It was a former, it was formerly zoned G2 industrial, dating back to the 1930s.
It was used for industrial use, kind of carrying on from the last application.
The Billy Pencorp actually utilized the property for years.
And you can see here at Tabby T in the Sanborns, you can show, it shows back in the early 1900s, how the property was utilized by the Billy Pencorp.
through the 70s, the 80s, into the 90s, and then sometime between 90 and 2000, the buildings were
demolished and remained vacant until my client purchased the property. The Sanborns show a
larger parcel. This parcel has been split up into two different parcels and three phases of this
project um the two prior phases one on north this street which i'll show you in a minute
um which is right here was previously presented to the zoning board by me
um and that was presented back in 2019 um is there were four buildings that are identical to
the building eight that we are presently proposing um each of those it was uh they were four eight
unit buildings and we have one eight unit building being proposed here at building eight but again
this project was approved with a height and a lot area uh variance um the uh required lot area for
the number of units that were proposed at that time was uh 14,888 we had 12,158 uh available so
um there was quite a bit of difference there and uh but the zoning board did grant the variance
particularly given what you had going on in the area at the time and still have going on.
You can see here there's a lot of vacant land still in the immediate area.
If I go to the aerials here and you back up, you can see that the property here, right below Burke Street,
we have a Burke Street frontage, Cadwell Otter frontage, and then a small North 5th Street frontage for this particular parcel.
But you can see here in this photo where the phase one has started under construction.
And you'll see photos that that is actually almost completed.
But to the south of us, you have what was the Honor Foods facility or operation, a large vacant industrial, I mean, large, very large industrial property that's with a vacant parking lot right now.
You have very large former industrial buildings that have been converted to lofts or apartments down here on the west side of Fifth Street below West Montgomery Avenue.
and then a lot of other vacant land in the area, too.
And as I scroll in again, you can see our property right here.
This is a view from Cadwell Otter, from Berks.
This is a view from Cadwell Otter, from Berks, from the south from Honor Foods, and then
from the east from North 5th Street.
You have non-residential properties of a gym over here to the left of us, and then a non-residential
property that's to the north on the 5th Street side of the project, and then a non-residential
to the south between us and Honor Foods in this little portion here.
uh the property well like i mentioned was previously zoned uh g2 industrial remap to rm1
and you can see in the zoning map down here in the bottom left hand quarter and again you can
see that that singular property that i showed you back with the sanborn maps um has been separated
off into two parcels um phase one here on north history and then there were two phases here on
And the remaining lot, 430 West Burks.
And so as I started to say, you had these projects here, the eight four-unit buildings.
And then you had by right buildings here, which was phase two.
And that was six buildings, eight dwellings each.
So you have 48 units there.
And that was all by right, meaning the RM1 requirements.
So what we came back to do, and those were built without parking at the time, and as you know, there's no parking requirements in RM1.
So this project involves two buildings and the completion, the third phase of the project, and that is proposed building seven, which was a 72 – it's a 72-foot-tall building that was proposed initially for residential use only.
There were 35 units proposed in that building.
And then, again, similar to the other buildings on North 5th Street that were part of Phase 1 that are almost completed with construction now, we have the last fill-in building down there, which, again, is eight units.
So a total of 43 units, in addition to the units that were already, the 48 units that were already permitted for this lot, 430 West Berks, brings a total to 91 units total.
So 43 parking spaces are proposed, as you can see, if you add them up with the required ADA and EB units.
Our notice of refusal, and while I did not have any, I did not waive the reading and stipulated to its accuracy, it's not a particularly well-written notice of refusal.
But essentially, we have two refusals. And one is that we don't quite have the lot area on this parcel for the 91 units. We have the lot area for 88. That's without any bonuses.
If we were to do a green roof bonus, for instance, we'd have 110 that would be permitted.
So we're a couple of units short or a couple, a little bit of square footage short of the required, not very similar to the difference for the units that were originally built with Phase 1 on North 5th Street.
And then the other is we have a height refusal for both the building, Building 7 and Building 8.
And again, building seven or building eight is exactly like the buildings that were built in phase one and that were granted a height variance by the zoning board back in 2018 and 2019.
So for the same reasons that we feel that the board granted the variances for phase one in terms of the height and the lot area, we feel those conditions still exist.
And particularly now, I mean, at that time, Honor Foods was still in operation, and now it's laying fallow.
So in terms of Building 8, we feel that the same basis for the grant of the variance exists in this situation.
As far as proposed Building 7, again, it's largely residential.
It's all residential.
We are providing about, for the total project between phase two, which was done by Wright, and now this phase three building at the corner, we're providing pretty close to one to two parking.
We provided a dog run, green space, and interior area.
One of the main reasons for our height variance, aside from the fact that Burke Street is an extremely wide right-of-way, it's 70 feet wide.
so 70 feet wide. And the fact that I can show you photographs of, as you may know, if you drive up
and down Burke Street, coming off of, let's say, Temple's Campus, that there are a lot of tall
buildings on Burke Street. And from a zoning map standpoint, there are a lot of other properties
that extend. You can see here, this is our parcel over here, but you can see there's ICMX.
here. This is our parcel over here, but you can see there's ICMX parcels that extend to the east
of us, and then there's some to the west of us. And in that zoning district, our height is
comparable to the height that's permitted. And that's just literally like a half a block away
where these start and some of the tall buildings either exist or can be built as a matter of right
to similar heights. But going back to the design, aside from the fact that you have a very wide
burke street you have zoning classifications up and down burke that also permit for tall buildings
as a matter of right um the the our open area we chose instead of covering the lot that 75 percent
of the structure we're we're we are proposing far less uh occupied area our open area actually
exceeds 50 percent it's 52.76 percent so we kind of what i like to call a squeeze the we took the
balloon and we squeezed it um closed it anyway so instead of spreading it out the units 88 units
99 91 units over the lot that's 41,789 square feet in size we took we took the building we took
the gfa and there's no gfa criteria in rm1 but we located it at the corner and created an impressive
building there at the corner to house the residential units while allowing the parking
and allowing more open space for the use of all of the residents of the overall project,
the wall three phases, one, two, and three. Here's a watercolor rendering of the building
from Burke Street, the corner of Burke Street and Cadwell Otter.
Here is a color elevation. You can see the building, the taller building at the corner of
Cadwell, Lotter, and Burks.
And then that's here on the right, Phase 3.
And then Phase 2, you can see the by-right buildings extending to the left.
Here is a view from Brook Street of the proposed building here for Phase 3
with the 35 residential units.
And then the buildings that were the first phase
and were done with variance from the zoning board for lot area
and for height you can see the first four buildings and then the fifth going in here
and you can see here from the photographs if I can go real quickly I'm just going to scroll I'm
going to show you the buildings that have been built thus far so these are the buildings that
have built thus far part of the phase on North 5th Street and the proposed building as was shown in
the rendering will be very will be the same type of building they're really beautiful buildings
um the so for given this given the history of the property given how long it laid fallow laid
vacant for well over 20 years um given the prior variances that were granted for north 5th street
given burke street the width of burke street the other tall buildings that exist on burke street
You can see here, I took photographs within a couple blocks, up and down, but buildings all of similar heights.
See here, heading over, you know, getting as far, I mean, getting to Temple is pretty far east, but you can see that Brook Street does have, bumping right into Temple's campus, has a lot of buildings on it, and others that can be built as a matter of right, as you can see from the zoning map.
i do have floor plans at tab 9 and again zoning archives at tab 10 that do show the history of
the property dating back to the 30s of commercial use copy of our zba appeal to the board and project
information form are at tab 12. copy of the notice of today's hearing that we posted at
the property in conformance with the requirements of the zoning code you can see those photographs
at tab 14. tab 15 is the deed for the property showing my client owns the property tax clearance
at time 16 and then the 14 303 notices are at tab 17. south kensington community partners because
this was viewed either individually for this phase three or in its totality as a larger project they
required us to have two meetings with their zoning committee and two meetings with the full community
So it was zoning committee, full community, zoning committee, full community.
We, Mr. Chairman, you referenced the letter from the community group.
There were three provisos that were referenced.
There were things in the letter that unfortunately weren't accurate.
They mentioned how we refused or would not accept the request for a commercial space.
actually at the second community group meeting
Actually, at the second community group meeting, well, the second zoning committee meeting and the second community group meeting, we did submit and provide revised plans that did show commercial use at the ground floor.
or the second zoning committee meeting
and the second community group
And I have those. Let me see where those floor plans are.
And here's the floor plans that we presented.
Now, there was a little bit of a back and forth.
Fourth, they asked us at the zoning committee meeting to provide that commercial unit at a discounted rent.
We came back to the community meeting and said, sure, we'll give it for this period of whatever period of time we had discussed.
I think it was a couple of years for free rent.
We were chastised for giving too much discount, I guess.
You see in their letter that it's not free rent.
It's something less than free rent.
But there was a lot.
I'll be honest with you.
I mean, I've dealt with this group a lot.
I like dealing with this group.
But like the people who are involved, they do a great job. But the letter threw me off, threw my client off, between being non-opposed, having no position, making statements about not refusing to put in the commercial space when we designed it and presented it.
Um, there was, uh, in the proviso, there was a request for the, that there be some type of cooperation with whoever buys the honor food slot to the south of us or owns it for some type of walkway to go between Cadwell Otter and North 5th.
I mean, you can see from Cadwell Otter, I mean, there's not a lot going on in Cadwell Otter.
But with that being said, there was just no specifics to it.
This is all Brook Street.
Let me swing around to Cadwell Otter here.
I mean, you can see, I mean, this is Cadwell Otter Street.
I don't know that there are that many people walking up and down Cadwell Otter.
But there just weren't any specifics to it.
It was involving a third party that wasn't part of the discussion at this point.
Um, we didn't know what was being requested. So we would have cooperated if we knew what was going
on or would have tried to cooperate, but, uh, it was just, there wasn't enough specifics. And then
in terms of the affordable units, we had actually discussed providing them. We ultimately didn't
finish the conversation necessarily about what the AMI would be, but to be honest with you,
with the way things are going right now in the development industry, you've heard it time and
time again throughout the day today. You have projects that have been approved by the zoning
board or by right over the last several years with affordable units, without affordable units
that just don't pencil out right now. So we will try to do that. We would continue to work with
the community group and try to work something out in that respect. But again, I'm really unclear
with their letter because they gave a letter of non-opposition, I think, without the provisos.
I did ask them in an email, a couple emails, whether they had taken the vote without the provisos.
They wouldn't give me an answer.
And things kind of broke down.
So I'm a little confused about their position and what it is.
We attempted, we made every attempt to cooperate when we came back to them.
And so the representation that we refused is just not correct.
You want to bring your client on?
Sean, are you still on?
I'm sorry he may have
had to jump off
but if not I could have Eric
quick because I think Eric's on
was on originally but had to jump off
and if Eric can raise his hand
at least he can adopt
I think he can adopt my statements
and if Sean is on
then he can raise his hand
as well and be sworn in
Is there anybody raising their hand?
Yes I'm
allowing them to speak now Chair
okay so that was rustin oler eric quick yeah eric or sean franklin
they've been allowed to speak hi rustin oler here i could please state your name and spell
for the court stenographer sure rustin oler uh r-u-s-t-i-n last name o-h-l-e-r right do you
swear or affirm tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do proceed counsel yeah
rustin um did you hear the statements that i made to the 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 yes and i don't
know if rustin is or um that's fine questions from the board and mr chairman i just might say
if we were to add and i discussed this with the zoning board's attorney if we were to add the
commercial unit, we could not vote that case today.
We would have to amend the application because that would generate another refusal.
Questions from the board?
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
Wait a minute.
You have hands up?
Sean Frankel, hand is up.
But I mean, I think we have to.
Yeah, but the testimony has been adopted.
I think we're fine with that.
How about Sloan, folks?
He's from Councilwoman Lozada's office.
But I'll get to Sloan once I do the board, right?
So the board's okay?
I'm sorry, Chair.
All good, Chair.