And my council member didn't just send a letter of, you know, of non-support just because, you know, we asked them to like Mr. Allen claim.
He wants it to be a business corridor. And if you know my council member, it's like he has a mind of his own.
So, again, I'm definitely I definitely want to see, you know, this commercial business corridor, you know, get revitalized.
And I welcome Mr. Lynn and his partners to, you know, participate in community meetings.
so we can kind of, you know, strategize on what revitalizing our commercial corridor looks like.
I haven't seen him in many community meetings at all, none, other than the community meeting
that we had to meet about in regards to this zoning situation. But, you know, Mr. Lynn,
I know you're on a call. We invite you and we will make sure you get notices when we start
those make up thank you for taking the time to call us we appreciate it is there anyone else in
that virtual audience no mr jr do not see any further hands mr knockison do you want to respond
before uh yes yeah so to reiterate for 6104 achievability sent a letter i believe of
supporter of non-opposition for 6104. The council member, Guthier, also issued a letter or
correspondence in non-opposition, but only with a temporary variance. My client did not avail
himself of that, honestly, because of the 2035 plan for CMX3 property. I believe the Planning
Commission also suggested or recommended a grantee of the variance. We are in the process of filing
a motion for reconsideration, reluctantly, you know, agreeing to hopefully the board will allow
us to represent, but reluctantly agreeing to a temporary variance. I hear what the community
saying about they would like a commercial corridor there. My client Len Chang has been diligently
marketing this property for years and cannot find anyone. And they talk about, and one of the
members of the community talked about safety. Well, having empty storefronts makes it less
safe. Having individuals with eyes on the street on the first floor makes it safe. So if this board
feels so inclined to protect this commercial corridor, my client would agree to a temporary
to protect this commercial corridor my client would agree to a temporary variance of five years
variance of five years.
hopefully at that time the commercial quarter will become stronger and more more robust and
my client would be more than willing to then convert that property back into a commercial
unit on the first floor thank you thank you mr malcomson planning commission
sorry i had to find my find my uh it's okay um greg waldman's planning commission staff
um the comprehensive plan recommends a zoning change to commercially mixed use three
which lacks a requirement for uh ground floor commercial given its documented
use history and physical conditions at the site we have no objection to the granting of the requested
variance. MI 2023-001-536-6109 Market Street, I vote no. Thomas Holloman, my vote is no.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is no. Thank you, Mr. Nocklinson. Thank you.
Number 9. MI 2023-003-574-2521 Grays Ferry Avenue. Brandon Sovereign is the attorney.
There's a letter of support from the South of South Neighborhood Association.
Coming back in as a panelist.
good afternoon mr saverin just for the record could you state your name please and spell for
the court stenographer yes my name is brandon saverin and that's spelled b-r-a-n-d-o-n
s as in sam a v as in victor r-a-n as in nancy you swear a firm to tell the truth the whole truth
nothing but the truth yes i do would you identify your client the relationship to the property
my client is the property owner miss amaris hernandez okay and our vice chair has
good afternoon council do you agree to wave the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its
accuracy yes i do mr vice chair we emailed in all the required documents to proceed with this case
five days in advance of this hearing yes thank you please proceed and share your screen thank you
Good afternoon, members of the board.
So the property I'm here to speak to you about today is 2521 Grace Ferry Avenue.
This is a residential building that is located in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood on Grace Ferry Avenue, which is a main corridor with a bus route.
So excuse me, it's my phone, which I'm going to mute.
Our side of the block, as you can see here, and this is a map from Atlas, the official zoning map, is zoned RSA-5, while the other side of our block is zoned RM-1.
This is one of 11 exhibits which I submitted to the board, and I would ask that all of them be moved into the record at the conclusion of the hearing.
Moving on to Exhibit 7, these are just more images from Atlas. This is a parcel map on the top and an aerial map on the bottom, which shows that it's a triangular block. We're towards the center of it, but we do have street frontage on Gray's Ferry, and we have a small rear yard.
I'm just going to show you Exhibit 5, which is a copy of a 1957 permit application that marked the beginning of the use of this building as a duplex.
And I'll come back to the significance of that in a moment.
And going to Exhibit 8, which is additional images from Atlas, I will show you what the building looks like from the street.
So our building is on the right-hand side where my cursor is.
Very handsome building with a brick facade.
And what you can see here are a few things of note.
So for starters, you have at the time of this photo, a third floor addition that was under construction.
And this was a by right addition. And because it was by right, it was constructed with a setback.
And because of that, it's actually not very visible from the street, especially if the construction railing weren't there.
You'd sort of hardly be able to see it standing on the street.
You'll notice that our building is three stories and some others on our side of the block of three stories.
You know, our building is three stories and some others on our side of the block of three stories. This one here, this one here, that's two doors, two doors down, four doors down. You'll also see about six doors down. I think that is 2509 Grays Ferry.
There are some buildings that have close to a half a dozen units and present themselves more in an apartment building format like this one here where my cursor is.
So it's sort of a mixed block in terms of use, in terms of physical appearance.
Staying in Exhibit 8, this is an image from Atlas of the other side of the street, which shows you that on that side, every building, at least in our vicinity, is three stories tall.
and there's a mix of new construction, older construction. So that just tells you a little
bit about sort of the vicinity. Going back to the image of our property, I just want to put sort of
the story of this application in layman's terms. So Ms. Hernandez, the property owner, acquired
this property by inheriting it essentially. I don't know if you could legally call it inherit,
it. I want to be careful, but acquired the property from the estate of her husband's
grandmother. So this is a family property. I believe in my application and in my exhibits,
I erroneously noted that it was her grandmother, just for clarity, it's her husband, Ron's
grandmother. And the goal here was for Ron and Amaris to be able to move into this property.
So it's always been a duplex, or at least since the 50s. It's basically at the moment an investment property, but they wanted to move in and they wanted to be able to do that without losing the income that is generated from the two units that have been there for a long time.
So their idea was, let's build a third story addition, since we're allowed to do that by right, and we'll move into it.
When they sort of started the paperwork to move into it, and this was after the construction was already underway, they realized that that is a third unit, and the increase from two to three units generates a refusal, and they called me.
Now, on the other side of the street, where the properties are RM1, this would not have generated a refusal.
But because our side of the street is RSA 5, we needed a use variance.
At that point, and this was a full year ago, and I'm going to exhibit 2C here, we filed an application for a variance and we met with SASNA and went through the entire RCO process.
So here is an interesting letter that SOSNA generated at that time, which it called a letter of contingent support.
And I'm going to summarize this for you. What this letter sort of does is establish a quid pro quo.
It says, you know, Ron and Amaris, we understand you want to live in this building.
We're all for that, especially since it's been in your family for a very long time.
So no problem with you having a third unit, but we really don't like that third story
edition you built.
We don't like that it has a setback.
We want the front of the building to be closer to the street.
And that was a very, I'll say, surprising request.
But it's a request that we could not comply with, even though we wanted to, because it
was too far afield from what we initially were going for, which was simply the third
unit without the addition.
So what we had to do was withdraw that case.
I never came to the board.
We withdrawed it before our hearing date, and we refiled with the addition that SOSNA
asked for.
And I'm going to show you the refusal and the plan in one moment.
But the sort of end result of all this, if you go to Exhibit 11, is that we met with SOSNA again with our new application, new application number, new plans.
And here is the letter that they authored this time.
Just like last time, we had a tremendously positive response at the meeting.
But this time, instead of offering a letter of contingent support, this was full support, as it says there.
And you can see that the six SOSNA zoning committee members voted in support of the project, as did every single one of the 21 other attendees.
So now to go into the refusal.
This is Exhibit 2D, and I will just note for the record that the
And I will just note for the record that the refusal that we got with this application that we're here before you on today had some incorrect language.
And I got lucky, I'll say, and I caught it immediately.
So I emailed the examiner that wrote the refusal.
I told him what I thought he needed to fix.
He agreed.
So we have a corrected refusal with the same date as the original refusal.
And the actual refusals aren't any different. It's just the description of the application that's a little bit different.
What are our refusals? It's that we're going up to three units from two and that it's we are eliminating the existing setback of the third floor because SOSNA asked us to.
Those are the only two refusals. And I won't read it word for word, but what is the proposal? It's to add that addition that Sassner demanded. It's to increase our unit count from two to three. And it's to build a rear deck off the third floor's bedroom. And that rear deck is by right. So that's not an issue here.
let's see how about I show you the plans so we do have proviso plans the proviso plans are not
all that different from the original plan that we submitted this time around the proviso plans
are at exhibit 2f of our package and I'll just I'll walk through them if you have any questions
I do have Jeffrey, our architect on the line, but in short, the third floor currently ends right here where my cursor is located.
And this is a cross section that is a part of our zoning plan.
So at SOSNA's request, we are adding what is labeled as a sunroom at the front of a third, the third floor, relatively small compared to what's already there.
But this is the front addition and it has a mansard style roof with a dormer window.
In addition, we're going to be completing a roof deck, so we're going to be punching a pilot house onto the roof, which is shown here, and then down here, not on the roof, but off the floor of the third floor is a small rear deck onto the bedroom that was just built up there that we're proposing.
um just to to say a word about the uh process process with sasna um this is exhibit 2g which
describes the the changes that we went through uh this time around with sasna so um my firm and i
at times have gone to war with sasna they can be very particular about the architectural elements
of the plans that they want to see. But this applicant and this architect, I have never
worked with anybody more cooperative with an RCO. I think they went through four different
iterations of the plan, not changing its shape, but changing materials, changing like angles of
the dormer, very sort of nuanced stuff. And that's what's described here. None of this generates
additional refusals. But I'm only bringing that up to really demonstrate how sort of hand in glove
we worked with SASNA here. And not only did we modify the zoning plan with SASNA, but here in
Exhibit 3 is the building permit set. And we walked through all of this with SASNA and changed
this at their request too. So I just really, I'm proud of that. My client should be proud of that
and wanted to mention it.
I think I can end my presentation there.
I mean, I'll just say in terms of the hardship in this case,
it's really that my client's not in a position
to join this community and move into this building
without, with giving up the income
that it can currently receive
from the two units that are already there.
So this is going to allow Ron and Amaris
to join this community.
And we did so, you know, with Sassana's blessing.
Amaris is on to adopt my testimony, and we're happy to take any questions.
We have been allowed to speak.
All right.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court's sonographer?
Amaris?
Amaris Hernandez, A-M-A-R-I-S, Hernandez, H-E-R-N-A-N-D-E-Z.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Receive counsel.
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Amaris, did you hear my testimony to this point in your zoning case this afternoon?
i did was it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge information and belief
I did.
Was it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge, information?
yes it was and would you therefore adopt it as if it were your own testimony
yes i would okay thank you questions from the board no mr chairman no chair questions from
our attorney hillary emerson um i just wanted to note mr chair um while there there is a
corrected refusal i don't think we can actually add that as a proviso because the date is the
same as the other refusal and there isn't any notation on that refusal to to indicate that
it's the it's an updated one or corrected one so i just i just want to put that on the record that
i don't think we can add that as a proviso thank you and and on our end that's fine i've discussed
that with ellen i and they said it won't be a problem so we won't have revised plans hillary
no we will have the revised plans it's just we won't have any proviso related to the fact that
there was a corrected refusal issued yep all right thank you um comments from the virtual audience
i do not see any hands mr chair planning commission good afternoon chair members of
the board this is greg bald planning commission staff the comprehensive plan recommends no change
to the existing residential single-family zoning in 2021 this property received a permit for two
dwelling units and a third story edition the pellet has not supported their hardship claim
with evidence of unique physical circumstances or conditions of the property for the third unit
city planning commission recommends that the zoning board grant the variance with the following
condition no more than two units yeah and and i'll just say mr chairman we we would not agree
to that as a restriction because it defeats the the purpose of the application mi 2023
zero zero three five seven four twenty five twenty one gray's furry avenue i vote yes
Revised by ZBA, one page, stamped by ZBA, October 25th, 2023.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes, with proviso.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes, with proviso.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you.
Number 10, MI 2023-003-575, 7911 to 17 Ogons Avenue.
Letter of support from 50th Ward Democratic Executive Committee, RCO.
Letter of support from Councilmember Phillips.
Attorney is Brett Feldman.
He's coming back in as a panelist.
Good afternoon, Mr. Feldman.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court stenographer?
Members of the board, good afternoon.
Brett Feldman, 1835 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Right.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Could you identify your client and relationship to the property?
I represent McDonald's, USA, and also the franchise operator, Mr. Kenneth Youngblood.