The comprehensive plan recommends no change in zoning at this location
from the existing CMX2 commercial mixed use.
The appellant has demonstrated that the proposed use
will not cause detrimental impacts beyond what would reasonably be expected.
The Planning Commission recommends that the board
grant their requested special exception for takeout.
MI 2025-000395-831 North 2nd Street.
I vote yes with proviso.
Trash stored in basement.
hours of operation 11a to 12a tuesday to sunday and coverage for first and first floor and
basement am i correct this will apply to first floor and basement yes use approved for first
floor and basement yes use approved for first floor and basement michael johns my vote is yes
with proviso cheryl gaston my vote is yes with provisos tennetta graham my vote is yes with
provisos i am win my vote is yes with provisos ishmael shaheed my vote is yes with proviso thank
you and thank you for being here the whole day thank you i appreciate it thank you for your
patience so mi 2024 005 780 5717 malvern darlene treat is the attorney um
there's a letter of opposition from winfield residents association
VOTE WAS 16 IN OPPOSITION, FIVE IN NON OPPOSITION, ONE IN SUPPORT.
They're coming back in as the panelists, Mr. Chair.
We had her earlier today, didn't we?
Didn't we have her earlier today, right?
Good afternoon, Commissioner Starlingfield, on behalf of the applicants.
Commissioner?
Can you hear me?
I can hear you, but very low.
Darlene?
Yes, I'm here.
Can you hear me?
Could you take your volume up?
Yeah, let me find it.
is that better it is we can hear you now right right so i i think i already swore you in once
they just state your name for the record uh darlene three uh d-a-r-l-e-n-e three t-s and thomas h-r-e-a-t-t
And could you identify your client in a relationship to the property?
My client is Carolyn Davis, a member of Davis & Davis LLC.
Our vice chair has a few questions.
Good evening, counsel. Do you agree to either read another refusal or stipulate to its accuracy?
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits as needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
i did email the required documents the zoning board sent me an email yesterday and indicated
they didn't have a picture of a posting and i uploaded one thank you and we received that
please proceed and share share your screen
a good afternoon uh commissioners i represent davis and davis llc the owners of 5717 malvern
avenue i submitted a package of information to the board uh last week which contains the
The refusal, the appeal, the property information form, the tax information form, excuse me, a deed, a prior rental license, plans, pictures, proof of mail-in, community letter, and the RCO letter of non-support.
Commissioners, my clients apply to the Zoning Board adjustment, not necessarily for the
proposed use of a two-family dwelling.
I'm indicating to you we're applying to legalize an existing two-family dwelling that has been
existing at least since documented by L&I 2004.
We received a refusal indicating that two family dwellings
Uh, we received a refusal indicating that, uh, two family dwellings are not permitted
in this, uh, zoning district.
Uh, I submitted a copy of the appeal, uh, the property information form, uh, Philadelphia
your information form i'm going to get back to this but i also submitted a copy of a prior
rental license which is dated may 11 20 2004 i would submit to you that is before my clients
became davis and davis became the legal owners of the property this property has been an existing
duplex. I could only find documentation of it on L&I back to 2004. I do have some other
documentation that I'll show you at a later date whereby this property was involved with the
Philadelphia voucher programs and I did find some payments from the voucher program to my client
for the first and second floor apartment. Here is the tax information. We have a zero balance.
the taxes are up to date uh here is the deed for the property and i would just like you to note
here that this property was originally owned by mrs davis father nathaniel davis
uh he passed away and uh that she and her brother inherited this um property in 2010
10, they took ownership of the property.
When my client came back to town because both her father and her brother was deceased to
handle the property, she did get a vacant property license since the property was vacant
at that time and this is one of the outstanding violations that she could clear before we came to
zoning so here we have the plans i'm just going to reduce it a little bit so i can show you the
whole thing and then i'll show you the individual floors
So here is just a site plan of the property. It shows you the dimensions and where it sits on a block. It shows you the front entrance and that's it. I'm just going to scale down a little and here's the property, the plan for the whole property.
Basically, Commissioner, this property is an existing duplex.
It has been existing for some time.
The basement is empty.
We store utilities in the basement.
The first floor apartment has access to the basement from the first floor.
I'm going to scroll it up a little bit and just show you how you would enter the property.
You would enter the property from Malvern Street.
i'm just going to enlarge it i can't really read the writing there
there you go
you can enter the property from malvern street you see you can enter the property here there's
a bedroom in the front of the property there's a bathroom off to the side there's a nice size
kitchen area there's a living room area and then there's another bedroom
in the rear there's also a bathroom in the rear bedroom
and you can access into the basement the second floor pretty much has the same exact layout
you will come up the stairs here there's a bedroom in the front
there's a bathroom here there's another bathroom
you have a kitchen dining area you have a living area and then you also have a bedroom in the rear
and that's pretty much the layout of the property i took some photographs of the property
this is the existing property it's a two-story dwelling that's just another
uh that's just another general uh picture of the block that's a long shot of the block to show you
general picture of the block
how the properties look uh basically when we received this violation uh mr maceo davis who
used to manage and own and manage this property in philadelphia was in the process of upgrading this
property when he received a violation indicating that he did not have a current rental license for
a two-family dwelling. These are just some other pictures of the interior renovation that he was
trying to do when he was stopped. This is a picture of the back of the property. There's one parking
spot in back of the garage. There is no parking spot here, but I would like to show you that these
boxes here are existing and they're existing. There are three boxes. There's a house box
and there's a box for each apartment the apartments are electric
that's a long shot of the alley of the behind the 5717 Malvern residence park in the alley
and some of them enter their houses through the back there that's a picture of another
the houses in the back, where they have doors and access to the basement.
That's a picture of my proof of mailing, and this is the letter of non-support that we
received from the community.
And I would like to address the letter of non-support.
Uh, commissioners, this letter, uh, indicates that, um, there's a need for a single family housing,
um, in the Winfield area. Um, and I just disagree with that. Uh, commissioners, I live in the, uh,
Winfield area. I've been living here for about 30 years and I probably live three blocks,
uh, from this location. There's a shortage of affordable single family housing in Winfield,
not a shortage of single-family housing. There are quite a few empty, very large houses presently
in Winfield because the neighborhood doesn't allow for any type of a different development.
What happens is individuals are not buying the single families in this
residential neighborhood because they're too high-priced and they all need total renovations.
Uh, once you do that, you can't make a profit off it. Or if you wanted a single family and you were going to pay that much money for it, you will buy one out in the county. Uh, I have some additional, um, information that I just had my client locate that she just sent it to me. Um, this just goes towards proving that this was a legal, uh, single family, I mean, duplex at one time.
I do have, I'm just going to show you, I have an invoice here from the voucher program in Philadelphia that shows they paid rent for the first floor and the second floor.
That was as far back as 2008.
I have one, again, that shows they paid rent for the first floor and the second floor as far back as 2010.
I also have the assignment from Nathan Davis to Davis and Davis LLC, the contract with HAP.
And we all know that you can't get payments or a contract if you don't have legal zoning.
uh commissioners i also have my client miss carolyn davis um on the line uh that i would
like to ask a couple questions if i'm allowed sure miss davis
counselor could you tell me what happened when you went to the rco meeting well we went to the
rco meeting uh miss davis and myself and basically uh commissioner i thought that the whole position
of the RCO and mainly one individual was they don't want duplexes in Winfield. And they wanted
me to prove that this wasn't a new duplex. It was an existing duplex. The only records I had at that
time were the 2004 rental license from license and inspections. After the meeting, my client was
able to find a rental agreement, some payments from the housing authority, document and payments
for the first and second floor miss davis are you on the line
down and davis correct
they're in the audience but they're not raising their hand let me allow them to speak
They're in the audience, but they're not raising their hand.
Let me allow them to speak real quick.
Counsel, you're an officer of the court.
We can gladly accept your testimony.
I think she has very pertinent testimony.
And if I can, if we could just give her 30 seconds,
I would really like to put her on.
Ms. Davis, if you're still in the virtual audience,
please unmute.
she's not raising her hand so so counsel if you obviously if you've interviewed her what
what pertinent testimony you think is important if i could miss davis was going to testify that
she was born and raised in winfield she went to school in winfield she still owns a house in
Winfield, that her parents were very, very active in Winfield. Her mother was the block captain
and they participated in community events. She would testify that when her father passed,
he left that property to her and her brother, that her brother became ill and he was managing
the property. When he decided to renovate it, he found out that his rental license had expired.
Before he could correct the violations, he passed away.
Ms. Davis then took over the property,
and she is continuing to try to renovate this property
and realize her inheritance and maintain her father's legacy.
And that's all she would testify to.
Questions from the board?
Yeah, I think the one question I have is it does look like there's a number of violations
going back to the early 2000s at this property.
both before it was transferred to you all
and before when it was still in, I guess,
or in the previous owner's name.
And I guess my question is,
what's going to ensure that this doesn't happen again to this property?
I mean, it looks like this family's owned it for almost three decades,
and I'm seeing 17 L&I violations,
many of them which started to deal with deferred maintenance issues
and lack of repair that led to their initial license sort of expiring.
So what's the plan to ensure that this go-round,
it doesn't happen with this next generation of the family?
Well, this is the plan.
Ms. Davis, who is an attorney herself, she was located in Washington, D.C.
She has now moved back to Winfield.
She maintains two locations.
She actually lives three blocks on Drexel Road from this property, so she will be an active manager of the property, and she's hired a property manager, I don't have his name, who will manage this property.
she'll be in the area and she'll be able to be contacted if there's a problem with the property
and she will be able to go around and look at the property and maintain a connection with those
she plans to rent it to. So she would testify that she plans to maintain this property. She's back in
the area now and she's taking over the handling of the Davis and Davis properties and that her
brother Maceo died within the last I believe within the last year he was managing it previously
okay and then I think my just second point would be to just make sure that we're getting all the
necessary permits and things that we need to sort of paper this accurately going forward because it
does look there was a tremendous amount of work that got started without permits both electrical
and structural and so just you know um miss davis it is her intention uh once we get the zoning we
can get the other uh permits uh to cure the uh violation uh for the work which was done which
was not permitted but at this state now we can't continue the only license we could really get
which is what she got uh was the property was the vacant property license we couldn't really
proceed with any of the others without the zoning. And then my last question is to the best of your
knowledge, do you know if the like most pressing L&I violations have been cleared or if those are
still outstanding? Because it does look like there's a few for like major roof and water
penetration issues. It's my understanding that there are only really two outstanding violations.
One is a mechanical violation, and one is a mechanical violation, and I forget what the other one was, but I don't think currently that roof violation is outstanding.
Okay. All right. Those are all of my questions. Thank you.
All right. Those are all of my questions. Thank you.
Any other questions?
Questions from our attorney?
Not at this time, Mr. Chairman.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
Here, I have a hand up from Craig Melodosian.
I will promote him.
well he must have put his hand down sir yeah i don't think he's winfield