ever that front building has always been an office supporting those business uses
And then John Mascara bought it in 1993 and has been using it for storage.
So we worked with the water department to say, okay, look, if we do something that's really important to us anyway,
something that's really important to us anyway in terms of stormwater management can we say
in terms of stormwater management, can we say,
tie into existing laterals in the street that are on our side of the trolley tracks which as you
know are temporarily closed since 1994 and it's a big onus so you know it's those kind of creative
solutions that we've been working on and getting all of our ducks in a row before coming to zoning
because you know if we should get through zoning and we didn't do that we were really concerned
that it would be an unbuildable project we might have zoning but we wouldn't have any any any anything
we could build so we've really uh through that process also built a lot of consensus so i'm i'm
kind of surprised i we just learned about this just now you know in terms of this opposition but
we've you know we've worked with we man we've worked with the bid uh we've worked with historical
commission got unanimous approval from them you know worked with streets worked with the water
department fire department um you know engaged uh the uh the executive director of the new covenant
church who's really the only actual property that's mainly impacted by this and they're
very supportive of this and and you know warm my heart to hear that and so um yeah in short this
has been a real passion of ours for the last few years getting it to this point um and as a resident
of Mount Airy for the last 14 years you know I'm excited you know to have something at the very
least in the front there where we have another place for people to come together and and you
know a third place to sort of hang out you know we need more of that especially out out there so
and then these houses I think are going to be a real model for an adaptive reuse which is something
we're really proud of Jim will be talking I think in a little bit but you know his firm is is has a
real long track record of doing that as well so i think between the two of us and my brothers
on the zoom you know we're really proud of the work we've we've done in that department
right thank you questions from the board yes i have a few questions one i know this is an
incredibly complicated site um so i do have some complicated questions um alan you mentioned in
your presentation that this is being planned as a pud and i just want to confirm is the plan to
than sell or to condo the units in the PUD? So I can hopefully answer that. It would be a PUD.
You know, we have not talked at length about that. We didn't want to put the cart before the horse,
but I would think it would be a PUD that would be sold. Okay. And then, because typically when
you have a PUD, there's something that retains back that's owned by the owner of the entire
development because you have to have somebody that's managing all the common spaces. So in
In this instance, is the thought right now that Cresham Green or Bancroft Green is going to retain the site forever and be the manager of the commercial space in all the public areas?
So what would happen, this would turn into a nine. Again, I don't want to speak out of turn, but, you know, again, and I'm sure there's different ways to do this, but I would envision this would be a nine unit pod, right?
commercial on the front eight in the eight units in the back actually you probably could have it
one of two ways that drive aisle can either be in an easement area where each of the actual units
have like you know a portion that's beyond their building structure or you can have essentially a
unit which is that driveway yeah and and the the association owns that he wanted the the ownership
group want to do that it's run by the actual unit owners themselves you know more likely than not
and i don't want to speak out of turn here but for the commercial unit you know scott's uh company
would would probably remain for the time being at least in the beginning to be the owner but
scott's not going anywhere he lives down the street now and as i indicated we've had discussions
and again you never know but there's interest on scott's behalf to like live in one of these units
no i just wanted to ask because the very specific amended refusal based on the assumption right now
that it's two condo buildings within the pud of five units and four units and that if it's broken
in ten like that's it's a different structure and i just wanted to state that on record because i
wasn't sure if that would have to change any of our approvals today no it wouldn't and so you see
this quite often well and this is the hardship too it's not like we can break this up we have
no street frontage. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't. The only way to make this work is to
create it as a PUD, which goes further to our hardship. I just want to say I had the letter
from Council Member Bass's office or Council Member Bass. I'm honestly shocked. We really
did a lot of hard work within the community. And this is not like just going through the zoning
variance process. And this pre-exists me, but there was community input during the historic
commission process right there was much community there was much input through a lot of the
through a lot of the stakeholders within city government streets department water fire department
stakeholders within city government streets department
and to say that after careful review and consideration this project raises significant
concerns that conflict with the interest and well-being in the surrounding community
is shocking i i'm i'm floored i mean honestly i was going to do a victory lap after giving
my presentation i expected that i was like out of all of my projects today i was like wow this
is the easiest one and i jinxed myself of course but i honestly i'm really shocked i mean from a
legal standpoint this is one that would so i i know i know but maybe you should hold up a little
but i would think mr richardson will be on yeah i would yeah yeah if mr richardson could i did
have two more questions one um for the historic carriage house in the front is it what is the
historic designation do you know if it's city state federal just the city just city okay and
then has there been a historic structures report yet for the carriage house well how about this
mr cassidy why don't you come up and and provide some uh professional guidance here
so mr uh could you please state your name and spell first it's james cassidy j-a-m-e-s c-a-s-s-i-d-y
You swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Please proceed, counsel.
Why don't you answer the question regarding the question by...
I'm not aware of that.
Is that something that would have been in the packet from the historical commission?
No, you would have had to conduct...
So either the current owner or the previous owner would have had to do a historic structures report,
but typically that's the first step to doing any type of renovation to anything that's landmarked.
So I just wasn't sure if it had happened yet.
we haven't done that yet okay do you can you talk or attest at least to like the current condition
of the carriage house sure it's um as if it's an office um it's pretty pretty run down but actively
like legally open technically i guess i mean he's he's got a couple desks in there and just lots of
shelves with building materials on it um he just has a you know a couple desks and uh storage for
building materials um and we don't you know obviously we don't plan to change anything on
the outside uh so the only renovations we were planning to do would be it on the interior
and gotcha and then just so the historic structures report would just determine if
anything needed to be like conserved in a very specific way but it would start to talk about
anything that was required of the outside um but then i think my last question is are there any
existing easements on the site due to some of the environmental considerations there's no um
easements regarding environmental um when mascaro purchased it in 1993 uh fc hob did a very thorough
phase two uh which i have access to and the land was very clean back then it's the only reason i'm
was even willing to entertain purchasing this then and obviously we'll do an updated phase two
um the only easement on the site and it's a significant one is this row for this interceptor
uh which runs if we pull the site plan it runs about 350 feet back and then curves so you know
it is um and you can't build you know within 25 feet of either side of it so it's you know it's
pretty significant easement but we worked around it you know so yeah it's got i apologize you have
one question you know the historic structure is structurally sound yeah oh yeah yeah there there's
no way that we can argue anything to be able to to uh demolish that historic structure no nor would
we want to i mean it's it's a it's i was i was happy that it got uh historically designated it
was only designated maybe two three years ago it happened sort of right around when we got under
contract by Oscar
Breitbart, who's been leading that charge, and we
support those kind of things.
My last question is, just on average, what is
the square foot of each property, and
what is the proposed
selling price?
I would say on average, and
Scott, correct me if I'm wrong, it's a
little over 3,000 square feet
other than unit number
four, which is 4,000 square feet.
Yeah, I was actually working on it today,
and the average overall
is about 2,900 square feet.
uh for each um they'll be sold you know we don't have the exact price points but
they're comparable with other high-end developments in the neighborhood which is what this is
other questions yeah i have a question um could you just review the pedestrian access from the
sidewalk okay uh and i i would ask that mr uh cassidy uh talk about that but there's uh can
can you explain what the pedestrian access would be from the sidewalk through the
might be helpful to put up the site plan helpful to pull up the site plan yeah let me uh do that
right helpful to pull up the site plan yeah let me uh do that hold on let me just share the right
hold on let me just share the right screen
screen let's see are you doing that are are you looking as far as with regards to sustainability
are you looking to do any third-party certification likely um so uh as uh alan did his uh presentation
we've done a number of lead projects um and we've started moving away from lead we haven't built
any differently uh we've been focusing just more and more on uh type building envelopes if we went
for a third party uh it would be passive house um perhaps living building challenge but probably
passive house um so jim's office has done a number of those types of projects um and we're always
interested in talking about it so um yeah yeah so so i want to just make sure i i understand
jim there i'm i'm putting my cursor from the back of the property to the front of the property and
there looks like there's a pedestrian walkway that you have created for each of these units
that leads from front to back there is that's the different uh hatch markings so that people would
know how to move through into the building and visit the neighbors okay can you go to the front
and the driveway i want to know what the pedestrian access is from the front the drive
from the germantown avenue yeah so right right here i just it leads always from front to back
this this this walkway and then you created these additional areas yeah that's just um
um you know so you can move on to both sides of the you know the way there and some of it's just
graphic yeah but um but it's open to germantown avenue there's not you know a gated area or
anything yeah so uh council member graham uh council member sorry uh board member graham
give you a raise uh you know something we don't
uh uh here's the walkway so this one i didn't mean i should have just went from front to back
but here it is it's straight through so and again can you just explain a little bit about
the the patios in the in in this part of here uh the second building structure yeah sure sure i
mean i think one of the things we're always trying to do is when you're building residences i mean
we see it all over the city where you see new projects and it's really just like a block a mass
and so what we were trying to do is to make sure that we broke these buildings down so that they
don't feel overwhelming to neighbors to the people who are living there and also by breaking down the
building you're able to provide more light and air and outside space so when you're i mean most
people come to live out in the northwest it's it's because of the green space and i think that's
really important i mean i live there scott lives there and you know we want to make sure that the
people who live in this community have opportunities to be outside and so you see that especially the
ones in the back that they have this ground floor patio as well as um roof decks so that they can
you know entertain hang out play kids can play outside and and to add add to that there's
actually in the back of these um rear patios so every unit at least units three through eight
have a front patio a rear patio and a roof deck a roof patio uh and units one through two one and
two have rear patio and a roof patio. That's mainly the steep slope against the berm is we're
actually infilling the berm where, you know, it used to be an old train line and it ran off with
the dirt that they built up. We're going to fill some of that dirt and use the rear of the first
floor of those homes because the elevations change one and two are lower. That concrete will act as a
diaphragm to hold back um that dirt so that you can walk out of the first of the the second floor
which is where the kitchens are on units one and two and three uh and walk right out to an actual
patio that you're directly interacting with this uh trail um you know we really hope that we can um
help activate this this and this crepling trail has been a dream in the community for about 30
Mike, do you have any questions?
Michael?
There was other question?
Do you have any?
So I was just going to ask about trash pickup mail
and if there was a market study done.
And I'd like to, I know we'd all want to hear
from the council person's office.
uh trash will be private um mail will be at each home um which is why we have that second
Trash will be private.
Mail will be at...
turnaround in the back so that uh you know mail more practically amazon can turn around and such
um market study uh can you elaborate what you mean by that
and he said the last one he wanted to hear from the council person so i have one question
chair uh so on the property where the slopes are the peaks and valleys um that are closer
to the property have y'all added any additional footers to prevent flooding or anything of that
nature uh the i mean the foundations we haven't gotten to the structural portion of this but the
foundations would be designed by a structural engineer um they've looked at this and don't see
any issues and there's no issues with flooding no yeah there's there's none uh and we worked
with the technical review with the water department um and they were satisfied with that
thank you questions or comments from our attorney Hillary Emerson not at this time
Mr. Chair questions from the audience questions from the virtual audience
yes mr chair i have charles richardson with their hand raised they have been allowed to speak
mr richardson you have already been sworn just for the record state your name
charles richardson r-i-c-h-a-r-d-s-o-n office of councilwoman cindy bass room 508 call
uh thank you sir councilwoman thinks that this is a horrible location
uh the fact is that it's 7600 block of uh germantown avenue is a speed trap for the most
part uh from gowan east gowan avenue and if anybody that knows anything about coming up
germantown avenue you pass by the wawa then you get to gowan and gowan is from there it's a quarter
mile s type of curve and whatnot and it's the speedway it's directly across the street their
egress is directly across the street from a property 7611 through 17 Germantown Avenue,
which is going to have 114 units. And if they're in the midst of finishing that property off,
but their egress is right across the street from the other egress where they have a garage
and it's on an S curve. And there's a very bad location. It's already, like I'm saying,