Why don't you move your screen?
That's great.
Could you state your name as spelt for the court stenographer?
Could you state your name and spell it for the court stenographer?
Yes, good morning, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, Mr. Chair.
William Kerr, K-E-R-R.
William Kerr.
I'm going to swear or affirm.
Yeah, go ahead.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Could you identify your client, the relationship to this property?
My client is HELP.
it's an acronym all capitals help h-e-l-p p-a roman numeral one and roman numeral two lp
our vice chair has a few questions for you sir okay
good morning counsel do you agree to read another refusal or stipulate to his accuracy
yes i do have you emailed them all the required documents that's needed to proceed with this case
five days in advance of this hearing i have except for i did not have the council uh the council
woman's um positioned so i believe but it sounds like you did receive that by email
from mr ambrose yes council please proceed and share this name
okay thank you um i am the attorney for again for help pa1 and 2 i have a representative of my
client. On today, Ms. Emma Colley, C-O-L-L-E-Y, so she's here, can answer any questions that come
up. Help PA1 and 2, my client, is an affiliate of a larger entity, and a larger entity's
business really is developing owning and managing affordable apartment units and those affordable
apartment units are typically financed under the federal low-income housing tax credit program
so on this site currently actually let me step back the client is actually a tenant
under a 99-year lease with an entity, a non-profit. Actually, HELP is a non-profit.
The entity that owns the property is Citizens Acting for Community Concerns. That's another
non-profit. HELP has had a 99-year lease in place with Citizens Acting since the late 90s,
97 or 98 and in that back when that at least was initially entered into help constructed 90
affordable rental units on the property there are 43 bedroom townhomes and then there's an
apartment building that that contains 51 bedroom units and those have been in operation since
the late 90s. Citizens Acting has its facilities on the other portions of the property,
and they actually have a health care community center with some associated uses that they do
there. Again, it's a health care-related community center is how they describe it.
There's also a lot of accessory parking.
Citizens acting use of the property dates back to a 1973 lease that they had with the school district.
It used to be a school district property.
And then in 1984, they obtained a zoning permit for their community health center.
Because HELP units now are 25 years old, they're in the process of refinancing so that they can renovate to upgrade.
and create moderate units for their tenants.
So this is really just a technical variance
because back in 1997 and 98, the lease was created.
And that's, again, it's a 99-year lease,
which is the equivalent of ownership.
But there was never a subdivision done.
The current financing team that's providing the financing
is looking for help to have a separate parcel of real estate.
So that's why we're here today to basically obtain subdivision approval so that we have a separate parcel of real estate so that the financing team is satisfied.
Now, I can start sharing my screen at this point if I'm authorized.
i'm not seeing that i'm authorized yet you've been promoted to panelist sir so that the greens
the green button should be at the bottom okay i've got it i just have to figure out which one this is
yeah i think that's it
okay are you seeing a screen it shows that we do we do see it sir yeah these this is my list
This is my list of hearing exhibits. I'm not going to read every one of them, but these are the exhibits that we've submitted.
of hearing exhibits, I'm not going to read every one of them, but the
I'm going to take you to, first of all, to the subdivision plan, which is tab five, and that's page 29 in this packet, because I think this will give you a better sense for what we're proposing.
Okay, so this is the – what I'm outlining here is the citizens' acting parcel, the real estate parcel pursuant to their deed.
This upper right-hand corner is a regular parcel in the upper right-hand corner.
That's the citizens' acting parcel.
You can see some parking.
There's some buildings on the site, some large – again, a large parking area.
back here. This irregular shaped parcel to the lower left is the parcel that HELP has under the
99-year lease. It's all, again, it's all currently part of the overall parcel. And what we're looking
to do is just create this irregularly shaped parcel as a separate parcel of real estate
so that the townhomes, the apartment building is in this area, and the townhomes sort of border
that are located along the perimeter.
The entranceway to the help parcel is through Wyalusing.
So we need the parcel to extend all the way to Wyalusing.
And if that's all we needed to do, this is all permitted as a right.
The problem is, is up in this upper left-hand corner along Wyalusing Avenue
is an existing two-story brick garage building that is used by Citizens Acting.
and there was no way to make that part of their parcel and still allow us to have the access that
we need so what we're what we proposed to do after looking at a number of options was basically just
to create a separate parcel for that garage building so that citizens acting could keep that
it's not subject to the lease it's still owned by citizens acting but when we do that um the lines
were drawn as tight as possible to maximize the efficiency of help getting its tenants in and out
of the property. So we basically just created the parcel line at the building. So doing that,
it created the four variances that are needed, including for lot coverage,
rear yard setback, and the other two variances which are listed.
So that's really why we're here. We're looking for variances for variances related to this, this parcel. It's an older building. It's a brick building. So it probably has some historic commission issues. If it were to be demoed, we don't want to demo it. And again, it help has no use for it. So it's going to be part of the citizens acting piece.
So that's essentially the gist of what we're looking for.
We're looking for the variances for parcel C so that we can create parcel A as a separate part of parcel of real estate for help.
That's the gist of the.
Show us some photos.
Would that be impossible?
Yeah, I do have some photos.
I'll scroll down a little bit.
So this is our first photo.
This is actually the street, Wyalusi Street.
This is the garage building that I mentioned, okay?
So you can see it's a two-bay garage.
It's an older building.
It's architecturally very interesting.
It's been underutilized by Citizens Acting.
But again, we don't want to tear it down.
They don't want to tear it down.
So that basically becomes Parcel C, that garage building.
And then this is the entrance into the help.
And you can see some into the help portion. You can see some of the townhomes. Again, they were constructed back in the late 90s, so they're relatively new, and we want to update them.
This is another citizens acting building that's on the site. And again, you can see the townhomes off to the left here.
another
view of the side of that same
building again then the townhouse is to the rear
this is a view looking along the
internal front of the townhouse units
this is the apartment building the 50 unit apartment building that I had referred to
You can see there's parking throughout the site.
Again, a view further down.
Again, a view further down.
This is the side of the apartment building.
This is the side of the apartment building.
And again, the townhouse has come to the end of this block here,
and then it turns to the right, going back towards Wyalusik.
This is a picture of another facade of the apartment building.
And then we have some posting photos, just confirming that we did do the posting.
Although I'm not seeing the posters, but these are also posting photos.
So that's, oh, here we go.
Here are the posting photos.
That's the entrance.
And we just have, we posted various sites because there are the two street frontages.
We posted a very, this is the list we got from the Planning Commission as far as who was notified.
We had two RCO meetings.
um one was virtual on october 14th and then there were some questions and concerns raised
so then we met in person on last week on november 4th um and the questions that came up from the
from the neighbors and the concerns that were raised related primarily to the fact that we're
going to be renovating the apartments and there were concerns about what will happen to the existing
tenants. And our position is, and what we're planning, what help is planning is that any of
the existing tenants that want to stay, they're going to work with them to either get them back
into the same unit when the renovations are done, or they will relocate them to another unit
on the site as long as they still meet the criteria that the affordable housing program
is administered by Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency. So as long as those tenants still
comply with the affordability requirements, then our intention is to get them back in.
But I think that was, we were having a hard time getting that across to the neighbors. And I think
that was the basis for their opposition. And again, Mr. Ambrose from the Councilwoman's office
was at the in-person hearing. He heard everything that went on. And we have a letter of support from
the Councilwoman here today. So that's the gist of the appeal. And we're happy to answer any
questions again miss collie's here and actually can we promote miss collie right now i'll just
have her adopt my my statements and if the board has any questions she can
they have been allowed to speak could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
hello my name is emma collie e-m-m-a last name collie c-o-l-l-e-y
fair or firm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth i do please proceed counsel
yeah good morning miss collie uh have you been uh on this hearing um since i started making my
presentation yes i have and you've heard what i've stated yes and everything was everything
accurate yes and do you adopt my statements as your own yes okay that's all i have again if there
Are there any other questions for Ms. Kali?
Questions from the board.
Yeah, I have a couple of questions.
I'm actually very familiar with this site.
And I know that there's been a number of issues and concerns that neighbors have had around security and things like that.
And this is a larger complex.
I know you showed some photos.
But it's really a large campus, right, with a number of buildings, including the townhouses and this building and the old, this was an orphanage.
So it has the old rectory and everything building that's been renovated.
So it's kind of hard just in the piecemeal to kind of talk about one aspect of this site without talking about the overall aspects of the complex and what that means to the surrounding community.
So I'm really kind of concerned that things that I'm hearing, that there hasn't been enough sort of engagement with the community. And I think that's the pushback that you're probably getting is because ownership issues and just a matter of understanding how this whole complex is going to work comprehensively, because there are a number of things that are going on and its uses.
so those those yeah mr mr johnson if i can respond to that uh we were we were actually
that was that was uh sort of one of the the threads that went through the two rco meetings
um and we were we were actually somewhat surprised by that that perspective because
um before i even got i was involved in this project um help met with
Before I even got, I was involved in this project, help met with various neighbors back, going back to 2022, or excuse me, back to 2020, I believe, Emma, and 2023.
Thank you.
So there were a number of meetings even before I got involved and before we had a, before we had a formal application and a process going.
And then we did have the two RCO meetings.
So we believe we've, you know, we've been more than accommodating to the community.
Even at the last meeting, there might have been 15 neighbors, including, and then Mr. Ambrose was there.
It wasn't a huge group, and there wasn't really significant opposition.
It was just really more of a misunderstanding.
And our perspective is we're not changing anything.
Everything is going to be staying the same.
There's nothing on the site which will be affected.
The site improvements are all the same. The only changes will be internal upgrades to the units.
And we explained that at both of the RCO meetings that I attended.
So we're not quite sure what else we could give the community that would make them more comfortable.
And as far as some of the issues that exist, as we listen to those, what those issues really, those did not appear to be issues emanating from the site.
They just appear to be neighborhood issues that internal renovations really are not relevant to the internal renovations that we're proposing.
Again, we're hopeful that the internal renovations will – one of the reasons that PHFA encourages projects to be rehabilitated after 20 or 25 years is this program, the Low Income House of Tax Credit Program, has been very successful because the units are very nice and it gives the residents, even though they don't own, it gives them a real sense of pride and commitment to the
complex and also to the
neighborhood. So that's why
PHFA wants us to update these.
So we think just having
that tenants in there that are really
happy because they have really nice
modern units benefits
the neighborhood, even though those
renovations are internal.
Thank you. I'm very happy with the
Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. I've worked with
the Housing Authority for $20,000.
So what's the
I mean, the other concern is what is the population that this development is going to focus around?
I know I believe that the townhouses are traditional family housing.
So what's sort of the plan?