17-75 Special Exception 806 Howard Street

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Area Board of Zoning Appeals—December 6,2017 20 parking spaces that are filled up and I have five young children. My youngest is nine. And trying to cross to going over to the park and it's very busy and people don't stop between St. Louis,Howard Street stop sign. They race from there to Notre Dame Avenue and I'm concerned increased traffic. I'm concerned about increased traffic, parking because people do not slow down. We live with game day parking for a very long time and people don't slow down. And the visibility of trying to get around the vehicles. I have a suburban and it's hard to see around to get onto Howard Street and I've been almost hit several times. I'm also concerned especially during the summer... MR. CRUMLISH: I'm sorry ma'am I have to stop you,that's two minutes. MS.STANFORD: That's fine,thank you. MS.JESSICA PAYNE: I live at 1119 N. Frances Street,just a couple of blocks from the Pandora Book Store. The one thing I want to state is that,and maybe it's my opinion based on the fact that I've been a resident for decades there,to call Pandora's an active office space up until this point would probably would not be an accurate statement. It was a warehouse situation. It did not have employees coming and going and parking on a daily basis. It was for most people's perspective borderline an abandoned building. So to know to have it used in a high capacity state and not add parking would just be something quite ridiculous. I do live very close to the Eddy Street Commons area and the added traffic, parking situation that has occurred there has been very intolerable for us and I hate to see that then carry over now blocks away. It's just going to continue to eat our neighborhood with addition of the second phase. Again I'm truly fearful of this neighborhood is going to turn into. People are coming to me now, "gosh you guys were right when you though the Eddy Street Commons situation, here we bought this house and it's becoming intolerable for us." I'm afraid that that, now all these people who have built these beautiful homes. We've brought kids back into the neighborhood. We've brought families back into the neighborhood and they're going to be continuously drawn away. If you allow this to go forward with no consideration for off street parking that will truly be the worst possible decision you can make. Does the building look better,yes it does? Is it too tall,yes it is? Is it ridiculous to say we don't really don't need any additional parking, absolutely? And to say that it will only be used for this one purpose, again ten years from now,twenty years from now,what will be the situation? Will it turn into something else? And if you give it blanket cart blanc to continue as it is, it would be a grave mistake. Thank you. MS.SARAH MUSTILLO: I live at 926 St. Peter Street. I'm the brick house that's immediately south of this building. It is dwarfed by this building. To follow up on what she said, it's great that they're willing to say that they're not going to rent, that it's going to be residential space, but we can only control,or we can only accept that that's the current use. We cannot control what the future use of what this residential space that's going to be. And so they may say that it only requires one additional parking spot right now because the owners are going to occupy it but what about if they sell it in several years, if something happens to their business? That's 3,000 square feet of residential space. That's bigger than my entire house. My house is 2300 square feet. So who knows what could happen to that residential space then? And how many parking spaces they will need at that time. That could become rental space which then leads to another issue. I don't know where this idea that mixed use is encouraged in our neighborhood came from. We live in a residential neighborhood. When our neighborhood had a very deliberate redevelopment plan,the idea was for it to be owner occupied houses. And many of our houses have restrictive covenants that we are not allowed to rent our houses. The person that sold us our house wanted to rent their house because they went away for a year and they had to sell it because they were not allowed to rent it. So can't rent our houses yet we might let these guys build something that they could end up renting. We don't live in a mixed use neighborhood. We live in an owner occupied neighborhood. So if they would like to build something mixed use,that's wonderful, build it downtown. That's where skyscrapers belong, not in a residential neighborhood. Thank you. 16