on this site so i guess i'm trying to understand with tree cover like what's the proximity
is this going to feel out of place for its location and look and look look out of place
not feel yeah yeah i mean we try to pick materials that are more you know ornamental in nature like
more aesthetically pleasing and we did um get art commission approval for this uh structure
so they thought that you know aesthetically it wasn't obtrusive you know and then my last
question is just a lot of the pwd pumping stations end up getting closed and then they sort of sit
as leftover infrastructure across the city and other neighborhoods um is there a sort of sunset
expectation on this already or is this something that we think is going to be in service for
a long time yeah no we anticipate the staying in service you know for decades if not longer
okay right other questions um go ahead just one uh so the actual erection of this building
and its use for basic services and utilities was authorized by a city council ordinance
Is that what I'm seeing?
So then what we're really here for is about the heritage trees and the replacement and or the payment in lieu of replacing some trees.
All right.
Thank you.
Questions or comments from our attorney, Hillary Emerson?
Not at this time, Mr. Chair.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience or the audience here?
yes chair we have daniel troopman with their hand raised
daniel troopman please let's have promotion to the panelists
he declined to be promoted hi could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
chair he declined to promotion okay thank you is there anyone else
there are no other hands play any commission
Thank you, Chairman, and good morning. David Fecto with the City Planning Commission,
Chairman and Board members. The comprehensive plan recommends no change to the special purpose
open space zoning at this location. The appellant has shown that this project cannot be practically
redesigned to protect the heritage trees for this critical public infrastructure.
The City Planning Commission recommends that the Board grant a requested special exception
for heritage tree removal thank you mi 2024 006 487 3401 west rod avenue i vote yes
proviso revised plans four pages stamped by cba may 28 2025 stamp pages 2 and 15 to 17
per conversations with l and i michael john my vote is yes with proviso
Tenetta Graham, my vote is yes with proviso.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes with proviso.
Tywin, my vote is yes with proviso.
Shmuel Shaheed, my vote is yes with proviso.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
Number 8, MI 2025, 000309-10151 Busselton Avenue.
Leonard Altieri is the attorney.
there's a letter of opposition from somerton civic 13 to 8 and a letter of non-opposition
from council member o'neill also there's an applicant provided support with two signatures
from neighbors on the block council could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
yes mr chairman leonard l-e-o-n-a-r-d last name is altieri a-l-t-i-e-r-i and i am with
the law firm of Claire Harrison Harvey Brandsburg here in Center City, Philadelphia. Do you swear
or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth? I do. Could you identify
your client, a relationship to the property? Yes, my client is Busselton HD LLC, which is the owner
of the property located at 10151 Busselton Avenue. Our vice chair has a few questions.
Morning, counsel. Do you agree to wait the reading of the refusal or stipulate to his accuracy? I do.
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits as needed five days in advance of
this hearing i did mr vice chair with the exception of a revision yesterday uh when we
received the letter of non-opposition from the councilman's office thank you council um please
proceed and show your screen. Thank you very much.
Okay. So again, good morning, everyone. Leonard Altieri with the law from McClare Harrison
for the property at 10151 Busselton Avenue. It is important to note at the beginning that
we are here for an application for a retail bakery with baking on-premises. The L&I refusals
for food and beverages and groceries in an existing commercial structure. The existing
commercial structure, which we'll get into greater detail through the presentation, was
originally approved in 1962 and has remained a commercial use and has been a commercial
operated entity or commercial operated property since that time. Again, we'll get into greater
detail, but I just want to make sure that we frame that for the board, you know, that it's been used
as a commercial property since the 1960s. It was approved, as I said, by this board seven years
before we landed on the moon to give a little context on how long that's been around. So again,
the property is currently 10151 Busselton Avenue. It is currently a daycare for the St. Luke
Orthodox Ukrainian Church. When you look at the property, and this is it from a sky view,
property is located right where my cursor is. George Washington High School is located to the
left. You do have some institutional uses, such as a synagogue across the street, and then there
are some residential structures around it. Again, this is a front view of the subject property.
and again a more zoomed out view giving you the context with the entire parking lot
again since its construction in 1960s the subject property has continuously been used as commercial
use it is located in the rsd3 and this is just going down pusselton again properties to the left
so george washington high school is to your right
and properties here here's church washington high school the property is in the rsd3 residential
single family detached zoning district it is also subjected to five overlay districts none of which
are applicable for this morning's hearing what my client is proposing to do is to keep the existing
walls of the structure and renovate it to do a bakery. The bakery will be the entire footprint
of the property, excuse me, of the existing structure. And we received the refusal from
L&I because the proposed use, the retail sale of food, beverages, and groceries is prohibited in the
RS3D zoning district. Again, the bakery will take up the entire footprint of the building,
and it's going to be Mediterranean themed. So they're going to have pita, which will be baked
on premises. Other baked goods, which will be cooked on premises, including cookies, baklava,
general sweets, hummus, olive oil, spices, coffee will be ground on premises. And again, pita will
be one of the large bakery items that they provide. There's also a small grocery that is
proposed, grocery area, if you will, which as you can see on the floor plan right here. So again,
shelves are going to be here. You're going to have some shelves in the back and then refrigerated
areas to similarly look as what we're showing right here. This will not be a sit down. And
after having conversation with the RCO, we will not even have chairs for people who are waiting.
That was one of the things that the RCO did request that there'd be no chairs on the inside.
There also will not be a bench on the outside. The RCO had some concerns about students congregating
afterwards. And my client is going to respect the wishes of the RCO on that. Hours of operation will
be 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week for customers. There will be reduced hours on Sunday.
We do expect that employees will be in there from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. The reason why the employees
will be there earlier is, again, because this is a bakery. Obviously, baking gets done early in the
morning. We are expecting that with regards to total number of employees, it will have around
four to six. Total number of parking spaces is what's already there existing, which is 19,
including two ADA spaces. We have had conversations with the neighbors, and we do have a petition of
support that was signed by three neighbors across the street. We've also had conversations with
other neighbors around who were indifferent to the project, but were not comfortable with signing
anything. And here is that RCO, excuse me, here is that petition of support, which for some reason
isn't coming in as clearly right now in these exhibits. We will have an exhaust hood. The
the exhaust hood will be located, the vending will be on the roof, and we will control that.
Understanding that we are in close proximity to neighbors, my client is going to be installing
an electrostatic air cleaner that will hang internally and will discharge fresh, clean air
from the top. These electrostatic air cleaners are for industrial-grade
venues, if you will, and they collect particles such as dust, oil mist, cooking fumes,
and various pollutants, usually in factories and machine shops.
But we understand that we are in close proximity to neighbors
We understand that we are in close proximity to neighbors, and so to cut back on the bakery smells, we are going to install one of these.
and sort of cut back on the bakery smells.
Again, it is important to remember that we're not preparing to cook anything on premises.
There will not be any fried food.
It will be purely the only thing being made there is going to be things associated with baking.
So, again, cookies and pita.
We will have loading and unloading.
That will occur in the back of the building at street level through the existing doors.
Deliveries will be as needed and only during business hours.
the storage and trash there's currently a a playground in the back that'll be a separate
enclosed trash enclosure that we will have for the for the dumpster area as you can kind of see
right here trash will will be picked up potentially three times a week and maybe even more if needed
and we will coordinate the trash pickup during business hours starting at 9 a.m not at 6 not at
AM, understanding that, again, we do have a lot of neighbors that are around us.
Now, I alluded to in the beginning of this presentation about the prior zoning history,
and I apologize, and we've already seen these.
This property was originally approved in 1962 for the erection of a medical center with
accessory all-street parking and an accessory sign.
That use has continued to the present day, with the most recent being, most recent decision
from the Zoning Board in 2016, granting a variance for a religious assembly along with
the previously approved use of group medical dental health practitioner. The site has never
been used for residential. The site is also not laid out, quite frankly, for residential use the
way that it is right now. With regards to the RCO meeting, as the chairman alluded and as part of
my exhibit packet, we did have an RCO meeting on May 13th where the RCO voted not to support the
variance. The vote was 8 to 13 against. As was stated in the letter of opposition, there were
45 members present. Only 21 members voted, so less than half. But none of the individuals who
were present at the meeting, none of those 45 that were there, and none of the 21 that voted
were members who were in the affected area. No one there received a letter of notice for that
hearing. They were just individuals as part of that RCO that came for their general meeting.
Again, while there's nothing controversial or concrete on why the application itself was
denied. The questions were pretty benign when we went through the presentation. The RCO letter did
state three or four questions that were asked as potential reasons of why we might have received
the refusal. The one had to do with concern about traffic exiting the site and making a left-hand
turn onto Busselton Avenue. Having conversation with the councilman for this district, along with
my client, we will, at our own expense and in coordination with the streets department, install
no left-hand turn, so you're only going to be able to make a right-hand turn onto Busselton,
so you won't have to cross over Bustleton to make that left. I think people were concerned
with regards to George Washington High School being there and traffic flow being pretty heavy.
Concern about proximity to the building to nearby residents. Again, this use for over 60 years has
always been a commercial use. We believe that this is a nice transitional use from the institutional
use of George Washington High School to what I will refer to as a soft commercial with a bakery
and then going into that residential district. Again, it's always been used as a commercial use
with those residential properties around it.
Again, being aware of the proximity of the neighbors,
we're going above and beyond
with that electronic electrostatic air cleaner
to collect any sort of pollutants or smell
that might be discharged from the baking.
And then lastly, there was concerns
about the adjacent high school
and the quote, afterschool misbehavior
of various kinds on the part of some students.
Again, my client originally was gonna have a bench out there
for people who were waiting for baking,
for their bakery items to be done.
The RCO, prior to the vote, asked if we would remove that.
We will still respect the wishes of the RCO, even though they gave us a letter of opposition.
We will not have a bench there.
But we don't view George Washington High School being right next to us as a detriment.
My client actually views it as a benefit to retain employees, to retain individuals who
might have an interest in the culinary arts, such as baking.
And that's something that he hopes to cultivate with that school.
The RCO did request, as a condition of approval, that we deed restrict the property so that
there would not be any sort of commercial uses, which realistically are already prohibited under
the zoning code, but that they view as concerning, such as tattoo parlors, medical marijuana,
dispensaries. They were all referenced in the RCO letter of opposition. Even though the RCO voted
to vote, voted against us, and we did say, you know, at the hearing, hey, we would enter into
that deed restriction. They still voted to oppose the relief that we're requesting today. So even
Even though we're no longer bound by saying, yes, we'll do that, we do believe that that's important to the RCO, and so we will deed restrict after final non-appealable zoning.
We will put a deed restriction in there to address the zoning uses that they have concerns about.
We will deed restrict our property to, again, be a good neighbor to that area.
uh to that area lastly and in closing again uh we did receive that refusal from l and i because of
Lastly, and in closing, again,
the the proposed use of retail sale food beverages and groceries is prohibited in the district and
we do have a letter of non-opposition from the councilman we were in contact with the councilman
prior to the zba here excuse me prior to the rco meeting and then also after the rco meeting
again highlighting the fact that we do believe this is a soft transitional use and also the fact
that for 62 years, it's always been a commercial property and has continued to be a commercial
property. With that being said, Mr. Chairman, I do have my client here that I would like to just
have adopt my testimony. Sure. Sure. Could you make sure that Mike's closed here? Could you
please state your name and spell for the stenographer? My name is Hashim Dahabra. First
name Hashim, H-A-S-H-E-M. Last name Dahabra, D-A-H-A-B-R-E-H. Do you swear or affirm to tell
the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.
Please proceed, Counselor.
Hashem, can you state what
your interest is to this property? You're the owner
of, are you the, excuse me,
are you the