single-family home construction is viable on this block the city planning commission recommends that
the board deny the use variants thank you mi 2021 005234 1636 north 26th street i vote yes
Carol Tenere, my vote is yes
Thomas Holloman, my vote is no
James Snell, my vote is yes
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes
Thank you
MI 2021-003-735-201 West Hunting Park Avenue
Attorney Tolliver
however if you're in the audience please raise your virtual hand
come back in as a panelist you see anybody
hold on let me i think i got him now
okay now he's being promoted to panel sir you're coming back in soon
good afternoon mr chairman mr toliver all the uh exhibits came in late to us
and we're going to continue the case oh okay we didn't get anything until late monday
okay no you we'll be in touch and we'll continue this particular case okay okay thank you
mi 2020 001579201 west johnson street um this is a resumptive hearing attorney bill kerr
okay mr chair mr kerr has been promoted to panelists who will be rejoining you soon
thank you
okay good afternoon mr car could you could you spell your name and uh state it to the court
reporter, please. I will. It's William Kerr, W-I-L-L-I-A-M. Last name is K-E-R-R. And I'm
the attorney representing the applicant here today. All right. Do you swear or affirm to tell
the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth? I do. Vice Chair, I think everything's
in. This is a resumptive hearing. So, Mr. Kerr, why don't you start and give us a sense of where
WE ARE. NEW SPEAKERS, OKAY, I'M GOING TO SHARE MY
Okay, I'm going to share my screen, if I can find that link. Here we go.
screen.
I think that is, are you seeing a hearing binder?
All right, again, this is a resumption of a hearing that was first held December 8th of last year.
And it relates to what we refer to as Building 3 on this particular property, 201 West Johnson Street.
At the time last year, we presented, now you see my cursor?
Yeah, could you make the, it's a little hard to see.
Try to make the, that's it, that's better.
Yep, thank you.
All right. So you weren't seeing my cursor? Again, I'm not sure I'm not seeing.
We should. We should.
Okay, good. This is the exhibit packet we submitted in December of last year. It included
the initial refusal, the supplemental refusal. We had some photos, including posting photos.
We had a facade rendering. We had various plans, including a site plan, elevations,
and some floor plans.
We had the RCO notice letters.
In the process, prior to December 8th,
we had been to CDR at the Planning Commission.
They had granted an approval.
We had been to the Historical Commission.
We had a Historical Commission letter.
We had also been to West Mount Airy Neighbors
and had a letter of support from the West Mount Airy Neighbors.
After hearing itself,
the Planning Commission supported the request of variances.
and at the end of the hearing um the the councilwoman councilwoman bass's office
unexpectedly took a position which opposed the application which surprised us that was the first
time we had become aware of her um opposition we're back here today essentially to supplement
the record um that we had made back in december with some additional um testimony including
evidence on our legal position which is that based on what's happened to this at this property
to date that we have a legally recognizable vested right to complete the project as initially
approved including building three which again is the subject of this application and that legal
vested rights theory is based on first of all Nolan property's reliance on the city permits
and approvals that have been granted uh to date dating back to 2009 uh its development of the
various infrastructure on the property and then its completion of buildings one and two
on the property uh given that um uh what's happened today nolan has a total investment
of over 30 million dollars in this property including five million dollars or so of which was
spent on the infrastructure and that infrastructure served not only buildings one and two but it was
also designed to accommodate building uh three and the entire development so at this point i'm going
to swap over to a hearing binder for whoops that was the wrong one so okay so initially i had
okay so this is this is the binder for today um and i'm just going to run through here real
quickly just the first three exhibits we have some posting photos to confirm that we did you
see the posters here we did post a photo or excuse me property again another poster for the today's
hearing. Tab two, we've included for your convenience a copy of the transcript from the
December 8th hearing. I'm not going to spend any time on that other than to let you know
that it's here. And then I'm going to get to tab three, which is the current plan. And
so just to refresh your recollection, this is building one, what I'm circling, this is
what we call a presser building. This was constructed in the 2009 timeframe. It has 45
senior apartment units, which are occupied by tenants who are qualified as affordable
housing tenants. It was constructed under the federal low-income housing tax credit program,
so there are rent and income restrictions on the tenants here. Building two is this building here,
which is sort of a back at L-shape, which is referred to as the Nugent Building.
That's occupied by 59 affordable senior tenants.
Both of these buildings are senior buildings.
You can also see that there's significant infrastructure, including the road services, building two, this parking, which service is building one, which has been installed to date.
You can also see that there's significant infrastructure.
now at the time of the um so this is building three we're proposing now um 165 units 135 of
those will be one bedroom 30 will be two bedroom units at the december 2021 hearing we were
proposing that 40 of the 165 units would be designated for seniors and then 125 would be
for general occupancy. Now subsequent to that hearing we've had a number of contacts
Zoom and other meetings and correspondence with Councilwoman Bath's office and we discussed a
number of issues in those meetings and Zooms. The Councilwoman let it be known that her preference
for this property really was senior apartment units.
So based on, in reliance on those discussions,
my clients today are committing that all 165 of the units
that are proposed for building three
will be designated for seniors that are 55 years and above.
Mr. Richardson confirmed to my clients,
Mr. Sudol and Mr. Hedges,
Mr. Rollins, that based on that commitment to occupy these solely as senior units, that
the Councilwoman was no longer opposing the project.
So at this point what I'd like to do, I think Mr. Richards is on the call, and I would just
ask for him to maybe raise his hand and confirm that what I just indicated.
mr richardson good afternoon mr chair i state your name and spell for the court reporter please
charles richardson from the office of councilwoman cindy bass last name r-i-c-h-a-r-d-s-o-n
room 312 city hall do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the
truth i do proceed uh based upon their commitment that they were going to make this a 100 percent
senior building as opposed to market rate as they were originally uh attempting to do
uh the councilwoman is not opposed to the uh to to the variance at this point um
she is still concerned about the about the uh community i do believe this there might be some
community folks that might be coming on but just to know that that she at this point is
not is not opposed to granting the variance based on their commitment. Thank you, Mr. Richardson.
Okay, thank you, Mr. Richardson. What I'd like to do is just walk the board now quickly through
the balance of our exhibits. And actually, it might be easier if I just go back to the
cover sheet. I could just indicate to you what we have in here and that you can review
the various documents as you believe necessary. So again, we've gotten down through the current
plan in Tab 3. Tab 4 and Tab 5 all relate to the initial permit and approvals which were granted
for this project back in in January of 2009. It includes the permit 11-2906 issued January 14th
of 2009 for the overall project that was building one, building two, and building three. As part of
that there were support letters there was a support letter from Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller that
was part of that process and then there was also a I believe it was a letter from four separate
community groups, including
Mr. Carr, Mr. Carr, I understand
what you're saying here, but why don't we just concentrate
on the third building? I mean,
back in 2000, I think
we understand that we have it in the package,
but let's just concentrate on this building here.
Well, all these permits, though,
included building three. That's part of
the... I understand, but
I'd really like to just concentrate
on building three. Okay, what I'm going to do
that. I'm just going to scroll through here and show you the plans that were approved with each
permit. Okay, so you can see what the evolution of the plans were. So that's the current plan.
Okay, I jumped too far. Okay, so this is the original 2009 plan. Building 3 was a linear building, approximately the same square footage, approximately the same height. And so that was approved as part of this plan, again, with Presser and with Studio.
Okay, I jumped too far. Okay, so this is the original 2009
and then this is a later iteration of of the 2009 plan again the the building free was still in its
linear configuration um we also one of the things that we had to do was we created a declaration
of condominium which is a fairly significant document uh which requires significant plans
I don't have them all in here but I just put that in there to let the board know that there
wasn't significant expenditure on the declaration of condominium. So this then we get to 2011
which is the second iteration. This involved some changes to building two, the first iteration
and then there was a second permit that same year which essentially added a wing into building two
so in addition to staying out building two we added this wing and then building three was
was constricted a bit in its in its configuration
so that was the plan which was something that subsequently led to building two being constructed
in 2014. And then in 2014, based on the success of the first two buildings, which were constructed
as affordable housing senior units, Nolan decided that they were going to take building three
to create a U-shaped configuration and split it in two. This building to the right of the U
was proposed in 2014 as another senior affordable building which was to be constructed under the
low-income housing tax credit program. We went through as far as getting zoning board approval
for this. This is a zoning board stamp of I think it's July 14th of 2014. Before this plan,
Nolan then submitted their application for financing to Pennsylvania Housing Finance
agency on two occasions and both occasions they were they were turned down and the message back
for phfa was that we already had two affordable senior buildings on this site and phfa determined
that they'd rather not have a third affordable building mr carr this is in 14 this is in 2014
correct yeah could you could this is approved by the zoning board because of that that financing
process, we never pulled a permit on this because we were going through the financing
process.
So fast forward a couple of years and we came in with the, yeah, this is just some,
these are just some support letters relating to the 2014 plan, including from the West
Mount Area Neighbors.
And that's the end of the package.
So basically that package indicates history. And again, in 2014, we were unable to get financing.
So when things calmed down financing-wise, the clients essentially went back to a similar plan,
but connected the senior building, right-hand side of the U, to the overall, to the larger building, the remnant building.
And we're now just proposing essentially the equivalent square footage and units, but in a single building, which we've now agreed will all be senior.
So that is the history. Again, there's been very significant work on this, very significant investment in the development that's been completed to date and in the infrastructure completed today.
So we believe that based on the history that I've given you, sort of a thumbnail sketch of here, that we're entitled to be recognized as having a vested right to this building free that we're proposing here today.
Thank you.
That's what I have.
Go ahead.
Well, I'm going to have the board ask, is your presentation done?
That's my presentation.
I'm just going to call Mr. Segal, who testified last time to have him adopt my testimony here today.
Go ahead.
Rick, are you here?
Oh Rick was a stand up a moment ago but he put it down for some reason I don't know
Mr. Kerry, you're an officer of the court.
Mr. Curry you're an officer of the court you're an officer of the court
You're an officer of the court.
I will confirm that as an officer of court, that what I've stated here today would be
confirmed by this.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Mr. Chairman.
Can I just make one last point then?
You can.
I did include a short vested rights memorandum outlining the law on vested rights.
and the key criteria as to proving or be entitled to vested rights.
And these are the five criteria.
I just want to go through this real quickly.
The first is there is due diligence in attempting to comply with the law.
We believe that we did that because we came back numerous times
and obtained the permits which were required.
There was good faith throughout the proceedings.
Again, we did everything that was required in the process.
going to the community organizations, the planning commission, historical commission,