Development Proposed at 4701 Pine Street (over existing garage)
MAKE WRITTEN PUBLIC COMMENT
GCCA has created a survey tool to sign up to stay involved and make public comment following the 8/25 community meeting. All public comments will be submitted to the Civic Design Review by GCCA. The survey and comment form may be found here. Please read below for a recap of the community meeting, project information, and description of the CDR process.
CDR Scheduled
This project has been put on the agenda for the 9/8/20 meeting of the Civic Design Review Committee, which will be a virtual meeting. Please see this link for details. The meeting is open to the public to make comment.
The owners of the Garden Court Plaza (4701 Pine Street) - Infinity Collective and Spruce Street Commons - have submitted a zoning permit application for a substantial addition over the garage. It is a "by-right" project that complies with the zoning code (the CMX-3 district), which means that there are no variances requested, but its scale triggers a Civic Design Review (CDR) by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission; the Garden Court Community Association is the RCO that has been assigned to convene the required community meeting in advance of the CDR.
GCCA held a (virtual) community meeting regarding the project via Zoom at 6:30 pm on August 25, 2020. Including the zoning committee and the applicant team, there were 101 people in attendance. After a short introduction by GCCA, the applicant presented their project, and community members made comment and asked questions until about 8:45pm.
The introductory/background slides GCCA showed are available here:
GCCA asked the applicant to provide their presentation to be posted here for those unable to attend the meeting. They did not feel comfortable doing so; here is their response: "As you know, the CDR application is public and can be shared. The presentation we are preparing is our best attempt to introduce ourselves to the community, explain our inspiration, and identify and respond to the community concerns we have heard to date. However, we have not yet put together design drawings or construction drawings and as a result we have little visibility into construction costs and total investment basis. As such, our presentation serves to outline our goals and benchmarks for various threshold items and community concerns. We do not feel comfortable publicizing in writing these ‘goals’ until we have a firmer grip on the final project cost. Once we have final metrics and plans, we would be happy to share a final version of the presentation as this version would contain promises that we can stand behind as opposed to goals."
Ahead of the 8/25 community meeting, GCCA developed a set of important-and-likely-to-be asked questions based on anticipated community interests and concerns. The questions were submitted to the developer and, and in addition to addressing the topics at the meeting, they have provided written responses. Please download and review the questions and answers here: