All right. Anyone else would like to testify? Please raise your hand. Something new and different.
yes chair we have a mary harris
miss harris you can unmute yourself yes i'm here miss harris please identify yourself
name and address my name is mary joe harris uh that's m-a-r-y-j-o-h-a-r-r-i-s
i live at 905 cross street do you swear and affirm to tell or affirm to tell the truth
the whole truth nothing but the truth yes i do thank you ma'am please proceed okay i'll try to
be uh brief because i agree in principle with the objections that mr brown already raised but i'm
here very specifically to object to what I find totally offensive is the
raise in the elevation at the rear part of the building. I live in on again on
Cross Street which backs up to Greenwich Street and I'm in one of, if you can see on the picture,
one of those backyards with the trees very close to the proposed building.
From our back gardens, we now see a portion of the side of the existing garage. It's only
one story high, but it covers what I assume is the entire lot at 900 Greenwich. The proposal
is to bring to bring that elevation up to a height of three stories, which would literally
loom over our gardens, as you can imagine. It would, our view to the east is obliterated
by the large apartment building that you referred to as formerly a factory. However, that is an
additional uh whatever the width of 900 is it's an additional 20 feet uh distant allowing some air
and sunlight to penetrate those backyards uh allowing the feeling of uh of space and privacy
when you're in your backyard and this would be entirely out of scale and uh it would literally
just loom over back gardens on both the Cross Street and the Greenwich Street sides.
So my specific and strong opposition is to raising the elevation of the rear of that lot.
If anything, I'd like to see the open space restored by the removal of the one-story garage
in the back of the lot, but it's there. I can't do anything about that, but I do object to
raising of the elevation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Brettel, I have a question.
How long is the garage not in use currently, correct? The business of the garage is not
operating, correct? No, I believe the garage is, and I believe it is in operation. And Mr.
vicario can correct me if i'm wrong but i believe it is an operation now i don't know if the business
correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it is an operation now I don't know if the business that's
currently there is um as oh I'm sorry go ahead I just want to is the garage operating as a business
yes uh can I speak yes okay no it is not because we've been waiting my my father passed away at 17
and how long it's been it's been not in operation since 2017 no no we've had it in operation
up until like a year ago okay all right just need to know that thank you all right anyone else
I'm sorry sorry uh just to remind the board that the height um we again we can do that by right
but to sort of hopefully this addresses um the neighbor's issue um we actually we're we're not
covering the entire if you can see from this um sort of overview site plan we're not going to
cover the entire lot with the addition. The open space is actually going to be there above
the existing one story in the rear. So I apologize if there was miscommunication about
that we were filling this space with this entire second story, but the concerns that
she has are actually, that's actually not happening. There is open space above the first
floor um even though we could go up um probably more and cover more of that open space or not
there is some open space um so the rear of the building will not be going up two feet
i mean it would not be going up to three feet it's only important thank you thank you anyone
else to testify in this case yes chair we have a susan
miss susan yes i'm susan fisher and i live on cross street
miss fisher please spell your full name s-u-s-a-n-f-i-s-c-h-e-r
your address 840 cross street you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but
the truth yes my concern my concern um is mainly the amount of people and cars and trash that it's
going to add to the area i'm also concerned you know we keep referring to the building on ninth
street that got approval that used to be the warehouse currently nobody even picks up the
trash there or shovels the snow. I'm just not sure how this is going to be taken care of with
so many tenants in it and adding so many cars. My concerns are pretty similar to the other two
people testifying. Thank you. So Mr. Fisher, I would say that I can't speak for the owner in
the corner, but the vicarios have been longtime members of this community. I don't know who owns
that other, well, I think I do, but I'm not 100% sure who owns that corner building.
And I don't know if they're from this community. The vicarios are from this community and have
been part of this community for a very long time. And so they have no desire to be a negative
detriment or impact on this community. They want to maintain the community that they're proud to
be from. So in terms of the type of owner that you can have coming in to do a project like this,
I think one of the things I would care about
is someone who's from here
and someone that cares about the well-being
and that's who the vicarios are.
Anyone else?
Chair, I have a Brian King.
Go ahead, Mr. Fertil.
I apologize if I'm interrupting you.
No, no, no, I'm sorry.
Mr. Kean please spell your first and last name and provide us with your address
I'm Brian Kean
K-E-A-N
I currently live up on the
I currently live up on Percy Street up by south
however my wife and I are moving into a unit
down on Catherine Street
and I wanted to say that I'm very excited
that these new units are going to be coming
pretty close to our new home. I'm very glad that... Excuse me, sir. You said you're moving to
Catherine Street? Catherine and 7th, yes. A little ways north of this. It's quite a distance away.
It's not a little ways. It's quite a distance with all due respect. Yes, sir. My point being that
I'm very glad that these units are going to be built here and it's going to relieve the housing
pressure in the neighborhood where i live and where i'm moving into and so i'm very grateful
that this building is going up and i hope that more of them go up in more of the city
Uh, anyone else?
uh anyone else
Chair, I have a Mike G.
Please identify yourself with the record, sir.
Spell your first and last name.
This is Mike Gumbel, G-U-M-B-E-L.
And I apologize, I'm on my way to pick up my son, so it's a little bit windy.
Your address, your address, sir?
924 Greenwood Street.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Thank you. Please proceed.
I want to start out by saying that I know several of the Vicario brothers have been on my property for 15 years.
They are great people.
However, I am extremely opposed to this project.
They have mentioned that they've been long-time members of the community,
But they never came around to actually talk to any of the people on the block or any of the members of the community to see what would work in this building and what would work for the people that have been on the block and live on the block.
Most of them live in New Jersey now, so they're not actively members of the current block in the community.
um also point out if you look at the map of the signatures there i believe are two signatures
on the 900 block of greenwich one of which is a rental property of theirs and the other one i'm
not sure which property it is and they also own several rental properties around our block in
that area and so i would assume that several of those signatures were from properties that
they have renters at. So I think some of those would be suspects. As far as the building on the
corner, there was significant opposition to that building. Let's just speak to this address if you
don't mind, sir. Yeah, but so the building on the corner has been a problem in that it is a
multifamily building and basically everyone in that building has a vehicle. And while I know
that parking is generally just an issue in general um everyone in that corner building has a vehicle
that parks on the street and the church has been very generous in allowing us to use overflow
parking but every single night the church parking lot is packed to the brim so when you add eight
units to the block i mean there's just there's not going to be any parking available for those
units. When it was a functional garage, it was, I mean, we really didn't have any problems with
the building garage. I don't necessarily want it to be an auto body garage, but I still would
rather that than eight units. Okay, appreciate your time. Thank you. I think we've gotten enough
testimony. Mr. Battil, you have anything to add before we have, is the board, does the board have
any questions oh i'm sorry um chair yes i could interrupt we do have um someone who
wishes to testify but we could not see her hand um but she's asking to testify suzanne
yes please thank you lakisha if you can try to find her in the list please oh yeah suzanne's
the rco yes but we need people to raise their hands and to recognize them and we couldn't find her
oh good afternoon miss tavani please identify yourself spell your full name for the record
you can give lakeisha minutes like a hundred or something people
uh while they're looking uh mr chair can i just respond to one thing that the last couple of uh
testimony said i just want to clarify what um hello oh okay miss tavani thank you very much
mr chairman suzanne tavani t-a-v-a-n-i i swear or for him to tell the truth the whole truth and
nothing but the truth i do please proceed i chair the zoning committee for the passing square civic
association and i'm going to start backwards i i am going to take issue with mr bertiel's
comment that the leadership of the organization was predisposed to an outcome, that two, our
accounting of the votes were not correct and were misrepresented. None of that is true. Third,
at no time have I ever received any communication either on the contact at passion.org email,
email, the zoning at PassJunk.org email, or my own email, which 90% of the neighborhood
at this point has, that there was any trouble in getting their vote registered, participating
that there was any trouble in getting their vote registered, participating in the meeting.
in the meeting.
The only emails that I have received have been a number of emails from neighbors in opposition to this project.
And I won't go over the opposition because you've already heard it in detail.
So I'd just like to submit that no one will ever impinge on my character,
nor on the character of how this organization is run.
We've run fair and open meetings.
The issue, as he said, was that we did go through the record of the tally of the votes,
because we do the votes online now, because we're meeting virtually, and we did negate the votes
of some people who are not in the neighborhood. And I think you have already heard from at least
two other people who live in Greenwood Street that they have not been contacted to sign a
petition, but people five blocks away have been contacted to sign the petition. So having said
that, I just wanted to put that out there. But officially, the RCO is in opposition to this
project based upon the incredible density, the massing of the project, and the specific use
of that lot. And frankly, I take it as an affront and a threat that if we don't do this for them,
they want to go to a buy right which would allow them to maintain an auto body shop which has not
been in operation in a number of years with three units above i'm not going to take up any more of
your time with telling you about the density and the trash the parking you already heard it you
know those arguments but um that's our case thank you thank you miss tavani uh i just want to
clarify um i don't know maybe miss uh tavani didn't didn't hear me um when i was saying this
but i again i i made no statement about miss tavani specifically and i didn't mean to apply
that she did something uh wrong herself what i was stating was i you know the the members of the
um rco leadership not just miss tavani is public record it's on their website and i just
characterized that i from the beginning of the meeting i can tell that they were um based on
their statements um that's again recorded um that there were members that were already opposed to
this that was just that's just a fact but that aside um again i also stated that i did reach
out to miss tavani because she was my contact initially throughout and there was no responses
but and again she reached back out and explained to me why um it's you know not my business to go
into why she wasn't responsible i mean able to be responsive but um i that's not something that i
was holding as a slight against Mr. Vani. I was just putting the record on kind of what
procedurally would happen. But more importantly, I think, I just want to, we're talking about
eight units here in a vacuum as if it's not replacing something that's in existence or
something that can, will likely for sure be the alternative. And so again, when we remove this
auto body garage, we're not just putting eight units there and nothing else is happening. It's
not happening in the vacuum. What's happening is a double wide curb cut that's in existence now
that folks can't park at now will be removed, which is adding an additional two parking spaces
on the street. That's one net offset. In addition to that, again, this auto body shop has not been,
I'm not sure why folks are saying that, but it has not been inactive for years. It's at the very
remotes, it's been about a year or so. In fact, that was news to me. I was under understanding
that it was still active. And that business comes along with a certain amount of traffic
and a certain amount of parking that's going to be there if it's in existence. And so this
plan is for the adaptive reuse of that space. As you can see, we want to keep the, because
we believe it's a nice shaped building. So we want to keep the shape of the building
with the additions. But we believe that what we're proposing is actually less of an impact.
I know people are skeptical of that. And again, Mrs. Tavani stated that she had some skepticism
or she believed there was a threat of us going with the alternative plan. But that's just the
facts of the situation. To make this project work, we need to keep this auto body shop if we're only
going to be doing the three units. And we believe this is a nice reuse of the building, maintaining
the nice roof line, and just increasing the floors and having additional housing in this community.
Thank you. I understand the buy right. I know people would like for that not to be the case,
but it is. But I do think that this is an overbuilt. That's just my opinion.
But I do think that this is an overbuilt.
That's just my opinion.
So any comments from the board again?
We need to move on.
Planning Commission now.
Good afternoon.
David Fecto, City Planning Commission.
Mr. Chairman, members of the board,
the comprehensive plan recommends this property for single family use.
While we could support a residential ground floor,
we believe that eight units is an overuse of the property.
we recommend that the board deny the requested variances. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Mr. Chair, but I just wanted to add that if
I was hoping to connect with the Planning Commission, but if the board would be receptive,
I do believe that the vicarials are open to exploring revised floor plans and revised density.
it just wouldn't be we just couldn't do the three units without keeping the garage um and so