size of a typical property on our side of the street. And I'm bringing that up
just to give you a sense of comparative density. So above our grocery store, we're proposing 12
dwelling units on two floors. That, and I'll show you the floor plans too, that was all designed in
close coordination with the RCOs over three meetings, two open to the public and one not.
And if you look at the red dots here, particularly on our side of the street, what you're going to find is that eight of the nine habitable structures are multifamily.
They're two to six dwelling units inside them.
So we're only aware of one single family home on our side of the street.
Given that these properties are eight times smaller than ours and they have two or more units, they actually have a greater unit density than we are proposing on our site.
Furthermore, if you were to subdivide our property, and it's interesting, the zoning is actually changing.
So Councilman Young has a bill on the floor right now that would allow this to be carved into eight home lots instead of six.
but you know using the number eight we could build in theory eight single family homes here
the problem with that is that they'd all be up to 38 feet tall they would have a greater number
of bedrooms in total than what we're proposing and the products would be unaffordable they also
would probably probably be impossible to build which is part of the hardship i've laid out
in my memo of law because we are here on what is in large part a non-residential corridor
And there's no recent construction of any kind on this block. I think in 15 plus years, there's very little single family home use. The cost of construction of a new single family home here, we don't believe can be recovered through sale without subsidy.
and there's no recent construction of any kind on this block I think
So for all those reasons, and because my client deeply as a, you know, 50, almost 50 year business operator around the corner wants to have another business here, multifamily allows us to solve those issues and to include a retail component, which we're really hoping is a grocery store ultimately.
And last note on this slide, and then I'll move on. If this was a CMX2 site, just like a couple of the other lots on this corner are, we could do 17 units by right and have the store. Again, we're only proposing 12.
So let's see, just skip ahead a little bit to save time.
okay I mentioned to you that we worked with the RCOs on both the overall design and the floor
plan so just want to show you this was the original rendering two of the three RCOs actually
had no problem with this mass or the number of units originally which was 18 but the coordinating
RCO wasn't happy. So we chopped off the top floor, took it down from 18 to 12 units. I don't have a
new 3D rendering, but we will only be three stories now. And that's reflected in our Proviso plan,
which I'm about to show you. Go to page 45. So this is actually similar, but not quite the first
page of the Proviso plan, just because this is the one with the streets approval stamp.
This shows you how the circulation of cars in and out of the site is going to work.
It's a one-way L-shaped drive aisle system with cars coming in off of 15th Street and
leaving onto Lehigh.
If the streets department wants us to do a right turn exit only onto Lehigh, we will
comply with that.
That'll come up in the building permit stage.
But essentially, you have seven parking spaces under an overhang of the second and third floors because the first floor is a little shallower in the rear than the upper two floors.
And that allows for an 18-foot drive aisle behind the property and then a pedestrian alley and then the rear yards of the homes to the rear.
so not only are we only three stories but we're separated by 20 plus feet of separation from any
of the nearest structures to the rear and really this is an opportunity to allow some of the
residents to have parking keep going and I have I'm not going to show them all I have I have
zoning stage approval letters from streets department water department planning commission
on, you know, the fence, all that stuff. And they're all in the exhibits, but I'm just going
to kind of, you know, try and save you some time here. So that was the first page. Here's the
second page of the proviso plan, which is the elevation I already showed you. And then we get
into some floor plans. So you have retail, right? We've, we've simply marked it as retail, but we
have flexibility to do all the different uses I named in this large space in the front of the
first floor with a lot of glass to the street both the residences upstairs who have an elevator
and this store have a trash room with a direct overhead garage door sort of like a sliding metal
gate where dumpsters can be brought out to this driveway so a private commercial hauler will pick
up trash on this drive aisle there will never be trash nor a trash truck in the street in connection
with trash service. There is supplemental space. That's our proviso form, sorry.
There's supplemental space in the basement for stock and storage, in addition to a couple
employee bathrooms for the store. The elevator does go down there for easy access to goods,
in addition to the various staircases. There's other rooms down there. I think at least one
will be used for mechanicals but there could be storage or a tenant amenity down there as well
no residences importantly and then the upper two floors are all are the same as one another
they have the elevator and and two stairwells you're going to have a mix that amounts to
two one bedrooms, eight two-bedroom units, and two three-bedroom units. So mostly two-bedroom
So mostly two bedroom units. This was actually something that the RCOs and my client pretty
units. This was actually something that the RCOs and my client pretty much
much saw eye to eye on. We did tweak a little bit, but the sort of two bedroom concept was
favored rather than packing in more one bedrooms. I do have the architect here. He or I can sort of
go through the details of each unit if you have any questions on that. And there's a residential
roof deck with the required setbacks and an extra large setback from the rear. Again, only three
stories, which is what our neighbors are too on Lehigh. So we're really not hovering above anybody,
but trying to sort of both for safety and privacy have adequate setbacks of the roof deck. And we
think this is important because due to the parking, there's no ground level outdoor space.
These are notices of mailing. We did two of them for the two public meetings. We're going to skip that. I guess the last thing I'll put on the screen here are the RCO letters. So, you know, here's our letter from the coordinating RCO, our letter from one of the other affected RCOs, Uptown.
And this letter wants us to accept Section 8 and other tenant subsidies, which we will do. Also comments on the floor plans, which I think we've already complied with, to my knowledge. And then another letter from Swamp Poodle, which is another affected RCO.
All these letters are of support. And as I mentioned, we had two noticed public meetings, but a really lousy turnout. So, you know, the one sort of saving grace to that is we had great participation by these affected RCOs. So there was always sort of good, healthy discussion of the issues at these meetings.
I will stop it there.
I also have pictures of the block.
You know what?
Let me just put those up for literally 10 seconds.
Street level photo of our lot.
These are the properties next to us on Lehigh.
They're also three stories.
The conditions vary, but I'm really showing you them so you get a sense of their height
and mass and how we're approximately going to match that.
And again, most of these are at least two units inside.
this is across the street where there's some commercial uh okay i'll stop there so brandon
brandon to summarize you went from 18 units to 12 units that's right and you took a whole floor
off the that's right okay so why don't you bring your client one okay uh britney choice are you
there yes they will be coming back in as a panel shortly
good afternoon my name is britney voice hi could you um spell your name please for the
court stenographer absolutely b-r-i-t-n-i accent last name c-h-o-i-c-e do you swear or affirm to
tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth absolutely do please proceed brandon okay
Brittany, are you indeed the president of G-Choice Funeral Chapel, Inc.?
Did you hear the full extent of my testimony in your case this afternoon?
Was it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief?
And would you therefore adopt it as if it were your own testimony?
And lastly, am I correct that you are interested in locating a grocery store to be the tenant of that space?
Thank you.
Questions from the board.
Have you reached out to any grocery outlets or?
Yes, indeed.
More so like natural food stores that would bring that benefit to the community.
We have a lot of generic things.
We don't have any things that can actually help us live.
So we're looking to do more of a natural-based store, like a lower scale of a Whole Foods, Trader Joe's.
What's the square footage of that space?
That's the lot, Brittany.
I think the upper floor, Michael, board member John's, excuse me, would be somewhere in the realm of 2,500 square feet.
And then I think there's another couple thousand in storage downstairs, I think it would be a ballpark.
All right.
And servicing that first floor would be from the rear?
Yeah, that's right.
So the same sort of hatch that, you know, you had the trash sort of opening that I mentioned.
You know, you'd have the trash sort of opening that I mentioned there, and you could, in theory, come through that room and hit the elevator to go down to the stock room.
The advantage of that is it's off the street.
Could you load from the other doors?
Yes, but you'd be on 15th or Lehigh in those cases.
Other questions?
what's the plan if you cannot find a national retailer i know we've had a number of people
try to open grocery stores and what would be considered an adjustment or even including
the same catchment area and had a like really difficult time finding national tenants i think
of the ha building on ridge avenue as well as uh i understand what was said i'm just i understood
I'm just saying, what's the plan? Because there have been a lot of vacant grocery store spaces
that sat in large buildings in North Philadelphia in recent years. And it took many of them a long
time to find a tenant. And many of them found tenants that were very different than what they'd
originally set out to do. Brittany, try and answer. And then I just want to jump in from
from the standpoint of the refusal and what it allows us,
which is a lot of flexibility.
Well, that's actually a great question.