to log on through the Zoom as a panelist for the two o'clock session.
Okay. See everybody at 2 p.m. Thank you. Thank you, Tony.
All right. Thank you, Stan.
Good afternoon. My name is Bill Bergman, and I will be chairing the ZBA hearings at 2 p.m.
With me is our vice chair, Ismail Shahid.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
Our board member, Thomas Holliman.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
And our alternate board member, LeBaron Leonard Palmer from Development Services.
Present, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
Also present is our attorney, Hillary Emerson, and our executive director, Tanya Sunkett.
Here's our virtual format.
Be advised the proceedings are being recorded.
The video will be available by contacting tanyasunkett at phil.gov.
For the benefit of our court stenographer, we ask attorneys and witnesses to identify themselves before testifying.
If you're participating by phone and you wish to testify, press star 9 to raise your hand and star 6 to unmute.
When an appearance statement, call 267-270-5548.
Leave your email and the address of the property in question.
And finally, the question and answer box on the screen is not for comments or testimony.
All comments should be directed to our Executive Director, Tanya Sunkit.
Let's look at the continuations we have.
Number two, MI 2023-000732-416-20.
0-0-0-7-3-2-4-1-6-2-20-Westerod Avenue.
That case is continued.
Number four.
MI-2022-007-568-5306-208-Havenford Avenue.
That case is continued.
Is there anyone has comments relative to the two cases I just continued?
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. This is Jason Hand. I'm once again co-hosting this afternoon. I do not see any hands at this time.
Are there any other requests for continuances?
Once more, Mr. Chair, no hands at this time.
Okay, thank you. I also have case number 7, MI 2022-004-822-5304 North Broad Street. Jermaine Harris is the attorney. This may be a request for withdrawal, but we do not have a letter. Is Mr. Harris in the audience?
I don't see him in the audience, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. So number seven, MI 2022, 004-822-5304 North Broad Street. This case is continued.
We're going to go to our add-ons.
so number one i have recused myself from this uh mr uh ishmael shaheed our vice chair will handle
this. Good morning or good afternoon. Let me see. MI 2022-003311, 1023-1027 West
that's when Hannah Avenue. This is a request for reconsideration and rehearing. After close
review of looking over this case and additional community input, we're looking to, my vote
is yes to reconsider ration and rehearing. Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes to reconsideration
and re-hearing.
LeBaron Leonard Palmer, my vote is yes to reconsideration and re-hearing.
Thank you.
Excuse me, Mr. Palmer, can you please certify that you watched the video of this hearing?
Thank you.
Yes, I certify that I watched the video of the hearing.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. So, number two, MI 2023, 000064, 513 High Street, I vote yes.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes.
Number three, MI-2022-007-133-1330 Ellsworth Street, I vote no.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is no.
Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is no.
Number four, MI-2022-003-722-3500 Ainsley Street.
Hold on one minute.
One minute here.
I vote yes with proviso.
So, approved use is vacant commercial space on first floor with four dwelling units on the second and third.
Use registration required prior to occupancy for commercial space.
Thomas Holloman, my vote is yes with provisos.
Ishmael Shahid, my vote is yes with provisos.
number five mi 2022 006 878 3964 poplar street i vote yes with proviso approved use as personal
spaces on the first floor with single family household living on the second floor
excuse me mr chair i just wanted to clarify the proviso it's approved use as personal services
on the first floor.
on the first floor. Okay, I'm sorry. Approve use as personal services on the first floor
Okay, I'm sorry.
Approve use as personal services on the first floor.
and single-family household living on the second floor. Sorry. Thomas Alamut, my vote is yes with
Proviso. Ishmael Shaheed, my vote is yes with Proviso. Number six, MI 2022-007-288-4223
Palton Avenue. I vote yes with proviso. Revised plans, one page, stamped by ZBA on June 14th,
2023. Thomas Holland votes yes with proviso. Ishmael Shaheem, I vote yes with proviso.
We're going to go to our regular list. I'm going to start with number three. MI 2023-000-504-873 East Thompson Street. Jerry and Roberta Tannenbaum are the owners. This is a pro se.
Today, this is an application for visitor accommodations at first floor in the same building with single-family household living above in an existing structure.
The proposed visitor accommodation is prohibited in CMX 1 Commercial Zoning District.
All right, excuse me, Mr. Chair.
They will be rejoining as a panelist.
Thank you.
hello can you hear me yes could you please put on your um there you go thank you um could you
state your name please and spell for the court stenographer all right my name is jerry this is
my wife roberta and our last name is tannenbaum that i'll spell t a n like nancy e n like nancy
b like boy a u m like mary and mr tannenbaum you're going to do the testifying yes okay do
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Our vice chair has a few questions for you, but I will note beforehand there's a letter of support from the Fishtown Neighbors Association.
That's correct.
There was a 92% vote in favor with some hundred people participating.
Mr. Shahid has a few questions.
Have you emailed in all the required documents and exhibits that are needed to proceed with this case five days in advance of this hearing?
Yes, I believe I did do so. Other than it turns out that your counsel advised us yesterday that the tax clearance that we had included was an expired tax clearance.
That's the clearance I used when I made the application.
So we did yesterday supplement by email as she had requested with an updated tax clearance.
Okay, thank you.
Please proceed and share your screen.
All right.
Okay, so before I go to the exhibits, first of all, thank you for listening to me and
good afternoon to everybody on the board.
I want to give you a little background about why we're making this appeal and what's going
on with us.
So my wife and I, we're age 67 and 69, we're both retired. We retired from professions working with special needs families. We were long-term residents of Philadelphia. And then, as many people did 30 years ago, we moved out of the city to raise our three children.
and as soon as our oldest youngest child got on his feet we came back to the city because
we really do love Philadelphia and we purchased a building here in Northern Liberties that was in
great disrepair um in I'm sorry I said Northern Liberties in Fishtown and um we've been here 10
years we are committed to this house this is our home this is our forever home we expect to be here
until we die we're not um you know some kind of operators that that are from out of the city or
don't live at the property or whatever. One of the reasons, and it's relevant to our hardship
that we bought this house was it's a very unusual home and it has a double basement. And my, our
idea when I retired from my profession was to return to being a working musician, which I had
been before I had children, right? So this particular building has this double basement
where I could set up a practice room.
I practice every day.
I'm a drummer.
I play in an orchestra in South Jersey.
in South Jersey. I've played several jazz groups in the city here. I do musical shows
I play in several jazz groups in the city here.
I do musical shows in the city here.
in the city here. So this was conducive to do that. Plus, it had an empty space. The history
of this building, this building is built around the turn of the century. It was built by a butcher
who had his own home over the top of a butcher shop. And at the front corner of this building,
which I'll show you pictures of, was the butcher shop. That house was then purchased by a subsequent
butcher who lived there with his family and ran the butcher shop however that house was purchased
by other people who then discontinued the use of the butcher shop when we bought the building it
was our understanding that the butcher shop had been vacant for some 20 years and um we thought
at the time this is another reason why we bought the building it had this great vacant space and
because we were retiring, we thought, well, we can make an apartment there and have some
additional income. We thought that that was fine because the building had already zoned for two
apartments plus a business. That was our mistake. We didn't understand that the zoning was
portion specific and that even though it was already zoned for two apartments,
because I should have told you, when we bought it, it had been divided, the part
that was the home original home had been divided into two apartments. We put it back to one
home for ourselves to live in. And we thought we could use the existing zoning to do an apartment
in the former butcher shop. Obviously, now we know that that's not true. And it's reserved
only for commercial space, which is part of our appeal. We invested a lot of money into the rehab
both of our home. It was in disrepair. I'll show you pictures. We brought it back to what we think
is a beautiful condition. We live here. We care about our neighborhood. We care about our
neighbors. We're not some kind of big time operators. We're just a mom and pop. And as I'll
show you, the neighborhood agrees with us and they think that our operation of this short-term rental
has been very beneficial to the neighborhood, both to the neighborhood businesses, but more
importantly to our actual neighbors because it's their friends and family who are the majority of
our guests. Mr. Tannenbaum why don't we start looking at what you have? Okay so I'm going to
now try to go to my exhibits and just bear with me for a second I'm not all that computer savvy
so first I'm going to share the screen and then I have to go to
I have to go to this zoning presentation and I don't know that you should wait a second
can you all see this on my um you see the green button at the bottom for share screen
all right here let me go back
you got to open this up i did that open this up i'm telling you and then yes i share the screen
and now i've done that and then click on what you oh i gotta i gotta share this first yes all right
you're coming up all right and now can you see um my exhibit it's loading it's loading
Okay, I apologize for that delay.
No, that's okay.
The whole computer process is making me a little nervous.
All right, so these are our exhibits.
You know the notice of, you know, I don't think we need to go through these with you.
I think you're right.
These are things that we were required to submit that we did.
I wanted to get to the photographs.
All right, all our permits. All right, here's the building. And you can see it's an unusual corner property. And this door here was the entrance to the former butcher shop.
And if you can see my cursor, that butcher shop, which I'll go inside and show you, that butcher shop runs from here over to on this side of this big window and then down this side of the street to the end of the building.
And we live up here.
Actually, our bedroom is right over the top of the butcher shop.
And the rest of this part of the property is what we've taken back to be the original home.
Oh, I'm going the wrong direction.
This is this again I can show you that butcher shop is on the first floor only like that and then down that other side, and this part of it is all our home.
This, again, I can show you that butcher shop is on the first floor only.
And when, and when we and this is our front door here. And when we purchased the building it was in great disrepair and we, we believe that we've done a fair amount of work here that benefits the city as a whole we brought this beautiful building back to life.
I'd like to say we're even proud of the work we did.
This is a picture of the actual unit.
We restored all these stained glass windows.
This is the inside.
That's that door I just showed you.
It's a small unit.
It has one bedroom back behind this section.
Trying to show you the space.
It has a small living area.
It has this nice galley kitchen.
and the bathroom. All right. That's all the pictures I have of the place itself. I guess
the most important thing for the board is to understand is that we live right over the top
of this, which we think does several things. Number one, we've never had a complaint. We've
been operating this for six or seven years now. We've never had a single complaint about any
behavior or noise of any of our short-term guests or trash on the streets or anything like that.
zero and we think that that's in part related to the fact that we do live right over the top of it
that it is very small that we don't um allow guests um under the age of 21 and we're on top
of things like i said before we're not um some uh out of city operators we're not big time operators
Mr. Tannenbaum, I know what happened at the meeting.
They're 92% in favor of you.
Correct.
So questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chair.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
Mr. Chair, we have a hand raised by Mr. Robert Everett.
I've allowed him to speak.
Mr. Everett, could you state your name, please, and spell for the court stenographer?
Yes, good afternoon. First name is Robert. Last name Everett, E-V-E-R-E-T-T.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Are you a neighbor?
I am a neighbor approximately 400 feet away.