street 5a northwest philadelphia 19106 and that's m-a-t-t-i-o-n-i i was not here
you're swearing a firm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
i do i was not here on 1925 north 4th mr chairman i think that was isaac slepner
um i was here on 1701 north 24th street
um well i maybe maybe the confusion was it's from your firm we're waiting for a letter from
the council person's office uh the case was heard last week i believe and we held off until this
morning i'm sorry 1701 south 24th we heard last week and the week before and we were waiting on
letter from Councilmember Johnson. Mr. Mattione I believe I had it down as you
were going to return and report on whether you were able to obtain the
letter and then the board would decide on whether to vote. Right I think that's
what what it was I have not oops with the wrong screen I'm sorry I did not
obtain a letter from them I did obtain a second letter from the RCO the Point
breeze community development coalition which is now in full support with provisos i believe
sharon you received that letter as well
it's not on our list today is it sharon um let's see no this was this was an add-on um i believe
it was announced that it would be that mr matigoni would come back this morning um this
the one for point breeze yes yes but on my my question it's not on my sheet for adding do we
we can add it on correct it is it's mi2020000044 it's number four on the list that i emailed you
this morning oh okay okay but that's okay i i'm sorry all right i got it now all right so
So, did you get the letter? You did get the letter of support, correct?
I got a revised letter of support from the Point Breeze Community Development Coalition.
All right. So, MI-...
I'm sorry. Mr. Maggioni, I don't have the letter in front of me.
Could you read the provisos that they are requesting into the record?
They said, as discussed, below are the commitments I hereby make you and the community,
make to you in the community with regards to the project that 1701 South
24th Street one the structure will be three stories with a height of 35 feet
One, the structure will be three stories with a height of 35 feet, plus or minus.
plus or minus
Two, there will be no power.
Wait a minute.
I'm sorry.
Excuse me.
That's a different address.
That's what I'm confused.
No, the one that I have is 1925 North 4th that you were returning today simply to report
on whether you were able to get a letter from the council person.
That one, though, but Isaac Slepner is handling that.
I am not handling that matter.
Ah, okay.
If you can reach Mr. Slepner and have him contact us, either for this morning or this afternoon, we'll hold off on that, Sharon, on 4th Street, okay?
And Leo Mulvihill was about to join in, if we could see if he's present.
Guarding 1800 Master? No.
1800 master which is number three on your list i believe the regular hearing list
regular hearing list okay uh before we go any further again mr manioni uh yes again so we're
if you can get a hold of mr slepner uh 1925 north fourth that's fine and then sharon do we have an
add-on for uh the the point breeze uh the one mr manione just spoke to
because i don't see it here no um mr manione could you call me on that one
certainly
okay all right so um mr mulverville regarding uh 1800 master street
and good morning chairman members of the board
Leo Mulvihill here on
1800 Master Street
identify yourself for the record please
sure Leo Mulvihill M-U-L
V as in Victor, I-H-I-L-L
Address is 2424 East York Street, Suite 111
Philadelphia, 19125
And are you going to affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
I think we held off, we were waiting for your letter from the RCO, which you're showing us
Yes, members of the board, just as a reminder, this was an application
for dwelling units in the existing structure on 1800 Master Street.
It had previously been approved for three units with vacant commercial,
then four units with vacant commercial.
Those permits had expired, and now my client was seeking not to have
the vacant commercial space and instead have only residential dwelling units
based on the makeup of the block, which is largely residential,
both single and multifamily mixed on that block.
What I'm showing on the screen now and what I emailed yesterday when I received it around
1130 in the morning is a letter dated October 5 from the RCO, which was Friends of the 47th
Overall, it appears that they voted nine, pardon me, three in opposition.
There were nine meeting attendees.
Nobody else is shown one way or another, and I'm not sure whether there was a letter of
explanation attached, but I'll see whether there was.
All right. And by the way, it's a black leather jacket today, correct?
Well, chairman, I actually had this in my calendar for two o'clock today.
So I was about to head out and run some errands. So I'm glad you.
Okay. All right. So MI-2020-001694, 1800 Master Street. My vote is yes.
My vote is yes.
My vote is yes.
My vote is yes.
Thank you, members of the board. In addition, just to go back to yesterday's list, the property was 1302 North 18th Street. I also sent over a letter for that project as well. Yesterday when I received it from the RCO. I understand it's being held till next week's executive session, but I just wanted to make the board aware of that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
okay uh we got the matione and sleptner we're waiting for i think everything else on the list
go to number five is it charon 39 uh 1501 north 33rd yes please i have someone um with their
hands up if you would allow um i'm not sure if it's matty only or remember
Caller on the phone and then in 420, are you requesting
on the phone and then in 420 are you requesting a continuance or speaking to a continuance
no i'm sorry i was did you guys do st raymond's yet no no okay you're going to do it today
okay we can continue
calendar number 37967 1501 north 33rd street
this case was reopened on the request of council president clark
and i believe there was some dialogue between
the rachel pritzker and mary jones from council president clark's office
um if i could ask um if everyone keeps their hands down until the chair requests someone
to come forward and raise their hand thank you kindly
Yeah, there's no need to have your hand up unless your case is called.
Thank you.
Okay, we do have Rachel here, Chair.
Morning.
Morning.
Morning, Rachel.
Please, you know, you know the drill.
Please identify yourself with a record by your name.
Rachel Pritzker, R-A-C-H-A-E-L-P-R-I-T-Z-K-E-R, 1635 Market Street, Suite 1600, Philadelphia, PA, 19103.
And do you swear and affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Thank you.
Please proceed.
I'm just going to share my screen and kind of go through this again.
As the board may remember this is 1501 North 33rd Street. This is a property located in
Strawberry Mansion across from the park. It is an oddly shaped triangular lot at the corner
and we are requesting variances just for parking. This property can support
17 units by right it's zoned rm1 but given the odd shape and location of the property in addition
to the sewer line that runs under the property that cannot be moved and has to have a 30 foot
non-buildable easement on it locating the parking anywhere from that's not front loaded is not
possible we presented this so as you can see the two refusals are proposed off-street parking
access by a front street, which is prohibited in RM1, and then surface parking in the required
rear yard is prohibited. This project was originally applied for back in June of 2019
and was continued a few times in order to meet the community and address other concerns in addition
to COVID-related issues. So just to go through, again, the site zone RM1. So you're allowed to do
17 units by right. We also are providing two affordable units in addition. And as you can
see, this rail line and sort of this location makes it so that the property doesn't have an
ability to provide parking elsewhere on the lot. We, this is sort of what it looks like existing,
it's been a topic of conversation for many years and it's just kind of sat vacant
with really no movement for quite some time.
Just want to
bring up we went through all the outreach with the community last time we also have letters of
support from the near neighbors although members of the community I'm sure will voice their
sentiments about this project but we have support from your neighbors including 1401
North Coralized Street, 1444 North Myrtlewood Street, 1463 North Coralized
Street, 1510 North Hollywood Street, it's the same one, and 1519 North 33rd Street
in addition to the near neighbor who had to get off the call,
um where his is 1533 north 33rd street he had to run to a meeting um i want to have ian smith
come on to go through um some of the plans he's the architect for the project and to just again
reiterate sort of the difficulties of this site um as the board can see we're proposing 13 parking
spaces. Everything else is by right. There's no dimensional variances being requested. It's just
Everything else is bi-right. There's no dimensional variances being requested. It's just for parking.
There is an existing curb cut on the site.
And again, the thought was to provide accessory off-street parking in order to help with some of the congestion and the additional density that's being built in the area.
There's another project that I think we had mentioned last time that provides no parking further down.
And so this was to help mitigate, you know, the 17 units that are by right and add 13 parking spaces.
Again, there's no other location for these parking spaces, given the sewer line that runs through the property and this sort of unique location of this existing site.
So I just want to have Ian speak to some of the comments that I've made from a professional perspective and also talk through some of the analysis that we had done from two different traffic engineers in order to address the concerns that the community had, which these letters have been provided to the board as well.
Given sort of the low number of parking spaces, this is not something that PennDOT or the city typically get involved with as far as doing a traffic analysis or a traffic impact study.
As per the Philadelphia Streets Department requirements, the study is only done if it generates 3,000 trips a day, 1,500 vehicles a day, and 100 trips per peak hour.
this is only 13 parking spaces so if we said it was 17 parking spaces that would be a total of
34 trips however we wanted to at least get a engineer to to review to make sure that
based on the criteria that they look at for safety and site distance that it would not cause
additional concerns that we could figure out ways to address the community's concerns with
um the street so if ian can jump on uh ian smith and keith aliats is the owner um to kind of
corroborate what i'm saying and um i'm happy to go into more detail if it would be beneficial to
the board but i know that they've already heard this before and and don't want to belabor the
point i would appreciate that and uh we can get your witnesses on and summarize the best of their
ability, we'd appreciate that. Yeah, so I would ask that your client raise their hand if they need
to come forward. Yep. We have Ian Smith is unmuted, and you can wait to be sworn in.
Good morning. Please identify yourself with a record, name and address.
Good morning. My name is Ian Smith. I'm the architect working on this project on behalf
behalf of Keith Allianz. My address is 322 East Thompson Street, Philadelphia PA, 19125.
We're going to affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Thank you. Please proceed.
All right. In order to summarize this, the task at hand was to try to include parking on a
triangular lot. And based on the geometry, as you can see presented in front of you here,
It is triangular. The hypotenuse of this triangular, if I can give a brief geometry exercise, is the longest leg in the back that fronts the train line, which is the Amtrak train line.
That's the longest leg. It's the easiest way to provide drive aisles by standards of the zoning code and provide as many parking spaces as possible on this lot.
It does encroach upon the rear yard setback, but because there is an Amtrak train line behind it, we saw that that nonconformity wouldn't be as difficult because we don't have a residential neighbor behind the property.
It was once a warehouse building that serviced automobiles in its sort of earlier history, and then later on sort of like a warehouse space that had utility vehicles in it.
So vehicles were coming in and out of that property, perhaps not as much as 34 trips a day, but were navigating the current traffic patterns that are moving along North 33rd Street.
And that's how I would probably summarize that.
um ian did you look at other ways in which that we could locate the parking um and can you explain
sort of the exercise with the issues with the sewer line that make it hard to put the parking
anywhere else on this site and in addition to the um the issues with the building and the location
of the building as it results to the hardship of the size of the site the look the shape of the
site and also the sewer line yeah so I so with regard to the
Yeah, so with regard to the hardship, I would like to describe this as legitimate hardship because this is something I've never encountered before as far as land use is concerned.
So we have a utility line. It's a terracotta sewer. It's about 18 inches in diameter. It's 30 feet below grade and services three to four properties on Nutrona Street.
Because of that, the Philadelphia Water Department has restricted any construction with regard to footings or walls or floors above, you know, right on top of that.
You'd have to first climb 30 feet in the air before you could actually build over that easement.
That then, you know, in order to get the density under 38 feet on this property, we had to sort of put all of the massing of the building or the uses of the building towards the northwest corner of the triangle, which is in the lower left-hand corner.
The easement runs sort of north, well, southwest to northeast along the train line.
And it basically follows the, it's parallel to the hypotenuse of the triangle.
That means that the open space left over is available for trying to fit a two-way drive aisle access on the property,
as well as open air parking, which would be, you know, sort of contained by the remaining
existing masonry wall that was once the rear wall of the old warehouse building that occupied
the site. Thank you. I wanted to just jump into the community piece of this. So Ian and Keith,
the owners and another attorney before I was involved had met with a small group from the
community and most of the concerns I think we heard last time were about the density on the
site and other things in addition to some concerns about parking, which is why we had this
plan put together and why we had the engineer review it. We also discussed ways in which we
could have this signage and lighting um and sort of a coloration so that it can make it more safe
we also did do an exercise of looking to see where else we could put the curb cut and again