So sorry about that, working from an iPad.
So this is the packet basically my client's looking to do, they were refused, they're
looking to do vehicle repair and maintenance.
It's a CMX2 zoning district.
They're not looking to do any paint or have any signs.
This is an open lot.
It does fit about seven vehicles inside. So they're not looking to leave any vehicles on the street. There was a permit that was, I believe, issued several years ago, 1987. And I guess it was never followed through. I believe that was before my client owned the property.
before my client owned the property. I'm just going to go through here. We have
the deed that's attached. We have some plans. We're not looking to do anything of
structural changes to the property or physical changes necessarily. I mean, this is a lot.
We have CMX2. There's some RM1 around, some RSA5. The particular street is between Duffield and Dara streets. Here are some photos. This is the property. It's just basically a lot. Been a car a lot for several years.
If you look up the street, there's not many residences. If you're looking this way, I believe this is towards Dara Street. On the left, there is a fire station at the corner. There's a couple residences. There are some lots and vacant buildings. Right across the street, it looks like there is a church that has its own parking lot.
This is the other direction looking towards Duffield Street. And there's some vacant buildings and some other lots there. This is the church that's across the street. I'm not sure if that's occupied or not. My client tells me there's another mechanic that operates up the street. This is the lot. It does fit several cars. I'm sorry that my photos are a little to the side here.
um but essentially that is the substance on it there were some emails as i mentioned
and they're attached contacts with the rco we do have the tax clearance
um but essentially like i said there it's not many residents residents on this block
um it's been a car lot for several years um and they're not looking to do any changes
I do have my client, Ms. Elizabeth Silva.
She should be on by phone, and I would wish to call her just to ask if she would adopt my testimony.
Please raise a virtual hand.
Ms. Silva, do you hear us?
I don't believe I see her in the...
Counsel, you're an officer of the court. We'll take your testimony.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Chairman.
Questions from the virtual audience?
mr sloan folks has his hand raised i will allow him to speak at this time
good afternoon chairman bergman and the zba board good afternoons mr folks my name is sloan folks
s-l-o-a-n-e f-s and fire o-l-k-s office of councilwoman maria quinones sanchez room 508
City Hall, 7th District.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do so.
Thank you, sir.
We are, our office is comfortable
with a resumptive hearing
in as much as the
applicant has not met
with the RCO. We weren't
privy to the emails back
and forth. So to that end, we
would like to offer our assistance in facilitating
a meeting between the RCO
and the community.
uh of the rco and the the applicants uh and for the record um we would like the record to remain
open uh so that um our office can weigh in as well as the rco and uh any letters from any other
community uh nearby nearby neighbors and we do know that the uh captain of the fire district
across the street had sent us a letter um and he um and he had some concerns uh so we would like
for the opportunity for everyone to be heard um at the community meeting and uh move forward from
there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Folks. Anyone else in the virtual audience?
Do you know him, sir? Tanya, so we're going to leave it open and reschedule it for a resumptive
hearing. Tanya? I'm sorry, Chair. I'm looking for a date.
So, any idea what a date?
Yes, I'm looking for one now.
Take your time, take your time.
We can do April 6th at 2 p.m.
Thank you, Mr. D'Arizio, and thank you, Mr. Folks, for volunteering to help.
Thank you very much.
Have a good day.
and thank you mr chairman may i be excused thank you mr chairman and members of board have a good
afternoon number three mi 2021 003128 1827 cuyoga street counselor is pritzker rco letter in
opposition from the 13th democratic group miss pritzker has been promoted to panels
good afternoon i state your name and spell for the court reporter please
for rachel r-a-c-h-a-e-l pritzker p-r-i-t-z-k-e-r uh 16 sorry 1521 locust street suite 605
philadelphia pa 19102 right do you swear a firm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but
the truth yes mr holliman has a few questions good afternoon counselor do you agree to the
reading of the refusal and stipulate to his accuracy yes according to our records you have
submitted all of the required documents is that correct yes sir thank you please proceed thank
Thank you. Okay, I'm going to share my screen. Chairman, members of the board, the property at issue here is 1827 Cayuga. As you can see, it's this corner lot. This is a long standing, non-conforming use.
The property is currently zoned RSA-5. However, it has never been a single family.
The history of this property dates back to 1938, where in 1938 to 1967, this property was a grocery store with a residential unit above.
In 1968, this board granted a variance to modify the grocery store to a luncheonette, and it stayed that way up until 2016 and has been vacant ever since.
Again, it's a corner lot. It is zoned RSA 5, but it has never been a single family home.
As you can see from the packet, I'm going to just speed this up.
Here is our copy of a refusal. The refusals are for use as assembly and entertainment, which is not permitted in RSA 5.
and also for storage use to complement the assembly and entertainment use,
which is also not allowed in RSA 5.
Again, I went through the history of the property.
It's a corner lot.
It has never been a single family home,
and it always has serviced the community as a commercial space.
It was a grocery store, then a luncheonette,
and now we're looking to have it be an event space with no live music, I should add.
Again, the zoning map.
It's also important to note that directly across from the site are all CMX2 zoning classifications, except for this park here.
So it's not out of character to have commercial on this corner.
I would assume back in the day there were other commercial uses.
In fact, 1815 Cayuga, just a few doors down, received a variance from this board for it to have a barber on the first floor with a residential unit above.
The reason that there is no there has been no development on the CMX2 properties is because they're owned by the city.
And so they are just now long standing vacant lots right directly across from our parcel, which is right here on the corner.
Again, an aerial photo, aerial photo posted of the property, postings of the property.
I will mention the obvious that there's an awning that says event hall. Before my client got to me, she was obviously unaware that she needed to go through zoning in order to obtain the correct usage.
She is a young African-American entrepreneur that grew up in this neighborhood.
But as soon as she realized that she needed to obtain zoning relief and that it was, although it has always been commercial, she needed an exact use permit for that commercial use.
we started to work through the process.
So just wanna mention that as I know,
you can obviously clearly see the awning on the property.
on the property again we posted both the side of the property and the front of the property
Again, we posted both the side of the property
and the front of the property.
and then this is just the interior of the property as you can see there's nothing
currently in it this is the ground floor this is the top level
nicely renovated, but not being utilized. And again, a reason for these refusals is for the
RSA-5. This is the zoning permit from, I think, the 80s showing that it had a storefront in one
family home. Again, just to show that this is in context. And again, before that, the luncheonette
permit, a luncheonette for the ground floor with one family above. We met with the coordinating
RCO, which was the 13th Democratic Ward. My client actually met with them a time before I was
involved, and we had another community meeting back in October when I became involved in this
matter. I want to make a couple of comments about the community meeting. For starters, there was 31
people propose to be in attendance at this meeting, yet there are not 31 votes represented
here, nine of which are just the RCO's board. They're not affected neighbors or affected
addresses. There is support from the four people that live directly in the affected
area and then 18 of non-opposition from those who participated in the meeting but didn't
live within that 250 feet. The only opposition really was coming from the RCO board slash
committee as referenced in their own letter. Some of the things that they mentioned were
concerns with parking. However, I've driven this area. And also, if you can, you can obviously see
from Google, and given the amount of vacancy on most of the directly adjacent block and further
down. It really is not an issue with parking. There's plenty of parking. These are not going
to be, it's not a residential use. This is a commercial use that will have limited hours.
And so I can't imagine that they would take up all of this parking, especially given the fact
that there's parking on this side of the street near the property, and none of this is developed
on this side of the street. In my opinion, the rest of the concerns related to speculative
issues like noise even though this application proposes no live music it's just to be an event
space for baby showers or birthdays or um engagements things of that nature with no live
music um the letter mentions that this would create an attraction for rodents we're not doing
any construction to the site so i don't know how this would attract rodents or pests um in addition
in crowd control was something that we were willing to discuss, but we weren't going to
bring in a security team aside from putting cameras and lighting and limited hours until
we were further along in the process. And there were questions at the meeting asking if we were
going to have armed security and things of that nature, but we had not gotten that far. And you
don't typically line those folks up until you know you're about able to use the space. But we had said
that we were willing to work with the community and specifically the near neighbors in a way
that made them feel comfortable. But a lot of the concerns like this being detrimental or being
devastating is, in my opinion, just an opinion. And I think that most people felt like this was
something very positive that a young woman from their neighborhood was willing to bring this use
and people were excited about that. This is a petition that I had my client get signed because
I was wanting to make sure that given there were only four people from the immediately affected
area that showed up at the meeting, that she went around and spoke with those who actually live on
the block and are within the 250 feet. This has been provided to the board. She was able to
obtain a significant amount of signatures from those who actually live on the block
and the neighboring blocks, all in support of the project.
All on the screen and included in the packet.
So you can see there's overwhelming support for this,
aside from the nine individuals of the RCO board who were not in support.
We did properly mail out notice for the meetings.
And again, there were two meetings, one of which I was not involved in,
the second one of which I personally attended. There also are some letters from some adjacent
RCOs like the Stenton Park Advisory Board, a nice town, supporting the project and stating
um supporting the project and stating that they believe that this is going to be uh beneficial
that they believe that this is going to be
for the community and offers a safe place for residents to have events um in addition they have
a letter noted to the block cap from the block captain of the 4400 block which is directly adjacent
stating that she's held the position for many years she met she went to the rco meeting and
felt that everyone would be in favor and attended the first meeting where people were in favor
We also did receive at the end of the RCO meeting, we were kicked off the call so that there could have a be a private conversation that we were not privy to.
And so we were not actually privy to the vote.
However, there was some individuals that reached out once the letter was made public from the RCO and stated that they did not believe that what the RCO letter stated was in line with what they had observed during the meeting.
so they both signed affidavits stating that they personally showed up at these meetings and live in
the immediate vicinity and did believe that there were 11 to 5 in favor of the request for the
variance so we included those in our packet there was two different individuals and again this is
the adjacent property that was granted this is 1815 that was also granted a variance from a
single family to a barbershop with one family back in 2003 um so uh and just to touch on hardship
because i know that that's something that will get brought up as the board is can obviously see
from the screen uh if if we were forced to turn this into a single family home let me just get
back to the visual of it we would have to as you can see this is quite a large building we would
have to demolish not only the front of the building, which has been kind of stuccoed up a
bit, but in order to make this a single family home, but we would have to demo the entire interior
of what is there and try to somehow repurpose this as a single family home. I know that the
zoning code doesn't care so much about financial hardship, but we don't also have to show the
property has no value if it's not given the variance, but there is a hardship in that this
has always been a corner store or a corner amenity this is something the community supports it's a
large corner property and in order to meet the compliance of the code we would have to completely
redo the entire interior and change the exterior of the building with that said I'm going to just
bring my client on Mr. Chairman so that she can adopt my testimony and then I do believe that she
and other folks from the neighborhood would like to voice their sentiments on this project
what is the name of the client tamika marks miss marks please raise your hand if you're
in the virtual audience i'm not able to uh allow her to speak she's using an older version of zoom
are you able to hear me yes oh yes i'm here do me a favor please state your name and spell
for the court reporter please tamika t-a-m-i-k-a marks m-a-r-k-s do you swear or affirm to tell
the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth yes proceed counsel uh tamika have you
heard my testimony today? I have. Do you adopt it as your own and do you believe it to be true and
accurate? Yes. Thank you. Please feel free to briefly provide any other comments and then
I do believe that there you had said that there were potentially other individuals from the
neighborhood that would like to speak as well so if we can get them to raise their hand and keep
it brief as well to keep things moving. That would be appreciated.
Amika, you have other comments?
Marks? Yes, I'm hoping that you will consider allowing me to open up my event space because I've
worked very hard to get everything together. I put my life savings in it and I'm from that
neighborhood. I was born and raised and it would be such an opportunity to be able to give back to
my community and be able to own a business where I was brought up and raised in. It just would mean
so much to me to have that opportunity. And Tamika, while I have you, did you go around and
get signatures for the petition that I showed on my screen? I did. I went to each individual home
and the people know me from that neighborhood being brought up and raised. And they were just
so happy to see that that building had been, it was dilapidated before. So it was really in bad
condition. So they were just happy to see that I was able to get in there and get the property
together and bring up the neighborhood value to that area. So they were all in support of
um and bring up the neighborhood value to that area so they were all in support of me opening
and looking for a safe space just to you know that they can come to that with in their own
neighborhood our own neighborhood to hold events thank you no questions from the board yes mr