And I just want to go on record and say how appreciative I am of everybody listening and helping us to keep the integrity of the housing stock of our neighborhood in order.
Thank you.
Mr. Williams, thanks for calling us.
We appreciate it.
Next hand, please.
Lauren, is there anyone allowed to speak?
hi could you please state your name as spelled for the court stenographer
first name lawrence l-a-w-r-e-n-c-e last name battle b as in boy a-t-t-l-e
mr battle do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
that is correct yes please proceed please well i've had some some interactions with pha in the
past and i've been um you know i've had mixed emotions with with them this particular project
i'm extremely excited about because i actually have a family that lives about three blocks away
or three houses away from this property and it's been uh it's been going through a few
or three houses away from this property and it's been uh it's been going through a few transitions
here and there back and forth and i really would love for pha to actually cater to the larger
families and this is actually the the project that i actually gave uh yeah i was very excited about
when they said they wouldn't cater to larger families so um i do i do appreciate um them thank
you mr battle thank you very much for calling us is there anyone else
i see no hands at this time planning commission thank you chair bergman a good afternoon david
effecto with the city planning commission chairman and board members in 2014 the zoning map was
amended from residential multi-family in this neighborhood to commercial mixed use at this
location in accord with recommendations from the comprehensive plan this property has a documented
history as a ground floor commercial unit with a two-floor single-family dwelling above. The
appellant seeks to turn the former commercial space into a residential unit. The proposed
ground floor residential use is consistent with nearby properties on an otherwise residential
zoned block. The City Planning Commission recommends that the zoning board grant the use
variance. Thank you. MI 2023-003-775-3148 West Burke Street. I vote yes with provisos.
Separate entrances from exterior to be provided for each unit must obtain a certificate of occupancy.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes with provisos.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes with provisos.
jane snell my vote is yes with proviso ty owen my vote is yes with proviso
thank you counsel thank you numbers of the board for your time and consideration
we're going to number five mi 2024 000 969 38 3801 woodhaven road brandon saverin is the attorney
there's a recommendation of support from Parkwood Civic. 33 supported, five opposed.
Mr. Saverin. Brandon Saverin is coming in as a penalist.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Saverin, could you please state your name and spell for the
court stenographer. Yep. I am Brandon Saverin of the Dilworth Paxson Law Firm. My name is spelled
B-R-A-N-D-O-N. And then S as in Sam, A, V as in Victor, R-A-N as in Nancy. Do you swear a firm
to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes, I do. Could you identify your
client relationship to the property? Yes. My client is the school district of Philadelphia,
which is the property owner thank you vice chair has a few questions
good afternoon counsel do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal or stipulate to its accuracy
um i agree i agree to waive the reading um mr vice chairman but i do not stipulate to its accuracy
um as i'll discuss that's fair have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that
is needed to proceed with this case obvious in advance of this hearing yes i did thank you
mr saverin please proceed and share your screen okay one moment
okay good afternoon members of the board as mentioned my name is brandon saverin i represent
the school district, who is the property owner at 3801 Woodhaven Road, which is the subject
property.
This is a very large property of over 47 acres, according to the Office of Property Assessment,
which the school district has owned since the mid-19th century.
It acquired it in two pieces, first in 1847 and then in 1915.
and it has been performing education and educational related services on this property
before the adoption of the zoning code in 1933. So accordingly, there is some discussion
that I'll give in a moment about how our use of the property is a legally non-conforming use.
I have submitted 15 exhibits to the board, which I will ask be moved into the record of this case.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I'll go through those and then provide a little bit of legal argument at the end of my presentation.
So I'll start with Exhibit 1, which is our refusal. I'll actually save discussion of the points of refusal by L&I for later, but let me dive into what we applied for here.
So I'll start with Exhibit 1, which is our refusal.
I'll ask.
So we are applying to essentially upgrade and modernize what is currently on the property
and has been for some time, which is a bus depot.
There was a while ago also a school next to the bus depot, but the school is no longer
in operation.
So the property is a bus depot and it has a perimeter fence around the entire property.
But we are applying to install a high, 10-foot high security fence, not to replace, but to supplement that perimeter fence.
And this fence would be on the interior of the property, as I'll show you on our site plan in a moment, and would specifically surround the bus parking lot rather than the entire property.
It's needed because, unfortunately, the property has been struck by vandalism in recent years, namely people stealing parts from buses, and the fence we currently have just isn't sufficient to prevent that.
In addition to that, we will be installing a new fuel tank in the bus parking lot area and a new modular prefabricated building to serve as a security headquarters.
So that's complementary to the new fence. And then finally, right here, the refusal mentions an additional new accessory building beyond the modular security building.
That quote unquote building is actually a little shed that will house an electrical gear switch that will go next to a new PICO transformer.
So this building here in the second line is not for occupancy by people.
It's just a piece of equipment that complements the PICO transformer.
The PICO transformer is exempt from the zoning code.
So that's not mentioned here.
and i'll show you how all these things will be located on the property in a moment
so exhibit two is the zoning map of the property in the area the property is owned rsd2 but on
you know about half of the different edges of the property there are not residential uses so to the
southwest of the property is the woodhaven road expressway which is how most of the buses access
this property. They turn off of it onto the very beginning of Byberry Road here and then come into
the property. To the southeast of the property is Knights Road, on the other side of which is the
Philadelphia Mills, formerly Franklin Mills Shopping Mall, and the adjacent shopping centers
around it. So that is a non-residential area as well. There is a residential neighborhood to the
northeast of the property and a small one across Byberry Road to the northwest of the property.
To the north of the property is another lot owned by the school district, which contains
woodlands, some athletic fields, and an elementary school called the Stephen Decatur School.
And Exhibit 3 is an aerial from Atlas that shows some of these features. Our property,
in addition to the Decatur property, has woodlands as well. And I'll zoom in a little bit here.
So you can see those woodlands exist on some of the edges of the property and in the middle
of it. And essentially, other than the woodlands, the property is sort of bifurcated into two areas,
One being the bus depot area, which has parking grounds, the bus maintenance garage, and a couple other accessory structures.
The remainder of the site, which is far less paved with impervious surfaces, has school buildings from prior school uses on the site, which none of which are used at this point.
And I'll show you photos of those in a moment just so you're familiar with what's there.
But again, all of this in the South is vacant.
And this is just a close-up of the bus area.
Exhibit four is our proof of tax clearance.
The property is exempt from local property taxes because it's owned by the school district.
Exhibit five are copies of the two vesting deeds as proof of ownership, which I'll sort of skip right by.
Okay, Exhibit 6 is our notice posters for this hearing, the orange posters.
Okay, Exhibit 6 is our...
We hung them twice because we continued the original hearing to allow for a second RCO meeting.
So I'll actually skip to the second set of posters here, still in Exhibit 6.
The reason we had a second RCO meeting about one month after the original RCO meeting
is not that the public was opposed to our application.
I will say that there was, in fact, strong support for our application.
And I think that in addition to the RCO's support,
there is a letter of support that was sent directly to the board by the councilman's office,
although I didn't have a copy of it in time to put it in these exhibits.
That all being said, the broad sentiment here of neighbors and the public, not that it was universal, was they are happy to see the present use of the property continue.
They preferred that to some drastic change of the programming on the site.
And we're happy that we're going to be increasing the security at the site, which is really the central aim of this project.
And the notice posters just give me an opportunity to show you what the surroundings look like. So this is a typical section of the perimeter fence. One of the pieces of feedback we got from neighbors, and it is a big chore, but it's to try to do a better job trimming the foliage on the outside of the perimeter fence, which we endeavored to do a better job of and have started.
Anyway, here's what the opposite side of that fence looks like facing Franklin Mills across Knights Road. Another shot across Knights Road. This is the Woodhaven Road Expressway.
And this is Byberry Road with houses on the other side. Just to say again that with the exception of I think one side, there are roadways that buffer us from surrounding neighbors.
where there are neighbors. Exhibit seven is our meeting summary by the RCO. 36 of the 41 members
of the public that attended the second RCO meeting voted in support of the project, and all three of
the RCO's volunteers voted in support of the project. Exhibit eight, which I'll skip through
showing you is just the two mailed notices that we sent out with regard to
the RCO meetings. Sorry, Exhibit 8 is for the first meeting, Exhibit 9 is for the
second meeting. Exhibit 10 is a copy of the zoning code sections that are
mentioned in the refusals to Exhibit 11. Exhibit 11 is our application for
appeal that was filed by my colleague, Neil Skleroff. So what I'm going to do is trust that
you can, of course, read this document. I will not do so to save time, but I will summarize
our legal arguments at the end of my presentation.
Exhibit 12 is the entirety of the archive of prior zoning permits that the city has on the
property, which isn't much. It's just one permit from 2019 that authorized the placement of one
of the modular buildings on the site. There are no permits that authorize educational use
or specifically the school bus depot use of the property. And that's because as is explicitly
stated in the refusal, this is a non-conforming use or in layman's terms, grandfathered use.
So it is not required to be permitted and there are no permits for it.
Exhibit 13 is our site plan that we submitted to L&I.
I'll give you a brief tour of this and then I have some other documents that, while they're not the official L&I plans, sort of illustrate things a little more clearly.
So, this includes an elevation of that shed we're installing. It includes a site plan with regard to the new modular building. And this is a zoomed in site plan. The general site plan is down here. So, this is the entirety of the property.
it's a little hard to trace with these change marks that l and i put on here but
if i zoom in just to this sort of one you know section of the property in the north
the security fence is in black here it's only going to surround the bus parking area
It will have gates on the existing driveway network, so we're not proposing the paving of any additional surfaces beyond what's already paved.
it will have gates on the existing driveway network so we're not proposing the pay
And what you have here in the gray are the installations of the new structure.
So Exhibit A is the new modular office building.
I'm sorry, not Exhibit A. I'll call it Item A.
You have here is the new fuel tank where my hand is, the gray box.
Building C is the existing bus garage.
The box labeled item B is that new shed to house the electrical equipment.
And the existing modular building is up here, which is administrative.
So like I said, I know that's a little hard to make sense of.
So what I have, in addition to that, Exhibit 14 is an existing conditions plan, but Exhibit 15 is like a schematic. So this is not the official plan we submitted to L&I. It's actually a bit outdated. The fence and some of the structures are not in the final locations that are shown on Exhibit 13.
But because this was color rendered, I thought this was a nice thing to include anyway.
It shows you those same things I just walked you through, I think, just a little more clearly.
The blue is the new modular building. Orange is the gas tank.
The purple is the new electrical shed.
The black boxes are existing buildings, the bus garage maintenance center and the existing modular building.
And then the red buildings are the various structures that are no longer in use, which used to be part of the schools here over time.
And I have some photos of all of this.
So this is what the site currently looks like as you drive by the modular building that's already there on the existing roadway network.
And this is where the security fence would sort of meet you, would be right at this building on one side.
And it's going to surround where the buses park. So as we get a little closer, at this point, you'd be within that fence. This on the left is one of the buildings that is no longer in use, which I'll have a close up of in a moment.
So this is one section of the bus parking garage, bus parking lot, which is the existing fuel station.
We are going to essentially be in a position to replace this by installing the new gas tank and related equipment that was on the site plan.
As you can see, this one's quite old.
This is the long building that is the maintenance center with some of the parking that's next to it.
This is a section of parking lot that will not be in the security fence, but that we allow staff to park their personal vehicles in, and it's next to one of the decommissioned buildings.
So this is what used to be a power plant, an on-site power generation facility.
this on the right is the back of that building and then i believe that these are buildings that
are from the early part of the last century that were used for education these were part of a
school haven't been used in a long time though a little further from the bus area is this which is
the most recent structure but still has not been used in some years this is the mid-century school
building. There was a pool and a gym on the site in this building, and there were dormitories
in this building. But again, none of that is used. So, and I'll touch on that more in a second.
What I wanted to do to conclude my presentation is go back to the refusal, walk you through the
actual points of refusal and lay out our legal argument a bit. So there are three refusals,
as you can see here. The first, which I'll go through, is on the bottom, is actually the only
refusal that we believe was rightfully issued. So that is a dimensional refusal with regard to
the height of that proposed interior security fence. And the thing with the limitation is that
it is designed for a residence. This is a residential zoning district, but a four or a
six foot high fence, as the code would limit us to, is not sufficient. We've seen that play out
in practice with the fence that is on the perimeter of the property. We believe that a 10-foot fence
is the minimum height that can provide the relief that we need in order to stop the vandalism.
that can provide the relief that we need in order to stop the vandalism and theft of parts
from school buses. We don't believe that a 10-foot high fence will have any detrimental effects on
the public based on where it's located, which is at its nearest point, I believe still 50 or 60
feet away from the nearest property boundary. So it is not as though it is up in the immediate
at sight of any of our neighbors to the property. The other two refusals are saying very similar
things. So what I want to say is that with regard to all three refusals, before I dive into those
last two, we are here to request variances from you, the members of the board. Now, we believe
that the first two of the three refusals should not have been issued, but that is a secondary
argument, which is mooted, as long as you agree to grant variances with regard to the refusals
on the page here. So what I'll first do is walk through why we believe we deserve variances for
these other two refusals, and then I'll briefly walk through why we secondarily believe they were
not properly issued. So one of the refusals, the one in the middle of the page, states that we
cannot install additional principal structures on the building, on the property. The first of
those two on the top of the page says that we cannot expand any of the existing structures
without, if we were to do so by more than 10% of the existing floor area. So why do these rules
impose an unnecessary hardship on the property. Well, what we're doing with this project,
in addition to making the facility more secure, is with the gas tank, the electrical shed,
and the new modular building. We're modernizing the bus depot. The prohibition against new
structures would prevent us from installing these things, and the rule against expansion
would do the same, even if instead of by building new structures, we did them via an addition to