That will be made part of the record. Thank you, Mr. Albert.
Thank you.
Anyone else wishes to speak on this case?
I have no more hands. You can proceed, Chair.
Thank you. Questions from the board?
Planning Commissioner.
Chairman and members of the board, this property is indicated for residential use on the comprehensive plan.
With the removal of the commercial on the first floor, we feel that it will not increase any potential impacts of the surrounding neighborhood.
Accordingly, we have no objection to the granting of the variance.
Thank you.
Calendar number 39299, 337 South 18th Street.
my vote is yes with the following proviso trash to be stored inside and to have commercial pickup
my vote is yes with proviso yes with proviso yes with proviso yes with proviso yes with proviso
thank you thank you have a good afternoon sounds like you're singing
um it does yes with proviso sounds like there's wine involved calendar number 39293 1500 dickinson
the attorney is vince tofino
is this continued case
no I know that Mr. Dufino was trying to sign on earlier and this case Dickinson Street wasn't
listed as an option so he signed in under another case that was withdrawn Hope Street
I don't know that that makes a difference as far as his ability to get in now Mr. Dufino you've
been promoted to a panelist and you can now speak ah there we go there you go hi do you agree to
waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy yes i do and you also swear to
affirm to tell the truth and nothing but the truth sorry frank always do always do okay
All righty. So 1500 Dickinson, I represent the LLC. Anthony D'Alessandro is hopefully on board
somewhere. He is the principal, one of the principals for the LLC, and he's a lifelong
residents resident of South Philadelphia this is a CMX one zone property on the
southwest corner of 15th and Dickinson I could I could pull some pictures up I
think if you you sure enough that would be helpful okay my daughter helped me
with this so without her I'm useless on the computer but do you see the
pictures hello not yet help me Nicole why don't you do this why don't you go
through with your testimony while you're trying to get the pictures oh okay one
second all right oh I gotta share my screen now I go okay so this is a view
of Dickinson Street this is the building there it's the southwest corner 15th and
Dickinson it's the the old deliverance church which was also a boarding house
up until a few years ago and basically the refusal is because we want three
residential units there and in doing so what first of all it's a 16 by 6 times
times 75 corner lot so it's a it's a very vast building it sits on a very big envelope and
75 corner lot, so it's a
basically my clients my client who's from five blocks from the neighborhood went to the neighborhood
and said what would you like here would you rather have commercial and two residential or would you
and three of the adjoining neighbors said that they would rather have residential there
because there's several reasons.
Basically, parking, there's two businesses on the other corners,
and they believe that they wanted to enclose the whole property
because there was giant decks off the side, as you can see, on 15th Street.
One of the decks runs the other property.
The first floor goes all the way to the other property.
That's an existing condition.
um so what i wanted to do is basically go to letters from the the closest
residents to the property and i'm trying to get to them now um hold on a second
that's the letter from the zone now call can you get in here again
that's why you're going at it you have any floor plans yeah we do have floor plans all right you
want to see them first before the letters yes all right the floor plans now we they submitted an
original plan that I'm giving you the initial plan later on it was agreed by everybody that
we could build all three floors out to the end of the property line. But the original plan doesn't do that. So we're just going to submit the original plan. And at a later point, if we have to go back, we will
I'm not clear the original plan calls for extending the original plan is right here. It doesn't call for extending the all three floors to the end of the property line.
You had decks on the original plane?
Yeah, you can see the original plane here, the decks.
Second floor and third floor would each have a deck, correct?
That's on the original.
They originally do have decks, if you look at the pictures.
They're existing.
They're existing decks.
And the bottom deck goes all the way to the back wall.
uh and the neighbors were concerned with that so they wanted to enclose they wanted us to enclose
the whole property to the property line so they wouldn't have these giant decks uh but when we
went to go amend it of course covid hit and we couldn't submit the plans anywhere so that's
basically where we're at we're in a situation where uh we we have neighbors that want the
whole property enclosed and we can't get to that you know so we so what I did
is I said I submitted the original plans to you because we would have to amend
them but from a practical standpoint what in the decks serve a purpose at
least to put for the people on the second floor and third floor to have a
place to put out trash well because where's trash want to be stored in the
there's a basement area which would which would be for all the residents all
they would all have access to the basement yeah I believe they would have
access to the basement area so but anyway we said what we did is we
submitted the original plan because I can't amend it so we submitted the
original plan which calls for for for deck area in the back and stairs and a
staircase well the staircase will be on the side but we may be able to change
that at a later point, pursuant to to the code. Let's go to let me go to the letters real quick.
All right. So now, basically, we, this is the letter from, I'll give you the letter from the
RCO first. The board, none of the members live in the area. The issue with the board is not
property coverage or anything like that. They're agreeing to three units. They just want the first
floor unit to be commercial. So there's their letter. And it just basically says the community
was opposed to the elimination of the first floor commercial space. No objection to the second
residential unit there was four people there for the board and they wanted to
people there for the board, and they wanted to hear it. We did a lot of studies. We showed them
hear it we did a lot of stuff
that there's absolutely no demand right now for commercial space, the COVID atmosphere,
the riot atmosphere. There's going to be a surplus of commercial space on the market.
So we made all those arguments, but they didn't want to hear it. They basically said,
this too shall pass, and we want the commercial space. But we said the adjoining members,
The adjoining members, Nicole, we need to get that letter up.
I can't get past that.
The adjoining neighbors agree with us that basically they want residential.
So I can give you the letters from the adjoining neighbors.
This one here is from James Wright, and I'm trying to find his property address.
Oh, okay. Yeah, his property address is up here.
I'm having issues, technical difficulties.
We understand that.
I've been having them myself.
I just want to go back.
Did your neighbors give you any reason why they wanted the building to take up the entire footprint and eliminate the patios?
Yeah, and I do have a plan.
The reason being because of noise in the back area.
Parties.
It's actually about 50 feet long.
The abutting property, as it goes back, are there windows on that abutting property that face the back of this property?
So it's a blank wall, right?
It's a blank wall.
All right.
It's a blank wall.
I have a concern, I would think that my, at least as far as I'm concerned, that the patios would serve a purpose, at least for the place for trash.
Because I don't see people storing trash for a week in a basement.
I just don't see how that's going to work out.
But I understand the neighbors are always worried about people sitting out on a deck and talking, but can't have it both ways.
All right.
So there's three letters from 1502 Dickinson, one's from 1510 Dickinson, and here's a petition that was put together.
Only one neighbor attended the meeting with the board, despite us paper in the whole neighborhood.
They talked to, we got three letters from the adjoining neighbors.
all the neighbors are for residential use basically even the neighbor that was in the
meeting she was a block and a half away she was for it then we left and then there's a board vote
and all of a sudden she was in opposition but we have her outvoted by the by the very near neighbors
all right before you hold on a minute is there anyone else to testify on this tanya
Yes, we have the property owner who wishes to speak. You are unmuted. You can go forward and speak.
This is Paul Markowich. Can you hear me?
Yeah, please spell your name and address for the record.
I mean, give us your address. I'm sorry.
Yep. Paul, P-A-U-L. Last name is Markowich, M-A-R-K-O-W-I-C-H.
I hope you swear and affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Yes, I do.
Can I interrupt you, your address, please? I'm sorry.
Address is 708 Mount Pleasant Road, Bryn Mawr, PA, 19010.
And you are one of the principal owners?
Correct. There's three owners in 1500 Dickinson, LLC.
It's myself, Anthony D'Alsandro, which is mentioned, and Rich Lilletto.
Okay. Do you have something you wanted to add to Mr. DeFino's testimony?
I just wanted to add to questions that Vince said, what Vince had mentioned.
So the first floor property is full property line, already existing, already built.
The patios start on the second floor and the third floor, which that is the current open
air space.
We are planning to have trash all housed in the units so that people would have access
to the basement, but the trash would be housed in the units.
to the near neighbors um as vince had alluded to the the the preference was to have the staircases
enclosed have it all 100 lot coverage so that there is no open space on the second and third
floor and having it 100 residential and actually just wanted to add in it in um in going around
the neighborhood in the area we feel in looking at the corners there's about 50 of the corners
in a really, I call it three block north and south and two block west radius.
I call it three block north and south and two block west radius. So 15 corners in that area,
about 50% of all those properties are currently residential. So this project was a boarding house
for a church prior to this that provided housing for homeless people, really not in great condition
as it was. We're not making any changes to parking. And there's really not a vibrant commercial scene
in the area with mostly residential corners, vacant corners, bodega markets, and we think
Broad Street really is the commercial corridor, which we're next to. So then the three neighbors
who signed it is our neighbor south on 15th Street, where we have that adjoining party wall
with no windows, and then the two neighbors to the west on Dickinson. And those three neighbors
are the most affected by us building on the space that Vince has shown there on the screen,
and all three of them signed to have that space filled, have no open air on our property,
and also have it residential. So just wanted to add that as really the main reason why we're
coming to you today with a vacant, blighted building that we think could really add value
to the neighborhood in what the neighborhood's already asked for. Let me ask you, Mr. Markowitz,
in the current configuration of the building, the second floor and third floor, how many bedrooms are
in there? What would you have if you did not extend the building out to the adjoining property?
So right now, they're, they had, the current configuration was not great because, again,
it was more of a boarding house that there's, all the rooms were turned into bedrooms.
The biggest challenge we would have is the staircase location. Because of the width of the
building to make the most optimal use of the units, we have that extra space on the second
and third floor. We can, the staircases really need to be east to west and south on the building
or they would just take up too much space inside of it. And it would then be very hard to have
bedrooms and hallways that we think would be suitable for a condo that could sell for maybe
$300,000 in the neighborhood. Well, let me stop you there because you broke up a little bit.
a center staircase is something you would not consider or no so we think a center that we would
consider we'd like to put it in the space that you're seeing right there so in the in the with
that with that center staircase would you have two bi-level units on the second and third is
that what you're proposing no we're proposing one unit on each floor so one two-bedroom unit on the
first floor one two-bedroom unit on the second and one two-bedroom unit on the third floor
with the staircase being on the south side of the building, which you're looking at right here
next to the neighbor's building. And then we'd have each unit would be full from north to south
on Dickinson heading south. So you'd have the Dickinson Street, the window 15th, and not having
the staircase in the middle of the building, which would chop up the units and not make them as
desirable. Well, the reason I asked was I've seen where, actually I did a building once many years
ago we did a staircase similar building corner property we did a center staircase but when you
got up to the second level it broke off to the right was a bi-level apartment to the left was
a bi-level apartment so they were able to get two full apartments that were bi-level i'm not
suggesting you have to do that i'm just looking at it was a position i'm more concerned about
providing an area for trash that's one of my biggest concerns and and if we're and if we can
gain the approval for three residential units that's something we can consider of just do we
make the staircase in the building still using full lot coverage and and maybe keep the trash
in the basements if it's desirable but we can't see how it can work with the open space as it is
because the unit is so small currently okay all right anyone else to testify on this um can you
Yes, Chair, we have Lauren.
You can unmute yourself and give your testimony.
Yes, hi. Good afternoon
to the chairman and the board. My name is Lauren Tavis. I am
co-chair of the East Point Breeze Neighbors
RCO zoning committee. I'm also
a resident that lives within two blocks of this applicant
location. I need to spell your name please for the record. Lauren, L-A-U-R-E-N, Tavis, T as in Tom,