CD hub to the community
and like that we go
and try to help people
help people
help people is our
commandment
did you hear me
make my presentation to the board just now
you were in the same room right
and that everything I say to the board
was accurate
and you would adopt it as your own testimony okay uh does the board have any other questions
of the pastor so one on one uh questions from the board no mr chairman no chair and jim snell
i have you jim thank you jim okay thanks thanks bill okay basically no chair okay thank you okay
Thank you, Pastor. Basically, what brought the church to this point is they were operating, minding their own business, doing exactly what the pastor was saying.
And then eventually, one day, a city inspector came in and said, you're not zoned, you're operating illegally, and we had to start the process.
Okay. So, Hillary, the refusal is because it's detached, right? It has to be completely detached?
Right. And there's space.
Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Mr. Vaccaro, let me talk to my attorney.
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, no, I'm talking to Hillary. Hillary, so what would the vote be on this?
well the only so if the board wants to consider that their that the refusal was issued an error
then we would need to really have an appeal against lni and call in um leonard to to um
deal with the case that way or we can vote or we can just vote on the the variance request noting
that the that there is an objection on the record to the refusal all right all right thank you um
hillary you have any other comments i do not at this time thank you um comments from the virtual
audience i see no hands chair planning commission thank you chair bergman and good afternoon david
effect with the city planning commission chairman and board members the comprehensive plan recommends
no change to the residential single family zoning at this location um the continuation of this use
will not injure the use of adjacent properties the city planning commission recommends the board
grant proposed use variants for religious assembly in an attached building building thank you um
MI-2023-004-877-2802, Boldenine Street, I vote yes and take note to the appellant's
comments relative to the detached structure. Is that okay, Hillary?
That's fine, Mr. Chair. We won't include it as a proviso, but we will note that,
you know, for the record, the argument is preserved. Thank you.
So I, MI 20, 23, 004, 877, 2802, Bodine Street, I vote yes.
Thomas Holliman, my vote is yes.
James Snell, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you.
Have a good day.
Okay, so number three, MI 2023-004-601-900-204 North 2nd Street.
David Orfanides is the attorney.
There is a letter of support from North Liberty's Neighbors Association.
David Orfanides is coming back in as a panelist.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
Hi, David.
Could you please state your name and spell for the court stenographer?
Certainly. David Orphanides, last name is spelled O-R-P-H-A-N-I-D-E.
Certainly. David Orphanides, last name is spelled O-R-P-H-A-N-I-D-E-S.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir.
Could you identify your client, the relationship to this property?
Certainly. My client is 900 N 2nd Street, LLC, near owner of the property.
Our vice chair has just a few questions.
Good afternoon, counsel. Do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
i do have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that is needed and
required to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing i did forward everything
it was not five days in advance there was a miscommunication and um they were submitted on
monday understood council please proceed and share your screen thank you can you see my screen we can
Okay. So again, my name is David Orphanides. I'm with the law firm of Orphanides & Toner. I'm here this afternoon for 900 to 04 North 2nd Street. I have a photograph of the property up on the screen right now. As you can see, it's a corner property. It's located on the northwest corner of North 2nd Street and Poplar Street and Northern Liberty section of Philadelphia.
I have with me today a representative from the owner, 900 N2nd Street, LLC, as well as the architect for the project on the call.
And they will be adopting my statements later on to conclusion of my presentation.
As you can see, the subject property is presently an undeveloped lot.
There is no structure existing there.
um historically uh if you take a look at the sanborn maps as i've included at tab 13
you could see at one point um this property was composed of three separate parcels
902 904 north second and 203 poplar this goes back to 1929 sometime between 1951 you see here
In 1976, you see here, the structures on the property were demolished.
And from that point, sometime between 51 and 76, to the present day, the property has remained a vacant lot.
Recently, it was utilized as outdoor seating for a restaurant that was at the property next door.
um so but other than that there's been no structure that's been uh that's existed here
uh as you could see both in the sanborn maps that i showed you as well as the zoning maps
uh the sanborns are tab 13 the zoning map at tab 10 as well as the deed that i have included uh at
tab 16 you can see that the property is extremely irregular in shape it's wider at second north
2nd street and then tapers down considerably uh as it extends westward down poplar street
and in fact you can see from the zoning drawings that we have here
at the front and i will zoom this in a little bit for you
there we go um the property narrows down to just uh about 12 and a half feet to the west
and we're at a considerable 37 feet at North 2nd Street.
So you can see it cuts down almost in half.
If this were a rectangular building,
we wouldn't even be, I mean,
a rectangular lot with a rectangular building on it,
we wouldn't even be here today.
But because of the way the property tapers to the west,
it's necessitated one refusal that we have here,
which is an open area refusal.
For corner lots, as you know, with CMX 2.5 zone properties, which is what we have here today, the required or the maximum permitted occupied area is 80 percent, and we're at 89.96 percent.
Going back to that existing photograph, you can see that we are located between – I'm just going to change this.
You can see that we're – again, we have a budding building to the north of us, 906 North 2nd, and then another building to the west of us at 209 Poplar Street.
Neither of these properties have the required rear yard depth.
We do have the required rear yard depth here. We're nine feet required, and we're a little bit over 11 feet.
And they also similarly have less than the required open area.
And again, if you take a look at the Sanborn maps, you can see here that I'm circling this is 209, which looks to occupy 100% of the lot.
And then here's 906 to the north of us, 209 to the west, to the left, 906 to the north or above our property.
906 to the north or above our property, extending all the way to the rear property line.
extending all the way to
There is a little bit of open area, a court here.
There's a little teeny part of this that belongs to 209 Poplar Street.
The rest of it belongs to 906.
But we don't have, so abutting us, our property to both sides are non-conforming structures.
the application is for a five-story building with the required commercial space at the ground floor
here you can see in the upper right hand corner we're utilizing all of the ground floor for the
non-residential non-parking use except for the entry the lobby which comes in the lobby for the
residential units and staircase and elevator that comes in off of poplar street this property is
Zone 2, CMX 2.5, the lot area is 1,686.08 square feet.
I've included provisions from the zoning code, which indicate with a lot area of this size,
we would be permitted just over six residential dwelling units.
We are only proposing four, one at each of the levels, one residential flat at the second floor,
one at the third floor, one at the fourth floor, and one at the fifth floor.
As you can see on the elevations that I have up here on the site plan, we have bay windows and balconies on the Poplar Street side, and we have bay windows at the second through fourth floors with a balcony above that at North 2nd Street.
We did add a balcony above the bay windows on North 2nd Street, similar to what occurs on Poplar Street, and that change was made through the process that we've gone through to get to the hearing today, and that's the only revision we have to the plan that was originally submitted and reviewed by the Streets Department, the Planning Commission, and the Department of Licenses and Inspections.
Again, the only refusal we have is the occupied area slash open area.
There is a corrected notice of refusal that was issued back in November.
There was some language issues with the description of the project.
The original notice of refusal is included here.
You can see they missed the reference to where the balconies were located originally on Poplar Street.
And that they had read the examiner had indicated that the four dwelling units were only originally at the second, third and fourth floors, as you can see here on the original notice of refusal.
And I had him correct that. So it included the fifth floor as well, which that is part of the application.
And that's what was posted at the property. As indicated, we we did meet with Northern Liberties and we have a letter of support from them dated December 4th.
The 14303 notice is at tab 21 of our exhibit book.
You can see here's the email from the Planning Commission designated Northern Liberties Neighbors Association as a coordinating RCO for the project.
The list of addresses at 21B, copy of our 14303 notice that went out, and the certificate of first class mailing.
uh real quickly uh at tab six you have a rendering of what is what will what the proposed structure
will look like um it blends in very nicely with the other structures that are to either side of
us as well as other recent development including a large-scale development on the southwest corner
of second and poplar directly across the street from us but other buildings that uh have also
been constructed or exists on that North 2nd Street corridor above Spring Garden Street in
the Northern Liberty section of Philadelphia. Here are colored elevations that dictate and show
the materials that we're going to be using and the different floor levels, the height of the
building. CMX 2.5 permits, as you know, a 55-foot tall building. We're showing a building that's
slightly below that, 53 feet, five inches, I believe, with a maximum height of 55 feet.
So I think it's clear that my clients, although we need more occupied area because of the odd
configuration of the lot, we're not looking to squeeze out every little last bit of this property.
Again, we are far fewer number of units than what are permitted. The height, we're even
trying to keep it below what's permitted. And we're not taking advantage of any affordable
housing bonuses that would obviously increase the height in additional seven feet and provide us up
to an additional 50% of units. We do have shadow studies at tab nine, as we often do when we're
looking at dimensional variances. And what the shadow studies would show you, would do show you
if you were to study them, is that the shadowing that are the additional...
is that the shadowing that the additional depth or the lack of open area creates doesn't have any
additional impact on the surrounding properties from what would be permitted as a matter of rate
and far less than what would be permitted with bonuses that are available for this property.
um quick quickly in aerial aerial images of showing our property um the development this
the development on the southwest corner again the very large development is is further along
than what's shown here but you can see again the property to the north of us above us in
the aerial image and then to the left and west of us in the aerial image those that exist there
right now and then a tag 12 existing photos that i took showing the surrounding structures
and here you see that large-scale development going off directly across the street and similarly
zoned property and i have the zoning archives for both the budding properties and some of these
other large larger new development properties or projects that have gone in to this corridor
since properties were remapped to 2.5.
So in conclusion, real quickly,
tab 17, we weren't able to pull
the tax compliance certificate,
but we do show a zero tax balance.
Here's a copy of the notice for today's hearing
that was posted at the property,
along with a copy of the corrected notice of refusals.
You can see we posted on all the frontages for the property,
both on North 2nd Street and on Poplar Street.
So we feel that given the odd configuration of the lot, given its longstanding vacant use or vacant condition, vacant and no structure existing there, given the lot coverage of the abutting properties, the lack of rear yard for the abutting properties,
The fact that we are providing the rear yard depth, but we are going to be extending to the building, to the wall of a building, directly to the west of us, that we feel that the criteria for the granting of a variance have been satisfied in this case.
And we request that the board grant that per the revised zoning drawings that are included at PAB 2, along with the revised provisor form at 2B.
And that would be one sheet.
And if real quickly I could have Matthew Elson and Ryder Kalick promoted to panelists, I would have them adopt my statements.
I'm sorry, you said Matthew Elson and who else?
Ryder Kalick.
C-K-A-L.
I'm sorry.
It's okay.
Mr. Elson is free to speak.
I'll do Mr. Elson first.
Thank you.
Sir, could you state your name and spell, please, for the court stenographer?
Matthew Elson, E-L-S-O-N.
Right.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Proceed, counsel.
Matt, you're the architect for this project, correct?
Correct.
Correct. And you prepared the drawings or involved in the preparation of the drawings that we have up on the screen right now?
That's correct. And did you hear the statements that I made to the zoning board today?
I did. And are they true and correct to the best of your knowledge?
Yes. And would you adopt them as your own?
I do. Thank you. And then real quickly in terms of for the ownership, if I could have Mr. Caleb promoted.
I don't see a Mr. Caleb.
I have a Jada Ackley and an Eric Carroll with their hands up.
A Daniel.
Oh, here we go.
Caleb, K-A-L-E-C-K.
Correct.