Good afternoon and welcome to Pittsburgh City Council's Cable Cast Public Hearing for Monday, June 15th.

Runs up to Bill 2026 0481.

Would occur, please read the title of the bill.

Bill 481, resolution approving a conditional use application under the Pittsburgh Code, Title IX Zoning, Article 5, Chapter 911, Section 91104A 64 to Passport Academy Charter School applicant for authorization to operate a school, elementary or secondary general use at 1835 Forbes Avenue, block and lot 11 J 56, zoned uptown public realm district B, first ward council district number six.

Thank you.

Our first order of business will be an introduction of the legislation by representatives of the Department of City Planning.

If you would introduce yourselves, give us your name and title, and then proceed with the presentation.

Christian Johnson, Senior Planner for the Department of City Planning.

Kate Rakis, I'm a senior planning manager with the Department of City Planning.

Good afternoon.

An application was filed by Wildman Chalmers Design on behalf of Passport Academy Charter School for change of use of medical clinic to school elementary or secondary general.

A public posting was conducted via on-site posters, mailed postcards, and email notice 21 days before this council hearing, according to 922.06B of the code.

On April 21st, 2026, the Planning Commission of the City of Pittsburgh made a positive recommendation to City Council with the following conditions.

One, all doming permits will be reviewed and approved prior to issuing the final record of zoning approval, and two, the final construction plans, including site plans and elevations, will be reviewed.

I will now turn it over to the applicant.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Robert Max Yunker.

I'm with the law firm of Babst Callen here with uh Joe Oliphant, who's the principal and CEO of Passport Academy Charter School.

We have a quick presentation.

We have given this uh to the planning commission twice, but we essentially cut it in half, knowing that uh we only had a couple of issues to address here as part of this public hearing process.

Uh as you'll see at the very uh opening here, we have the hashtag uh Watts.

Uh, just ask uh people to keep that in mind as we come to the end of the presentation, see if you can guess what that stands for.

Uh, because it's not hashtag passport or hashtag packs.

Uh so we'll see if you can guess it by the end of the presentation.

The property at issue is located at 1835 Forbes Avenue.

As Mr.

Johnson referenced, this is currently zoned and approved as a medical office.

Our intention is to purchase this property and convert it to exclusively uh a school general for elementary secondary education as defined by the zoning code.

However, we do not have elementary students.

Uh you'll hear a description of our program uh from Mr.

Principal Oliphant as we get to that part of the presentation.

But looking at the property, you can see we are right in the middle of the uptown district, uh, the hill district up to the the north of this picture in the site.

Um we have the Fifth Avenue Lofts, former high school uh right there on the edge of our circle and the property that we are acquiring.

We have signed an agreement of purchase and sale with the uh owners of this property.

We are in the due diligence process.

We do have some final due diligence dates uh at the end of this month, so we appreciate City Council and scheduling our our hearing here on June 15th.

So we are hopeful that we will get a positive recommendation out of the public hearing process and a positive vote, hopefully next month, uh week, I'm sorry, at the city council meeting.

Uh we have just street on the side of our property.

We front Forbes Avenue.

Uh we have Watson to our rear.

Uh we have a parking spot, uh, parking lot that is part of this sale as well.

With our application, we submitted detailed compliance comments and an operation memo showing how we address the specific requirements for this school use under the zoning code, as well as the general criteria for all conditional uses also in the zoning code.

As noted by the Planning commission, as you'll hear, our operations are less of an impact than a traditional elementary or secondary school, and that is why we think it is appropriate for a conditional use approval.

We are not planning any major renovations here.

There's no additions.

This is only a change of use, and that is why we're seeking the conditional use approval through this process.

Zooming in on the site, as we mentioned, the binding street bounding streets, Watson and GIST at the property's borders, in addition to Forbes Avenue.

But we do have two bus stops that are indicated here, and that is key because we do not provide student transportation in the traditional sense of yellow school buses or other types of transportation.

Our students primarily are given PAT bus or Port Authority, Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus passes to get to the location, and we do have those two bus stops and easy walking distance of our location.

Next, I'll turn the slides over to our principal and CEO to explain the operations as well as the history of PACS Charter School.

Sounds good, thank you.

So starting with the school started in 2013, two of our current uh board members were co-founders of the school, working within the Hill House Organization Association and realized that the amount of students that were not completing their graduation requirements was getting higher and higher.

So that was the infancy of our program.

So the board decided that at that time that it was not only just to be a school, but a school to make sure that it has an academic support and career career ready focus.

And so that's one of the things you'll hear about through my presentation.

We are a public charter school.

We're not an approved private placement.

We support students that are 16 to 21 years old.

PPS has our um is our our charter authorizer in the schools at its 12th year.