Tanetta Graham, my vote is yes with proviso.
Number five, MI 2024-007-299-609-Adden Street, I vote yes with proviso.
Approved use visitor, visitors only, visitor accommodations only.
And temporary variance expires 6528.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes, with provisors.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes, with provisors.
Tanetta Graham, my vote is yes, with provisors.
Number six, MI 2024-005-345-1014 South 25th Street, I vote yes to reconsideration and rehearing.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes to reconsideration, rehearing and reconsideration.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes to reconsideration and rehearing.
All right, let's get there.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes to reconsideration and rehearing.
Tynetta Graham, my vote is yes to reconsideration and rehearing.
Thank you.
Mr. Chair, on this one, we'll actually need to, sorry, hold on one second.
Oh, never mind.
It was a different one.
The Annan Street case, Mr. Chair, we're going to have to re-vote with one board member, when or board member Shahid joins us, because board member Graham wasn't present for that case.
So we'll just need to re-vote that one once one of them arrives.
Okay, thank you.
Number eight, MI 2025, 000459-1627 East Air Street, Jeffrey and Margaret Bladen.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and good morning to the rest of the board.
Thank you for hearing our case this morning.
My name is Jeffrey Bladen, spelled J-E-F-F-R-E-Y-B-L-A-D-E-N.
Right.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
So this application is for the erection of an addition to connect the existing principal structure and previously approved addition per ZP 2024-010868
six eight to an existing accessory private resting parking garage to create a single structure on the
lot no change to previously approved single family living use with accessory off street parking
structured parking whereas the minimum required rear yard depth for lots in the rsa 7 zoning
district shall be nine feet and the resulting structure here proposed addition has a rear yard
depth of zero. There's a letter of support from the Fishtown Neighbors Association, a letter of
non-opposition from Council Member Young, and there's a letter of support from the neighbor
who shares your party wall. Why don't you start your presentation, sir? Thank you very much, and
again, thank you for your time this morning. We submitted an extensive list of exhibits. I do not
intend to go through the entire list of exhibits, but I'm happy to answer any questions you may have
about anything we submitted.
I have a short presentation to hopefully maximize
the time this morning and minimize the required review.
Excuse me.
Searing my screen.
Hopefully this works.
Is everybody able to see my screen at this point?
It's loading.
It's loading right now.
So share screen, screen sharing is paused, resume.
So I think what has to happen, you have to open your documents, then hit the shared screen
button.
Oh, that's what I did.
try this again
time off sharing and then stop
my apologies
why don't you start over again
let's try this again
it wouldn't be a zoom call if there wasn't
some small glitch
there you go you're up
Okay. My apologies again for the delay. Thank you again for your time this morning. My wife, Margo, who's also on the call, and I are longtime Philadelphia residents, although we've been away from the city for just under 10 years, and we're excited to return.
We are working to renovate a neglected row home in Fishtown and connecting it to create a single, seamless, sustainable home in the neighborhood, trying as best we can to adhere to the character of the neighborhood using traditional red brick design and so on.
And so what we also are trying to do is adhere to the spirit of the RS5 zoning, which calls for buildings to be connected along the streetscape and to match the setbacks of one another.
Um, unfortunately, the, the only option we were given in order to create that kind of seamless structure and setback on Tulip Street, which is the main frontage, despite the address being on Ayer Street, um, was to actually tear down the existing row home on, uh, Ayer Street and build a new, uh, structure on Tulip Street.
Unfortunately, the only option we were given in order to...
We, of course, didn't want to do that. Our preference is to renovate all of the structures on the lot.
It's a unique situation where you have two separate structures on two neighboring streets on a corner property.
So our goal is to renovate and create a single sustainable home.
Our goal also is to maximize the green space.
We're actually, when considering the green roof that we'll be building, we're more than doubling the amount of green space on the lot.
And we are asking for what is the absolute minimum variance.
We've already got a building permit for the design.
The only thing that's missing is the building permit currently includes a six-inch gap between the new structure and the existing accessory garage structure.
I'll show you a picture of what that gap looks like in the approved building permit in a moment.
And as you noted, Mr. Chairman, the Fishtown Neighborhood Association not only submitted a letter of support, but I hope they shared that it was unanimously supported by every neighborhood in attendance at the meeting.
There were many that submitted letters of support as well.
We're taking a dilapidated property and renovating it into something that everybody has told us that feels like a real addition to the neighborhood, but still maintains the character.
You did have 35 votes in favor.
yep um i'm not gonna go through the appeal description you just read that a few minutes
ago just to give you a sense of what the property looks like so on the left you'll see an overhead
view with two different buildings facing two different streets uh and then on the right you
can see sort of a different view that shows sort of from the corner looking down on the property
where there's a whole bunch of pavement that we're going to be uh removing and and it'll be
largely replaced with a structure that has a green roof on it adding green space and then you
can see from from Tulip Street the dilapidated accessory garage that exists there today and
our goal is to create a seamless streetscape on Tulip that matches the neighboring residents that
you got a support letter from with red brick that would that would cover the the Tulip's streetscape
rather than having a gap between the garage that's shown here and the addition,
which would otherwise be required by the zoning interpretation.
In addition to having multiple green spaces on the lot,
what you can see here is an elevation that was created for us by Solar States,
who we have under contract to install solar energy on the rooftop of the addition and the garage.
They're also going to be installing battery storage that will help us get the house to nearly net zero energy consumption.
So in addition to substantial green space, we're going to be adding a fair amount of renewable energy, and we expect to mostly power the home with solar energy.
And as I mentioned, the section in the middle of this rendering that shows a one-story building that is a new building, that is going to be topped with a green roof.
And that is instead of what is currently there, which is essentially paved concrete parking lot.
Again, here's a layout view from the architectural drawings.
You can see on the left, we have two different buildings with a large concrete paved surface lot in between them.
The new addition is going to largely cover the space where you see that concrete paved parking lot.
And we're going to be renovating the space in the rear where there's a storage shed currently to have additional green space as well.
And we're going to be fully renovating the structurally sound portions of building one as shown that faces Ayer Street.
There were some not structurally sound portions at the rear of that building, but we're going to maintain the entire 1890s era row house section.
There was a 1950s era addition that wasn't structurally sound, isn't structurally sound.
And I'm going to keep moving.
So what you see here is on the far left is the current existing footprint of the lot with this unique setup where you have two different streets and buildings on two different streets.
unusual in Philadelphia to have something that looks like this and we inherited this and tried
Unusual in Philadelphia to have something that looks like this.
to come up with a design that was within the character of the neighborhood but also took
advantage of of the existing structures rather than tearing them down and building new which
unfortunately has been quite quite a lot of what's been done in Fishtown so by right we've got a
building permit for that center drawing which includes the addition in the center of the
property along tulip street and what you see circled in red is a small gap that was required
by the zoning interpretation that would prevent us from connecting the new structure to the existing
accessory garage structure the ask today is nothing more than to close that small gap
So when it says there's an ask for an addition, we're not asking for the major portions of the addition that are rendered in the middle there.
Those are all approved.
We have building permits for them.
We're only asking for the literally to close a six inch gap between the two structures to create that seamless streetscape with seamless red brick along Tulip Street.
And so, as you see on the right side of the screen, the only difference between what's already approved and building permits issued and what we're asking for today is six inches of connection between those two structures so we don't have this weird gap between the buildings that you would not normally expect to see in a row home city like Philadelphia.
So, the picture that you see now on your screen is the stamped building permit.
The upper portion, upper left portion of the image shows what the gap would look like if it were built that way.
Again, it's unusual to find buildings that have gaps like this in a neighborhood like Fishtown where the expectation under RS5 is that the buildings are seamless and connected.
That's our intent with this variance is to live up to the spirit of the RS-5.
And so that's all we're asking for is this minimal variance to allow us to connect the structures of what's already been approved.
You can see in the lower right a rendering of what it would look like without a gap.
and then last but not least um we uh we convened with the fishtown neighborhood association who
we've been uh we've been excited to get to know all of our future neighbors um there was quite a
lot of discussion and and uh all of our neighbors ultimately were very supportive of the of the
variants. They see the value of the property being renovated like this. They certainly see
the value in what we're trying to do, which is to renovate rather than tear down and to renovate in
a way that maintains the character of the neighborhood as best we can, while also adding
quite a lot of green space and using clean energy to power the home. As you see, it was unanimous,
the support uh we did have one abstention um but i'm told that was because somebody just
they had registered but didn't vote um and um uh we uh you could see the the the support letter from
the um from the fishtown neighborhood association covers a number of the items i just went through
that uh that they appreciated not the least of which is that we're also not uh building to the
maximum allowed under the zoning which is often the case in fishtown we're building well under
the maximum we're only building the the primary portion of the addition is only one story tall
instead of three we're adding green space rather than subtracting green space the totals lot
coverage when we're done by the letter of the law would be just under about 65 64 if you include
the green roof were well under 50% lot coverage. So the neighbors were all appreciative of that,
particularly the neighbors across the street in Memphis Flats, the seven-story condominium
building, which will look down on a nice green roof rather than a large structure that might
otherwise be built. And as was noted, we are now friends with and have the full support of
our neighbor that shared the party wall with the garage that is being described as having zero
setback when we're done it has zero setback today so there's no change in that situation
the six inches that we would be filling in with this variance are entirely in the property that
that is our will be our home it's not we're not reducing the setback from our neighbor terry
we're we're only maintaining what's already there in fact we're going to be renovating that building
we're only maintaining what's already there.
In fact, we're going to be renovating that building.
so it'll
So it'll be better when we're done than where it is currently.
So in the Salem, we're asking for the absolute minimum variance
that we could ask for to try and live up to the goals of RS5,
which is to create a seamless streetscape.
It was a unique condition that we inherited.
We did not set this out where you had these two different structures
on two different streets, but we're trying to make the most of the property within the character
of the neighborhood. We're trying to do it sustainably, adding clean energy and green
space to the lot. And we have the full support of all of our neighbors. And so while we know that
the letter of RS5 zoning is interpreted by L&I, didn't allow for attached buildings. We think that
the variance actually lives up to the spirit of the zoning, maybe more so than the interpretation.
So happy to take any questions and appreciate your consideration of this variance request.
Right. Questions from the board?
Yeah, I do have a question or two. So the lot was already consolidated when you acquired it?
Yes, sir. As far as we can tell, it's been consolidated as far back as records go.
We looked at the Sanborn fire maps going back to the 1950s.
It was consolidated.
In fact, the section of the lot that has the accessory garage on it and the surface parking back into the 1800s was apparently used for wagon and horse stable parking.
So there have been vehicles, so to speak, parked on that lot for a very, very long time.
It's a very unique project.
Unfortunate that your presentation didn't allow us to really sort of see what the plans look like because it's so small.
I guess it's part of a PowerPoint, so we can't really see the plans and how they look.
But you described it well.
It's just difficult to read these plans to kind of see really what's happening on the site.
But a very unique project.
sounds like it's going to be really nice. Thank you for that. We're excited to add something
to the neighborhood to move back. It's been too long since we've been in Philly. We're excited
about it. The questions from our board members? Questions or comments from our attorney, Hillary
Emerson? Not at this time, Mr. Chair. Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
Yes, Chair. I have a hand up by the name of Robert Everett.
I will be promoting them to panelists.
Good morning, Mr. Everett.
Whoops, took me a second here. I'm sorry. Good morning.
Good morning, Mr. Everett. Please state your name and spell for the court stenographer.
Sure. First name is Robert. Last name Everett, E-V-E-R-E-T-T.
You swear we're firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Please proceed, sir.
My usual. We're in full support of this project and happy to have Jeff and Margo back in Fishtown.
All right. Thank you very much for calling in. We appreciate it.
Is there anyone else in the virtual audience?
i see no more hands at this time chair planning commission thank you chairman and good morning
david vecto f-e-c-t-e-a-u with the city planning commission do you swear or affirm to tell the
truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes sir i do please proceed thank you sir chairman
and board members the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the rsa5 residential
single-family zoning at this location the city rezoned this neighborhood in 2015 in accord with
recommendations in the comprehensive plan the appellant is building in addition connecting
their existing home to an existing garage the appellant has not shown they were suffer they