Counsel, you're having a hard time with your computer?
Yes, yes.
I have more photos, but they're not.
Okay, so why don't we do this?
Why don't you get that straight?
we'll come back to you because we have to move on okay so i'll i'll get back to you in about 15
minutes okay i promise okay my sharing is paused do you hear me i do hear you i'm okay so well
you're gonna have to go out and come back okay all right number six mi 2024 006 405 2531 to 35
cedar street justin crick is the attorney counsel you'll have to come mr wise you got to come back
i'll call you back shortly just try to get your computer straight okay yes sir good morning mr
chair this is jason hand i am stepping in temporarily mr crick will be coming back
and as a panelist shortly.
Sure, thank you.
Good afternoon.
Good morning, members of the board.
Counsel, could you please state your name
and spell for this phonography?
Yes, my name is Justin Crick, K-R-I-K.
Right, do you swear or affirm to tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Do you identify your client,
their relationship to the property?
Yes, my client is K&M 2531-35 Cedar LLC, and the members Manoj and Kristen Prasad are with us today.
I see that old Richmond Civic is in non-opposition to this, and Council Member Squill is in non-opposition to this, and our vice chair has a few questions.
Council, do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal or stipulate to its accuracy?
have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that's needed to proceed with this
case five days in advance of this hearing yes thank you counsel please proceed thank you very
much i will share the screen members of the board we are here today on an application for a variance
for this property at 2531-35 cedar street and we are seeking the could technically be considered
legalization, but the use of four off-street parking spaces, surface parking spaces, that
will be an accessory to the single-family house on that property.
This district in an RSA 5 prohibits single-family off-street parking unless it's accessed from
a shared driveway or alley or rear street.
That is not the case here, but you'll see from the description and the layout of this
property that it is uh it is probably the best and highest use for the neighborhood as well
um the refusal is correct other than we're not really building any off-street parking it's kind
of already there using the side yard for that purpose um for geographic purposes we are at the
corner of cedar and east sergeant street and it is as you can see i'll zoom in a little bit it's
a sizable parcel with a fairly open side yard, as you can see here, and actually more importantly
right here. So you'll see from the historically, and this is an older picture, a car had routinely
parked here and there is a gate at this end of the fence. Obviously, that person had some issues
getting in and out with no curb cut and cars parked along that side. But currently, we are
still talking about the same open side yard and rear of that property, and gate is located in
the same location. From a floor plan perspective, the existing D dimensions show that this is
that this is uh essentially like parcels separate parcels but within the same deed
essentially like parcels, separate parcels, but within the...
and it had been put together by a previous owner uh at some point in time where they kept the
single family structure and then paved over this entire area with concrete and as you'll see they
built a wall it's kind of like a little compound uh on on the on the corner here case in point
right here. This is also a slightly older photo. The fence has been updated by the current owners.
The important thing to know here is that these owners are, this property is not for rental. It
is not being turned into multifamily. It is single family dwelling for the owners themselves. They
bought it in an LLC because it is not their primary residence. They do reside in South Jersey,
but they have several relatives, including a nephew who attends law school in Philadelphia.
I'm sorry, who attends Temple in Philadelphia and their daughter may be going to law school nearby.
And they're hoping to have they use this space currently for when families in town, when they want to stay overnight in Philly after an evening or something.
But it is, again, not for rental. So this is a this is a essentially I don't know.
Not many people may have second homes in this neighborhood, but this is a kind of a second home to address their needs when they're in Philadelphia and not that close.
I have a bunch of photos just to show you the scope of this from the street, and there's a lot of street frontage here that many cars do park on.
This is going up Cedar Street, down Sargent Street, and just getting to the point here.
You can see here that they've updated the fence and the gates for this area.
One of the things you might also have a question about is this telephone pole.
PICO has already indicated that they are moving this pole much further out of the way from where
this curb cut would be, where this car sits. We have also obtained streets approval for the curb
cut. I will just pull that up for a second. This wasn't included in the packet because it
was necessary as part of the application to be approved before we could even apply.
But just so you know, the streets approval has been given for the possibility of the curb cut
in this space so as you can see from the interior photos this is a pretty large concrete pad in the
side yard and is ample space based upon the um based upon the drawings that our design
company did you can fit approximately four cars in here with plenty of turning radius
Is it the intention of the owners to use four? It's rare or unlikely, but even with that, the fact being is that they would like the opportunity to stack four for their family, and that does take potentially four cars off the street, even with one additional curb cut that is here.
We believe that it provides a lot of relief from off-street parking for the rest of the neighborhood.
We did meet with the neighborhood.
There were not many people in attendance, but those that did were in support.
And before I just go into some more, I will show you our notification to the public of the meeting,
along with, as you can see along the side here, all of the proof of mailing notices.
this is an exemplar page from the deed my clients purchased this in july of last year
legal description the taxes are only for 2025 um at this point still and then we did have
posting of the property on the front and on the sides um so essentially this this application
would um again it would benefit the neighborhood by by removing possible congestion on the street
taking away uh the need for more parallel parking by people that can slow certain you know traffic
down or so forth but we believe it's we believe it's the minimus even though it's asking for four
based on the scope of it it's it's still a small amount by comparison to just uh just to go to
off-street parking. So we're just saying that the step from off-street to on-street to off-street
parking is the request. The number of spots, again, is basically they are just hoping to
maximize this use of the space. This will not impact any of the neighbors' air or light. We're
not building any structures to do anything that would impact that. And in fact, we believe it
will decrease congestion in public streets. I should also note that Sardin Street is one way,
so it does make it easier for turning radiuses out of here, which were part of the application
to streets, and it showed that. So it's a little bit less of a concern when someone's pulling out
left or right from a potential curb cut here. It would only be going in one direction. There is no
curb cut here it would only be going in one direction um there is no environmental impact
with this application and it would not burden any public utility we believe that because of the
and this owner did not create this but because of this disproportionately large cemented side yard
we believe that a literal enforcement of the code preventing off-street parking
where there is access to the street directly and no need for a rear alleyway shared driveway or
such that literal enforcement of the code would create a hardship on this applicant.
And so we are requesting the variance to allow this side yard to be used for off-street
parking.
Mr. Crick, before we bring your client one, counsel, could you mention the issue about
Yes, Mr. Crick, do you know if any of the fencing that's up has been previously approved,
to the you know especially where it's a corner property um and it's completely opaque
i will i will say this um i have not my client has not received a violation this was what was
the existing fence but i do recognize when looking at the pictures i spoke with them about
that the the fencing itself may have some um some issues and again this is the old existing fences so
So this technically would or could require legalization, but we didn't when when doing the application that was not noted.
But again, we didn't put in for a fence. It may need this.
This fence may need either legalization or approval, but that is not part of this application.
Right. Right. I understand. I just want to make sure that, yeah, the applicant was aware that there may be additional things that they need to do because of because of that fence.
if it was not previously approved understood yeah and i'm sorry go ahead counsel why don't
you bring your client on yes if uh kristen prasad could raise her hand
and kristen prasad has been promoted
miss prasad please let me know when you can hear me
i'm here hi christine could you please state your name and spell for the court stenographer
sure christine k-r-y-s-t-i-n prasad p-r-a-s-a-d you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole
truth nothing but the truth yes could you please turn your video one certainly proceed counsel
all right thank you miss prasad um have you had an opportunity to hear my testimony to the board
today regarding this project yes uh do you are were the statements made by me to the board true
and correct to the best of your knowledge yes and would you adopt my testimony or do you adopt
my testimony as if it was your own stated today yes thank you questions from the board
yes could you pull up the the parking plan again yes and then how many current
off-street parking spaces are going to get eliminated at with the approval of this project
so here is the uh here's the parking plan and we have this one curb cut that will essentially take
away one uh as you can see also here i guess it's a little bit closer but this is the power pole to
be removed. So only this curb cut, which is right out front of this gate, is expected to be
taking away an off-street parking space. So for one house, even with one car, that's equal,
but we're hoping that we can have more to take more off the street.
And can you explain to me, like, if there's four cars parked here, how do the cars in the front
get out? So because we have this larger rear yard, in addition to this spacious side yard,
this demonstrates the turning radiuses and it may be necessary for the family internally to
have to jockey some cars a bit if they were to ever have the density that is requested
but there is ample space to pull a car back move another in without having to do that on the street
and and interrupting the traffic flow just to get a car out of here and then what is the
rear yard for the house wants this okay well this is the rear yard for the house yeah except there's
a car turning on it so is the rear yard currently paved this entire area is paved it's every
everything up to the actual physical yeah you can kind of see it here it's just always been
concrete yeah or at least as far as we can tell i mean and as long as we've owned it i i definitely
Or at least as far as we can tell. I mean, and as long as we've owned it, I definitely question what this circle of concrete is. It's a little odd, but I don't know, maybe they had an above ground pool sometime way back in the day.
question what this
And then how often are they occupying this house on average during the year?
I can let Kristen tell you that. From my understanding, it's not that often, but Kristen, if you want to just weigh in on kind of the usage and what you expect for usage.
Yeah, so this property has allowed us to see family that live in Florida now that my nephew's at Temple. So, you know, I would say we are not there during the week. It's weekends, mainly. That may change if my daughter gets into law school in Philly. Right now she's at Rutgers.
so currently we're using it you know every few weekends when our family is in we meet them for
dinner we stay at our property my older daughter currently who lives in Bridgewater New Jersey
she comes every now and then on a weekend so I mean for now it's it's not as frequent it's on
the weekends but that'll depend if my daughter gets into law school you know what's the long-term
plan for the property once the family that's currently in college oh we fell in love with
fishtown so much when we were having dinner with my nephew that i decided that this is my husband
and i's retirement plan to be near medical facilities that are wonderful um when we're old
so it's my retirement home okay yeah other questions from the board
Questions or comments from our attorney?
Not at this time, Mr. Chair.
Questions or comments from the audience or the virtual audience?
Carol Wright should be coming in.
carol rice can you please unmute yourself why could you please state your name and spell for
the stenographer she's still muted chair i'm trying to ask her to unmute carol weiss
yes she's muted planning commission
amy boyd with the planning commission the comprehensive plan recommends no change in
zoning at this location from existing single-family residential rsa5 the appellant has not shown that
there are unique physical circumstances or conditions of the property that would prevent
it from being used in conformance with the zoning code the planning commission recommends that the
board denied of the requested variants for parking. Thank you. MI 2024-006-405-2531-35
Cedar Street, I vote yes. Gojohns, my vote is yes. Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes. Tanetta Graham,
my vote is yes. Tywin, my vote is no. Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes. Thank you. Thank you,
Council. Number seven, MI
2024, 006
536, 4219
Main Street.
Vern Anastasio is the
attorney. There's
a letter of support from Manny Young
Neighborhood Council.
also believe
one other group up there sent a letter.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board.
Hi, Vern. How are you?
Sir, you've already been sworn, just for the record, could you state your name?
Yep. Vern Anastasio.
On behalf of Nakia Peterson, the applicant.
All right. Our vice chair has a few questions.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, counsel.
Do you agree to read another refusal or stipulate to its accuracy?
Good afternoon. Yes, I do.
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that's needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
I have.
Thanks.
Counsel, please proceed.
Thank you.
The application is for a restaurant on Main Street in Manioc.
Not an unusual occurrence.
So that's what we're here to do.
42-19 Main.
We have an exhibit binder of 77 separate exhibits.
It's ZoneCMX 2.5, the sit-down restaurant with 30 seats is a refusal, and it's refused
And it's refused for accessory parking. There is none. I mean, it's Main Street. So we're coming up with a parking plan with Manny Yonk Development Corporation and working with MDC and Manny Yonk Neighborhood Council.