say the same thing she did or that's correct oh okay um um state your name please and spell for
the stenographer bill let's b-i-l-l-l-u-t-z do you swear or firm to tell the truth the whole truth
nothing but the truth i do please proceed counsel bill did you see and hear my presentation today
i did was it true and accurate yes it was would you adopt it as your own testimony yes i will
thank you questions from the board what's the height of the pilot house above the second floor
roof line I'll also ask that Graham Baylor he's the project architect be promoted as
panelists so he can answer any technical questions but I'll also flip to yeah
do we see his hand
yes they've been promoted to panel sir but could you could you please state your name and spell
Could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer?
for a stenographer
They'll be coming back soon.
So the pilot house is the 10 feet.
From what the roof line looks like, it's at 22 feet total.
And then the pilot house is an additional 10 feet above that.
so the whole the total height of the entire structure is 30 feet
i believe so it's a little bit small on my screen oh is the architectural
yes okay do you please could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer
yeah sure graham baler uh g-r-a-h-a-m-b-a-i-l-e-r you swear or firm to tell the truth
the whole truth nothing but the truth i do you heard the question i did i'm pulling up the right
thing it just kicked me out for a second let me pull up my pdf and i'll give you the exact dimension
um the quick answer to the pilot house is that it would conform to code as less than
10 feet above the deck level um but i don't know if that's the question i i was kicked
out for a minute so i don't know if there was a follow-up question
no that was the question i was just trying to reconcile the fact that it was said that the
height the tallest height matched the building next door and it does not because the pilot house
is actually taller than the building next door yeah yeah and i was wondering if you could explain
why the pilot house is so big because it doesn't need to be as wide as it is to be honest the way
that it's drawn as wide as it is you mean the three feet or the length the length um it can
certainly be shorter it was just drawn um schematically staying within code but
i would imagine it would be tailored to be a little bit smaller that's that's fair
that the uh any other questions just just to make to confirm that street uh that's the back street
there are no um houses that front on that street correct
I know that street pretty well okay so it's a back as a back street all right thank you
sorry my question why the exterior stair from the first floor to the ground
yeah do you want me to field that
yes yeah um sorry i was talking to andrea i didn't want to cut her off um the interior stair
would use up the parking space to be honest um in the floor plan those you have very very minimal
amounts of space to um to to fit a stair interior to that so we decided to bring the stair out to
the courtyard okay and this would be from the garage into the unit or how are we
the stairs goes from the the yard to the home gym on those above the garage okay
and we need that because if there was an interior stair inside the garage that sort of traditional
like traditional details was was breaking through the existing roof you would not have the the height
to get in there going across the property and if you went um for a parallel let's say from watts to
broad you would essentially eat up the entire parking space kind of rendering the garage
useless
getting rid of one of the parking spaces
Okay, thank you
Questions from our attorney, Hillary Emerson
Just briefly, there was a couple of
provisos listed
in the RCO's
letter
that would be enforceable
and I wanted to know if your client was in agreement
with them. One was
no change of use from single family household living second no kitchen and new addition above
existing garage yes they're in agreement okay thank you
okay um
questions or comments from the audience questions or comments from the virtual audience
i do not see any further hands mr chair planning commission thank you chair bergman and good
evening david effecto with the city planning commission chairman of board members the
comprehensive plan recommends no change to the rsa 5 residential single-family zoning at this location
rsa 5 residential single family zoning at this location the appellant requests relief for multiple
principal buildings and for a proposed roof deck property already has a rear structure as do most
of the properties on this block face so this variance for multiple principal buildings is
supportable however the appellant has not shown that the roof deck is necessary to enable viable
use of the property the city planning commission recommends the board grant the proposed variance
for multiple principal buildings but deny the use variance for the roof deck
mi 2024 006 171 1417 south broad street i vote yes with proviso no household living
and no kitchen in addition no well no change of use from single family household living
and no kitchen in new addition above existing garage.
No change of use for single household living
and no kitchen on top of garage.
Michael Johns, my vote is yes with proviso.
Cheryl Gaston, my vote is yes with proviso.
Tanetta Graham, my vote is yes with proviso.
Tywin, my vote is yes with proviso.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes with proviso.
Thank you, counsel.
Thank you very much.
All right. Number eight, MI 2024-006-174, 911 East Westmoreland Street, Darlene Treat is the attorney. No letter of summary, but notice was sent. Meeting was held December 19th. Applicant provided a petition of support, 27 signatures, six from the immediate block.
And just an update on this one, Mr. Chair, there was a letter of support received from the Kensington Independent Civic Association.
Thank you.
Counsel?
Counsel?
do we see darlene's good afternoon commissioner can you hear me
hello can you can you hear me i can hear you can you hear me yeah sure all right could you state
your name please and spell for the stenographer darlene threet d-a-r-l-e-n-e threet t-s and
thomas h-r-e-a-t-t do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the
truth? Yes, I do. Could you identify your client a relationship to the property? My client is RS
Express. Today, representing RS Express is Sandra Martinez. Counselor, do you agree to
read another refusal or stipulate towards accuracy? Yes. Have you emailed in all the
required documents and exhibits that's needed to proceed with this case five days in advance
this hearing. Yes, I did receive the civic letter this morning and I did upload the civic letter
this morning. Understood. Please proceed and share your screen.
commissioners can you see my screen yes
a good afternoon i represent uh rs express um for 911 east westmoreland street i've turned in a
bevy of documents uh including a refusal the appeal the property information form d tax
information, map, activity license, petition, letter of support, electrical permit, affidavit
of continuous use, pictures, community letter, photograph, and a proof of mailing.
Commissioners, we filed this application to legalize an existing duplex.
Commissioners, this property has been existing as a duplex in this community for over 20
years, as will be evidenced by the Civic Association's letter. I did research the
zoning archives, and I can tell you I was not able to find that the prior designation of this
property would have allowed it to be a duplex as a matter of right. Nonetheless, it has been used
as a duplex for the last 20 years.
I'm just going to scroll down a little bit past the, I'm just going to show you the deed.
And you can see that my client purchased this property in 2023.
She was under the impression that this property was a duplex and she started to renovate it.
Here is the tax information here.
Here is the tax information here. You'll see there's an outstanding balance for 2025, but
the taxes have been paid for 2024. I'm just going to scroll all the way down now just to show you
a picture of the property. This is the picture of the property. This is our property right here.
It is a corner property, 9-11, and here is the posting whereby I posted this property.
I'm going to go to the Plans now, and I'm going to reduce it a little bit,
and then I'll enlarge the portions that you want to see.
So I'm going to start out by just going over the site plan for this property.
as you can see it's a corner property and it sits on the corner of Westmoreland and Rand Street
I'll let you know that there are only four properties on Westmoreland Street here and
most of the houses are on Rand Street there is an error in this site plan you have the rear
stairs here that go down to the left when actually the rear stairs actually go down that way. And if
the board requires, I can submit a new plan showing the direction of the rear stairs. But this is a
two-family corner property, which sits on the corner, again, of land in Westmoreland. I'm going
to go to the uh floor plan now basically we are asking the board to legalize a duplex basically
we have a one apartment on the first floor it's a two bedroom apartment with one bathroom and then
we have i'm just going to blow it up a little bit so you can see the first floor dimensions a little
bit better. Here we go. So, as you can see, you would enter the property here from the front.
When you enter, you have a combined living room, dining room area. You have a kitchen here.
You have a full bathroom here. You have a closet, and then you have two bedrooms.
the second floor apartment is laid out basically the same you enter from the rear here you enter
into the living room you have a dining room area you have a kitchen area you have a bathroom area
and you have two bedrooms there's a one closet for one bedroom and there's one closet for the
second bedroom since it is a corner property there are windows all along on the side of the
building, and there's a window in every single room here. Now I'm just going to
flip to show you the length of the property. This is a very long property
that sits, again, on the corner of this block. Most of the corners, as I'll show
you later, have additional uses in them, some grocery stores, some additional
units. I took this picture to show you that we have two electrical boxes here, and I'll show
you later on that we actually have an electrical permit that was issued before I filed for zoning
for two units. Again, this property had been an established two-family dwelling.
It lost its zoning somewhere.
I couldn't find any documentation.
I showed you on the plan that the stairs seem on the plan to have come out this way, but
the stairs actually come down out into the yard there.
That is a discrepancy in the drawing that I submitted today.
This is looking down Westmoreland Street.
It's a pretty busy block.
Parking is an issue here, but I will submit to you on our block, there's only three houses here.
This is a long view of the property, so you can see the entire length of it.
This is the other half of the block of Westmoreland Street.
Our property is at the corner here.
There are two other dwellings on this block, and the rest of the block is open.
I believe Esperanza owns this lot here.
They use it for different purposes.
again another picture of the posting and the property and here are just some additional
pictures to show you what the area looks like there are corner stores on most of the corners
and on all of these blocks, they have additional uses.
So in this area is existing two family at 606 Westmoreland.
We have a grocery store diagonally across the street in the corner property.
And we have some additional duplexes on the block.
I did take some interior photos of the property to show you what the interior currently looks like.
We did notice a meeting for, I believe it was December 19th.
The meeting was not very well attended, but Ms. Marnie Laurie did run the meeting and they did support our project.
and write a letter of support for us. I did send out the required notices. I sent out 213 flyers
and we also circulated a petition with 27 signatures and all of these signatures
are from Rand Street and from Westmoreland Street. Rand Street is the intersecting block.
here is the letter from the community association indicating that the property has been used in the
community as a two-family dwelling for many many years and that they don't have any
objections to it i also just wanted to show you some additional information there was a point
of time where this property actually did have a zoning violation but actually before i filed for
zoning um the violation was cleared um on august 28th 2024 but in an abundance of caution and really
because i couldn't get a rental license um i filed the zoning application
and uh that's all i have commissioners thank you you want to bring your client on
miss martinez are you on the line today
Sandra
They've been allowed to speak
Yes hi
Could you state your name
State your name and spell for this sonographer
Sandra Martinez
S-A-N-D-R-A
Martinez
M-A-R-T-I-D-Z
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth
The whole truth and nothing but the truth
Please proceed counsel
Ms. Martinez
are you a member of the Corporation RS Express? Yes. And do you own 9-11 Westmoreland Street?
Yes. Did you and I attend a civic association with the Kensington Independent Civic Association?
Yes. And did they support this project 100%? Yes. Did you hear my testimony as given to the
board this afternoon? Yes, I did. And if you were to testify today, Ms. Martinez, would you adopt
my testimony is true and correct yes that's all i have commissioner thank you questions from the
board questions or comments from our attorney hillary emerson not at this time mr chair
comments from the virtual audience no hands mr chair army no hands mr chair thank you planning
commission thank you chair bergman and good evening david fechto with the city planning
commission chairman and board members the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the