DARYL FOX- Yes, I did.
DARYL FOX- And do you waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate to its accuracy?
Yes, I do. Thank you. You can share your screen and begin your presentation. Okay.
Okay. And we do have all your documents, so. Thank you. Okay. Okay. There we go.
All right. Good morning. This is the refusal. I'm here to present a case for 1401 East Cheltenham Avenue, as I'll show you in a minute on the zoning map.
this is a structure about a block from roosevelt boulevard at the intersection of cheltenham
av and large street near oxford circle i have submitted 18 exhibits to the board which are
displayed here on my screen and i would ask be made a part of the record
um essentially um to start with the refusal uh this is a case about a um a building a corner
building um and you know what why don't i just show you one exterior let's bring up some pictures
yeah so here is a recently taken photo of the long side of the exterior on large street and
And then here is a slightly older photo of the front of the building on Cheltenham Ave.
Some of the photos, as I come back to these later, through Atlas show bars on the windows on the ground floor.
And those have been removed by my client.
So this photo is from last week.
And you'll see there are no bars.
So essentially, this building, I'll go through interior photos.
I'll go through past permits.
historically this was two dwelling units over a um a store or an office
before becoming an apartment this according to the zoning permit archive had an office
for a pest control business on the ground floor at some time before that it was a building supply
store. So all sorts of things have occurred down there. At some time 2020 and prior, could have
been far prior, an owner, two owners ago, converted what was that office into a third apartment.
My clients purchased the property as is, as we can discuss in a minute. They have some thoughts
about how to potentially improve the ground floor unit but they have not touched it they have not
put a resident in it they've done nothing because what they did was they bought the property
realized that they could not get a rental license for three dwelling units so got a rental license
only for the top two dwelling units and they only have tenants in those two dwelling units
So that's probably a good time to show you the rental license.
Here it is, and you'll see it says number of units, too.
Before I continue, I'll just mention that I did send a memo of law to the board.
Before I continue, I'll just mention that I did send a message.
This will discuss how we believe our application satisfies all the legal requirements for a variance, hardship, and otherwise.
I won't go through those arguments unless you have questions, but they're there in Exhibit 2.
So here are some of those past use permits.
This is one in which the gentleman that we understand built that third apartment, Mr. Marzulli. He pulled a permit that just said two dwelling units. Not quite sure why, because before that he had pulled permits like this one from 2006. You'll see his name there that says two dwelling units and an office.
you know i don't know whether he was trying to pull the wool over ellen i's eyes and what he
was really doing was creating an apartment down there but just to give you a sense of you know
that's that's sort of what the record shows and if you go back in time you're going to see other
commercial uses here's a store in 1983 etc i will skip through stuff like the tax clearance
Yeah, we have those documents.
Yeah. Okay, great. Zoning map really quickly. You got the property here at Cheltenham and Large.
I made this land use map myself. I'm trying to zoom in a little bit. And I put all the addresses
of the highlighted properties in the upper right. And basically what this shows you is that there is
an extensive amount of multifamily use in the area. Every orange property has two or more
dwelling units all of the properties here across large street from us are multi-family
i'll show you in these aerials here it's sort of like a what seems like a coordinated
constructed together like complex of multi-family row homes so that's that's you know directly
across the street so this corner is very much sort of like a multi-family mixed-use corner
Here are just additional photos of our property, and then I'll show you the greater neighborhood too.
This is the rear shared driveway behind us.
This is the back of our building, so we have direct rear egress from both the ground floor and the second floor unit.
And the third floor unit has a roll-up window ladder to assist with egress in case of emergency.
see okay here is that sort of multi-family complex directly across the street from us that i showed
in my handmade map this is what's across cheltenham nav so this building like ours did in the past
has a commercial use on the ground floor it is unfortunately an alcohol-oriented mini mart
there is a I believe like a seafood restaurant with other sales catty corner from us
and this is our property looking back from that store our zoning posters here's our floor plan
before I go into interior photos I'll show you the floor plan so you come up into a shared lobby
off of Cheltenham that serves the second and third floor units that's pretty straightforward
as I'll show you in the photos and as I mentioned the second floor unit has an egress to the back
the first floor unit this is not my favorite layout of all time it's safe it has you know
a door to the the rear so there's two egresses it's got plenty of windows as you saw in those
photos. I think my clients are contemplating redoing some of this, but they didn't want to
do that until they got the variance to legalize the existence of this unit. But I wanted to say
that because I do have the architecture firm that drew these existing conditions plans on the line
and in defense of their work, I just want to throw out there, they did not design this space.
Again, it was created two owners ago. And it has this very large back room that the tenant has access to. What really should happen, I think, there's a little pocket here in the corner that has shared mechanicals. That should be closeted off. And probably this back room should become the bedroom.
But this is the bedroom as of now in the middle. It does have a window. So again, I don't think there's any safety issue implicated there, but we, you know, happy to take questions on that if you have any.
Okay, let me now go into interior photos. So this is, this is that first floor unit. Again, my clients did not renovate this. They have an occupation.
Again, my clients did not renovate this. They haven't occupied it either. It's just sitting there. Those bars are now gone. You'll see in all the photos, there is an alarm system with smoke detection hardwired in all of the units.
bathroom downstairs this is the lobby for the second and third floor so this would be the
staircase here to the third floor unit door to the second floor unit door out to Cheltenham Ave
here is the panel and a strobe for the fire alarm system going into the second floor unit
this is their den again the strobe from the fire alarm system on the wall there
this is their kitchen this is their bedroom in the rear sorry it came out tilted so i tried to fix
that uh unit three this is now occupied it wasn't when the photos were taken this is the third floor
unit strobe there from the alarm system again and there's smoke detectors throughout um zoning code
uh rco letter the chairwoman mentioned we have um support from frankfurt cdc's knack group that
does rco service uh we have a letter of non-opposition from councilwoman lazada
um this is a this is a letter i'm not going to read it i kind of went through everything it
mentions but this is from the realtor that um was involved in selling the properties the last
two times so he was able to attest for us that it was the owner two units ago that created that
apartment and then proof of our rco mailing um um so i can have my client adopt my testimony
and also happy to take your questions yep okay my client is probably listed under roman de jean
if roman if you could raise your hand
he's been allowed to speak
and roman can you just unmute yourself please
hi good morning good morning hi could you state your name and spell it for the record
Yes, my name is Romain Dejean, R-O-M-A-I-N, D-E-J-E-A-N.
Okay, do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Okay, counsel.
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Roman, did you hear my testimony in your case this morning?
Was it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief?
Yes, it was.
Are you authorized to speak on behalf of Horizon Homes, LLC, Horizon Homes Capital, LLC, as one of its principals?
Yes, I am.
And your company bought this property about a year ago?
Okay. Would you adopt my testimony on behalf of the LLC as if it were your own?
Yes, I do.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Questions from the board?
yeah so I have a sort of a main question one you already have approval for the two units that are
currently occupied I know you're seeking approval to allow for you to have this third unit but the
third unit as you've already addressed requires a lot of work and I think it's really hard to sit
here and sort of envision what this could be without having had any floor plans done to sort
of outline what the changes are and i think sure you know my general concern right now is approving
it in its current state would allow that unit and it's not great condition to be rented out as such
and so um i think my question is can your client expand more on what their plan is um and and how
they want to move forward with the renovations on that first floor unit um board member when
And before I let him speak, I'm just going to pull that existing conditions plan back on the screen.
Just give me one second.
I have a burden to my memory, but if you would like to ask more questions.
Yeah, and I'll, Roman, you know, I think just to play the lawyer for a second, the hardship is that this floor has never been tied into the rest of the building internally, right?
So that's, it's got to be something on its own basis.
It's not going to be combined into the second floor unit without considerable work.
I think that knocking out these non-load-bearing walls to reconfigure this space is actually a pretty light lift compared to what it would take to combine this floor into the rest of the building.
I wasn't necessarily suggesting that you combine it into the rest of the building.
I was just saying that without seeing the plans currently, as it stands, what we're being asked to do is legalize this.
currently as it stands what we're being asked to do is legalize this so if this is the plan
So if this is the plan that we're.
that we're legalizing i think well great so i think what we would ask to do then is a here and
hold will will submit a proposed floor plan rather than it's a very smart idea okay yeah that's fine
roman do you want to address sort of your vision on how to maybe move or enlarge that bedroom or
anything else you would do to improve this yeah the so the in the utility storage room that you
see here, as Brandon mentioned earlier, utilities are mainly on the street side. And so we could
potentially knock down the non-bearing wall and extend the bedroom into the utility storage
on the non-street side of the building. On the street side or is that an alleyway?
That's a street. That's a large street there. Oh, got it. It's on the right. Got it. Okay.
yeah yeah he weighs in is in the back i mean i think that would make sense i think the the
question i have and maybe you know i was trying to avoid having to bring the architect on but
is that utility storage room already insulated
i don't believe so roman do you know and if not i think i don't know yeah yeah and i mean i i think
the general concern about this bedroom is one it looks like the renovations from switching this
from an office to a house were done without permits i'm like 90 sure that that room is not
legal in terms of size so i mean i think apart from like just being a better living space um i
think to come back with a plan for the revision of that uh that that back side of that apartment would
would be advised okay okay that's that's absolutely fine um i think um i don't know um
madam solicitor if you would like to have public comment in the planning commission
uh before we wrap up was up the hearing or we're not yeah can can we um i i guess i'm interested
in uh you said you wrote a brief okay so yes what are your what are your hardship
um like well donning hardship yeah kind of the so um several things uh board member gas
sure so as i showed on this map it's particularly at our corner right as opposed to further down
the block at our corner this is really a predominantly multi-family environment
the investment to whether making the whole building a single unit or even just combining
the ground and the second floor, the investment to combine those spaces would be major and we
don't think would be repaid by the market given how thoroughly multifamily the immediate vicinity
is. I think that, you know, beyond that, the history of the building's use, you know, it's
it's never been, as far as the records show, at least for something like half a century,
a single family home. So, you know, without, and again, we're of course happy to submit a
floor plan and come back. But if this were ultimately be denied, right, it would really
leave the options as either leaving it vacant, which is economic waste, or turning it back into
a store, which probably would require a variance given the time that's elapsed since it was last
an office and and you know having this as an office or a store i i don't find it economically
viable at this time but even if it were that would seem to be less in line with the zoning code than
having a third unit given that you know our block is our block is rsa5 even if there's other
commercials in the area the zoning is rsa5 so it doesn't seem like favoring commercial
um over residential is like a valid basis for denial here um
any any you know questions or comments on that i'll kind of keep it at that
well you're you're kind of going for economic um hardship well i don't think so because the space
is not combinable with the remainder of the building it it's never been i mean there's
no history of this floor being tied into the rest of the building. I think to say that the space
should sit vacant is more than an economic argument. And the case law bears that out. I mean,
that's basically foreclosing the use of a significant portion of the building. And this
is an above ground floor largely. So I don't really, I don't classify that as an economic
argument. I think that is well within the ambit of other use variance case law that's non-economic.
But I guess I was going a different way.
I guess I was going a different way. So it was represented to him, to your client, that this property was already zoned as three family. Is that what the representations were?
So it was representing
I believe so. Yeah, I believe there was an effort made to pull a rental license, which came back with Ellen and I saying you can only have two units based on the prior permitting.
Yeah. Well, I guess I was just going out thinking about perhaps he could argue that
he was a bona fide purchaser for value in the sense that he had the real estate agent who knew
the history of the property and sold it to him as like three family. Well, the real estate agent
wasn't necessarily, you know, might not, was not. Let me go a step further. The real estate agent
was not his agent he was either the seller's agent solely or or doing a joint listing and
we know there's inherent conflicts in that yeah well no i mean but that would it's still um someone
you know represented to him that this property yes uh three family and yes yes what he relied on
when he purchased the property and i say okay okay yes an argument that could be made regardless of
who made it to him, and actually that works better in his favor that somebody who, you know, was not necessarily someone on his side in this whole purchase.
Right.
Just a thought.
Okay. Any other questions from the board?
Thank you, board member Gaston.
Okay. Questions from our attorney?
I don't think necessarily a resolution hearing is necessary, but we can just close the record except for revised floor plans that the board can view prior to voting.
But the issue on the table today is the use.
I believe the Planning Commission is prepared to comment on that, and we can take public testimony regarding the use.
Okay. All right. Any questions from our audience or virtual audience?
I see one hand chair. I have a hand up by the name of Nikki Burnett. I'm going to allow them to speak.
Hello.
Hi. Could you state your name and spell it for the record?
my name is nanika burnett i'm black captain of 1400 east sholtenham avenue okay did you
could you spell your name for the record oh i'm so sorry n-n-n-n-n-e-k-a burnett b-u-r-n-e-t-t
okay and do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
yes okay uh what is your comment do you oppose uh or support the project
we um upon my upon my neighbors and myself we support the project if it's going to be used as